Sometime I just wish I had my Invisiblity Cloak...

After the beach it was time for us to take on the Universal theme parks. By this point Andrew and I were almost always on the brink of exhaustion. The morning we had planned to be the first day of going to the park I wasn’t feeling very good. Lack of water mixed with intense heat and humidity made my brain feel like the different lobes were playing bumper cars every time I moved my head. I figured it would go away and we braved the park anyway. No sooner than we had entered the park then my head tried to explode. I was finished with the day and wanted to die. Maybe if I just held still for a while it would go away…. The Men in Black ride looked like it had a long enough line to let my head simmer down. I honestly can’t believe I was gullible enough to think that. The first red flag should have been the words ‘long line.’ Long lines lead to board kids who then turn into annoying pains in the neck while they are trying to find something to do. Also the length of the line meant that it would be forced outside into the muggy heat. Long story short, after standing in line for over an hour we finally got to the ride. My head never had a chance. The ride seemed determined to try and give me an aneurism. Andrew and I promptly went to guest services and asked that the hour and a half that we had been there be over looked so that we could go home and still have three full days on our passes. They were very understanding and gave us the extra day.
The next day was much more eventful. We went back and jumped in the single rider line of the Men in Black. There was this crazy guy who had been on the ride a million times in front of us. The moment there was a pause in the movement of the line he spun around and started telling us all the secrets of how to shoot the aliens to get the most points. He talked Andrew’s ear off the whole time we were in line. Good thing the single rider line only took fifteen minutes to get through. Surprisingly the man was right! Crazy… but right! Andrew and I dashed around and jumped back into the single rider line. Just ahead of us we heard the man going off to someone else about the ideal targets during the ride. We just smiled. After that we took on the Mummy ride. The line was forever long but the roller coaster more than made up for it. I rode it once before when I was twelve but, as I did with almost all the roller coasters at that age I had covered my eyes and ducked wishing the ride would end. I had only ridden them because I knew my sisters would have never let me hear the end of it if I hadn’t. Now though, I really enjoyed it! I had forgotten about the fire part. Of course that was when the ride camera took the picture. Andrew laughed pretty hard at the expression the picture had caught on my face. We rode the Mummy again in the single rider line then moved on. We made our way toward the new Harry Potter area of the park. It was amazing! I knew that they had built a Harry Potter ride but I didn’t know that they had converted an entire section of the park into the wizarding world depicted in JK Rowling’s books. Andrew and I had Butter Beers, walked around Hogsmead, went into HoneyDuke’s, saw the owl post office, and went into Hogwarts. It was so fun! The line for the new ride was never under an hour wait but we finally sucked it up and went. The line was surprisingly enjoyable. It took us through corridors of Hogwarts, through Professor Sprout’s green houses, the defense against the dark arts room, Dumbledore’s office, and a huge room covered with moving/talking pictures. Before we knew it we were at the ride. Oh wow that ride was amazing! I don’t know if my description can do it justice… so I will just highly suggest that anyone and everyone go and ride it! We liked it so much we turned right back around once we were off and jumped in the single rider line. That line was a different story. It took forever to get through. Andrew and I started talking to the lady and her daughter behind us. When we had finally gotten up to the front I was in a conversation with the mother and the girl when the mother pointed and said that Andrew as going on the ride, I had forgotten that I was in a single rider line so the girl and I ran to catch up with Andrew. One of the female workers dressed in Hogwarts robes turned and yelled at us. “Hey! You two get back here!” then under her breath as she stood in front of us at the line she muttered “Ya, nice try.” The girl and I turned and looked at her mother who was trying hard to hold in an outburst of laughter. When she finally got control of herself, she whispered (because the worker was still right there) “At least she didn’t put you in detention!” Her daughter and I felt retarded but laughed about it as soon as the grumpy worker left. So yes, I got in trouble at Hogwarts. We rode the Dueling Dragon three times in a row and had to go home earlier than we wanted because we were both motion sick and had brilliant headaches. The next day we repeated the day before and again had to go home early. Unfortunately we found that we had lost our camera. It had all our pictures from the beach and everything we did at Universal on. We’ve been trying almost every day to find it. Even now we keep calling them. Sad days! At least I know what I can get him for Christmas!
Our Florida trip had come to an end and we packed up Toothless to bursting point. I drove most of the day and Andrew took the night shift. I took over again in the morning and let Andrew try to sleep off his car sickness. At one point, just outside of New Mexico we hit absolute insanity. We were laughing at nothing and singing All American Rejects at the top of our lungs with the volume turned almost all the way up. I have never been so happy to get out of the car as I was at my sister’s house in New Mexico. We spent two days there then set out for Rexburg. We drove straight through and made it home at 11:00 that night. We walked in the house, went to our room, and crashed on the bed without even changing our cloths. But we were HOME!

