Chapines Chillin'

Sneaking in a quick computer session before heading off to bed. I'm supposed to be unpacking suitcases and getting ready for work in the morning but I'm not known for my self-discipline....especially when I have 174 pictures to upload!!! Don't worry, I'm not burdening you with all of them ! Just thought I'd let my fellow Guatmamas see a tiny bit of Guatfest 2010 at the Nickelodeon Hotel in Orlando.

Mr. Squarepants is there to greet you at his decidedly UN-pineapple abode.

Now, due to school constraints, we were unable to join Guatfest on the opening two days. Big mistake!!!! Seems that most of the poolside chillin' had happened on Friday and by the time we got there on Saturday morning everyone had scattered around the immense resort taking in all of the Nickelodeon entertainment. We opened our day with the character breakfast....

where many of the favorite characters moved throughout the restaurant greeting the guests! Had a revelation or two at breakfast...

like the admission by Mari that she still had quite the soft spot for Dora! And that somewhere there was a factory assembling waffle irons that....

looked like SpongeBob!?!?!?

 

We hardly had time to watch our first Mass Sliming......

when it was time to Nick-or-Treat in the resort mall. There we met up with Arianna R. and family as the kids went around getting candy and pictures of the characters.

Now comes the first of what will probably be many apologies for missed photographs! See, we then got some quality pool time with a few other families but as I was in the pool jabbering I didn't take any pictures! Patrick tried to step up but this was the only one he could manage!!!

Then it was time for the big group...um....chaos??? Other than a couple of seven year olds, my two were the only ones not in pre-school!!!!!!!!!

Herding cats is a cliche that would not be too far off of what it was like to assemble the group shot! Then there's the tiny little incident with Mari and the Fire Ants.....oh well! Mari at first lost it completely but after some soothing words from some scarred Floridians and a handful of hand sanitizer [turns out it eases the pain of the stings] we went on to get some shots of the group. The 'official' one hasn't arrived yet but you can get the idea...right?

What's with Julia and the gorilla you're asking?? Well his name is Gabbin and he's the "Travel Buddy" for her 4th grade class and she had a series of instructions to follow to document his/her travels. So Gabbin came with Julia as she got her airbrush tattoo...

and he got to sit through all of the 4D movies!

Then he got some time to hang with his buddies too!!

Only fair since he got dragged to hang with all the Chapines poolside.

Mari had a good time too!!

Then we made tactical mistake #2! Since my girls were going to be drastically older than the rest of the attendees AND given the fact that we had no time/money/energy for a Disney park we decided to opt out of the Pizza & Movie Party to head over to Downtown Disney for the evening to satisfy our Disney craving....where it was PACKED!!

While we got a Disney picture moment or two.....

this would be Julia by 9PM....begging me to take her back to the hotel so she could sleep!!!

By the time we could drag ourselves from the bed the next day....Guatfest was over ):  

Next year /time....we miss an extra day of school and get there when it begins!!!! In the meantime, we need to find a few more teen/tween Chapines to attend along with us to help balance the age imbalance.

Coming soon...our days at Grandpa's beach in Sarasota.