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We spent this past Thursday through Sunday in Kissimmee and Orlando, Florida. Our hotel was the Champions World Resort in Kissimmee, on which I got a great rate from Expedia. It was an okay hotel, nothing really wrong with it, but next time I'll take JAFRA's recommendation (we were there for the National Conference) on accommodations. Now that resort was amazing!
I took a few snaps of Rob - who has dropped the puffy weight he gained from being on steroids from his brain tumor saga nearly overnight, and I am so not jealous - and Paco on the bed one night we were there. Paco actually cooperated! I had to turn off the flash, because he blinked every time, and then he just looked and posed for me. What a love. He sorely needs a bath, though, whew! Definitely going to do that later today...
These three nincompoops more or less cooperated for a quickie snap or two. Sophie is almost always the one to do "bunny ears," and as you can see, she is completely incorrigible. I love this picture of my three, because for once I think it's easy to see the resemblance among all the babes!
Speaking of incorrigible, I had told the children that it would be cold on Thursday and Friday, but they should bring their bathing suits anyway, because they could swim all day Saturday when it warmed up again.
Sure enough, Friday came, and it was only 44°F out (as I mentioned in the previous Sunday Stealing post). They begged and inveigled and cajoled and all of that, and I finally caved, telling them we could go to the heated pool only, dip their feeties in only, and if they absolutely MUST jump full-bodily into the water, I would be waiting there with towels for them to come right back out and get dry.
Yeah, they didn't really hear that. They heard, "You can jump right in." And so, that is pretty much what all three of them did.
Jack is my edge-clinger. He stays in the shallow end, always always always. He can swim for short distances, pretty much underwater, but he knows how tall he is and doesn't like to go in water deeper than that!
Sophia, on the other hand, swims like a fish. She's been swimming since she was two or three - and she's the baby of the lot! She lives in the deep end. It's next to impossible to get this child out of the water, and just as soon as you do, she's begging for the next swimming occasion already. She sets random athletic goals for herself, but she has reiterated several times her desire to be an Olympic swimmer. I really need to look into getting her on some kind of team.
Chloë, who is braver than Jack in that she will go to the deep end but still only against the wall, is very timid about learning to swim. She's just afraid. She was afraid to walk - as was Jack - and she's afraid to let go and just swim already. So she's 13½ and still clinging to the wall. It took her until last year just to jump in! But as you can see, she loves it, so maybe one day she'll get brave and go for a real swim.
Jack loves to do a cannonball and the Dead Man's Float. I told him he's not allowed to do the float unless he tells me first, lest I jump in with all my clothes on - and my Nikon - to rescue him! He's good about following this rule.
And like I said, there is just no stopping Sophia! She walked at seven months without a fear in the world, and she is still fearless and full of non-stop energy. She doesn't even stop moving in her sleep, often hopping from bed to bed to bed while she's half-unconscious. She did this several times in the hotel this weekend, which was nothing unusual. Oy vey, this girl!!
Chloë, who has the least amount of insulating body fat, was the first to get out of the water. While the other two swam and then dried off, she danced to the calypso music being piped out over the pools at our resort. Girl loves to get down! ;)
I'll have more pictures from the JAFRA conference - and the resort where it was held - later. We drove home from about noon to 4:30 on Sunday afternoon, and there were two packages on our porch when we got there. (I never held the mail - oops! - and our box was quite full, too.) Anyway, my Crazy 8 clothing order for the kids had arrived, so I had them all bathe and try on everything. They all looked too cute! I gave the girls each a kitty-eared headband, and Sophia was quick to don this adorable red outfit and then go paint a cat face on herself. She's always drawing, whether it be on paper, the sidewalk (I can never keep enough chalk!), or her own body.
More to come from the conference...!
Fin.
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