Day 1: First Flight
Day 2: Just Hanging Out
Day 3: Disney Fun
Day 4: Lego Land
Day 5: Kennedy Space Center
Day 6: The Zoo
Day 7: A Drive Along the Coast

Exactly one month ago we left Florida and headed back to the chilly north. I figured I should get this vacation series done before another month flies by!

We woke up very early on Thursday, day eight, so we could check out, grab some quick breakfast from the lobby buffet, and head to the airport, just 10 minutes away. Alan dropped the kids and I off and went to return the car. We headed for the luggage check/print tickets line. It was longer than I was expecting at 6:15am. We waited, mostly patiently, and eventually got our tickets and checked some luggage. Then we headed for the security long, which was LONG!! So long. I guess Orlando airport gets a little more business than our local MHT. So we waited, and waited, and waited! We eventually we got through and started running. They have a little train thing that takes you to the gates, so we had to ride that. When we got off we heard a last boarding call over the loud speaker. We RAN! We made it to the gate, just before they closed it. Then we were faced with finding seats on a packed airplane where the only available seats were single middle seats. Alan took Eve and I took Lex and we tried to find seats together. I was able to get a woman to (grumpily) move to a different seat so Lex and I could sit together, and as I turned around I saw Eve settling in between two men and Alan heading for a row or two up. I almost cried! I grabbed the closest flight attendant and begged her to help. Eve is too young to sit alone! I couldn’t believe how many excuses people had for not moving. In hindsight I should have given her a lollipop and told the people next to her to have a nice flight! I bet they would have been begging to switch seats real soon. However, at 7am, after running through the airport, I was not amused. Finally a guy agreed to move over and Eve ended up sitting across the aisle from me. Thankfully! I know it was our fault for being late, but we were at the airport an hour before our flight. Sigh.

After all the excitement, and the complete disappointment that my efforts for the A group boarding were in vain, we settled in and the flight was fine. I was exhausted and resorted quickly to the digital aides.

They had no complaints.

Since we were shuffling people around on the flight anyway, I had made the wise decision to do so as close to the front of the plane as possible. When we landed in Chicago we were able to get off the plane fairly quickly and make it to our next gate. We even had time to grab a quick snack and watch them load the luggage onto the plane. I was happy to see our suitcases go on!

I have to take a moment here to bid a fond farewell to my lovely backpack. It saw me through many years of college, kids, travel, and much much more. The rip in the front seam has been there for awhile, but when a large hole appeared at the shoulder strap I figured it was time for retirement, before disaster occurred! It was a wonderful backpack and will be missed.

As we boarded our final flight home the attendant made a dramatic announcement that the flight was… practically empty. She suggested we all spread out. Once again my A group boarding efforts were in vain. Oh well. This time Alan sat with Eve and I sat with Lex.

Eve was happy to show Alan all the drawings she did in her Doodle book. A great impulse buy at CVS before the trip! It kept her busy for hours!

He quickly resorted to the digital aides as well. We were all pretty tired at this point.

Lex, however, had been inspired throughout the trip and decided to take this final flight time to draw plans for a new train track. It included slides and flying trains and much more. He was on a roll! He even built it as soon as we got home!

We arrived safely in Manchester where everything was dirty and gray. Florida was so shiny and clean and not covered in salt and sand! It was nice. We got back to our dirty car and headed home.

A wonderful vacation was had by all! Alan liked it so much he even suggested we do it again! Music to my ears! We just need to recover from this trip first. :)

Day 1: First Flight
Day 2: Just Hanging Out
Day 3: Disney Fun
Day 4: Lego Land
Day 5: Kennedy Space Center
Day 6: The Zoo

Wednesday, day seven, started early for me. I was determined to get a good boarding group for the flight home, so I was up, huddled in the bathroom with the tablet ready on the Southwest page at 6:45am. When I tried to check in at 7am, 24hrs before our flight, it didn’t work and I realized our flight was at 7:15am. Sigh. Most days Lex is up by then so my original plan had been to check in from the lobby while having breakfast with Lex, but he chose to sleep in and so I was perched in the bathroom. Anyway, I checked in right at 7:15 and go the A group for boarding! Yay!

Our original plan had been to hang out with Alan’s family on Wednesday morning and then slowly make our way back to Orlando for the night. However, things didn’t work out with his family so we just checked out of the hotel, stopped at Target for snacks and water, and headed south again. We decided to take the coastal route instead of the highway so we could see the water and maybe stop for lunch in a nice little town. I was thinking St. Augustine’s would be a nice place to stop, but we didn’t have much of a plan and when we got there it was crowded and we just kept rolling through.

