Vacation

I know, it's been a long time. There's been lots of stuff going on, but I have been prioritizing and other stuff has bene taking priority over blogging. But, we just took a long, amazing vacation. I felt that it deserved a blog post. I have already posted pictures on Facebook, so I will share those pictures here so that I don't have to re-upload them. That would take forever! Just a warning, this is a really long post!

We left our house on Thursday, May 12 after work. We drove down to Tifton to eat, stopping at an Olive Garden on the way down. We drove the rest of the way to Tampa on Friday, checked in at our hotel, then headed over to Busch Gardens. School hadn't let out yet, so there were not many people there. We rode every ride we wanted to ride that day, but didn't really spend that much time looking at the animals and all that. Friday night after we got back from the park, we went over to the mall close to the port in Tampa and had dinner at Maggiano's and watched Thor. We really enjoyed both. I thought Thor would be more exciting, but it was still good. I am glad that now I know the story. We went back to Busch Gardens on Saturday and spent more time looking at the animals. The first thing we did was ride the train around the park so that we could see all the animals that are out in the open area. We rode a couple rides, at lunch, then went to the Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy, which was kind of like a miniature Cirque de Soliel (we think). We stopped to watch a short Christian concert and then it rained pretty hard. We ducked into one of the shops and tried to wait it out, but it just kept sprinkling. So, we bought a couple of ponchos and headed over to the animal area you can walk through. There we saw giraffes, gorillas, a small aquarium area (small compared to the GA aquarium), meerkats, and lions. I love giraffes! They were a lot of fun to watch. The little meerkats were also so cute! We had seen that they were having a Michael W. Smith concert that evening, so we headed over there. The openers were the the Sidewalk Prophets. We really enjoyed it. We would definitely pay to see Michael W. Smith. We ate dinner on the way to get in one more ride before the park closed. We purchased the all day dining deal that Busch Gardens offers and it was well worth it because we were able to get bottled waters and snacks all day when we wanted it. Here is our album of pictures from Busch Gardens.

On Sunday morning, we got up and took our time packing and eating breakfast, then headed over to he Port in Tampa. We went through the embarkation process to get our Sail and Sign cards (the ship ID) and got on the Carnival Legend. The first thing we did was find the buffet since our room wasn't ready yet. The food was pretty good. We chose the chinese buffet line. It was hard to find a table, so I sat at the first empty table we found while Scott got his food and then got mine while he ate. That was really the only way to do it since we were still lugging around our carry on luggage. By the time we were done with lunch, we were able to go to our room and put down our stuff. We then headed out to the pool to wait for the muster drill and the sail-away. We paid for a room with just a window, but we got upgraded for free to an obstructed balcony, probably because our ship wasn't full and my sister booked our cruise through her company and they book tons of cruises throug Carnival. The only other big things we did that night was go to dinner and the Welcome Aboard show. The show was so late that we checked out the Sing-along in the piano bar with a guy named Mr. H. That was a lot of fun. We met a couple at dinner who would supposedly be sharing our table for the week, Jocilyn and Dustin. The picture is of us sitting at the pool before the muster drill.

Monday was a "Fun Day at Sea" meaning we were cruising all day. We went to a couple of seminars about what do do in the ports when you weren't on an excursion, mainly about shopping. Please remind me to never waste my time at one of those again. They hand you all the information you need on the way off the ship and none of the "great deals" they talk about are really all that great from what I can tell. We also laid out in the sun, ate lunch, and went to our first "formal" night. Our new "friends" Jocilyn and Dustin had been drinking all day and were kind of funny, but Jocilyn said some things that I think embarrassed her. Also, Dustin hadn't realized that they prefer for you not to wear shorts and flip flops to the dining room. So, probably for those reasons, we never saw them again. That night there was a show called "Hot Jazz" that was pretty good.

