Traveling Together - Dezerland Park

So, normally for these huge volleyball tournaments, they assign teams to the am wave (8-2) or the pm wave (3-10). We were assigned to am a week or so before the tournament began.

Unfortunately, we were reassigned to pm wave for Tuesday. 

I had already bought tickets for the 6 of us to hang out at Dezerland Park, so the kids dropped us at the Convention Center and they continued to follow our original plan.

Baby Doll had a great tournament day! She always amazes me with how good she really is!

Before the games, we did a lot of this.

And this...

Don't even get me started talking about how many floods we've cleaned up!!!

The kids graciouly shared about a million pics showing how much fun they had at Dezerland Park...just sharing a few.

Yes! We are having fun without you, Mom...

Aren't we, Sport?

Traveling Together - Daytona Raceway

I love volleyball, but I do have a little fomo about all the fun things the kids are doing. So they all dropped us off at the Convention Center and they took off for a tour of the Daytona Speedway. I will let Dog Walker add some pics later.

This is my Baby Doll playing some awesome volleyball.

After the kids picked us up, Curly treated us to BJ's. The food was awesome, especially the pizookies.

Then we decided to give the airboat one more chance. This time, we got there with minutes to spare. They loaded us on the boat and we rode for about 9 minutes total. Lightening again.

We did see some wildlife, but no alligators.

I arranged for a refund.

We headed for the hotel. It was still early, so Baby Doll, Dog Walker, and I went swimming with Bossy's boys and Twizlet. Of course, they found a ball and played water volleyball!

We stayed in the pool until almost 11. Baby Doll's games had changed to the pm wave for tomorrow so we don't have to be there until 3:00.

Thank goodness! 

Except now we have to miss another fun outing...

Traveling Together - Winter Garden

It almost seemed like I didn't sleep...oh wait...I didn't!!

Sunday morning at 7:00am was our check-in time for the tournament. Scout and Curly came with Baby Doll and me and we left at 6 to get to the Convention Center.

Traffic was crazy!!

They have at least 150 courts set up in the Convention Center. People cheering and yelling; balls bouncing and leaving their own courts. Scout got hit in the face during warmups.

Baby Doll's team won one of the 3 matches they played.

After the games were over, we headed out to Boggy Creek to do an Airboat ride. It was the six of us and both of Baby Doll's coaches. We got there way early. So they let us wander around.

Lightening eventually canceled the airboat ride. So we went out to dinner with the coaches.

They wanted to go to a mini-golf place. The food was really good.

Sport bought us all ice cream. It was even better!

Traveling Together - Red-Eye

It's finally here! Our long-awaited trip to Orlando for Baby Doll's volleyball Nationals tournament. We decided to make it a bit easier on Bossy since Gamer had to stay home because of work by taking the the red-eye so her little ones would sleep. There are 7 in her group, 6 in mine, and 7 in the group with Teach and Drama Queen. It's almost like a family reunion with 8 of my 12 kids here. We came in early Saturday morning, but Teach's group is driving and they will be in later today.

Our flight left just before midnight. Thankfully, the airport was pretty quiet at that hour.

We got into Orlando around 6am. Everyone was tired and grumpy, and we still had to get luggage and our rental cars before we could drive the 40 or so minutes to our Hilton suites at Aqua Sol.

Some of us slept the day away. I got about 3 hours before Bossy and I went to the 'required for owners' Hilton presentation. After a couple of hours, I dropped her and Bright Eyes at the complex and then I went grocery shopping at Aldi's.

I can’t really afford restaurants all week and our suites have full kitchens. We ate spaghetti and meatballs for dinner and played games.

The rain shut down the pools and waterslide, so we watched the lightening from our 3rd story deck. 

Afterwards, we all watched Sheep Detectives except for Sport. He hasn't been feeling well.

Tournament starts early tomorrow. Let's GO!!!