On Wednesday, April 6th, Blake, myself, and our four youngest children hopped on a plane and headed to Naples, Florida!

To say this is a dream come true for me is an understatement!

It only would have been PERFECT if our WHOLE crew would have been able to join us!!

We are not vactioners, as you know if you have been around here for any time at all, so this truly was the trip of a lifetime!

I have somewhere close to a gazillion photos – so I decided to “scrapbook” our memories in three different posts – each covering three days at a time.

SO…here we go!!

It was freezing cold and snowing when we left that Wednesday, which made flying to somewhere so warm and summer like even sweeter.

The kiddos were great travelers!

We drove three hours to the Minneapolis airport and caught a direct flight to Fort Myers from there.

We had a rent-a-car reserved for when we arrived.

The line was LONG.

Do you see my hubby (in between Eliza and Lane’s head) who is the last one in line here?

Here he is again one hour later.

Do you see him there??

Not quite to the front yet!

That’s ok though, because THIS is what was outside that airport door!!

When we finally got to pick a car out of the lot we chose the biggest one we could find – but still had to ride to the hotel like this, ha, ha!!

We headed out for grocery, made a quick dinner, and then got unpacked and settled into our little home away from home.

My wonderful hubby thought to bring the lap top and a cord so that we could run our discovery plus through the T.V.

That meant they could watch their favorite show on Animal Planet with no commercials – which is the way we watch shows for obvious reasons!

Thursday morning I was welcomed by this early bird during my Bible time – who, by the way, was thrilled that his mama had lost her mind and bought cinnamon roll cereal at the grocery store the night before.

Something I love very much about being a mom of many is how different they all are!!

Here is Eliza – who slept late – and went straight from her bed to the couch.

Tate promptly went to make his bed, now that everyone was FINALLY awake and all!

It wasn’t very warm on Thursday and it was also partly cloudy.

We went to check out the pool anyway and decided it was perfect for us Wisconsinites!

We swam and played there most of the day!

In the late afternoon we got everyone cleaned up and headed out and about.

We took the kiddos to get smoothies at our favorite smoothie place and also stopped and picked up Chipotle for everyone (but me!) for dinner.

I ate once everyone else was done, don’t worry! My dinner was fantastic too.

Blake and I had bought a new card game on date night the week before we left on our trip to surprise the kids with!

They really enjoyed playing five crowns and I highly recommend it as a fun game!

Friday morning after breakfast we headed to the beach.

It was the first time the three youngest have seen the ocean!!

Chad had been at the ocean when he was nine months old, which he obviously does not remember.

It was the BEST to watch them experience all these new things!!!

We played there for awhile, but it was cold!!

Back to the pool we went, and ate lunch pool side that day.

Blake and I had other surprises that the kiddos did not know about!

He had bought them each a kite, so Friday late afternoon we went and flew them at a park.

It was SUPER DUPER windy and a great day for kite flying!

There was also a disc golf course at the park.

We tried to play a round, but the super duper windy part was not a good fit for playing disc golf!!

Eliza and I enjoyed the swings for awhile too!

Friday night we headed back and made dinner in our home away from home.

The kitchen was challenging, to say the least!

It only had two burners and a microwave…but they had a grill outside we could use.

We managed to pull off this delicious meal!

Saturday was another chillier windy day – can’t wait to share what we decided to do!!

That post will be next!!!

Stay tuned for more Florida photos!!