for lack of a good description: Aruba (Part 1)

Steve still has airline and hotel points from all his travels at his last job, and we decided we wanted to take a international vacation as a family before it gets to exhausting/expensive with older/multiple kids. (Sorry future children). Steve wanted something relaxing and I wanted something with a short flight (or in this case, two short flights each way), so we settled on Aruba.

Every family has at least one bad vacation right? Well, this was ours.

Bad thing #1

Having gotten to the Newark, NJ airport very late, we discover it is under construction, and the airtrain to take us to our hotel pick up location is out of order. We ask an airport employee where to go, and he sets us off to section P4 just outside baggage claim. After an hour, and three increasingly impatient calls to our hotel, we notice no hotel shuttles are picking up at our location, and we find out we are at the wrong P4 location. What, there’s two P4 locations?!? Oh yes. So we ask a more informed airport employee how to get to the correct P4 location and he directs us to a bus (that has temporarily replaced the airtrain) that takes us to the correct P4 location. We call the hotel again, explain that we were in the wrong place and tell her we are waiting at the correct pick-up location now. She tells us the shuttle is on it’s way.

Twenty minutes later, the hotel shuttle picks us up. Whew. I am very excited at this point to get one very tired baby and mama to bed. We get to the hotel, try to check in and… it’s the wrong Fairfield Inn! And our correct Fairfield Inn is 30 minutes away! The clerk tells us we have to take the airport shuttle back to the airport and wait for the other Fairfield van. Ugh. I’m ready to collapse having been the only one able to keep Brielle happy through this whole ordeal. But here is where God gives us a little break. The other clerk (Daniel) working the front desk informs us his shift has just ended and he can drive us to the other hotel himself. Wow. At the time he told us it was right by his house, but we find out later it’s actually 20 minutes away (and his wife is anxiously waiting for him to get home). We couldn’t have been more thankful to Daniel.

Brielle got admittance to her first Red Carpet Club at the airport the next day. Here she is hanging out in the lounge.

Brielle was a champ on the way over, but we did take our first day easy just trying to let her catch up on some sleep. She’s not the best sleeper on the plane (which means mom is not a good sleeper on the plane either, so maybe I was the one catching up on sleep…). Here’s one of the many cute bathing suits Bri got from her 2nd cousin Ashlyn. Thanks Ashlyn!

On the second night we were there, we took salsa lessons. Oh yes, the whole family. Here’s Steve and Bri.

And a video (notice he does pretty well until he looks at the camera, then he misses the direction change)

Bri was pretty tired after all that dancing.

Before heading out to Aruba, Steve did a little research and found a butterfly farm to visit. We thought it would be a fun experience for Brielle, so we packed up the family and went. I don’t know if you recall back in 2010 when we went to a petting zoo on our East Coast trip and the deer found me irresistible.