I let the kids play with the camera in the car and they took tons of pictures like these.

Trees

Eve’s Disney pen and tiger in her lap.

Big brother

Self portrait

Blue skies

Eve’s feet

Lex’s feet

We ended up stopping a little south of St. Augustines at a beach front restaurant. The restaurant was nice (except for the smokers!?! I don’t miss that in VT!!), the food was good, and the view was beautiful. After lunch we took off our shoes and hung out on the beach for awhile. It was cold and windy, but otherwise fun. :)

Lunch!

To the beach!

I love their love.

Happy kids on the beach!

This was Alan’s grumpy day. We each get one day, right? :)

The water was calling our names!

It was warmer than we expected. Or maybe the air was just colder. Nothing stopped Lex from getting soaked though!

Happy family in the sunshine.

Wet and chilly and having a blast.

You could drive on this beach. I’ve never seen that before. There was even a “lane” set up at the back of the beach with cones marking the lane.

We collected a bunch of sea shells.

Lex running back to me when it was time to go.

Back in the parking lot we had to dig out the suitcases and get the kids de-sanded and into dry clothes. Then we hit the road again. By this point we were tired so we headed for the highway, direct to Orlando.

Did I mention on our Disney day (Day 3: Disney Fun) that at the very end Mike pointed out “the best Disney gift shop” and I quietly told him to shush as I was tired and not in the mood for a gift shop at that time? Later that night Eve asked me why we didn’t go to the gift shop. “Mommy, I was saving all my money to buy something at Disney,” she tells me. Later in the week Lex also asked why we didn’t go to the Disney gift shop. They do have good ears and good memories!

Since we had one more night in Orlando we decided to go back to Downtown Disney for the gift shop and maybe dinner. We got there and the place was packed. And we were tired. We hung out for awhile, took lots of pictures, had our brains saturated with piped in Disney music, braved the gift shops, and then took off! Exhausted!

They had several windows of “dresses” made of Barbies. Look closely. It’s cool. One was all pink, one yellow, one blue, and this white one.

A Lego dragon creation.

They even had this guy built of Lego, in the water!

A Tinker Toy windmill, because why not?!

One of the stores had an RC car demo setup outside. The kids had fun driving and crashing them around.

They decided to pay a dollar each (of their money) to ride the little carousel. There’s something about carousels that’s so enticing to children. You can see here they’re getting a little loopy. Lex is standing on his and check out the look that other little girl is giving Eve. Clearly mine were not the tame, well behaved children on that ride!

I loved this Mr. Potato head display! You could pick and chose your pieces and fill a bucket. They had some pretty creative pieces!

In the gift shop they had a pretty cool Tinker Toy set up on the ceiling, support a functioning train track.

Disney has some pretty cool ideas.

We were thinking about meeting up with Mike and family for a final dinner, but they were still sick and busy, and we were exhausted and cranky, so instead we just headed to the hotel. Alan took the kids to the pool while I repacked from “hotel packing” to “airplane packing.” Then we had left-overs, granola bars, and fruit and cookies from the lobby for dinner. Early to bed in preparation for an early trip home!

Day 8: Heading Home

Day 1: First Flight
Day 2: Just Hanging Out
Day 3: Disney Fun
Day 4: Lego Land
Day 5: Kennedy Space Center

On day six, Tuesday, we took the kids to the Jacksonville Zoo. Alan and I have been here before, many years ago, and I remembered bright pink flamingos, giant gorillas, and gators that were uncomfortably uncontained. There is a lot more fencing around the gators now than what I remembered from the past. :) The kids had a great time, as we expected.

We have 268 pictures from the zoo, but I’m guessing you don’t want to see them all. I’ll post a few favorites here. If you want more, let me know and I’ll put them up on Picasa. Zoos are mostly fun in person, not in pictures.

Welcome to the Jacksonville Zoo!

The first thing we did was take a train ride around the outer perimeter of the zoo. The ride gives you a good overview of the zoo and some behind the scenes views as well.

Lex was excited to take pictures on the train. Unfortunately most of them came out blurry or completely missed the subject! I’m such a dork that I pulled out my cell phone to take pictures of him taking pictures. :)

This is the back of the animal hospital. I thought the giant bath tubs were funny.

