Vacation: Florida

After a wonderful summer of fun, sun, parks, picnics, and loads of family time, we decided to give ourselves one Grand Finale for the summer and take a 2 week vacation to West Palm Beach Florida. What an adventure. We've been planning this trip for a year. We also had it planned for Christmas/ New Years time. However as we were trying to plan our future, and being unsure of what was going on with Ben's promised promotion, and with the possibility that we'd be moving to Utah, we decided not to take the chance of flying from Utah out to Florida, so we upped our trip by a few months, and ended up saving ourselves a load of money by doing so. So here is our vacation in a few paragraphs, but mostly slide shows and pictures.

So we have learned a few things from our vacation, look for discount deals for Disney World, go for a birthday to get free parking and special awareness, take two other people to help care for the baby, plan out where you want to go at the beginning of each day in the Disney parks, bring a stroller with plenty of food, don't go to the beach and get burned on your back before you go to Disney, get a camera that DOESN'T eat batteries, bring 2 pairs of walking shoes so you don't have to buy a pair of shoes once in Orlando, don't try to do everything at the parks, there's no way it can be done in 1 day, have 3 drivers to drive the 12 hour trip from Raleigh to West Palm Beach, pray that you don't hit rain storms or traffic when you drive in Florida at night, don't pack junk food when you drive 12 hours, eat real food= less potty breaks, saving up money for the trip before you go on the trip, allows you a budget to stay in without hassle, relax before and after you go to Disney...of course there are other things, but you get the idea. ;)

OK, so after a very long 12 hour trip that included 3 major thunder storms, and 3 accidents we made it safely to West Palm Beach. The first day there we kept it relaxing and easy by going to City Place to walk around and see the neat buildings, and see a movie. We also visited with Grandma Carr, who highly enjoyed us. Over the first week we went to the beach two times, played at the pool in Ed's apartment complex, went shopping, and hung out at the condo. We watched a load of movies, one each night, it was really fun.

For the weekend of my birthday, we headed up early on Friday to drive to Disney World. It was a wonderful day! We spent a very busy day at the Magic Kingdom. Some of the things we did are: ride Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, Stitches great Escape, Mike's Laughing floor, Winnie the Pooh's honey adventure, It's a Small World...Joseph had a lot of fun, became very tired by staying up way past bedtimes and not taking long naps, but enjoyed the whole of Disney. We we weren't going to stay for the fireworks, so we could beat the crowd out to the parking lot, but Ben and Grandpa Ed and Joseph got stuck on the Carousel of Progress, and so we all watched the fireworks. Then we went to eat dinner while the light parade was going on. Had Joseph been awake for the light parade, we would have watched it, but he wasn't. To end the night we went to stay at a 5 star resort in Orlando. It was nice, but not as nice as we thought for a resort. We did get a wonderful king sized bed, mini kitchen complete with fancy china and dishware, and a jacuzzi tub.

Saturday Ben and I spent 4 hours at what was supposed to a 90 minute tour and breakfast for the resort (as it was a timeshare deal, we stay there and get free tickets, if we hear their deal on their condos for sale). Breakfast was OK, nothing special, but the condos were nice, but super expensive. We finally got out and rushed to Epcot. We had a load of fun, Ben bought me a shirt w/ matching hat for my birthday. Joseph figured out how to nap in the stroller better at Epcot. We checked out the different countries, and rode the Mexico and Norway rides, Joseph had fun on both. We got stuck on the Mexican ride right at the end, so it took like 10-15 minutes before we could exit. Riding the rides once, and listening to the songs once is plenty, but listening to the songs over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...well you get the picture. We stayed for the beautiful Lazar light and water and fireworks show. It was really cool. Poor Joseph was once more asleep, so he missed it again.

Sunday was our last day in Disney. We went to the Animal Kingdom, which was really neat. We rode the new Yeti ride, and had a blast. Daniel and Grandpa Ed rode it twice. We found out that if there is the option for single riders its the fastest lane if you don't have the fast pass tickets. Ben and I got soaked on the White Water Rapids in Asia. We walked through a zoo where we saw giant bats, tigers, hippos and more. We rode a real safari and helped chase poachers from the elephants. We saw lions, hippos, the rare Black Rhino, ostrich, giraffe, Okapi (a rare animal that looks like a horse, zebra, giraffe thing. We had a blast. Joseph got spoiled as we bought him a Winnie the Pooh, to go along with his Tigger and Piglet. The Animal Kingdom closed early, so we were able to get home at a decent hour. What a weekend, and we still had 1 week left in Florida.

So for the last week, we visited the beach more, hung out inside or at stores as it rained a bunch, and went to the Everglades for an Air boat ride. The air boat ride was cool, it made a load of noise so we had to wear ear plugs. But the coolest part of the boat is that it glides right over the grass and plant life in the marshes. We got to see a couple of "wild gators", out there, but the pictures aren't so good, because our camera kept focusing on the grass between us and the gators. Oh well. When we got back we walked around their wildlife refuge and got to see Timber wolves, raccoon, black spotted leopard, Florida's panther, a brown eagle or hawk, we can't remember what she was, a ball python, and a water dragon. We then went to a special reptile part of the zoo and saw giant torti, Reticulated python (my favorite), a Croc and loads of different sized gators. Even a giant gator 12 feet long. She was HUGE! To top off our adventure, we got to hold a baby gator. That was the coolest part!! What a wonderful vacation, but it was really nice to come home, and get back to reality.