Family Travel

Family Vacation to Fort Lauderdale Tropic Seas

June 26, 2010 by Jennifer 4 Comments

The One Moms World family are continuing their family road trip down the East Coast to Fort Lauderdale at the Tropic Seas Resort.

As many know, hubby’s family is in and around the Fort Lauderdale area. Hubby grew up in Hialeah so it is always so nice to come back and visit. The girls and I had actually not been back to Fort Lauderdale since fall of 2007. It really is an amazing place here in South Florida. Unfortunately, I have been hearing of lots of heat index warnings back home in NC so to be here with high 80’s temps and the graceful breeze coming off the ocean has just been excellent and a dream come true. Also, the beach is not crowded at all so this is definitely a great time to come to South Florida and the Lauderdale By The Sea area.

The first night we arrived to the most amazing sunset over the ocean and pool area here at Tropic Seas.

All of us could have just sat out by the pool for hours and been so content. Most of the time you hear of people saying you need a vacation from a vacation, so that is why we always try to just relax and keep it cool throughout the time we are on vacation. My youngest L doesn’t like a lot of stimulation so we all just content of being cool, calm and collected. AND Guess what? The girls love it just so much!

One of the reasons that I love it here at Tropic Seas is that you can just wake-up and walk out your door and you are on the sand to the Beach.

Also, you are just a short few steps to the pool that is surrounded by the ever so awesome scenic palm trees.

The girls are having a true blast playing in the white sand and trying to build sand castles that usually get toppled over by the crashing waves from the beach. The laughs are so worth it though as they tickle hubby and I so much. There was a point yesterday that I just sat on the beach with my feet in the sand and looking out into the ocean as far as I could. I kept singing Amazing Grace out loud over and over, because it really is amazing to be alive and see all of God’s glory right before our eyes. The relaxation and stress free of our beautiful nature really is the best medicine for the body’s soul at times in your life! Remember…nature is all around us, we just have to take time and enjoy it. God is sooo good!

One big milestone this road trip is the girls swimming. L has realized she can swim with floaties on now. At the beginning of the week, she would have nothing to do with going out in the pool water to swim with floaties. Now, she is a little fish taking off and singing her own songs while swimming! M is so loving being an little fish without floaties this year. All those swim lessons have definitely paid off and it has caused my panic levels to go WAY DOWN since she always wants to be in the deep water treading. I’m so proud of both of them.

Hubby and I are off to spend the day with his family here and so thankful for having this time with everyone on our East Coast road trip.

Hope everyone is having a fantastic Summer! Leave a comment below and let us know what all you are up to this summer 🙂

P.S. Tropic Seas has really been good to our family in letting us experience the beach and pool here. We so appreciate them for hosting us for this review. See a full review on the property at Traveling Mamas.

Ocean Isle Inn Great Family Fun

June 24, 2010 by Jennifer 3 Comments

We are driving away from the wonderful Ocean Isle Inn. It really is bittersweet as we are heading towards Fort Lauderdale now, but it is like saying good bye to family. This was our third time back to the Inn, and I really do feel like we are all family.

We arrived at the Inn on Friday to a fun filled weekend with Miss Lori. The girls were so excited to spend time with their friends, The Tiger Boys of the beautiful Carolina Mama and the Princesses of the beautiful Real Life Sarah. Hubby and I were excited as well to spend time with great friends.

The evening started off with a Tweet-Up and a Twitter Party with several mom bloggers. It was so much fun to finally meet Chele and Heather. We all had a blast sitting there and tweeting each other and hanging out with Miss Lori.

Saturday, we started the morning out by the beach with some super fun relay games. Who knew I would win a hula-hooping contest? Fun times!

The adults did participate in a game of wives vs. husbands in tug o war. The girls were trying with all our might to win this and finally I fell and ate sand and you can guess who won that contest 😉

The kids were having just as much fun as the adults too with their own relay games. Thank you Ocean Isle Inn for coming up with such creative games that could be done right on the beach.

We all thought after that to go take a dive in the pool and then head over for some good ole ice cream. It was so delicious and I found some super stylish flip flops thanks to Carolina Mama and her awesome fashion advice.

We all headed back to get ready for the grand event of the weekend. Miss Lori Activate Summer Concert. All the kids had such a blast dancing and singing to all the unique songs. I totally seen all the adults rocking out to her songs as well ;).

We ended the night with a Dance Party. It was such a grand time to just hang out by the pool chatting with all the moms and the kids enjoying themselves in the pool with beach music playing in the background. I would have loved to just bottle up that specific moment. More fun times for sure!

Sunday was all about the Dads. Happy Father’s Day to my wonderful hubby. We were able to take the time and go have some delicious seafood with Carolina Mama’s family. We just adore their family and loved having this extra time before they were getting back on the road to head home.

We were there two more days, just having a blast with Ocean Isle Inn. I love we can stay there and never have to leave the premises. The girls just wanted to play in the pool and at the beach. I was totally fine with that as we all were having such fun times. Real Life Judd was having fun squirting us with water guns. It was just great to laugh and laugh and laugh and let the stresses melt away.

The Inn is such a family friendly place, that you cannot help to fall in love with the place. The last night was spent packing up to leave… the girls started crying because they just wanted to stay longer. They really have grown to love the Inn just as much as hubby and I are! Thank you Lee, Tracey, Melanie, Maria and all the staff there at the Inn for a wonderful 5 days. We created more summer memories that will last a lifetime. We cannot wait to get back.

Fun Friend Memories!

See our complete review of Ocean Isle inn over at Traveling Mamas.