Tuesday was our first day in a port of call, Cozumel. We had planned a dolphin swim and ride at the Dolphinaris. We really had a lot of fun. We got to pet the dolphins, "dance" with the dolphins, kiss the dolphins, hug the dolphins, and do a belly ride with the dolphin. Our dolpins names were Bina and Marcy (yep, that's right). The lunch was included in our package. It was pretty good, but when we saw how much it was, we decided that if it hadn't been included, we'd have gone somewhere else. After that, we just walked up and down the main shopping area and looked in the shops. We were getting up early the next morning, so we just headed to bed early and watched tv.

Wednesday was our day in Belize and our longest excursion. We went through a private company as opposed to going through Carnival. There were only six of us on our tour, Scott and me and a family of 3 and their son's friend. We did cave tubing and zip lining. The cave tubing was just okay. It was just like tubing in GA down the Chattahoochee, except you are going through a cave in the dark. We did see bat holes in the roof of the cave and some real live bats! Eek! The zip lining was tons of fun! We did 7 zip lines. We got some good videos of each of us zip lining. I really enjoyed being able to look down and see all the trees below us. Scott enjoyed it too and he's afraid of heights. It's a very controlled environment when you're zip lining.

Thursday was our day in Mohagany Bay, Isla Roatan which is in Honduras. We spent the morning on the beach. We purchased a package that included a ride on the "magical flying beach chair" which was a chair lift kind of like at ski resorts, two chairs and a "clam shell" cover, and two floats. The beach was crowded, but it was beautiful and they had an area roped off so that people could swim and not have to worry about floating too far out. Some people were renting snorkeling stuff and jumping off a dock that was a little to the left of where we were. I heard some people saying they saw all kinds of cool stuff. While we were at the beach, our waterproof digital camera stopped working. We had a regular digital camera on the ship, but the next day was our snorkeling trip, so we really wanted to digital camera. So, we decided to be cheap and go back to the ship for lunch, put away our beach things, then go back out to shop for a camera. No luck. We ran into a couple we'd met the next day while we were doing the slide later on and they have a waterproof camera and said they loved their's and had seen the exact same camera but a new model in the photo area on the ship. So, we bought one that night. That was our second "Cruise Elegant" night and there was a New Orleans-type show, so they had beads on everyone's plate when we got to the dining room. That night, it was really windy in the area the ship was sailing through, and we were going really fast. So, the ship was really rocking. There was a big show that night, the best one of the whole cruise, call The Big Easy. We couldn't believe the dancers and singers were still able to go on with the show. The cruise director had told them they shouldn't do it, but they really wanted to. The cruise director, Wee Jimmy, who was Scottish, said that after dinner he saw all the sober people walking around all unstable-looking and people were walking out of the bar in a straight line. It really was hard to walk!

Friday we were in Grand Cayman. It is so nice there! The water is beautiful and clear, the streets are fairly nice and clean. We shopped around, at lunch at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville, and then went on a snorkeling tour. We visited a coral reef and a ship wreck. It was my first time snorkeling. Scott had been a couple of times before. There weren't tons of fish and there were really only abour 3-4 different kinds of fish down there. The ship wreck was cool. The ship was the Cali and it had a cool history about how it had had several owners, but the last owner had retro-fitted it with 2 big diesel engines. One night he was trying to make it back to the port to beat a storm and he fired up both engines at full throttle. The boat couldn't take the force of the engines, so it started to literally fall apart at the seams. He made it to the pier in Grand Cayman and a welder was trying to fix everything, but finally told him it was a lost job. Since he didn't want to be embarrassed by sinking his ship at the dock, he drove it further into the ocean and left it there. The boat was full of rice, so when the rice got wet, it expanded and literally sank the ship and busted the seams! It's the only time in history our tour guide knew of a boat being sank by rice. The British, who own Grand Cayman, thought the Cali was an eye sore, so they decided to blow it up right where it was. They brought 10 cases of dynamite with them. They really only needed 2.5, but they didn't want to take it all back with them. So, they hooked it all up and let 'er rip! The explosion was so huge, it busted all the windows out of the shops that are close to the dock in that area! This had happened years ago and the ship was all in pieces at the bottom of the ocean and there was lots of algae growing on it. That night, we saw a hilarious juggler, Dana Tison.

