Favorite Florida Moments

Since Nadia turned 38 months old today, I'm posting eight of her highlights of our trip thus far:

These are all made from Legos (at Downtown Disney).

1. Playing with her cousins. The first thing Nadia said when I opened her door one morning was "I want to go play with Susie and Rachel!" Ian had fun with his cousins also. He and Adam were both laughing hysterically while they played together on several occasions. Precious memories! Nadia and Adam were in the same Sunday School class, which was also special! You can tell she's the first born in our family as she said once "Rachel (age 2) is being a bad girl." When asked why she responded, "she's not obeying me." LOL!

2. Flying on the airplane. Nadia has been on an airplane several times (flown to Chicago, Antigua, New Orleans, and twice to Florida). The flight down (on the 20th) was definitely the first time she got really excited as we were taking off. I actually had to ask her to calm down because she was squealing so loudly! It was fun to see her get so excited about flying in an airplane. Ian's highlight at the airport was seeing lots of buses while we waited for the bus to take us to our rental car at the Orlando airport. His joy would have been greater had I let him run freely.

3. Going down waterslides. Nadia had her first experiencec with waterslides on this trip. One of the pools at our resort had five water slides. On Saturday she did two of them, on Sunday afternoon she tried two more, and on Monday morning she tried the biggest one. She and Susie were the only ones who did all the slides. Adam (age 4) and Rachel (age 2) did four of the five slides. Susie was only wearing swimmies on her arms. Rachel and Adam used inner tubes, and Nadia was wearing the inner tube that was attached to her. I wish I had a picture showing Nadia's glee that first afternoon (20th) as she went down the slides. She could not have been any more thrilled. It was another precious moment to see her total and complete delight.

4. Talking on the phone. Normally when Nadia talks on my cellphone (to one of her grandmas), I am holding the phone (using the speaker phone setting). During this trip I have let her hold the phone for the first time in her life while she's been talking with Daddy each evening. What a thrill for her! She kept asking him if he had any questions for her. This would cause him to laugh, and then she would laugh because he was laughing. Those two crack each other up very easily. So sweet.

5. Going to Sea World. Nadia's most favorite parts were the splash pad, rides (we rode 4 of the rides in Shamu's Happy Harbor), and the Pet's Ahoy show. She asked me a few times if we were going to come back "lots of times." I said we would come back again in a few years with Daddy.

6. Playing at Chick-Fil-A. We were about to head back to the swimming pool after she woke up from her nap when it started raining. We tried to wait it out, and then decided to let the kids play at Chick-Fil-A instead. Nadia found the mirror that makes your head large, etc. to be very, very funny.

7. Grandma brushing her hair. Nadia usually cries when I brush her hair, no matter how gentle I am. She has been thrilled that Grandma can brush her hair instead of Mommy the past few days.

8. Splash pads. She enjoyed doing one in May 2010 in another part of Florida, but she doesn't remember that. On this trip she really enjoyed the one at Downtown Disney on Monday night and at Sea World on Tuesday.