Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Tampa, Days 1&2

Before I get into our Tampa trip, I wanted to ask you all to pray for a good friend of mine today.  Long story short, she just found out one of her 9 month old twin boys has cancer in both of his eyes.  He starts chemo today to try to save the sight in his left eye and his right eye (which is blind now) from having to be removed.  His brother is also being put under to take a closer look at his eyes to determine if he has cancer or not.  Please pray for three things:

1) for Mama's strength as she is with one baby for chemo and hospitalization while the other is having his eyes checked
2) for baby's chemo treatment to go well and to start killing all the cancer cells and for God to heal his eyes
3) that the other baby does not have cancer

Thanks!!! Now on to Tampa...

Last week, our family ended up in Tampa to celebrate the life of Ben's Grandma Bonnie with the rest of his family.  Even though we were there for a sad reason, we had a great time being with family and celebrating her 89 years of life.  Our family kind of trickled in to Tampa.  My mother-in-law came from Baltimore and my father-in-law came in from San Antonio last Tuesday and meet up at the airport.  The girls and I flew in last Wednesday with the help of my sister-in-law and brother-in-law and Ben came Thursday.  He had a big project at work on Wednesday that he couldn't miss.

So Wednesday was our first day in Tampa and even though the flight was shorter than 2.5 hours, it certainly took us the whole day to get there!  My  BIL and SIL picked us up around 8:45am for our 11:00am flight and we made it in plenty of time.  We did find out that traveling with babies gets you through the security line faster!  Instead of taking a stroller through the airport (we rented one in Tampa) Chessie and I wore the girls with my TwinGo Carrier, which is awesome!  I love that carrier.  Kevin parked the car while Chessie and I each wore a baby, each had a backpack, and each rolled two large suitcases through the airport.  We were a sight, I'm sure!
One of my two helpers...Uncle Kevin and his favorite nieces.

The babies were pretty good on the flight.  Both had a few fussy moments here and there but that was about it!  Natalie slept for most of it and Noelle slept for half of the flight.  I had to sit behind Kevin, Chessie, and Natalie so I don't have any in-flight pictures of them.
Mommy and Noelle

One of her new favorite toys is Sophie, the giraffe.

Washington D.C. as we flew over on our way to Tampa.  If you look closely, you can see the Pentagon in the middle of the picture.

Snoozing baby

Once we got to Tampa, Kevin and Chessie grabbed our luggage while I met Linda, the baby rental lady.  We rented two pack & plays, two single strollers, and two car seats.  All of this equipment made us look even crazier!  It took us awhile to rent the car and then cart all of the stuff to the minivan, load it up and get on the road.  Thankfully the house we were staying in was only 11 miles from the airport, about a 20 minute ride.  Our minivan was F-U-L-L!  We barely had room for Kevin to squeeze in the back!

The rest of the day was spent unpacking, checking out the house, and catching up with family.  The house we rented with Ben's extended family was pretty big.  It was on a lake and had jet skis we could use.  It also had a pool, hot tub, game room, and movie theater room.  We watched the sunset on the lake and ended the night watching Pitch Perfect in the house's movie theater room.  It was a long day of travel but thankfully it went pretty smoothly!
Our lake view


While in Tampa, the girls tried sweet potatoes for the first time.  Natalie liked them.

And so did Noelle.


Thursday was kind of a hodgepodge day.  The adults spent the day making sure everything was ready for the funeral the next day.  My mother-in-law, sister-in-law, the babies, and I made some runs to Target and grocery stores for various things.  Ben flew in and made it to the house.  And to top it all off, it kept storming on and off all day so we tried to fit in some jet skiing, pool, and hot tub time when we could.  I didn't get a chance to do either of those activities until later in our trip though.

And that's about it!  I'll try to follow up with Days 3&4 tomorrow.  Thanks for reading! 

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