Greetings from the USA! We made it and the long journey was pretty painless. The girls were as good as gold on the plane. Flo lost the plot around the 6 hour mark and she threw a couple of diva strops, but after a walk around the plane with Daddy, she returned to her seat and told me “I’m better now Mummy. No more grumpy, I’m happy now”and stuck out her hand for a chocolate button.
I packed the girls a travel goody bag full of bits to keep them entertained including; Disney sticker books, story books, Disney figurines, LOL Surprise, PJ Mask blind bags, Thomas Tank blind bags, Power Rangers and lots more. They also had their Amazon Fire Tablets. If you’re travelling long haul with little ones, it’s well worth putting taking a travel goody bag, it will be a real life saver.
It only took 40 minutes to get through Immigration, we just made sure we packed up our bags before landing so we could hop off the plane and speedy walk to beat the queues. You can request for your buggy to be at the gate, so you can use it when you first get off the plane. The worst bit for us was picking up our hire car. It took around 40 minutes to upgrade to a bigger car, a further 25 minutes for us to locate the car (bearing in mind we had four heavy suitcases, two pushchairs, two Hangry and overtired girls, two car seats and only two pairs of hands) and then it took us a while to work out how to fit the car seats.
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Once we were all set, we headed to Emerald Island resort to catch up with Nana & Grandad. We arrived at the villa around 6.30pm and thankfully there is a lovely play area, right next to the Club House, so the girls could play whilst Daddy checked us in. We dropped our cases and headed out to find somewhere to eat. We ended up eating at Wild Side Texas Bar-B-Q.
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There were arcades and “grabber” machines and Bella found her lucky streak and she won three rubber ducks and a red teddy, her face was priceless! On our way back to the villa, both girls fell asleep, so we transferred them straight to their beds, fully dressed, whilst silently praying that they will sleep through. Unfortunately our prayers weren’t answered because they both woke at 1.50am.
Like everything in America, everything is bigger, including the beds. Flo rolled out of her bed and whacked her ear on the corner of the chest of drawers. There was blood everywhere and she was hysterical. Whilst I was trying to calm her down, Bella was crying because we didn’t read a bedtime story, whilst they were already fast asleep.
After lots of cuddles and a dose of Calpol, Flo calmed down and went back to bed. Thankfully Bella passed out until 5am. Flo however kept waking up and I could hear her cry and say “ouch” so she spent the rest of the night, hogging our bed. The girls were bright eyed and bushy tailed at 5am and the first day of our holiday begun.
