I last blogged (or just threw a bunch of photos up on a web page) about our awesome day at Gatorland. Speaking of that post, Chad would like me to make sure and point out that these…

are alligator nuggets! He really thought that needed clarification. We ate these at Gatorland.

Anyway, now it’s Wednesday and we’re back in St. Pete, trying to get back to regular life. It’s so hard after vacation! Before I can blog about today, I want to finish up vacation. Gatorland was on Sunday. On Monday morning I did my workout in the hotel room with an audience.

They decided to do pigeon pose with me.

Then they refueled with chocolate covered Entenmann’s doughnuts.

We spent the morning at the pool, but I didn’t take any more pictures there. I figured I had taken enough pictures of the pool. But here’s a one minute video that I took of the mass sliming at the Lagoon Pool.

 

After swimming the cousins got in some quality bonding time in our hotel room…

then we all headed to Downtown Disney.

Lunch at Earl of Sandwich (awesome).

The girls love the Disney trading pins. Grace says that she has at least 10 lanyards!

The boys could care less about trading pins, but they love remote controlled cars.

The girls love to have their faces painted.

The boys didn’t care about face painting. They just wanted to go to the Lego store!

Everybody got what they wanted at Downtown Disney. Even the big boy.

After we got back from Downtown Disney, Hope and I hung out in the hotel room while all the boys and Grace went to see some more of the “4D Experience” movies (they had a pass to see them all). When they got back from the movies we all went to Panda Express for dinner.

Once back at the hotel we went to “the mall” to see a show. We also happened to see the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Our show:

Cal got called up on stage for the pre-show warm up.

We had seen the same show format a few years ago when at the Nick Hotel. It was a take on the old “Double Dare” game show on Nick. Two families had to battle it out with trivia questions and physical challenges. The losing (or winning?) team got slimed at the end. It was fun to watch.

After the show we let the kids blow some money in the arcade.

Then we all went back to the hotel rooms and crashed.

Yesterday (Tuesday) morning we had early reservations for the character breakfast at the Nicktoons Café.

All the characters that Hope had been wanting to see all week were there!

In addition to characters and a little mini-show, there was an awesome buffet.

I tried to stick to low-carb, except for the oatmeal (which is fine) and that serving of corned-beef hash (which is not fine). That has potatoes in it, right? It was all so good. Yesterday (Tuesday) ended up being an unscheduled total rest day for me, and I have to admit that I also ended up totally blowing my “ModelFit” diet and eating everything under the sun all day. Anyway, back to characters…

After the character breakfast we loaded up the cars, but didn’t quite say, “Goodbye,” yet. We all hit up one more outlet mall on our way out of Orlando, and we said our goodbyes there. I was sad to say goodbye to the girls. It was fun to have some girly kid time! All of the cousins really got along well and seemed to have a blast all weekend. We miss them already!

I did have a major score at that outlet mall, though. I bought a bunch of clothes for my nephew Cody who I am going to see next weekend, and I also bought a bunch of things for myself at the Loft Outlet (best store ever).

Which dresses/outfits do you think I bought?

Once back in St. Pete we stopped at Arby’s for lunch. At this point, I wasn’t totally off the grid on my diet. I got the Arby’s Farmhouse salad, but I got the crispy chicken instead of the grilled chicken (the crispy chicken was foreshadowing for the rest of my food choices yesterday).

It was good, of course. The rest of the day was chilling out and “recovering” from our vacation. I snacked all afternoon. Chad made Mexican pizza for dinner, and I ate it…white flour crust and all.

Except for the white flour crust, it was pretty healthy, though. He made the taco meat with ground turkey.

Well, that is officially IT for our mini-vacation to Orlando. It was fast and furious and fun. Today it was back to the grind.