Family vacation 2011 - Day two

When this hotel was built, someone really knew what they were doing.  In order to get to the waterpark, you have to pass a gift shop (with a giant candy display in the doorway), a lounge blasting the Disney channel all day, a coffee shop with pastries in full view, and, the most enticing, you have to walk through an arcade.  So, every time we went to the water park the kids begged to play the games.  Which were NOT included in the room price :)  But, you could conveniently charge tokens to your room via the wristbands worn throughout our stay.  On our second day we planned to stay mostly dry and explore the arcade, the small indoor theme park, and tubing at Christmas Mountain.  First we went to the arcade, while we waited until 10:30 for the theme park to open.

The kids are so excited!

We taught them foosball, because it took about 100x longer to play than the other games. 

As long as Ellie and I kept scoring, our ball would return so we could keep playing

After spending most of our tokens, we headed to the indoor theme park.  Which, as it turned out, did not open at 10:30 like the waterpark, but 2:00pm instead.  Hmm, there went our plans for the day.  We decided to come back, change into our swimsuits and eat an early lunch, then go back to the water park.  Actually, this time Jason stayed behind with a sleeping Violet while I took the other kids to the water park.  Then, we came back and changed again into clothes and went to the indoor theme park.

We weren't sure what to expect, but I had measured Ellie before we came and thought she could ride just about everything there.  The requirement for everything but the go karts was 48 inches, and she was about 47 1/2 inches without shoes.  I guess my measuring was off, because the signs with height limits were much higher than her head.  I actually asked a supervisor to come out and talk with me because the signs were ridiculously higher than her head.  Someone came out with a tape measurer and sure enough it was 48 inches.  Apparently I need a basic measuring refresher or something...

Anyway, there were only a few rides that the kids could do, but they really liked all of them.  There was something called the crazy trolley (or something like that) that was like a trolley, but it went around and around like a ferris wheel.  Imagine my surprise when the attendant asked if I wanted to ride on it with Violet.  I mean, it even had those bars that push down on your legs to keep you in your seat, but it's okay for a 5-month-old to ride?  Yes, she is 5 months old.  Some people might not know it because I haven't blogged in a couple months ;)   Well, I hopped right on because I was pretty confident that I could hold her tight and, well, when else would a 5-month-old get the chance to ride an amusement park ride besides a carousel?

Violet on her very first ride.

Another ride the kids could do were the bumper cars, but only with one of us driving with them.  I took my turn with Ellie, but as you can see from this picture of Jason and Rowan, it was hard to take pictures.



Ellie had to enjoy this ride by herself.  The ride actually had a minimum and a maximum height requirement, so she was the only one in our family who could ride it.  I think she really liked it; she said, "Mom, that ride made my tummy feel funny, but it was fun!"

And of course the kids loved the teacups.  They loved that they could spin the cups themselves.  I rode them one time, but I spun the car so fast at the end that the attendant had to stop the car when the ride stopped and I sat in the car for a minute or two before I could get off.  That was enough tea cups for me!

After the theme park (which also had an arcade and we HAD to play those games too), we decided not to go tubing at Christmas Mountain.  It was already 4:30, we would have had to go back to our room and bundle up, and Rowan is not tall enough to tube according to their rules.  So, we went back to the room and changed into our suits again (while I ordered pizza online) and went swimming for the last time that day until we came back to wait for our pizza.

And wait.  And wait.  And wait some more.  We ordered from Dominos, which now has a handy dandy pizza tracker on their website.  The tracker will tell you exactly what step your pizza is in the process.  I ordered our pizza to be delivered at 6pm.  When we returned to our room it was 5:50pm, and the pizza tracker told us our pizza passed the quality check at 5:47pm.  Perfect for a 6:00 delivery, right?  Well, the pizza tracker did not move beyond that point.  At 6:20, when it still hadn't moved to "out for delivery" we called the store.  Jason was told that they got busy and the pizza would be ready in 5 minutes and delivered in 10 minutes.  Um, okay, by that time I was hoping that they made us new pizzas instead of our pizzas sitting out for over 1/2 hour.  We were all starving and if it wasn't for cable tv we would have had some screaming kids.  At 6:50 (20 minutes past the "10 minutes" delivery promise) Jason called yet again and  they tried to explain something about the drivers, yada, yada, yada, and that they would void our charges.  I would hope so!  It was finally delivered around 7:15pm, and I tried to tip the driver, thinking that it wasn't really his fault that it was so late, but he refused the tip saying, "It's too late for that."  I'm hoping he meant that the pizza was too late and not that he was being snotty because we got him in trouble or something.  Either way, the pizza was free.  Plus I had splurged and ordered some chocolate lava crunch cakes and they were AMAZING.  I guess it was worth the wait to get everything for free, but it was pretty rough.

I think the day not going at all as planned (although still enjoyable) was a premonition for that evening (which was not enjoyable).  The night that Violet WOULD NOT SLEEP.  I don't know if it was teething, or a tummy ache, or just over tiredness, but she was practically impossible to get to sleep and then she couldn't stay asleep.  Which would be rough at home, but it was horrible in a hotel.  I walked the halls with her for at least a couple hours, with her screaming at points and just staring around with her red eyes wide open at others.  When she finally fell asleep (around 11pm) I brought her back to the room and tried to lay her down and she immediately started screaming.  She wouldn't nurse, wouldn't be distracted, and wouldn't calm down for me or Jason.  For about 45 minutes this continued until I finally tried giving her some tylenol, thinking that maybe it was pain from teething.  She gagged that up and threw up a bunch of phlegm (probably from crying so much), but she seemed to calm down a little.  So I gave her new tylenol, walked her to sleep again, and sat up in bed with her sleeping.  Every time I tried to put her down, no matter how long I waited, she cried.  I think I dozed off and woke up and put her down and finally she slept (around 1am).  And through all of this screaming??  The other kids did not make a peep.  I had no idea that they could sleep so well!  I guess all the swimming (and going to bed late from eating dinner so late) really wore them out.  So, I went to bed, restlessly waiting for someone to wake up...