Saturday was another "Fun Day at Sea" and we got up bright and early so that we could get a good seat by the pool. We laid out by the pool, reading and napping and talking. There was an ice sculpting demonstration that afternoon. We of course spent a good bit of time on the slide. We played putt-putt on top of the ship in winds so hard, we had to lean into it to keep from being blown over. That was interesting. We worked on packing before dinner and managed to get most of it done before we went to eat. We just finished packing that night and went to bed since we knew we'd have to get up early if we wanted to get breakfast on the ship.

Sunday was "debarkation" and it really went very smoothly. We drove about half way home and stopped in Moultrie, GA where we had dinner with our friends John and Ashleigh, watched the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and stayed the night. We drove the rest of the way home on Monday and managed to get almost all of our laundry caught up! It was definitely a good idea to take Monday off!

I think we are both in post-vacation let-down. I, surprisingly, didn't feel a real sense of dread about going back to work. So, I thought that was good. I feel revived. I thought our vacation had a good mix of fun and activity and laying around and being lazy.

A Belated Post About Our Vacation

Back at the end of July, Scott and I went on vacation in Destin for a long weekend. We really enjoyed it when we went down there for my sister's wedding, so we thought we'd go there again. The water and beach were so beautiful. Well, with all the oil issues and the storms, it wasn't as beautiful as it had been. There was no oil around, but everything just seemed stirred up. I have made a slide show of the few pictures that we took. It was really windy and hot. That's the one thing I don't like about the beach - that you get all hot and sweaty. Ick! But, I read Sense and Sensibility while we were there and we sat on the beach the whole time, with one short trip to the outlet mall. We had one nice meal out at a place called The Back Porch, which was right on the beach. It was an open restaurant and it was really windy that day. We made good use of the salt and pepper shaker and all the condiment bottles to hold down our napkins and such. The other nights we cooked dinner in. We ate lunch in every day too. We spent as much on our one meal out as we did on our food the entire rest of the trip! I think that Carrie, Bethany, and Shana will appreciate this! I took pictures of the place we stayed so we'd remember. It was called Capri by the Gulf by Harmony Beach Vacations. It was pretty nice. It also was the best price around! I didn't bother labeling my pictures because I felt they were pretty self-explanatory. Enjoy!

Trip to Louisville

Scott and I just got back from a trip to Louisville, KY to visit Josh, Shana, and Truett. We also got to spend time with Judy and Dean. So, it was a fun, Stringer-filled few days. While we were up there, we saw some of the sites of Louisville and the surrounding areas. Scott and I weren't the best eaters while we were gone. So, it's back on the bandwagon now.







It seems like the only picture Scott took of me with Truett I was not wearing make up. Great. But, here we both are holding him.

We visited the Louisville Slugger Museum the first day we were there, Saturday. We visited Josh and Shana's church, Crossings, on Sunday. Afterwards, we all ate at a burger place called Red Robin with Darrell and Jenny Estepp, some friends of ours that we used to go to church with. Monday, we went to the Creation Museum close to Cincinnati (in Petersburg, KY). The Creation Museum was really good. I would definitely recommend it. They have the museum part and then they also have a botanical gardens outside. We drove through Indiana and Ohio just to say we'd been there. We also tried Skyline Chili, since we'd seen it on Food Network. It was an interesting flavor. It is not normal chili. There's cinnamon in it or something like that. We were googling things to do in Louisville, and Scott found that we could take a tour of the Jim Beam distillery. Not that we like bourbon, but processes like that are always interesting. So, we drive the half hour or so out there and it turns out that they are renovating the distillery so that people can tour the distillery, but the current "tour" consists of visiting the Beam house on the property, looking around a gift shop and sampling some Jim Beam chocolates, watching a video about the history of Jim Beam, and a bourbon tasting. Yeah, disappointing. We also went to have lunch at Tony Boombozz, which is the pizza restaurant that Darrell is part owner of. It was really very good pizza. Luckily, Jenny does some marketing for them, so she just happened to swing by to do some marketing so we got to talk to both Darrell and Jenny! It was great. If you ever want good pizza in Louisville, let us know and we'll tell you where Tony Boombozz is. The whole time we were there, we were invited to dinners at Josh and Shana's, cooked by Judy. It was all very good. Last night we visited this place that Josh and Shana love called the Pie Kitchen. Oh, it was good. I almost made myself sick eating half of the piece of pie Scott and I shared because we had had Graeter's Icecream after lunch. Graeters is handmade icecream. There are several locations in Louisville. Man, was that stuff good.

