Vacation!

It’s been a week since we got back from vacation & I still feel like I haven’t adjusted! We took the kids to Legoland in Florida, stayed at the Legoland beach resort…basically went all out so that Dex & Piper could have a blast. The kids loved it, and while my husband & I had fun with the park, the resort & all that, de-stressing on vacation with kids is almost impossible.

One of the things that I love to do the most is just explore–just get up & go. Wherever…no matter how long it may take to get there. With kids, that’s not a good idea. Especially when one of your kids is autistic. Dex requires so much consistency. We told the kids we were going to Legoland and the days that we didn’t & had the plans to explore, he was just not having it. A big part of it is our fault. We want the kids to see all these things & appreciate the sights and scenery, but it’s not that easy. On one of the days when we weren’t planning on going to Legoland, we wanted to go explore downtown Orlando and look for things to do with the kids. We decided to go to the Orlando Science Museum. We love science museums, especially ones with kid sections, so it was fun. But, it also took us about an hour to convince Dex to give it a shot. And then once we convinced him to, it all went downhill when we suggested looking outside of the dedicated play areas. And that was most of the vacation outside of the Legoland days. Oh, well. I can’t say we didn’t expect to run into issues. All that matters is that the kids had a blast & they still won’t stop talking about it. And because of that, we’ll do it again. Mom & Dad are just going to need vacations on our own. We haven’t had one in 7 years!

The kids were on board, however, the last day when we decided to spend the day at Clearwater Beach. Now, I had high expectations of Clearwater–it was named, I believe, the 2nd best beach in the United States. Coming from the Chicagoland area, where we have Lake Michigan, the Dunes & Michigan only 45 minutes away, we’ve been to some beautiful beaches. And let me tell you, I was a bit underwhelmed. The beach was so congested, the water wasn’t as clear as led to believe & the actual beach wasn’t very clean! One of our favorite beaches, only about 35 minutes away from us, is always clean, clear & gorgeous. Except for the palm trees everywhere, it wasn’t making me want to pack up & move there.

So, all in all, I wasn’t too impressed with the Gulf. We went to Daytona, Ormond beach specifically–wasn’t too impressed with the Atlantic.

These are pictures from the summer at our favorite beach…the only difference is the color of the sand.

I guess I’ll just stay a Midwest girl.

–Lissa

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