I’ve really been meaning to write so more details about our trip to Orlando, visiting the Holy Land (in Orlando,) St. Augustine and drinking from the Fountain of Youth. But these photos will have to suffice for now!

ICRS: Meeting great authors and cool friends!

Susan May Warren, prolific writer and blogger at Writer…Interrupted

Amy Wallace, Me, Mark Myhneir, Marlo Schalesky

Meeting the President, er John Morgan

Meeting Kirk Cameron, really! It was late and we all were exhausted!

And seeing the premiere of  FireProof

Hubby got a kick out of seeing this road sign and made me take a photo of it!

St. Augustine, Florida Day One

Swimming in the ocean, wave jumping and

collecting sea shells. We came home with four small bags to add to our collection over the years

which is turning into a small beach!

Islands of Adventure Day Two

We picked a winner of a day to go! Hardly any wait on the lines and the weather was a pleasant 80 degrees!

Hanging with cousins!

Grace didn’t want to take a picture with Shrek, so I did,

and SHE took the picture! Pretty darn good, even though I wasn’t looking!

Dunah, Dunah, Dunah, Dunah, Dunah… Gottcha, Grace! All the kids posed in the mouth of JAWS!

The Holy Land, Orlando

Parting the Red Sea

Hanging with the Hebrews!

Can you say “Cheesy?”

But we thoroughly enjoyed the shows, especially musical resurrection reenactment and the worship through the ages! I really felt the spirit of God at the end, and couldn’t help but have church, maybe it’s because on vacation we sort of missed going!  The Scriptorium was awesome! Rooms and rooms full of authentic Bibles through the ages, dating way back and written by monks in Hebrew and other languages.

We drank from the Fountain of Youth and it tasted bitter, like sulfur, but Ponce DeLeon thought it tasted sweet! Can’t imagine what the water on the boat tasted like!

Did you know the average European was 4 foot 6 inches and Ponce DeLeon was tall at 4 foot 11 inches. When he got to Florida and met the native Indians there who lived well into their 60s and 70s (average European lived to mid 30s) and were much taller, the thought he had found the Fountain of Youth. But it was actually the Indians healthy way of life and they didn’t have the disease the Europeans had. Ponce DeLeon shipped the Fountain of Youth Water back to Europe and drank it the rest of his life, which was very long, into his 60s when he died in an Indian fight (I think) and not of old age!

Those are the highlights! Maybe one day I’ll get around to putting the photos in an album!

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I can’t believe I kept you all hanging from my last post about Universal! Life’s been really busy, but I’ll have to save that post for when things are official. Suffice to say, I’m packing up to move.

So day two Universal/Islands of Adventure!

Hubby woke up with his first case of vertigo and said he couldn’t accompany me, my four kids, 16 year old brother and two cousins 12 and 14 (all boys except Grace) to the theme park. I felt a little panicked but determined to go back to the park without hubby especially since it was our last day in Orlando and I had not ridden any roller coasters.

I can’t remember the details, but I was a tad stressed, and hubby felt a tad better as the morning preparations took longer than usually, so he decided to go with us. BIG SIGH!

After we picked up the two cousins at the parking gate to avoid my cousin having to pay $12 for parking (she’s a single mom with a dead beat almost-ex, and was dropping her boys off to spend the day with us!) we headed to the HULK while hubby and the little guys went to some other part of Islands of Adventure. Chris decided to sit the Hulk out because he got sick the last time on a different roller coaster.

Half way through the line, there was something over the load speaker talking about a malfunction…but it sounded too much like the cartoon video and noise playing on the monitors that I didn’t realize it was for real until people started leaving. So we headed to Spiderman…

VERY COOL… virtual roller coaster. We headed to the Dueling Dragons FIRE next and rode it three or four times in a row. We quickly learned if we went into the SINGLE rider line we got on way faster and we weren’t that far apart. In fact, most times at least two of us got to sit together, sometimes three of us!

The last ride on the Deuling Dragons was pretty scary, not because of all the turns and flips, but because at the end of the ride we stopped before the unloading dock. In the distance we heard the screams of people on the next roller coaster…the one right behind us. We were locked in, suspended, and waiting to be impaled by the fangs of the Dragon behind us and the worst part was that we all sat in the LAST two rows. We start there for what seemed like several minutes, waiting for the crash, feeling a little panicked and wishing our legs were long enough so we could do the Fred Flintstone run, but it finally started up again, and our heart rate returned to normal. We all agreed, THAT was the scariest part of the ride!

