Animal Kingdom...

Today is our last day to hit the individual parks as we fly home tomorrow night, so it was off to Animal Kingdom!  The kids have gotten used to running out to the bus stop and waiting in line for the Disney Transportation to wisk us off to our destination.

Here is Asa being his usual mischievous self early in the morning (well 10:30-ish anyway)  We stayed out late to watch the fireworks at Cinderella's Castle at the Magic Kingdom.

Here is Delaney in her big sister (little parent) role at the bus stop making sure Asa doesn't climb on the chains, ropes, bars, insert your falling nightmare here...

OMG is it HOT here...  I thought I would take advantage of the self timer and actually get in one of the photos ;-)

Asa and Delaney pose with Goofey and Pluto here at Animal Kingdom...

Asa just L O V E S Pooh Bear! Kinda the same size as dad...

Here are the kids posing with Eyore for Aunt Laura to see later!

Words alone can't describe what's happening in this photo of Asa and Piglett...

Here's all of us (thanks to some nice foreigner) with Tigger...

I finally had an opportunity to photograph the sign at the entrance to the resort.  Tomorrow is kids choice (like its been all week) on what to see in our last few hours at Disney.  I'm sure Delaney will NOT choose Epcot (long story)...

The Magic Kingdom...

Today we spent our entire day at the Magic Kingdom Park, but first I thought you might like to see some photos of the Pop Century Resort where we stayed.

This is looking at the actual hotel we stayed in while at Pop Century.  That is a 4 story tall juke box.  The pool was shaped like a bowling pin...

Asa standing in front of "Lady"...

Delaney walking past a VERY large yo-yo.

Yup, that's us in front of Cinderella's Castle.

Woody from Toy Story doing a musical number in Frontier Land.

Here is a shot of Cinderalla's Castle lit at night.

We stayed around, so I took some images from the firewooks at 10:00pm.

Here is the last shot of the evening - it's the horse  that Asa rode on...  I hope you enjoy the photos and commentary on the blog.  I would write more but it's always around midnight when we get back to the resort, and well after 1:00am when I'm entering the blog text

Walt Disney World...

Well we're on our second day at Disney - we decided to stay on the Disney property at "Pop Century" and it is a LOT of fun. Our last day in St Petersburg was Monday and we took the kids to Sawgrass Park to look at the gators, turtles and other wildlife. We did see a 5' gator sunning and at least two bottle nose turtles each about two feet in diameter. After the park we took Great Grandpa & Grandma as well as MJ to Shell's Seafood restaurant for lunch. If you've noticed whenever we visit the Great grandparents, food is always involved.


We drove to Orlando and met with Nancy's cousin Sherri and her husband Ben for dinner. Sherri works for Disney and was kind enough to make some dinner reservations for us and give us some pointers on what to see and when!


Chip and Dale were the first Disney characters that Asa saw as we entered the park and he went wild! Delaney and Nancy headed off to see High School Musical...


Nancy volunteers for a part on the back lot action at Disney's Hollywood Studios and proceeds to have 500 gallons of water dumped on her! Asa goes wild meeting the cast from "Little Einstein's" and "Jo-Jo's Circus"...





Today we started our morning at the Beach Club Resort for dinner with Goofey. We ended up seeing Dale, Miney Mouse and Goofey. The food was excellent as were the characters.

Today was our day in Epcot and tomorrow we head off to the Magic Kingdom!




Asa was sooooo tired he fell asleep on the shuttle back from Epcot! He and Delaney had their first ride on the monorail and we even sat in the front with the driver!!! Needless to say Asa and Delaney are having a great time as are Nancy and myself...

St Petersburg - Day 2

So today started out on the Beach after we had a lovely breakfast at the hotel here in St. Petersburg. We took Aunt MJ along with us and the kids had a blast! MJ is just as much fun as the kids and we loved having her along. We spent about 2 hours on St. Pete beach and then headed off to take Great Grandpa & Grandma on a Dolphin sightseeing tour from the pier.

Here Asa and Delaney run back and forth to gather supplies to build a sand castle...
Here are some shots of us on the Dolphin sightseeing tour...









What a great way to end another fun-filled day in Florida! Tomorrrow we bid farewell to Great Grandpa and Gramdma and start driving to Orlando! The kids still don't know they're going to Disney World for 5 days...
Jeff

ON VACATION - Florida Style!

So we woke the kids up at 5:00am and jumped into a taxi headed for the Albany International Airport... Asa still had no idea where we were until he saw an airplane on the tarmac. He was soooo excited to be flying and was pretty awe struck when we took off...



Our Southwest airlines flight made it into Tampa about 10 minutes early. After working out our rental mini van with Alamo (AAA messed up our dates) we headed out for a bite to eat and to see Great Grandpa and Grandma. They were thrilled to see us and we talked for a while, I showed some photos taken during the fall raking and at Thanksgiving.


Tomorrow we're heading to the beach and for a boat ride with Great Grandpa and Grandma...

Almost vacation time...

So here we are 3 days away from taking the kids somewhere where big ears and castles are part of everyday life... Delaney knows we're flying, but has no idea where to or for how long. We're flying into Tampa to visit with Great Grandpa & Great Grandma Greer for a couple of days and then we'll drive to Orlando to stay at the Pop Century resort for 5 days...

This will be Delaney's second trip to Disney (first was at 4) and it will be Asa's first time there and first time flying on....


And if that's not enough excitement... Look what arrived on my doorstep!


All I can say so far is COOL! I've only loaded it with my demo slide show to show prospective clients on the 42" LCD TV and it looks awesome. I've started to rip some DVDs to MP4s so the kids can watch watever they want without fumbling around for and scratching up the DVDs.

For all of my PC friends out there - I did NOT drink the Apple Kool-aid, but it's very tempting ;-)