Florida trip

I have been putting off posting anything about our trip to Florida because I knew that it would be a longer blog entry than usual and I haven't wanted to put forth the effort yet. I need to just sit down though, bite the bullet and get something posted before I forget everything, so here goes (I hope I don't leave out too much):

January 11-16
DH & I flew out of Salt Lake early Friday morning. My parents came over early and my mom stayed with the kids while my dad drove us to the airport. I had to do two sets of packing since my kids were going to be staying at my parents' house while we were gone. We had a fairly long layover in Albuquerque, NM so we had time to get some lunch. We arrived in Orlando in the evening and then got our luggage and rental car. It took us about 45 minutes to get to the condo resort we were staying at. After we unloaded our luggage we left to find a grocery store so we could buy something for dinner and then breakfast the next day.

Saturday we slept in a little and then drove out to Tan & Chez's apartment. We spent the day with them and went to the Kennedy Space Center in the afternoon. It was a pretty neat place to visit but we unfortunately missed the bus tour that takes you out to the actual launch pad. We realized too late that the last tour left not too long after we got to the space center. So we just walked around the complex there and DH & Tan rode a flight simulator that simulates a shuttle launch (Chez & I couldn't go on it because it had pregnancy restrictions). Chez & her son C & I were able to watch them on some T.V. screens in a viewing area, but we were disappointed to see that neither of them showed any reaction to the ride whatsoever... We also watched a couple of neat 3-D IMAX movies and we attended a briefing by one of NASA's employees who talked about the future of the space shuttle program. On the way home we stopped at a restaurant for dinner. The weather was absolutely beautiful on Saturday.

On Sunday we met Tan, Chez & C at their church building and attended their ward with them. It was pouring by the time we left the church building - but luckily that was the only day it rained during our stay. After church we went back to Tan & Chez's apartment and had dinner and spent the day there with them. We really enjoyed spending time with their family & were very grateful for their wonderful hospitality. DH & I played the Nintendo Wii for the first time and got to box each other. The Wii was a lot of fun to play and I could see the kids (even the younger ones) getting into some of the games. We will probably look at purchasing one in the future. I felt particularly bad for Chez with her pregnancy though. I don't envy her for living in a part of the country with warm winters. She was just getting to the point where her ankles were swelling & I was fearful that I would have the same problem before I left Florida. Other than that she looked great being 8 months pregnant (super skinny with a basketball belly). I also think nephew C was glad when we finally left because we weren't giving him the attention that he wanted and he didn't have anyone his age to play with.

On Monday & Tuesday we went to Disney World. All I can say is that tickets are EXPENSIVE! We almost spent as much per ticket for 2 days that we spent for each of our plane tickets to Orlando. We spent Monday morning & early afternoon in Magic Kingdom and then spent the rest of the day in Epcot. Magic Kingdom is what I think of when I think of Disney World - with Cinderella's castle and all the main animated Disney characters. We think that it was a little more crowded than usual for that time of year because the annual Disney World marathon took place the day before on Sunday. We saw quite a few people that had marathon shirts on. Luckily though we didn't have to wait in line too long for anything. There were a few rides there that I couldn't go on since I was pregnant which was unfortunate, but we found enough to occupy us.

Epcot wasn't quite as exciting as I had heard that it would be. Maybe part of the problem is that we were trying to do as much as we could while we were there and so didn't necessarily take the time to enjoy some of the exhibits. We ate dinner in the Epcot World Showcase area and right when we came out there was a group of Chinese acrobat performers getting ready to start a program there on the sidewalk so we stopped to see them perform. They were very talented and we were able to get some of it on video. That evening we stayed for the Epcot World Showcase night show, IllumiNations, around the lake. It was a neat show with fireworks. Weather wise it was a great day. We were a little cool in the morning with short-sleeved shirts on so when we made our way over to Epcot we went out to our car in the parking lot and got our jackets.

Tuesday we spent the day at Hollywood Studios (formerly known as MGM Studios). This was my favorite of the 3 parks that we visited. We knew beforehand the big shows that we wanted to hit and so we made sure that we got there in plenty of time for those shows. There is an Indiana Jones Stunt show and then a Lights, Motors, Action! show that demonstrated how some of the high-speed chases are done in the movies.
There were a couple of rides that I made DH go on by himself since I couldn't go on them. He enjoyed them but it's not quite the same having to wait in line by yourself and not having someone to talk to and share the experience with.

We stayed for the night show at Hollywood Studios called Fantasmic which was a show over water again with some parts of it being displayed on water being sprayed into the air - pretty neat. Apparently it was a little scary for some kids in the audience though. Tuesday was even cooler than Monday had been so we wore our jackets the whole day. One funny thing that happened this day was that we had bought the ingredients to make ourselves sub sandwiches to take with us each day to eat for lunch. So at lunch time we were sitting down on a bench eating our sandwiches and a family came up to us and asked where we had gotten them because they were looking for something similar to buy in the park.


Wednesday was our real wild card day. Our plane to go back to Salt Lake wasn't scheduled to leave until about 4:50 in the afternoon and we had to be checked out of our condo by 10 a.m. So we had several hours to spend doing something - but not enough to go to one of the major theme parks. Tan & Chez had suggested a couple of things to do and so we ended up taking an airboat ride and then we stopped at Gatorland on our way to the airport. Both were somewhat expensive but sometimes you just have to fork out the money - especially when you might not have another chance to do something like this again.