Here is a garden where they grow food for the animals.

After the train we just followed the path around the zoo. First up, Africa!

These birds have a wild ‘do!

Look at the way this bird is sitting. Strange.

Lex took a pretty picture of the palm trees.

This is a crazy animal! It has the head of a giraffe and the body of a zebra. It was my favorite.

Snakes! We saw far too many snakes in the zoo. I’m grateful we didn’t see any outside of the zoo though!

Several times I found myself recalling the scene in Harry Potter where he disappears the glass on the snake exhibit. Shudder!

Elephants!

The kids like the elephants.

Lex was taking pictures of the elephants and asked if we wanted him to take a picture of us too. As I type this a lot of elephant jokes come to mind, but we won’t go there!

Lions!

They were resting at first, but then they got up and started roaming about.

We watched the lions for awhile as they paced back and forth by this door. I thought I heard noises on the other side and we were hoping it was feeding time. After awhile we got bored of waiting and moved on.

We stopped to pet and feed the giraffes. That was fun! They have very long tongues! Did you know they clean their ears with their tongues? Yummy!

Bamboo. You don’t see much of that growing in Vermont!

We all had to touch and feel it. It’s very reedy.

Just as the kids were getting antsy we came across a climbable elephant statute. Good times!

Eve trying to pull the elephant!

Lex swinging from the tail.

Then on to South America. The problem with doing blog posts like this, long and three weeks behind is that I tend to forget a lot of the details. We read all the signs along the way, but I can’t remember what any of these animals were called now. Except the obvious ones, of course, like the elephants!

Look at this guy sunbathing. His arms are stretched above his head and his belly is all exposed. He was quite content.

After awhile he turned over and looked right at us with a sour puss face. :)

Eve took the camera for awhile and took lots of pictures of flowers.

The Aviary and the Carousel.

The flamingos were really orange! I was surprised. I guess they’re eating a different kind of shrimp at the zoo.

Kids can’t pass up a carousel. Especially a free one!

Me riding my favorite zoo animal, the okapi!

At the far end of the zoo we found water. Trout River. There’s water everywhere in Florida. It was beautiful.

Pretty family.

The kids read on the map that there was a Play Park at the zoo and about a third of the way along the path they started whining and begging to go to the play park. We kept telling them that we’re following the path and we’ll get there eventually, but they got crabbier and crabbier. At one point I was remembering trips to the Ross Park Zoo and other places that we went as kids and how much we fussed and complained. Sorry Mom and Dad! It’s so frustrating to pay that much money and hear nothing but complaining! In hindsight they complained a lot along the pathways, but thoroughly enjoyed almost every exhibit.

Eventually we found the playground and they had a pretty cool cement slide.

Alan and Lex took a pretend nap on the “spider web” at the playground.

While the kids played I told Alan about my childhood zoo memories. He laughed at me. Shortly after leaving the playground Eve started complaining again and I lost my temper and got short with her, telling her we paid so much money and she’d better stop fussing and blah, blah, blah. I felt dumb even as the words were coming out of my mouth. Alan laughed at me and said, “Channeling your mother, eh?” Sigh.

Just past the playground they had more monkeys, climbing on vines.

Outside the monkey enclosure they had “vines” for the kids to climb on too!

The Great Apes!

We did catch feeding time for the gorillas!

They each got a whole head of lettuce and they were happy! That’s what I should eat for lunch. We were laughing because all four of them settled down well within sight of the viewing window, but with their backs to us. Like they wanted to be seen, but also have a little privacy. :)

Friendly strangers offered to take a family photo for us. Why not?! Eve decided to be a monkey in the picture.

Pretty cardinal

Lex made us and several strangers laugh when we came around the corner to this view and he said, quite loudly, “Wow! Even the monkeys get a cool play structure!”

We hung out here for a long time, watching this family of Bonobos. Mom, dad, and baby, just hanging out.

They all climbed to the top of the structure for a nap in the sun. True to human life, mom and dad laid down and baby bopped around. After a bit dad got frustrated and left, then mom tried for awhile longer to get baby to lie down, but to no avail. Eventually they all gave up and came down.

All smiles

My little monkeys, watching the monkeys.

The kids can’t resist climbing on every statue they come across. Lex has an awesome smile in this picture!

Wild Florida.

Last, but not least, the gators!! Once again they were not moving at all. Doesn’t the water look totally disgusting?! That’s how it was years ago when we were last here.

