Spending time with Uncle Matt

The kids enjoyed their visit with Uncle Matt and would love him to move back here.

Spring is Here!

I think Mark has spring fever worse than I do this year. He's been planting pansies, indoors, but won't tell me what his secret plan for them is. Then he gave us the project to move all the rocks from around our tree and bought flowers to put there. The kids helped plant them. They sure do look beautiful.

Early Celebration

Uncle Matt brought presents from Grandma. Sam didn't take his track suit off for 3 days - including sleep. We also celebrated a triple birthday for Me, Matt, and Sam at my Dad's. It's nice when we can consolidate them. Sam of course got to blow out the candle's.

Matt & the guitar

Grandma brought Taylor a guitar last time she came. I didn't think it would be too hard to figure out how to play it and teach her. The harder I tried, the worse it sounded. Luckily Uncle Matt came for a visit and showed Taylor some of the basics. Now she's on her path to becoming a real rockstar.

Kennedy Space Center/Cocoa Beach

On our last day we had originally planned to visit Universal Studios, but after a full tiring day at Epcot we weren’t sure we wanted to do another day at a park back to back. We figured it was more likely we would go to Universal some day with the kids and decided instead to visit the Kennedy Space Center. We took a tour of the grounds which included seeing the Space Shuttle from the observatory. It is preparing for one of the last 4 trips of the space shuttle. We also saw the Apollo/Saturn center, and the processing building. It was neat to hear and see all the stories and memorablila. We also got to go on several simulations. The one that allowed us the experience of feeling the G-force was very real like and I almost lost it on that one. We couldn't get over the fact that there were alligators all over the side of the road. We didn't want to get out of the bus. I managed to get a picture of one, but we often drove by too fast. Mark also say an armadillo and manatees. While we were in the area we decided to visit the coast at Cocoa Beach as well. It was chilly, but we enjoyed a walk on the beach anyway. The weather cooperated on the days that were important and downpoured on the days of conference and shopping. After several days of airplanes, rides, and simulations I need to be grounded for awhile. A day later I’m still feeling dizzy and motion sick.

Epcot

We spent a whole day at Epcot. It was a long 12 hours, but we were smart enough to do all the fast pass rides early in the day so we didn't have any long waits. At Test Track we opted for the single rider option which got us in 30 mins faster. We didn't have a long wait for the Mission:space ride either. We got fast pass tickets for Soarin'. I was surprised how much we were able to do and we had plenty of time left to see what we wanted to of the World Showcase. We were a good 500-1000 feet away from the fire from Illuminations, but we felt extreme heat. It was a fun filled day. Out of the many times Mark has been to Disney World, he'd never been to Epcot, so we were glad to get a chance to experience it. His favorite ride was Living with the Land. He was able to see some of the fruit that was plentiful when he lived in the Phillipines. We lucked out with the shuttle buses this time too. Not too much of a wait.

Resort hopping

We decided to look around at some of the resorts one evening. We started at Coronado Springs to reminisce from our previous stay. We also visited the Grand Floridian. We were told to visit the Animal Kingdom Lodge around dusk for the best view of the animals. We must have hit dusk a little too late because most of the animals were hiding and it was too dark to get a picture of the ones we could see. We also visited the Boardwalk. We visited several on our last trip as well, so we're getting a better idea of where we want to stay next time.

Hollywood Studios

Mark got a discount to the parks on the days of his conferences, so we went on my birthday to Hollywood Studios. Because we went in the evening there were no more fast passes left and the lines for the major attractions were extremely long. A lot of the shows were over for the night by the time we got to them. We did do enough to make it worth our while, however. We waited out the line for Tower of Terror and the Toy Story ride. We also saw Beauty and the Beast as well as the American Idol experience. The girl 5th from the left won. She sang Reflection from Mulan and had a real good voice. It's a little disappointing standing in lines for so long for how short most of the attractions are.