Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Meeting Great-Gram and Busch Gardens

Luca was already 6 months old and he still hadn’t met his Great Grandma Helen that lives in Port Richey.  It’s about a 3 hour trip and this is no small task for us with the kids, but we needed to get over there!  So we decided to make a full weekend of it and spent Friday with Grandma and Lily (my Mama’s best friend) and then went to Busch Gardens on Saturday.  It was a full and very fun weekend!

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Grandma has Alzheimer's so I don’t think she knew exactly who we were, but she was still so happy and loved showing us pictures or what she does remember – mostly lots of stuff from way back.

I love this video of her telling us all the names of her 10 brothers and sisters!

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Smiling with Sebastian during our lunch.

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With Luca!

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It was so much fun to see Lily and the girls.  We had Colombian empanadas and ice cream sundaes.  Yumm!  Mostly it was just so great to see them all.  They gave us all the tips for our day at Busch Gardens since Lily and Vera work there too.  Thank you sooo much for getting us all set up for our adventure!

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It was pretty cool that night and Luca looked so cute in his cold weather clothes!  Man, I sure don’t miss it though – I was having to dress Matteo like this everyday at that age when we were in New York!

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Sleep wrestling.  =)

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One of the main reasons we wanted to go to Busch Gardens was to check out the Sesame Street kids area.  It was amazing!

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This carousel was a favorite.

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Log ride for little's.  We were scared Matteo would try to stand up and jump out, but he didn’t.

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Riding in the front of Air Grover, the kid rollercoaster.  Sebastian loves rollercoasters and rides of all types.  But especially rollercoasters.  He was especially bummer he couldn’t ride the huge coasters that are all over.  So were we.  Very strange to go there and not get to ride a single rollercoaster… =(  He made us promise to go back when he is tall enough to ride the big ones.

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Carousel.  Again.  Did you know all these rides make me feel sick?  Ugh.  Matteo is roaring like his lion.

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The show was a big hit – Matteo even watched it twice.

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Hard to explain, but we were standing inside this little observation area IN the tigers exhibit.  There was one laying right on top of it!  Matteo loved it.

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Loved the sky ride overlooking the animals.

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This hippo was doing laps in the water and was fascinating!  The kids though the fish were more interesting of course…

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Train ride around the park was lots of fun and we saw lots of animals.

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They were hilarious on these airplanes!  Matteo had the front which controlled the up/down and as hard as he pulled it would not go up.  Poor Sebastian kept wanting to go up, but nothing…so they went around and around like this.

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Quick, easy, cheap and kid approved = Cici’s for dinner.

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Happy Luca waiting his turn to get his jammies on for the long drive home.

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Thankfully, they all slept after our very full day.

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Thanks Lily for such a wonderful time.  And the kids still sleep with their animals every night! =)

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