Summer Plans!!

Two really cool things my mom did for me when I was a kiddo were a) send me to summer camp and b) plan mother/daughter trips for the two of us. We went to London, and New York City, and Disneyland/Universal Studios and Washington D.C. and Hawaii together. And I got to go to a summer camp that I dearly loved (and still do) every summer from age 10 to 16. I know she had to save like CRAZY to make these things happen, but she never made it seem like a sacrifice. It was just fun. Now that I'm a parent of an almost-six-year-old, I can fully understand how much being able to do these things for me meant to her.

Dah and I have taken The Geej to a couple of places--the beach on South Padre Island and the Hyatt Hill Country/Sea World in San Antonio--and both of those trips were really fun and nice. But I just booked our best trip yet: In August, we're going to San Diego to stay in a kick-ass hotel with awesome pools and kids' stuff AND we're going to go to LEGOLAND and the San Diego Zoo.

Here's the kick ass hotel:

See? GORGEOUS!! Holy crap, the smoke is still coming off of my MasterCard after all of the online booking and pre-payment that went on today. However, I'm so excited that it doesn't even matter.

And how sweet is this: They've got this special "Africa" thing going on at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, and I'll be damned if the summer camp she's in right now isn't totally focused on learning about Africa! It was meant to be, people. Hakuna ma tada!

So my plan is to give her a card on her birthday with a calendar page in it marking down the days until we leave, along with a map that shows where we'll be traveling to and pictures printed off of the hotel, Lego Land and Zoo websites. I'm about to burst!!

Speaking of her birthday, I booked this (yes, on my poor MasterCard once again) for Miss Thang's party:

She'd only been asking for a "bouncy house waterslide birthday party" since, um, Christmas, so I figured it had to happen. Our back yard is wide, but not very deep, so we had to (thankfully) opt for one of the smallest options. But, as they say, it's not the size that matters.

I'm also happy to say that I've booked a weekend trip to see some of my girls in Florida in July. Yes, it's the same crew I visited in spring '09 (plus a couple of additions), so I can only imagine what kind of fun we're going to have. I doubt we'll be aggressively flauted again. But you never know...