The real 1st America settlement

St Augustine is the Oldest settlement in the Continential US. This will surprise many, but it was founded some 60 years or so before Plymouth Rock. Settled by the Spanish in North East Florida it was the first stop on the their trade route. It grew in prestige and was attacked several times. Thankfully the Castillo de San Marcos, this huge fort made of ‘coquina’ (or something like that), a sort of concrete rock made of crushed shells, is there to protect the citizens. The fort has never lost a battle. Ok, enough with the history lesson… But St. Augustine is really cool. It has been a family favorite for a long time. My Mom loves old stuff, so this place is right up her alley. Erin, my Mom and I all took off up there when we left Daytona to spend half a day there. Our first stop was the fort of which I used as such a splendid introduction. They have a cannon demonstration, and 5 guys in thick wool suits (remember this is mid-day in Florida…), march out and shoot like 3 pounds of gunpowder off, with unfortunately no cannonball. They shortened the demo to 5 minutes, from the historically accurate 10 minutes to fire the cannon. Crazy, I know, in the shows its only like 10 seconds. We walked around the Fort and took in the sites around, and then headed to St George Street. It is kinda the main street of Old St Augustine, with loads of old buildings that have been converted into money making museums and shops. One cool thing about it is that the road is super narrow so they converted it to a walking only street. So we walked around and checked out the shops and sites until we were too tired to move. We had a long drive ahead of us back to Orlando so we weren’t looking forward to it, but had to trudge on in our adventure! Check back for Erin’s telling of our fun times at Universal.

O' Brother Where Art Thou?

Last week was Beach time. We went to South Daytona Beach and spent a couple of nights at an old family favorite. Its right on the beach and is a lot of fun. My sister and her family as well as my Mom all made it out. We had a blast. The waves were a lot calmer than the last time we went to the beach and Erin was able to handle it a little better. She claims she learned a little more in Ocean 101 now. Our first day there, we all started to build a big sand castle but the tide interrupted us with its own idea of what it should look like. So, we went out and played in the water. We decided to go running early the next morning on the beach and watch the sun rise. It was beautiful! I haven't been a big fan of running for many years now, but I've changed my mind and we both enjoyed it. On our run we saw several dolphins making there way up the coast, it was postcard worthy with the sun rise behind them. As surprising as the dolphins were, we saw a very large group of people, hundreds in fact, congregated tightly on the shore. We first thought a dolphin was beached, as many were waist deep in water. But as we neared, I saw a man dunk someone in the water and another from the queue walk up to him. A baptism? Sure enough as we got closer we saw several men in the water baptizing this large group. "O Brother Where Art Thou?" flashed in our minds. Come on in boys, the waters fine! Oh the South...
Later that day we swam with dolphins! We were out body boarding and suddenly a dolphin surfaces and Erin freaks out. As the dolphin approached within 20 feet of us, I had to reassure her, it was a dolphin and not a shark. Erin added dolphins to her list of things she's swam with. We finished the trip lounging around the pool, throwing footballs and Frisbees around, and playing Rumikub.

Long one...

