We got to travel with our friends Sarah and Brad, since Sarah works with Jason and orchestrated the successful conference submission that allowed us all to go. Hayden was SO excited about traveling with them. Requests for "Sa-raw and Bad" were rampant the whole weekend. She always wanted to know where they were and was excited when we met up.
We were lucky enough to fly out of State College, and had a fairly uneventful trip. The longest wait was for our rental car. Thank goodness Hayden found a little friend to follow around with while we waited. After having left State College around 11 am, we finally made it to our hotel in Orlando around 6:30 pm. We made the decision to go out to eat and after several false starts (finding a place to eat at a "hip" little shopping plaza on Friday evening was not easy), we found a very child-welcoming, and uncrowded Hoolihan's. Hayden had a great time playing with a glass of water, and tasting lemons.
I got everyone to pose for a first group photo to celebrate our arrival. and then Hayden posed with a very silly grin on her own. We had arrived, there was no snow in sight. Life was good.
Next, as you have already read, the Harrisons arrived and again, life was good. Toddlers played, we ate tapas and did some shopping, pools were played in. Then the Harrisons left and things slowly went down hill. Okay, that might be an exaggeration, after all, we were in FLORIDA, it was SUNNY and WARM. But such things are no good if your sweet little toddler is taken down by illness. It wasn't completely out of the blue, her nose had started running, but soon after nap after the Harrisons had left, she just was not herself. Even when we went out to dinner with Carrie, a good friend from college who lives an hour away and came to visit, Hayden didn't quite rally, as you can see in this picture.
That's kind of what she looked like for the rest of the trip, unless she had recently had a dose of Motrin. Thank goodness we brought some medicine with us! We did still manage to have a nice meal with Carrie and catch up. Hard to believe we'll see her again in May at our 10 year college reunion! So old!
Monday and Tuesday ended up being much lower key days. Hayden and I spent a good deal of time in the room while Jason was conferencing. Or we'd snuggle in a lounge chair by the pool. We couldn't really convince her to do swimming; she just wanted to snuggle with Jason on the side. We did take a long walk one morning where I was able to take pictures of the upside down building that just completely captured my attention.
We did manage to make it to the steak house that Brad had been dying to go to. Quite a place, that steak house. White tablecloths, big hunks of meat, fancy wine - not the best for a toddler, but I think Brad enjoyed his meal! Hayden ate pretty much nothing and refused to sit in the high chair the whole meal. I was quite disappointed that the huge hunk of chocolate cake we could order was laced with Grand Marnier. Who wants orange flavoring with chocolate?!! NOT ME!!! The highlight of the meal was Jason's bacon addition to his house salad. The picture may not do it justice, but this was one incredible hunk of bacon - it cost more than most house salads do on their own, but he said it was worth it!
Our final night in Orlando, feeling several days worth of heavy (expensive) eating, we just headed to a mall for a simple chain restaurant. Dinner was fine and Hayden rallied enough to have fun exploring the mall. She just had to give the little dog outside of a special doggie treat store a big hug and was fascinated (as were all the adults) by the indoor surfing venue where you could pay to surf while everyone watched. She also thought the dog/bench combo in Old Navy was too much fun to pass up.
All in all, we managed to have a great trip to Orlando, despite Hayden's illness. She did great on the airplanes and is turning out to be a pretty good traveler. We've learned to always pack some medicine - just in case - and know the importance of being flexible. I'll leave you with two pictures of Hayden from our trip. One is before Hayden got sick, one is while she is sick. Can you guess which is which?
PS After we returned, we got a feel for how tough Hayden was for making it through the trip while feeling yucky. Within a day of our return, both Jason and I had caught whatever Hayden had and boy did we feel awful!! So she must have been feeling REALLY rotten. What a trooper! Luckily we're both starting to feel better. Hope everyone else is feeling okay as we wait for spring to arrive!
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