So, that was our trip, lots of good times with the Stringers, lots of good, bad food, and several tourist-y outings.

We drove home today and since we were going to be driving through Nashville around lunchtime, we asked our friends Kari and Eric if they wanted to meet us for lunch. It was so good to get to sit and spend some time with them. We also got to see how big Evan has gotten and meet Grace for the first time. We rarely get to see them now that they are living in TN.

Over all, we had a good trip. It was fun to spend time with old friends and to meet Truett and get to hold him and watch him change every day and see all the cute faces he makes. It is fun to see how Shana has gone from zero to Mom in 60 seconds.

Tomorrow it's back to work for Scott. I took the rest of the week off. I am going to see how much of nothing I can do the next two days. :)

Biltmore House Visit

When we took our trip to Asheville a couple of weeks ago, we drove down Wednesday morning and had lunch at the Tupelo Honey Cafe once we had checked into our hotel. We then drove to the Biltmore and made sure we didn't go in before 2 pm. We did the outside stuff on that day. We checked out the gardens and the little sitting areas and then headed over to the winery to do a wine tasting (well, Scott did, I forgot my wallet in GA, so no luck for me) and inside the actual winery they had all kinds of samples out! They have all these cheeseball and dip mixes for sale as well as salad dressings and they have various samples of these things sitting out with a big bowl of pretzels next to it. We wandered around tasting for a while. We also sampled their Wassail mix to wash it down.

Thursday, we toured the house in the morning, had lunch at the Stable Cafe, and then checked out the Farm and the petting zoo-type area they have. We then went on a Behind-the-Scenes tour of the winery, which was very interesting. We really don't like wine much at all, but it is still interesting to see how they make it.

Here are pictures we took at the Biltmore House. We have other pictures from our trip, but that is for another slide show and another post.

We're Back!

We are back from our much-needed get-away. We enjoyed Asheville and the Biltmore House. There really isn't much to do in Asheville, so if you want to take a 5-day trip, I suggest you plan two stops, maybe 2 days in Asheville and then the rest somewhere else close by with not much to do. But, we still made the most of it. We thought we were going to have an indoor pool, but as it turns out, there are 2 Country Inn and Suites in Asheville. We ate at the Tupelo Honey Cafe that Lindsay suggested and it was really good. We at breakfast and dinner at the Moose Cafe next to the Farmers' Market close to our hotel. All the restaurants in Asheville are all about fresh food from the farm and stuff like that. The Biltmore House was fun to go through and they had even recently reopened one of the important rooms in the house. All the flowers were really pretty. We ate at the Stable Cafe on Thursday for lunch and it was really good.

While we were in Asheville, we also played a round out Putt-Putt and saw two movies: Monsters vs Aliens (in 3D) and Star Trek. I had never watched an entire show or movie of Star Trek. I am not sure how I avoided them growing up as they were on a lot since my dad and sister were big fans. I thought that the Star Trek movie was really good. I would definitely like to own that one once it comes out.

We have downloaded our pictures, but I haven't finished editing them and I need to create a slide show to share on here.

Also, we threw a baby shower for Shana on May 3 and I have those pictures downloaded but not posted yet either, so sorry.

