Puerto Rico!

Thanks to Jim's stellar performance at work, he earned us another Caribbean vacation! This was a 5-night trip to the El Conquistador Resort in Puerto Rico. It's on the east coast of PR, about 30 miles outside of San Juan.
The company encouraged employees to bring their children. At 5 months we decided Aidan was too young to appreciate the trip, so he stayed with Grandma, Grandpa & Uncle Joe McCracken. At 2, we knew Ellie wouldn't remember the trip but would likely have a good time while we were there. So Jim and I opted to share our Valentine's weekend with Ellie in PR and hoped for a somewhat relaxing trip!
There were 170+ kids on the trip so Ellie made friends quickly, starting early in the morning at Dulles when our flight was delayed about an hour. We discovered that when you take a 2-year-old on vacation, EVERYTHING is exciting. The bus to the terminal at Dulles, the airplane bathroom, the tray table that folds into the hand rest, etc. I think that our travel day to PR was the most exciting day in Ellie's young life. We woke her at 6 AM to leave the house. She loved everything about the airport, even playing football with some of the boys as we waited to board our plane.
Once on the plane we got lucky enough to sit in the bulk head row right behind 1st class. We had lots of leg room and we were armed with new books, toys and of course DVDs! Ellie watched Elmo, read books, ate snacks and visited new friends sitting in other places on the plane. She didn't sleep one second on the plane and didn't sleep until we got in the van in San Juan for our 1-hour trip to the resort.
When we got to the resort she was ready to go exploring before the opening dinner. At dinner she ate, did some crafts and loved seeing all the fun animals they had to entertain the many children. We got back to our room late (thanks to our adventure in the funicular that broke down with us in it - a nice 45 minute delay in getting back to our room), got to bed late and even with the lights off it took her about an hour to wind down. She didn't fall asleep until nearly 11:00 that night but was up & ready to go at 7 AM the next morning!
The resort was a great place for kids and we had beautiful, sunny, 80 degree weather every day. We spent most of our time at one of the various pools or the water park, but also spent one morning on the island at the beach. Ellie was an ideal travel companion and loved being on vacation, especially staying in a hotel room. With all the other kids on the trip we were even able to find baby-sitters for Ellie so we could enjoy a few adult dinners with friends.
Ellie was having so much fun in Puerto Rico she didn't want to come home. However our trip did come to an end and once we got back, she was happy to see Aidan and the McCrackens and sleep in her own cozy bed.
As I uploaded our pictures, I realized we didn't take very many! We were too busy entertaining Ellie to capture it all for posterity. But we did take some, so check out our Puerto Rico pics.