The airboat ride was pretty neat. The boat just skims along the top of the water/marsh and the driver points out different wildlife along the way. It was pretty noisy & windy. There were lots of birds that we saw and we even got to see a alligator (from a reasonable distance). The driver said that it was a pretty big one from what he could tell. He said that you can determine the length of alligators by the distance between their eyes and the tip of their nose (each inch is equal to about 1 foot of alligator). The one that we saw was about an 8-9 foot alligator. The other neat thing that happened during the airboat ride was when we were stopped to look at some birds and the driver pointed out an osprey that was flying up in the air. He talked about how they will fly around and then dive into the water to catch fish. Right after he said that the osprey tucked up it's wings into a dive and dove straight into the water and came out with a fish. It was pretty amazing to see - too bad it happened too fast to get it on video though. We also unfortunately ended up being on the wrong side of the boat to get very many good pictures of anything... (The trees in the picture above are Cypress trees with Spanish Moss hanging from them.)

Gatorland is one of those tourist locations where you have to pay just to get admission to the park and then anything else at the park costs extra - you can pay extra to buy food for the alligators or birds, you can pay extra to get your picture taken on the back of an alligator, you can pay extra to get an up-close encounter & feed a group of alligators, you get the idea... We were able to get some amazing pictures of some birds & alligators though. The park is basically a marshy area that has a boardwalk going around it where you can view the alligators and other wildlife. We also saw a "Gator Wrestling" show where one of the workers came out and demonstrated some things with one of the alligators in the park. The most amazing part we saw was when the worker turned the alligator on his back and they essentially go to sleep in this position. He even yelled right in the alligator's face and it didn't even move a muscle.

After Gatorland we tried to navigate through Orlando to the airport without having to take any toll roads. DH definitely had something about taking any toll roads while we were there if there was any way we could avoid it. The only toll we ended up taking was from the airport to the condo on the first day. I think overall it took us a bit longer to get to our destinations, but DH had the satisfaction of saving a dollar or two each trip.

The kids did great with my parents and it didn't even seem like they missed us much. M&M & Luke were enrolled in swim lessons that my parents took them to several of the mornings that we were gone and they had a Saturday primary activity, Blondie's ballet class & M&M's tumbling class. I think that all of the activities helped keep my parents from going totally crazy in the house with the kids. On Sunday the kids went to my parents' ward (which luckily for them meets at 1 p.m.). They said that the kids were fine for my dad for the first part of Sacrament Meeting (my mom is the organist) and then my mom was able to come down and sit with them. Blondie had my dad color in her new coloring book with her and my dad said that a lady who had been sitting behind them told him afterwards that she was just in tears watching them color together. They also took the kids sledding several times at a nearby park that has a steep hill. They had a few small snow storms while we were gone and since it was so cold the whole time there was plenty of snow around from previous storms. I also had bought some little things for the for the kids and wrapped them to be opened each day - which I think the kids really looked forward to.

We tried to call the kids each night so we could talk to them. We only missed Sunday night because we didn't get back from Tan & Chez's until after midnight (which was after 10 Utah time). At first my parents tried putting the kids on the phone 2 at a time but we couldn't hear a thing anyone was saying like that and it was hard to tell who was talking (they sound very similar on the phone). I would usually ask Luke if he was behaving and not driving Grandma crazy and a couple of times he was pretty honest and said that he we was driving her crazy... I am definitely grateful for my parents for putting up with the kids for so long. The only thing that was somewhat bothersome for them was that Blondie had a cough the whole time she was there and my mom was giving her some cough medicine for it. She also took a nap almost every day which is very unusual for her. They also had Kitty wandering at night a few times and would find her asleep in the hallway between the bedrooms downstairs and then she would sleep in really late into the morning...

It was definitely a temperature shock to come from temperatures in the 60s-70s and then to land at the Salt Lake airport in our short sleeves at a whopping 17 degrees. You could even see your breath walking up the jetway from the airplane to the airport. We got back to our house a little after 10 p.m. and Kitty unfortunately was asleep already. Blondie gave her dad a great big hug - I actually think that she's the one that missed us the most. The next day Kitty even slept in and I finally went in to her room after the other kids were awake and just stood there for a minute looking at her and she opened her eyes and saw me. As soon as she saw me she sat up in bed and said, "Mommy" and gave me a good big hug.

I was somewhat nervous with spending two days walking around Disney World and on my feet the whole time that my feet and ankles would be swollen by the end of our visit but I faired amazingly well. The bottoms of my feet were a little sore (especially if I had to stand in one spot for a while) but other than that I felt just fine and wasn't even terribly tired at the end of each day (and no swelling).

Overall the trip was a lot of fun. I always felt like I was forgetting something whenever we would get ready to go somewhere but it was also nice to not have to haul the kids around, especially when we had to wait in line for things. There were definitely times (at Walt Disney World especially) where DH and I would talk about which of the kids would have enjoyed the ride or show that we just experienced. We are talking about possibly taking a trip to Disneyland in the next year or two (it would definitely be cheaper because we would be able to drive and from what I understand the park is a lot smaller & easier to navigate with young kids).