Mateer Blog and Carpet Emporium: Florida "Staycation"

Dave's parents were visiting this week. It was a great week. We did all kinds of things that we don't normally do. We went to Daytona Beach on Monday. That was a lot of fun. It was perfect having 4 adults to 5 children - it made it a lot less stressful. We had talked to some people about the best place to park in Daytona and two different people recommended a place called Sun Splash park. It had free parking and a little splash pad for the kids to play in while we were unpacking the car at the beginning and packing it at the end. It was a great day at the beach! The kids played and played all day - in the waves, in the sand, at the splash pad. Too much fun!

all of us when we first got there

Tim and Pop-Pop playing in the water

Mom-Mom and Anna

Josh with his hands full of sand

Dave was in the water the whole time - pulling kids on the boogie boards, jumping the waves with other kids, holding Anna's hand. He was such a trooper!

cute Anna

Sarah & Sam on the boogie boards we borrowed

I think we wore Pop-Pop out

We also headed over to Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse at the end of our visit to the beach. I took the younger two children out to some cheesy souvenir shops while the rest of them climbed the lighthouse and toured the grounds.

Then on Wednesday of their visit, we headed on down to a Disney hotel to visit Dave's sister who was visiting down from NY. We just had to pay for parking and then we were able to swim at the pools and use the water slides. It was such a fun day! We loved seeing Tim and Diane, Ethan and Kady, and Tim's family. We swam and swam and swam! Then we had lunch and swam some more! It was great fun. Timothy said he thinks he went down the water slide 22 times! Then we went over to the Disney Boardwalk, had some ice cream and celebrated Ethan's birthday.