After lunch I took Grace to the water area in Dr. Seuss Land while the boys rode some more roller coasters. Then we went to Universal and I went with the big boys to the Mummy and hubby took Grace and Timmy to Jimmy Neutron.

We did the single passenger again and scatted past all the others to the end.

The wait time was not even ten minutes! The Mummy was GREAT, and I think a better thrill than Deuling Dragons. We rode the Mummy a few times and then headed over to Twister, but Hubby was still stuck in Jimmy Neutron, it seems it was broken down for 20 minutes while they were in there.

Other highlights were the MIB alien ride, and the E.T. ride. The kids rode it more than once and got a kick out of giving the man at the beginning a FALSE name because at the end ET says goodbye

to you. The funny thing about this ride is that Grace refused to look, though it was very mild and not scary. She just doesn’t like ET and she usually doesn’t scare easily. Though at the end there was an opportunity to get a picture with ET in a studio and she said, “Mommy, I’ll take a picture if you really want me to!”

What a sweetie! But I wasn’t about to shell out more money. I forgot to mention the first day I was with Grace I wanted to take a picture of her with Shrek, but she refused. Instead, I let HER take a photo of me and Shrek. It’s in the last post and came out pretty good!

So we had a wonderfully second day, even though the temperature was about 10-20 degrees hotter and it didn’t rain. That Souvenir cup came in real handy and one thing that didn’t cost us any money was water! They gave it to us with cups of ice at the drink stands!

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When we go to Orlando, which seems to be every other year, we do all things Disney. We heard Universal was for older kids and since our kids were young, we passed on Universal. Now that my two oldest are 13 and 11, we thought it was time for Universal and since we had done Disney LAST year (really wasn’t planning on coming back so soon…) we thought everyone would had fun.

So we checked the weather, we packed the rain ponchos, and headed out with my dad and brother (16.) We started at Islands of Adventure since it was supposed to rain in the afternoon and most of Universal is inside. I went with my dad and Grace to Dr. Seuss Land while my hubby, popping Dramamine, took the boys on the rollercoasters. Thanks to fairly short lines, we did Dr. Seuss Land in an hour. Unfortunately, there were only four rides. The carosell, One Fish, Two Fish ride strangely familiar to Dumbo in the Magic Kindgom, an over head train trolley (which had the longest line and we passed on,) and the Cat and the Hat ride.

When we were done, we met the boys at the Sinbad show. It was a little loud and scary for Grace, but she huddled close to her daddy. The boys told us about the Deuling Dragons and how Timmy was too small to ride. I really wanted to ride, but knew we would be back another day and everyone was hungry.

We ate pizza at the Fantastic Four Cafe and shared our refill cup between us. By then my dad had gone home and we headed to Universal as the rain started to fall.

We pulled out our rain ponchos and made our way to Shrek 4-D. It was something the entire family could do. Then Grace and I went to Jimmy Neutron and the boys went to The Mummy. Waiting for the boys, Grace spied a rock climbing brick wall and begged me to let her climb. For $5 she got to climb three times (it was only supposed to be two, but she later told me she asked the lady if she could climb again) and I got one happy little girl. The boys found us and tried their spiderman skills as well.

Next was Jaws. It wasn’t too scary for the kids! Then off to Fievel’s play ground and water slide and Woody Woodpecker’s rollercoaster. It was pretty fun for a kiddie rollercoaster. We somehow made it out of the park without buying a souvenir. Probably because I told them we could look on the last day.

By the time we left the park, half of us had sore feet, and all of us were exhausted. But we had fun and got to scope out the good rides for when we’d return the next day.

I woke at the crack of dawn, showered, dressed and started waking everyone up only to hear the familiar groans of kiddos complaining about being too tired and wanting to stay home! I almost didn’t believe my ears. Kids NOT wanting to go to an amusement park and me, mom, begging, for them to go so I could ride the rollercoasters. But in the end the majority ruled and we decided to go back our last day.

I was a little leery of the plan. What if something came up? And it did! My husband woke and informed me he wouldn’t be able to go with me. He had spent the entire night battling vertigo. I would have to take my four kids, two cousins and one brother to the park. By. My. Self.

But I’ll save that story for another day!

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