Florida

We stayed at the Westgate Resort in Kissimmee Florida.  This is what our villa looked like.  We were in the upper right unit.  Bonus:  we were the only visitors in our unit until the last day!  (Lucky for us AND everyone else since I'm sure we were pretty loud!)

This place was huge!  The Dad and I jogged around the place on Monday morning and it took us 30 minutes!   

Our back patio was screened in (hurray!) and looked over a courtyard with tennis courts, a sand volley ball court, and swimming pool.  When we had down time, I would go sit on the back patio and enjoy the peace and quiet.  I told my family, "I am not going to sit inside and watch TV on my vacation!"



After a while, Baby Sis wandered out to the patio and started hanging out with me. These were some of my favorite times.  I hardly ever get to just sit and relax at home--ever! One time I dozed off and woke up to a clicking sound.  I looked and there was a blue jay sitting in the tree right in front of me.   I have seen blue jays around my home town, but never HEARD them before!  

A similar thing happened with 2 squirrels we walked past.  I was a little freaked cause I see squirrels all the time around here, but have never heard them making sounds before!  Pretty cool to add "communing with nature" to my vacation list!

One day, I said hi to our neighbors in a villa across the parking lot from us.  I asked them where they were from (North Carolina) and ended up being invited to their Bar-B-Que!   The staff and everyone we came across at the resort was very friendly!

 We went to the pool every chance we got.  The kids loved it.  I didn't realize Little Bro. was such a fish!   We only visited a couple of the 14 pools, but they all seemed to only go up to 5 feet deep.  This was nice because the kids had SO much more swimming pool to play in.  It also helped me not worry as much as if there had been deep water.

Little Bro. cracked me up.  If he ventured into water that was a little deep for him, he would take a breath, sink down under the water until his feet touched the bottom, then jump up again and take another breath, and repeated that pattern until he had jump-swam himself to the side of the pool.  He thought it was the greatest thing!   I tried to keep him in the shallow water, but I figure it was good for him to learn to adapt to the deeper water as well!   I think he spent more time swimming around under the water than above it!

 We didn't spend too much time in the kiddie pool because the water wasn't heated.  It didn't really warm up until after a lot of afternoon sun shone on it. 

















On our last day of swimming we were suprised to notice an airplane writing in the sky!

 Can you guess what he/she wrote?











It wrote:   JESUS LOVES U !

The resort had a bunch of fun things to do that were free to owners.  Since we were there as the guest of an owner, we had access to lots of fun activities such as their Mini-golf course.  The older kids went a couple of times, while The Dad and I took the kids once.   We had a great time and I was surprised at how good the little ones got at it! 

I like these next pictures because you can see the great view from the course. It was right next to a lake and you can see the paddle boats in the background. It was a beautiful place to spend a week!