Well we finished at Disney! It's all been a blur and we get home so late that I can barely stay awake long enough to brush my teeth, let alone blog about the whole day. We went to Animal Kingdom super early to see the animals before it got hot. They don't like the heat much. The gazelles were full of energy, running, prancing, and frolicking around their enclosure. It was almost as if they were showing off, bringing to mind Marty the Zebra from Madagascar. To contrast the lively gazelles, the tigers could have been stuffed furs and we wouldn't have known the difference. It struck me how dismal a life it would be to be caged in a zoo. I asked one of the tiger keepers if they were going to feed them lunch anytime soon but they only eat before the zoo opens and after it is closed. Once in a while they freeze a hunk of meat in a block of ice and toss it in the tiger's watering hole. The tiger will spend a good hour playing with it trying to get the meat out. This is the only mind stimulating that cat gets. I'm so glad I'm not that tiger! After that we spent a few days at Disney Quest and the Disney water parks. Wherever we went there were buses and buses of Brazilian teen age kids running around. Oh my word. They were always either clapping in unison, singing loud chants, or talking at the top of their lungs to their neighbor who was only inches away from them. They walked slow, talking up entire streets, and were impossible to cut through. They have no comprehension of forming a line or waiting in a line that was already formed and they don't speak a drop of English so you can't tell them to get into the back of the line. I have no doubt that if an American school took a trip to a non-English speaking theme park that the American teens would be just the same and the natives would be just as annoyed. Suffice it to say, after ten days of being in crowded theme parks Andrew and I are sick of people. It is hard to stand in any form of a line anymore. It seems annoying people search us out and deliberately hang around us. I'm not making up how ridiculous a lot these people are. For example, while standing in line at Blizzard Beach (a water park) there was a family with two girls who were between the ages of 8 and 11. The mother bent down to talk to the oldest of the girls and the girl mouthed off to her mother and slapped her in the face. The mother just took it and the father didn't say a word. The same girl reached up and grabbed the waist band of her father's swim suit and pulled as far back as she could. If Andrew or I had of been any closer to the man we would have had front row sets to a bare butt shot from him. I'm sure people in the line beside us got to see all the way down. The father turned and stifled a yell of embarrassment and anger at the girl. But the girl wrapped her arms around him and nuzzled her head into him. The father turned back around and the girl did it again! The same thing happened but no actual punishment ever took place. Then the girl started groping her father. I was shocked. I couldn't believe this was being allowed to take place at all, let alone in public. Her father pushed her away and stepped as far as he could away from her. This left only the girl's little sister to pick on. The girl stood there for only a moment then grabbed her sister's arm and twisted the skin on it in an painfully ugly way. This child was a honest to goodness brat. She could have done well with a good spanking and other disciplinary actions. She had no respect for anyone one, least of all her parents. Andrew and I just stood there in awe at what we had witnessed. This is just one example of the the kind of annoying people we have encountered. For this reason we feel our anti-social behavior is necessary for a reboot before we go deal with more crazies at a park. I think my favorite water park was Typhoon Lagoon. The lines weren't too bad and we got to go snorkel in a cold salt water pond with sharks, sting rays, and other tropical fish. At first I couldn't get the hang of the snorkel. I'd try to breath out of my nose (which obviously didn't work)then I would hyperventilate trying to breathing out my mouth piece. Finally I got the hang of it and started through the pond. Andrew was ahead of me. He looked back and gave me a thumbs up, I smiled but my high cheek bones raised up with the smile breaking the suction of my goggles. Water started pouring into my face mask and I inhaled a great deal of salt water through my nose. The burning went all the way down my spine. Somehow I made it to the midway point and climbed up the rock that was the rest stop. Andrew met me there and we fixed my mask. The rest of the swim/float was great. Andrew almost touched a shark! We had so much fun we went to that park twice. The second time through the water was much better without any inhalation of salt water. Last Friday we headed to Tampa to go to Busch Gardens (it's like Animal Kingdom but targets an older age group). The tropical storm Bonnie had hit Tampa pretty hard drowning our hopes of making it to the park that day. Our hotel room was great though! It was right by the beach and had a beautiful view. That evening Andrew and I went on a moon-lit walk along the beach. It was as though I was in a fairy tale. Everything was just so perfect and beautiful. The next day we headed over to Busch Gardens. It wasn't as nice as any of the Disney parks, but it was still good. We got in and went straight to this huge roller coaster. We went to get in line but the girl who was measuring the kids to see if they were tall enough to ride started freaking out at us. She said that we had to put our back pack in a locker. Ok.... So we went to the lockers and found that they wanted to charge us to use the lockers. We hadn't brought change so we went to a gift store to see if they could break our dollars into change so that we could use the lockers. I was very put out about the situation. We had already paid an arm and a leg to get into the park and now they wanted to charge us more ride the rides. I pointed this our the the worker at the gift shop and told him it was ridiculous that we had to pay to ride a ride that we had already paid so much for. He agreed and said that if we wanted we could just put our things where everyone put their shoes but the park wouldn't be responsible if anything was stolen. We were ok with that so we went back. We walked past the girl again, and again she started yelling at us. I was not in the mood for her crap so I started having back at her. She still wouldn't let us through even though we explained to her what the man at the gift shop had said. She was so rude to us I couldn't believe it! Andrew asked for her name so that we could report her if we needed to or had the chance. We went back to the gift shop and told the other worker what had happened. He called his manager, came back and told us to go back to her and have her call her manager. We went back to the girl but she had called in for a switch and in her place as a tall black guy. I don't know if she thought this would intimidate us or if she was just trying to get out of there before we came back and I didn't care. The way we had been treated and the park's policies was ludicrous. We had the tall guy call his manager and they still said we had to pay to ride the rides. Andrew and I had had it. We went to guest relations and got a refund for our double pass to Bush Gardens and Sea World. This actually works out better. We have four open days to do the Universal parks and the beach. The rest of the day Andrew drove back to Orlando while I napped. That evening we went to the movie Inception. OH MY GOODNESS! The previews made me made because I couldn't figure out what the movie was about. I didn't want to see the movie because I was still irked that it had confused me. But the ratings for it were so good! Andrew really wanted to see it so I caved. I'm glad my stubbornness took a break on this one. It is the best movie I've seen in a long time. Really really intense. The movie got out super late. The mall it was in had closed, Andrew and I had to walk all around the outside of the mall to get to Toothless. As we were walking we saw a a black guy walking toward us from the bushes separating the other parking lots. There was only one other couple around and I was already on edge from the movie. I changed our direction slightly to see if the guy would continue on straight. My stomach dropped as he adjusted his course to intercept with ours. Again I redirected us and again he corected to match us. I started to panic. He was walking fast and the parking lot was dark. the other couple had gotten into their car but hadn't pulled away. According to Andrew, they were keeping an eye on us and making sure help was there if we needed it. Finally the guy was about seven feet away from us, he called out politely and asked if he could borrow our phone. He said his ride had left him and he needed to make a call. Andrew handed him his phone. He made his call and left. The other couple left after the guy was past their car. I was grateful for them. It just goes to show you that there are good people everywhere, even in creepy dark parking lots at one in the morning. Thank goodness.