I guess gators don’t eat turtles. This guy was hanging out in the same enclosure. It looks like he really needs a bath!

The end. We left just as the rain started. Not heavy, but enough that it would have been no fun to be caught in.

I said I’d post “a few favorites” and ended up with 45! Oops! It’s hard to choose just one. :) The kids did a lot of picture taking at the zoo so of the 268 I have, many are blurry, out of focus, or contain no actual animals. Oh well.

On the way home from the zoo we passed a SWAT team on the bridge. Police and news everywhere. One SWAT guy was even on his belly, finger on the trigger of a mean looking gun. I did some serious rubber necking as Alan drove by! Then I pulled up the news website (thanks to their van sitting on the side of the road) to see what was going on. They updated the page several times throughout the evening. Shots were fired under the bridge. Turns out a person living under the bridge (seriously?!) was shooting a pellet gun at people going by in fishing boats. Then she shot herself in the foot. Local yokel stuff. I guess due to the unknown nature of the shots and the difficult access (under the bridge!) they brought out the whole battalion immediately.

The rest of the night was spent eating ice cream and watching TV at the hotel. Aahh, vacation.

Day 7: A Drive Along the Coast
Day 8: Heading Home

Day 1: First Flight
Day 2: Just Hanging Out
Day 3: Disney Fun
Day 4: Lego Land

On Monday, day five, we said a sad goodbye to our friends and headed north to Jacksonville. The original plan was to spend a few days with Alan’s cousin and family, but she wasn’t feeling well so we ended up hoteling it instead.

An early morning sword fight. How else do little boys say goodbye? :)

Along the way to Jacksonville we stopped at the Kennedy Space Center. Alan and I visited the space center many years ago and thought it would be fun to bring the kids! For the most part it was. I got a little cranky with the lines, but everyone else held it together quite well. :)

Welcome to the Kennedy Space Center. I think Alan was more excited than the kids were for this stop. :)

We’re sending them to the moon!

This was the kids’ favorite place – the plagyround! They loved it and kept asking to go back. The day would have been nicer (for me) if it wasn’t so cold and windy.

After checking out the visitor complex for awhile we got on a tour bus to go see the launch pad and the Apollo/Saturn V center.

This is my trying to be happy face, after waiting in line for the tour bus for 30m and then waiting ON the bus for another 15m. Finally we started rolling!

Vehicle Assembly Building. There are so many cool facts about this building, but I don’t remember many. It’s the tallest single story building in the world, with the largest door in the world. The roof is so large you can put four football fields on it… I should let Alan do this post as I’m sure he remembers many more details than I do!

This is the launch pad. If I recall correctly it’s an active launch pad for Atlas V… launching soon, I think.

This is amazing! They put the shuttle on this “crawler” and transport it to the launch pad. This thing moves! It’s HUGE! Before the rocket launches this cralwer is filled with water (some insane amount) to help absorb some of the energy from the rockets. Right now people have to be 3 miles away from the launch pad, but without the water they’d have to be 6 (I think?) miles or more!

This is the road the crawler takes to the launch pad. This looks like two roads, but really it’s one road – the crawler is just that wide! It’s also a very special road designed to handled the weight of the crawler, which moves, I believe at about 2mph.

We got off the bus at the Apollo/Saturn V Center and got a cool tour of the “command center” including a demonstration of an actual launch. Like a fly on the wall you heard the whole pre-launch process. An abbreviated version, I’m sure.

The stations below light up with each voice that you hear and the “windows” light up on launch!

I thought it was cool to see the huge check-list on the wall. Each step lit up as it was checked so you could see what was done and was to come.

The rockets from the Saturn V shuttle.

They had the whole things hanging from the ceiling, split into the stages of separation. It was pretty amazing. This is Stage 2.

Stage 3

The command module. This is where the astronauts sit.

They had an awesome re-enactment of landing on the moon. At the end the kids wanted to touch the moon too. :)

Afterwards they touched a REAL piece of the REAL moon! They were less impressed.

This is where the important people get to watch the launches. Kathy, have you been here?

Thumbs up for NASA!

Eve’s new friend.

We spent the entire day at the space center, then back in the car for a 2hr drive to Jacksonville. Along the way we stopped at the Olive Garden for dinner! YUMMY! We got to our hotel and crashed. That was the end of day five.

Day 6: The Zoo
Day 7: A Drive Along the Coast
Day 8: Heading Home