From the ICT to MCI to ORD to FLL in 30 hours... ish.

So, naturally, Tyler and I still had loads to do the morning of our departure. You know, important stuff- finish packing, acquire notary signature on the girls' medical release form, fit one more tanning session in...

We hit the road to Lawrence around noon on Friday. It was quite a squeeze in the van, with Tom, Lynzee, LMB, LuLu, Tyler, myself, and our luggage for 10 days. Yeah. We totally made it work, though.

I was pretty sad after leaving the girls. I knew they would be fine better than fine, but it was hard. I'd be lying through my teeth if I said it wasn't.

We headed to Lynzee's parents house. Dropped the children and the men-folk off, picked up Lynzee's Mom, and headed to have our nails shellac-ed. I was pretty impressed with the whole process. Lynzee's nails (which are nice to begin with) looked gorgeous with a french manicure. My sad, shorter-than-short nails really got a pick me up with my fun I'm on vacation double coat of champagne silver glitter. It held up really well, too. Best part- no waiting for them to dry!

We picked up some sushi on the way home, had a little snack, and re-lived leaving the girls behind as we watched Tom & Lynzee do the same. Sad face.

We may or may not have driven straight to Orange Leaf to lighten our moods. Or something like that.

Ultimately, we ended up at Applebee's for trivia. Yep, Lawrence is the mecca of the Kansas Trivia League. It was fun. We came in 2nd place... the usual.
Oh, and we made a stop at the liquor store so that we could purchase the one bottle of wine/champagne per traveler that we could legally bring onto the ship with us {not that any one of us, ahem, TYLER would ever try to illegally smuggle a liter of Mount Gay Rum in a Nalgene... and succeed, much to his wife's chagrin, after chastising him incessantly over wasting the money only to surely be caught...} and they had one of my favorite wines EVER that I've yet to be able to find in Kansas... Sexy Wine Bomb red blend. Hip hip hooray! I may or may not have bought them out of stock, which was luckily only 4 bottles.

We stayed the night by Tom's parents house in Kansas City and arose bright and early to catch our fairly-early-morning flight. Except, we all forgot that we were traveling with, er, ME... so, of course there was a delay in our first flight which caused us to miss our quick connection in Chicago. Boo.

However, once I realized we'd be spending 5+ hours at O'Hare, I quickly mobilized forces and made sure my lovely little family would be paying us a visit with the two most important things of all... Gene & Jude's hot dogs and my nephew, Tucker. YEAH!








I'm sure Tom & Lynzee were less than thrilled to see our afternoon in the warm Florida sun dwindle to something of a dream, but Tyler and I relished in the time we were able to spend with Tucker. ♥

We arrived in Ft. Lauderdale with just enough time to catch a shuttle to our hotel, grab dinner at the adjoining diner, and catch some zzz's before our busy day ahead. THIS is precisely why you arrive a day PRIOR to your debarkment on a cruise... we would have missed ours had we not planned accordingly!

Carnival Freedom, we were ready for ya!