Crab, Sting Rays, and Sharks! Oh my!

So Erin has been on me to blog for a few days now, but I’m on Vacation! But it’s good I guess to record it so we can share our fun adventures with all of you. I need to tell you about last Wednesday and Thursday. So much has been going on; it’s all one big scrambled mess to me. But she gave me a quick rundown to refresh me which days they were. We were beat after two long days of parks so we took Wednesday off, so to speak. We got up at our leisure and took our time in the morning. We ran down to one of the half-dozen outlet malls in town and did a little shopping. I bought some shoes. It turns out I’m like a closet shoe-freak. I know, weird, huh? So far on this trip I’ve purchased a pair of Crocs kind of boat shoes, a old school looking pair of Pumas, and some new running shoes for our new workout régime. Which Erin claims is more shoes than she has gotten, but she got 2 from Charolett Rush or whatever, some Under Armor Flip Flops, and two pair of running shoes Pumas, and Reebok. Anyways, enough about shoes… After our adventures shopping we went to Disney Quest. Think of the coolest Arcade place, give it four stories with no tokens or quarters required, and that is Disney Quest. We had a blast in there. It turns out Erin is really good at video game driving (it’s in real life you need to watch out). We spent a few hours just messing around on the bottom two floors before we took off to dinner with my folks. Joe’s Crab Shack. Its awesome. Erin hasn’t had much crab in her years, so we thought we’d fix that and get her a big bucket or two full of it. And boy was it good. The fun part about crab is the adventures you have trying to actually get some meat. They gave us cool tools to use, which I was personally unfamiliar with, but they made sense to me. Erin however was struggling until coached a little. She only got a few pieces of crab shell in her hair… Oh it was great.
It turns out one day wasn’t enough, so we spent the next lounging too! Typhoon Lagoon! I had never been and neither had Erin, so we didn’t know what to expect! But it was loads of fun! Sure they had the typical rides and wave pool. But that’s not all! There was a ride that went down and then had jets that pushed the tube back up! Super cool. The highlight of our time was most definitely the big salt water tank they have full of sharks and sting rays and fish that we swam in! Now I’ve swam with sharks before (and almost been eaten by them), but this was fun. One of the small hammer heads got pretty close to me, which was cool, but obviously there was no diving to get a closer look, heck, we couldn’t even kick with our feet, so we wouldn't freak out the sharks. Nonetheless a really fun time.
I’m not sure what tomorrow will bring but I’ll bet it is gonna be awesome.

