Well it’s that time of year where it is still too cold in Michigan and spring is not coming soon enough. Therefore, my family (like many Northerners) likes to take a Spring Vacation. This year we chose to go to sunny Ft. Lauderdale, FL. I know some of you may think…’why Ft. Lauderdale?’ Well, for those of you who don’t know…my wife (my high school sweetheart Carrie) and I have been blessed with a wonderful little girl who we named Taylor. Taylor is now about 14 months old and we wanted to go somewhere that we knew, someplace that we had been to before, someplace safe where we enjoy our time with our daughter away from all the riffraff.
This led us back to the Marriott Beachplace Towers right on A1A. http://marriott.com/property/propertypage/FLLBP
Taylor did great and is really a great kid all around. She probably has no idea what was going on, but she always seems to deal with everything like a champ. She did really well on the flights down, so we were optimistic for the flights back…but more on that in a bit.One day we went shopping at a couple of the malls there and Taylor was having so much fun walking around...but really it was more like running and pumping her arms and laughing and screaming. Taylor had a great time and I was able to work off some calories chasing here around. Just about everyone we came across young and old…would stop to talk to Taylor…they all thought she was the cutest kid they’d ever seen….and of course…I agree.
My normal day last week was getting up around 6 - 6:30 and going for a run along the beach to
watch the sunrise or into some of the beautiful neighborhoods over the inter-coastal waterway bridge right across from our resort, these houses are easily in the millions of dollars and their boats (yachts...more appropriately) are huge...you wouldn't believe it (where do these people get their money?). After that I would go to the gym at the resort to lift weights and watch the news. By that time I'm pretty worn out and head out to poolside and read my book ('The List' by Robert Whitlow...it's a Christian novel about spiritual warfare).I get back to the room at about 8 - 8:30 to get Taylor up and feed her breakfast. The girls (Carrie and her mother Gena) then get ready and take Taylor down to the pool at about 9:30 - 10:00, to get our sunbathing loungers reserved. By this time, Matt is back from his morning workout and cooks up a man size breakfast for him and I. Matt and I then join the girls at the pool when were finished eating.
We all take turns entertaining Taylor and trying to keep her from jumping right into the pool.
This kid has no fear...kinda scary. I hold her up to the window in our suite and she looks down 15 stories and laughs at how small the cars are etc. No fear of heights yet either apparently. In the pool area they have a few pigeons that Taylor would find most fascinating and chase around, they also have a little dual waterfall which Taylor also loved. She would every so carefully put her hand in the water and then immediately run away laughing, then come back to the waterfall and do they same thing…but this time either putting her hand/arm in further or holding it there longer…then running away and starting the whole process again. Of course, she would be entertaining everyone in the area. We have this on video if anyone wants to see it…it’s really quite hilarious and hard to express in words.We had been putting Taylor down for her first nap of the day at 11 - 11:30. She would sleep for about 30 - 45 min and I will need to wake her up. We then resume fun at the pool.
We had been taking Taylor up for her afternoon nap at 3-ish and she would sleep until we wake her up around 5, when we usually give her a quick bath and all get ready to go out for dinner. They have so many good places to eat in Ft. Lauderdale that we typically didn’t have a problem hitting everyone’s favorites.
That's about it...we would have some leisure time in the room at night which is short for me since I've been waking up a lot earlier than everyone else. Taylor would go to bed about 9-ish and we would talk, read and watch TV.
This was an example of a typical day for us while we were in Florida. We had a great week with great weather and really enjoyed ourselves.
As promised, I eluded to some difficulty on our return flight with Taylor. We started off that Saturday morning for the most part on time. That was until we pushed the down button on our elevator. There are 4 elevators for the building and we waited for what seemed like an eternity, but was really more like 20 -30 min. At that point we decided to get on any elevator that we could all fit on…because the only ones that would open were going up. So we rode that elevator all the way to the top…then we had to go all the way back down by stopping at every floor…just to show the people waiting to get on that we were full and that nothing else could fit. Keep in mind that we have our 14 month daughter and that we now know that we are running behind. This is just the beginning to the stress of that day. Also, something to note is the amount of luggage that we had to pull and carry with us. All of the adults had a full size suitcase and Taylor had a smaller suitcase. We also had a diaper bag, a laptop with no carrying case, a stroller which was packed in a bag so that we could check it…which meant that I had to carry Taylor…and we all had our own carry-on luggage as well. I’m not even sure if I know now how we were able to get this entire luggage mess into the mini-van.
Finally exasperated we get to the airport and attempt to check in and the nice curbside check-in fella laughs at us. Our flight takes off in a half an hour and he can’t even check us in. So now, our fears have come true…we have to beg and plead to get on a flight. We find our first hope at 3:11 pm, and I look at my watch as it reads a few minutes past 11 am.
The good news is that we can check our luggage. The bad news is that now we have to wait until at least 2:11 pm before they will let us into the concourse. Well none of us, except Taylor, has eaten anything all day. So we walk the terminal to find food only to find one restaurant…Chili’s. The line for Chili’s is about as long as the terminal, because as we find out by passing flight goers….they have just dropped off 4 cruise ships! Oh, so that’s why there are people sleeping on just about every square foot of vacant carpet. Reluctantly we find out that they have a Chili’s To go…so this is what we do. Order a bunch of burgers and proceed to become part of the mass of humanity constrained to the floor and scarf down our food, not knowing what the rest of the day will entail.
Amazingly, we are able to all get on the flight…not all together of course, but at least we are all on the same flight. We had been discussing what would our reaction be if they said that only one, or two, or three can go…but this is great news to us. At the very least we will get into Chicago this same day and if necessary drive home and sleep in our own beds.
So now let’s remember that we have a 14 month old little girl that has yet to take much of a nap and who is used to getting about 3 hours per day. Without going into too much annoying detail…it was a rough flight.
Ending on a good note…we did not have to use our connections to have Nicholas (manager of Avis Kalamazoo operations) let us bring him a car over from Chicago. We were able to also make our connecting flight out of O’Hare to Kalamazoo. After all of this madness…the bell rang for the luggage conveyor and our luggage was the first bags out of the flaps!
