Oh the weather outside is frightful....

...but not in Florida! Down there it was really nice. In fact there was only one day where it rained for a little bit.

Lyle summed up a lot of the events pretty darn well. What we did in chronological order was...
Day One: Celebrated my gmas bday and went to the pool. We just kind of hung out.
Day Two: Drove in my parents' camper to the Gulf of Mexico and spent the day on the beach.
Day Three: Went to Sea World for the day.
Day Four: It rained so we went swimming in the morning and then went to the mall for the afternoon.
Day Five: Went to Busch Gardens
Day Six: Went home!

Okay so Lyle went through all the good things about the vacation. A couple of bad things happened too. First of all we found out that Keegan doesn't like to sleep on the plane. He would sleep for about 30 minutes and then he was ready to rumble. All I have to say is I have a new respect for people in general. I respect people who travel with babies this age and retain their sanity. I respect all the people on the plane who; gave Keegan hi-fives, waved back at him, humored him by taking an offered toy and then handing it back to him, smiled at Keegan when he (while walking down the aisle in the plane) grabbed their knees or shoes. Also thanks to the guy who had a sense of humor when Keegan grabbed his boarding pass at the gate and took off with it and thanks to the lady who let Keegan stand by her seat at the gate and hold on to her shoulder while he looked out the window at the plane.

So I guess all in all I meet more "strangers" on this trip than ever before. This was all due to Keegan's lack of shyness and new found ability to run off at a moment's notice and go over to people and yell "HI" with a big smile on his face. You really get to see the "good" in everyone when you have a cute little friendly kid :-)

Other "bad" thing that happened was that I lost my wallet during the Shamu show at Sea World. Between juggling Keegan, ice cream, and a diaper bag I lost it somehow. We quickly found out that the cleaning guy found it under the seat at the stadium. Within a couple of hours he had returned it to customer service and it was intact. All the cash was in there, everything! Still I was stressing for a while there; hoping I wouldn't have to call and cancel all of my cards!

Then when we got back to the twin cities I went down to baggage claim and Lyle took Keegan to get the car. As soon as I got to baggage claim there was an announcement that Karissa Eckert needed to report back to the Gate G2 to get her driver's license. Well I couldn't really do anything about it. So I got the luggage. Then Lyle drove me to ticketing. At ticketing they gave me a gate pass to get back through security. In the line in security they wanted my ID. I explained to them that I was going through security to get my ID. The security guy actually chortled at me (like this was the funniest thing to happen to him all day) and told me I was "red flagged" and needed to undergo a stricter security check. The good thing about this was I didn't have to wait in line anymore. Bad thing was they did a full pat down and rubbed everything I had with me with chemical sensitive paper to make sure I wasn't carrying any explosives. The guy doing the check was really nice but he had to call female security down to do the pat. I tried really hard to not get irritated but it was tough.

Then I finally got down to the gate and, of course, they were just starting to board the plane. So I had to wait line to get to the front desk to request my license. I met Lyle on his 7th lap around the airport. It had taken me exactly 17 minutes to re-acquire my license. Oh well. At least I got it back. Hopefully I never do that again.

Keegan was, excepting the plane ride, an awesome baby. He was interested in everything and actually watched the shows we went to see. We all liked Sea World a lot better than Busch Gardens. Sea World had nicer exhibits and wasn't as crowed as Busch Gardens was. My mom was nice enough to hang with Keegan while me, Lyle, and dad went on some of the roller coasters. The Kraken at Sea World was by far the most awesome roller coaster we went on. We also road that Mamba (I think that's what it's called) and Shreikra at Busch Gardens.

All in all it was a fun trip. I kind of underestimated how much work it would be to travel with Keegan though. I felt like I was constantly making lists of what we needed to pack in my head. It was like okay, let's pack for the beach. Then the next day we packed for Sea World. It was a constant estimating of how much milk we had, how many diapers, did we need swim diapers, and did we have enough wipes. I imagine that traveling with your child gets easier as they get older.

Keegan really didn't want me to leave him at daycare today. Keegan was really excited to get home but I think he liked all the time with mommy, daddy, gma, gpa, greatgma, and greatgpa. I had to pry him off of me and then distract him and sneak out of daycare. I felt bad about it but well, it's back to the old everyday routine. Anyway, that being said I have some more work to do. So hope everyone enjoyed the updates!