The Husband Eatting Grass Hopper!

Fireworks are over!! The last day was hectic to say the least. I always thought people would get fireworks for the 4th, not on the 4th. Obviously I was wrong. People were packing the tent the entire day, and they were almost all grumpy. The only thing we ate were cheese burgers, some fries, and a few chicken nuggets. We virtually inhaled them between customers. I’m not going to go into the amount of people who threw a fit because we wouldn’t give them something or the number of times I just wanted to scream at people and ask them how it is legal for them to be so astoundingly stupid. Let’s just say that night was the equivalent of a mass of PMSing college freshman girls zeroing in on the only ice cream store for miles; in short, angry chaos. We finally headed home around 3:30am. As we were driving home I thought that I had left my cell phone back at the tent. I had Andrew call it and I rummaged around Toothless looking for it. I heard my ring tone so I knew it was at least in the car. I gave up on finding it, comforted by the fact that I hadn’t lost it. Just then police lights started flashing behind us. I really couldn’t see how this night could get any worse. The cop had pulled us over because we had been swerving (because we were hunting for my cell phone) and wanted to make sure we weren’t drunk. We go home, showered off and crashed at 4:00 am. The next day we woke up, ate, went back to sleep for the rest of the day.
I’m not really sure what happened the first half of the week but towards the middle of it Andrew and I went on a date. We went out to eat at one of Andrew’s favorite paces, Steak n Shake. They had really good food but rationed out their water to one cup full of ice with a few dips of water in it. Dinner was so good and we had a lot of fun. Then we went to Knight and Day. We were both very exciting to see this movie, though I had been warned by my sister that it was plot less and cheesy. She had been completely right. But all the same Andrew and I had fun. The movie got out earlier than we thought it would so we went to an arcade across the street. Andrew took me to the batting cages and we had a fight with the pitching machine. It was stopped up and wouldn’t throw anymore. Finally it started working again so we could finish our set. Andrew and I have an ongoing battle with air hockey. So far I have beaten him every game…. 1/0. To even the score we decided to play again. The game was going great until the score board stopped counting my points. I scored three goals but the table had a bias toward Andrew and didn’t count them! After yelling at the table for five minutes, I lost. Andrew vs. me is now 1/1. The next night Andrew took me to the new Twilight movie, Eclipse in IMAX. It was AMAZING! You had to turn your head from side to side to see the full screen. The speakers in the theater literally shook the seats. The movie it’s self was surprisingly good. The first movie in the series was so badly made I had little hope for the others. I was happy to see that they stepped it up with this one.
The next week was the week of Disney! Sunday night we drove to Orlando to stay with Andrew’s Dad while we went to the parks. . On the way we noticed we were almost out of gas. We stopped at a station and filled up Toothless. Once we got back on the road Andrew noticed that a rather large bug had jumped in for a ride. He felt something on his foot and pulled Toothless off to the side of the road as fast as he could then he jumped out of the car. Sitting where his foot had been was the mother of all grass hoppers. Big and ugly it could have been one of the monsters of the giant bug horror films! I started…. It started back…. Then JUMPED AT ME! I started screaming, knowing my big strong husband would come to my rescue. To my surprise I wasn’t the only one screaming…. Andrew was screaming too! I knew I was doomed with no hope of rescue. I started kicking at the mammoth sized monster. Finally it gave up its desire to eat me and jumped out of the car. Once Andrew was back in the car he confessed that my scream had scared him and that is the reason he started screaming. Not because of the bug. We got there about 11:30 at night but realized as we arrived we found that we left the camera back in Ocala, an hour away. We turned the car right back around got the camera, and headed back to Orlando. Monday we hit The Magic Kingdom! It was crazy the kind of lines people were forming as soon as the park opened! Although, I was surprised at the amount of rides there were in the park. When I was little it seemed like there were so many! Somehow everything seems bigger when I was small. Andrew agreed. His theory was that with big families it was hard to do the Fast Pass line and it seemed to take forever when we were little. Then going from the highest point of boredom to the complete opposite made it seem like so much more. Andrew and I on the other hand zoomed through the lines and worked the fast passes to the limit! We had so much fun and even took on the rid that terrified me as a child. The dreaded SPLASH MOUNTAIN! I took a picture of the picture they took of us on the ride as proof.
The next day was Epcot! I loved Epcot went I went ten years ago, so I was super excited to go back. It was just as much fun as I remember. The park was really empty but all the better for us, we road almost all the rides. We even went on the Kim Possible Mission about the countries at the park. I got bored with that pretty fast so we just toured around. Our camera ran out of juice in Italy Andrew and I ran out of juice two countries after that. So we posted out our spot for the firework show. And watched the storm clouds roll in. Luckily, it didn’t rain till we were cutting through groups of slow walking people on our way to the car. We will have to go back to that park, I want more pictures and we need to see the rest of the countries. Whew! Having this much fun is exhausting!

