Mommy Spirit: Tampa

6.19.2015

Last week, we went on our long awaited summer vacation to Tampa, Florida. After going here last year and having a blast, we quickly decided that we wanted to make this trip an annual tradition. Simply stated, there's just so much to do in Tampa, and each time we go on vacation, we're lucky if we even get to do 1/8th of the activities. For example, there's Bucsch Gardens, the Tampa Zoo, Adventure Island, and tons of other beaches and costal towns that we still haven't even ventured to yet.

This week, our focus was going back to LEGOLAND for two days (we loved it last year and knew Lewie would enjoy going back) and hanging out at our resort's pool and beach. Some extras that we were able to squeeze in that were different from last year were taking the Trolley Bus to John's Pass (a cool shopping area with a baby alligator petting zoo), having a fancy dinner at Guy Harvey's RumFish Grill (the restaurant has a 33,500 gallon fish tank that was built by Animal Planet's hit series "Tanked"), and venturing to our neighbor hotel, the TradeWinds Island Grand Beach Resort, that has the coolest beach slide ever!

My husband and I have a motto that our vacations need to be just as relaxing as they are adventurous. We could have certainly packed in more things to do into our six-day itinerary, but we would have come home exhausted (and quite possibly--BROKE). Also, on some days it rained, and we decided that it was way more fun to just curl up inside our hotel and watch a good movie than get soaked trying to make it from point A to point B during Florida's famous, wild thunder and lightening storms.

My favorite part of the trip, hands down, was having my son wake up with me every morning around 5:45 a.m., so we could walk on the beach and watch the sunrise together. On the first day that he came with me, I wasn't sure he enjoyed it; however, during the next morning, when I thought I was sneaking out before he or Daddy would notice, his little head popped out from the hotel room (his eyes still half closed from sleeping) and called down the hall, "Mommy, Can I come with you?" From that point on, he was my little morning buddy, and each morning we would walk for a good hour before returning to the hotel room. (Our walks made such an impact that he woke me up this Wednesday around the same time and said, "Mommy, Can we walk together this morning and watch the sunrise?" We didn't because I don't know where we can get a good view of the sunrise by our house, but I'm still trying to think of a place...I'd like to continue our morning routine--at least on the weekends since weekday mornings are just a little too frantic around here...)

Here are some highlight pictures and videos from our trip: