I don’t know about other kids but our kids don’t care to have parties anymore. They rather travel. Lance Jr. especially. He always has atleast 5 places in mind that he wants to visit from Cali, to New York, Texas, the boy has big dreams ok! Since his birthday is right after school let’s out for the summer his birhtday trip usually ends up being our summer family vacay.
Coordinating a party of 7 isn’t an easy task. But I just love the way we look when we roll out looking alike. For this trip I decided to do matching swimwear since we were going to the beach. To find matching gear for all of us I first start with brands that I know carry women’s, men’s, and childrens like Polo, Tommy Hilfiger, Target, Old Navy etc. Most of the times you can find that they will use some of the same patterns, & fabrics for all age ranges. This year due to Covid-19 the options were limited but I did my best. First I found our swimsuits from Macys. I chose them because they offered a takini(t-shirt) version that was appropriate for my 11 year old as well as a bikini top version for my 16year old. I got the takini version for myself as well and cut the bottom portion off that way we matched yet we all had a unique look. When Lance saw the swimsuits he suggested I get black shorts for the guys. I found the boys trunks at Target with the neon trim and the bigs guys trunks I got from Old Navy. The big guys trunks originally had a blue drawstring but of course they had to match us so I found this neon multi colored string from Walmart and replaced the blue string with it.
All of our black slides were from Old Navy.
When I travel I like to be right in the middle of all the action. I do immense research and read lots of reviews when choosing where we stay. For this trip I chose Gallery One Hotel which sits on the intracoastal waterway in Fort Lauderdale. It features 2 room 4 bed suites that sleep up to 8 and it was walking distance to the mall and beach. Of course a pool is a must have with children and they also had jet ski rentals right at the pool area that you can ride up and down the waterway while taking in the views of the waterfront mansions, restaurants, and boats.
Gallery One is also a stop for the water taxi that picks up guest about every 30mins and chauffeurs them to the surrounding hot spots along the waterway like Las Olas Boulevard, Birch State Park, bars and restaurants.
One of the first things we do as soon as we hit every city is check out the nearest mall. We also hit up the grocery store to buy breakfast food and snacks for our 4 day stay. Our room had a mini kitchen in it so we did cook breakfast every morning and I used YELP(which is an app that locates restaurants as well as businesses and services) to direct me to all the foodie spots for our dinner every nite. YELP never fails me it’s my secret weapon for good eats and I’m never dissapointed. Lance is the breakfast master in our home so he took over making breakfast most days and Kyndal assisted on pancake duty:) I was very grateful to get out of cooking duties on this trip:)
Since it was Lance Jr.’s big ten I wanted to do something festive for him so I ordered him a cake from Celebrity Cakes by Janeth. I found her from a Facebook search and I was extremely pleased with their service. Lance’s Fortnite cake was stunning, it tasted great and they delivered it right to our hotel on time.
I would say the funest part of this trip was definitely the Jet Skis for all of us.... It was the kids first time and they had a ball... Fort Lauderdale showed us a good time.