The Haunted Flip Flops!

Last night was a night that I never want to repeat. Andrew and I closed up the stand early because of the bad weather and went to bed. At about 4:00am I woke up from a dead sleep to a very determined pain in my stomach. While laying there I tried to distract myself from the pain by listening to the traffic on the high way that runs beside our tent. Amid the sounds of motors and engines I heard a sound that distinctly sounded like someone was walking in flip flops. Normally this wouldn’t bother me but the sound was coming from behind the tent, not from the side walk along the road. I’d been told that homeless people like to sleep in the abandon restaurant that is in the lot just behind ours. Also, there is a bar to the left of our parking lot, and a truck stop gas station to the right. The only thing separating any of this from us is the Florida shrubbery and a few rows of taller trees. I strained to hear the footsteps. Maybe this was just my imagination, maybe there was really nothing out there. But I heard it again. I held my breath and concentrated on the sound. My stomach dropped as I realized the steps were getting closer to the tent. I reached over and woke Andrew up. I told him I had heard something, that there was someone out there. But the footsteps had stopped giving no proof of what I just said. We both listened for a long while and then the steps began again. Andrew got up and tried to look through some gaps in the tent, but couldn’t see anything. He walked around in the tent making noise so that whoever belonged to the footsteps would know that there were people inside. He came back to bed and tried to go back to sleep. I couldn’t sleep after that; adrenaline had me on high alert. Almost ten minutes went by without anything odd. I figured I was just being silly and that Andrew had deterred them from coming any closer. I was about to go back to sleep when I hear the sound of flip flops again. I grabbed Andrew and asked if he could hear it. He could, I wasn’t going crazy. I asked him if we could call the police and just have them drive though the abandon lot behind us. Surely the sight of a cop car would get rid of them. We looked up the local sheriff station on the internet. Andrew called and requested a patrol car to swing by. Once the policeman was here Andrew went out and explained the situation. The policeman stayed for a while and looked around but no one was seen. After he left neither Andrew nor I felt like sleeping at all. It was about 5:00am now. I wanted to do something that would settle my mind. So we started watching How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, about twenty minutes into it we turned it off and fell back to sleep. I think I’m ready for this firework season to be over.