While we were away, it rained a good bit, so everything grew a lot! Our neighbor Nan was also sweet enough to check on the boys and water my pots on days that it didn't rain.

I will post a slide show or two later this evening, hopefully.

TTFN (ta-ta for now!)

Thursday-Downtown Disney, Animal Kingdom, and Rainforest Cafe

Thursday was our "relaxing" day. We had breakfast at the Boatright Restaurant at the Port Orleans resort and then headed over to Downtown Disney to do some shopping. We headed into the World of Disney first and about halfway through the store (which is huge BTW), we ran into Bethany and Carrie! Ha! It was so great to see Bethany and finally meet Carrie in person. We talked for a few minutes, finalized our lunch plans, and then finished up our shopping. There were so many things we wanted, but we held ourselves back! We also visited the toy store. We had lunch at the Earl of Sandwich with Bethany and Carrie and sat for about two hours just talking about all kinds of fun stuff. It was quite enjoyable. I wish they both lived closer because I think it would be so much fun to hang out.

After that, we went back over to Animal Kingdom and rode Everest again, watched Mickey's Jammin' Jungle Parade, walked a couple more of the nature trails, did the Safari for the third time, and checked out a few more shops. I love the safari, it really was different every time. I had forgotten about the Maharaja Jungle Trek, or I would have wanted to do it again too. Then, it was time for our dinner reservations at the Rainforest Cafe'. As we were heading over to the Rainforest Cafe', the park was closing and they were "trucking" Mickey, Goofy, Donald, and Minnie somewhere, I guess their dressing room, and we got to take pictures of them. That was fun. The Rainforest Cafe' is so cool with such detailed decorations. It is decorated to look like a rainforest with all kind of animals that move. For instance, there was a huge snake slithering around on a tree branch that hung out over the dining room and several families of apes that would start jumping and making ape noises randomly every few minutes. I kept hearing tigers roaring and birds cawing. It was interesting. We had to pay for this meal as it was not on our dining plan, so we just shared an appetizer sampler, but it was really good. I believe those were the best chicken fingers I had ever had! After that, I took some pictures of the huge tree that had been put up in front of the entrance to the park between when we had been there on Monday and Thursday when we got back over there. They really had a lot of detail on that tree. We headed back to our hotel and had a dessert of those chocolate covered icecream bars shaped like Mickey's head. Those things were surprisingly good and much bigger than I expected them to be!

You can see here how big the tree was. The whole tree was decorated with all types of animal ornaments and then under the tree were toys and the Winnie-the-Pooh and Jungle Book characters.

This was at the entrance of the Rainforest Cafe'. I thought it was funny.

Scott and I had some fun with the Rainforest Cafe' sign!

So, that was our day on Thursday. We tried to take it easy.

Tuesday - Epcot

Our second day at Disney was our day at Epcot. We wanted to do the ride Soarin' first because we thought it would be really fun. I mean, it was okay but I kept expecting something kind of scary to happen and it never did. But, it was a nice ride. We then went over to Test Track and the beginning was kind of interesting but not exciting, but the second half was great! I enjoyed it! Our favorite ride in Epcot is Mission Space. It simulates a take off in a space shuttle and a trip to Mars. It was a lot of fun...but if you have motion sickness, it is not the ride for you! We also rode a ride called Spaceship Earth that is inside the Epcot ball and it basically is a history of communications between people throughout our existence. Besides that, we visited various countries in the World Showcase, had lunch at the Coral Reef Restaurant which has a huge aquarium as one wall, rose the Finding Nemo ride, and had dinner at the quick service Mexican Restaurant. We sat for a while waiting to see the Illuminations laser and fireworks show that night which was awesome! I really enjoyed walking around and seeing all the countries. We didn't make it to all the countries, but we went back another day to finish seeing them.

This picture is of a car right outside of the Test Track ride. I guess it's the car of the future or something.

These pictures are ones we took inside of "Mexico". They had these crazy big sombreros on sale and we had to try them on!