Rayovac Powers Your Vacation

May 14, 2010 by Jennifer 1 Comment

Summer is about to be on the arisen. Oh I so cannot wait!

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Disney Social Media Moms Celebration Day 2

March 9, 2010 by Jennifer 1 Comment

This is a conference that I truly walked away feeling so uplifted and inspired. Day 2 definitely helped in that inspiration.

We started out the day at Epcot at the Volunteer Celebration.

Disney brought in families from all over to congratulate them and express their many thanks for all the volunteer hours they were able to put in for our country. You see Disney put on an awesome event called Give A Day Get A Disney Day.

From Disney’s site “The overwhelming support we received for the “Give a Day. Get a Disney Day.” program has helped us reach our goal of inspiring one million people to volunteer a day of service to their communities.”

For Disney to take the time to so appreciation to all these families is just so inspirational and just what our great Country needs. I was so happy to be involved. Our own families were able to volunteer right there on Disney Properties during this Day 2. Seeing all the families working together just big a big huge smile on my face.

During the event, a special guest arrived to showcase the biggest Can Food Drive. I have two videos to display this event.

After the volunteer events, we headed into the Epcot world showcase. This was neat as the girls had not been to Epcot since they were 2 years old and 8 months. We enjoyed walking through all the countries and seeing all the culture changes that each country would have. We stopped and danced, visited characters, dined on different foods and L’s favorite spotted out all the animals that we could.

Fast forward to the evening, and we were invited to an all exclusive dance party that included one of the Jonas Brothers. M was so excited and stayed right there at the stage watching every minute while Mommy and L dined on all the different foods that were served to us.

I do have a funny story… A cameraman came right up to us and I didn’t realize he wanted to video us and I was looking all around me trying to figure out who he was going to video… then DUH it was us. L gave him one of her infamous looks that said get that camera out of my face while mommy is over here acting clueless that he wanted to actually video us. I laughed so hard after the cameraman left…just another clueless moment for Jen right? :).

Disney really put on a spectacular show/concert for us and we were all over the moon heading back to the Polynesian that night.

Up next Day 3 of the wonderful conference with some superb guest speakers. Stay tuned for the post coming up 🙂

Disney Social Media Moms Conference Day 1

March 3, 2010 by Jennifer 5 Comments

For a week in February, we decided to leave all the snow behind and head for Sunny Florida. Over the next few days, I am going to do a daily recap of our time at the conference. Let me just say that Disney went way out of their way to make this such a grand time for everyone and including all our families in on the fun.

Day 1:

We checked into the super fabulous Polynesian Resort where we were greeted with such superb Customer Service. As soon as we dropped off all our luggage, we wasted no time in heading straight to the parks. I do have to say this was our first time staying on-site and it was nice to just park your car and take the Monorail or the Bus to all the parks.

Our first park we headed to was the Animal Kingdom. I will go ahead and tell you my youngest daughter L is not a fan of all the Disney characters. She is very afraid of people dressed up and wants no part in seeing them, so we made the decision to let her go see the Animals first!

As soon as we walked in, we were immediately greeted with the animals. L was loving this Disney park. She is a huge animal lover and we just had to stop and see all the animals.

Unfortunately, since we had never been to Animal Kingdom, we didn’t realize Safari was the place to see many more animals, so we made a trip back to Animal Kingdom on our last day. (More to come about the Safari on the last day recap)

As I was hanging out with L, hubby would make sure to make all the stops for the Greet and Meet Characters with M. Just a note of advice… Make sure to let your little one have an autograph book with them in the parks (you can even just purchase a small notebook for them) so they can have all the Characters autograph. M was loving all the autographs with each of the characters.

L was over the moon happy with just having her Lil Tinkerbell Baby to carry in her arms throughout the park.

After spending all day at Animal Kingdom, we headed back for a night of fun at ESPN Worldwide of Sports.

This venue was huge and so awesome to be able to take in the sights while no one was there :).

As the moms were attending a Press Conference, all the families were out on the field having a great time partaking in all the sports events.

Back in the Press Conference, the Social Media Moms, were getting a look into all the awesome upcomings Disney is bringing forth for everyone. One of the new adventures is the Disney Dream Cruise that is coming in 2011. I knew I wanted to take a Disney Cruise before, but now I really WANT to make it happen for my family after seeing all they are going to offer for families.

Also, one of the key features of the Disney Cruise is the AquaDuck water coaster. Just watch and see how cool this new water coaster is:

And yet another great feature coming back is the Disney Electrical Parade in Magic Kingdom this Summer. We were able to experience the Electrical Parade when we were at Disney this past Christmas. It was so neat and the girls were just in awe during the whole parade seeing all the floats lit up and the people in the parade all lit up. Definitely a must see when you are at the parks. Here are some photos from our time at Christmas.

After the Press Conference, we all headed to another venue at the ESPN Worldwide of Sports to have dinner and let the kids enjoy a dance party with all the beloved Characters. L was just fine sitting with her mommy the whole time, but M really got up on stage and had the time of her life dancing her little heart out. They even were entertained by the High School Musical Cast.

It really was an awesome way to end the evening. Big KUDOS to ESPN Worldwide of Sports for hosting us and show what true family entertainment is all about!

PS: Keeping it real here at One Moms World. I was apart of the Disney Social Media Moms Conference in which we did get reduced hotel and was given tickets as well some dinners provided. They in no way had us post about our time during the Conference. I wanted to from my own mind and heart and will be expressing my opinions about Disney over the course of this week :).

Family Travel

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