At the beginning of the year, I decided we WERE going to take a vacation. Our last vacation was just a few months before we started our first IVF cycle that resulted in our pregnancy with the girls.
While I hadn't really saved any money for a vacation, specifically the beach vacation I really wanted, we had enough to go on a weekend getaway to Dallas.
As soon as we decided where we were going, I began planning. Our vacations before the girls usually consisted of shopping and not really much site seeing. Since we now have TnT, site seeing was on the top of my list (although we managed to do a little shopping).
The places I chose to visit were the Dallas Zoo, the Dallas World Aquarium, and IKEA (see, I managed to slip in some shopping).
For us, it's only about a 3 hour drive so we decided to start at IKEA since it was pretty much on the way to our hotel. It was our first visit ever to an IKEA and holy moly I was in heaven! Tillie is so much like her momma. She just kept saying, "Whoa! Whoa!".
We ate lunch in the café. I had seen and heard a lot of people talk about it…specifically about the meatballs so that is what we had. I have to say I was a little underwhelmed by them. Honestly, I could have made it myself and have. They were nothing special in my opinion.
After IKEA, we headed to our hotel to check in and freshen up before dinner. The girls napped on the way to the hotel. Our room was perfect for our little family. We booked a suite so we had a living area and a separate bedroom. I was pleasantly surprised at how much space there was! There was plenty of room for both pack & plays next to our bed with plenty of walking room. Our room was also on the ground floor and opened up to the courtyard & pool area which was nice because we could let the girls run off some energy when needed.
We decided to head over to Grapevine and have dinner at the Rainforest Café. It never occurred to me that the girls might be frightened by some of the sights and sounds of the restaurant until some people had mentioned it. Thank goodness they loved it! They weren't even afraid of the gorillas during the "thunder storms"! Again, Tillie kept saying, "Whoa! Whoa!"
The next day we went to the Dallas World Aquarium. It was a pretty neat place. We went on Friday hoping to miss the crowd but no such luck. Apparently it was field trip day. There were kids everywhere! The girls still enjoyed it though.
That night we met Amanda and her family for dinner at my favorite Dallas Mexican restaurant, The Blue Goose. It was good to actually meet her in person! I'm not sure why we didn't take any pictures. I guess we were too busy talking.
On Saturday we took the girls to the Zoo. It was a beautiful day! We let the girls walk for a lot of it. It just made it easier for them to see most of the exhibits. They of course loved the sense of freedom.
Our last night we went back over to Grapevine and did a little shopping. Then we had dinner at another favorite restaurant of mine, Fuddruckers. We don't have them here so when I saw it, I insisted we eat there. So yummy!
It was a good vacation. The girls were great, other than Tensley refusing to sleep. We definitely learned a lot about traveling with kids. On our way home we were already planning our next vacation! We're thinking a beach vacation for next year.