Oops

Okay...so while I was writing my Wednesday post, I was thinking...oh, I forgot to say this about Epcot and that about our lunch, etc...

I just realized I have not done a post on our day at Epcot on Tuesday. Oops. I'll do that next. heehee.

Wednesday - Magic Kingdom

Wednesday was the big day for Magic Kingdom - what Disney World is all about!

As we entered the park, we were trying to get to Space Mountain and I just wanted to keep taking pictures. This is my very first sight of Cinderella's Castle, the tallest building in Disney World. It really is beautiful! We never did go inside. I guess that's something we'll have to go back for!

It really is a magical place! We got there before the park opened and they had a group come out and do a song and then the train came and brought the family that got to do the countdown to open the park for the day and MICKEY!! Mickey was there! Yay! It was so great. Also, they had completely decorated for Christmas (I think) in that park because they had the Very Merry Christmas Party the previous night! It was so pretty!

We made a beeline for Space Mountain. The line was short so we didn't have to wait that long and it was still short when we got out so we rode it again!! We also did the Buzz Lightyear ride where you shoot laser guns at targets and it keeps your points (except I didn't realize it was keep points until the ride was almost over, so Scott had about 77K points and I had about 3K). We rode the tea cups, the Winnie the Pooh ride, It's a Small World, the railroad train, Space Mountain (yes, two more times), the haunted house, and we rode the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. I really liked the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. We had lunch at the Liberty Tree Tavern in Liberty Square (we did not ride all those rides before lunch, that was all day). Liberty Tree Tavern was probably our favorite restaurant the whole trip. Yum-o! It rained a couple of times that day so we don't look so great in our pictures. But, what can you do? We saw Mickey's Philharmonic and the Monster's Inc Comedy Club. Both were awesome! It started raining just before dark and we headed down Mainstreet USA and had hotdogs and fries at Casey's Corner. You know, Might Casey? Well, that was a great hotdog. We had to huddle under one of the umbrella-covered tables and dry off our chairs to eat. There were these ducks from the ponds that were walking around and looking pointedly at people hoping for table scraps. They cracked me up. There was this little boy in a poncho that kept following them around. They didn't seem to mind. I don't think they were shy. What could I do except take pictures of them? After dinner, we walked around through a few of the shops and then found a spot for the SpectroMagic Parade. Then, we realized that Cinderella's Castle was all lit up with LED lights and it was blue, no purple, no pink, no turquoise! It kept changing colors. Once the parade was over I started becoming obsessed with trying to get a picture of it in every color! After the parade there was a really great fireworks show. Tinkerbell was even there!! It was a very magical day!

Here are our...ahem...friends...they are pretty cute, aren't they? (P.S. those are rain drops beaded up on those ducks. They aren't spotted.)

When it rained the first time, during the day, we had just gone into some shops. Somehow we ended up in a jewelry store where a barber shop quartet were singing and they were asking us about our Happy Anniversary buttons. The next thing we know, they are making us dance in the store as they sing some "romantic" song to us. Here's the proof.

I took a picture of everything in the SpectroMagic Parade. So, if you want to see the whole thing and the fireworks and Cinderella's Castle, I will just upload all those pictures to a slide show. Just leave a comment.

Monday - Animal Kingdom and Disney Hollywood Studios

Monday was our first official day at Disney. There was an extra Magic Hour at Animal Kingdom that morning and 3 extra magic hours at Disney Hollywood Studios that night. So, in order to capitalize on those, we planned both things in one day! Whew!

We got to Animal Kingdom when they opened and had to go pick up our tickets, which was a small ordeal because of how things were set up, but we got them. When the park opened, we made a beeline for the Kilimanjaro Safari because we had been told that the animals are the most active in the morning. Well, they weren't kidding. This is a ride in which you get in a smallish bus that's kind of like a Range Rover I guess and you drive through this huge wilderness reserve that has "Asia" and "Africa". It have been very well done and there are all kinds of animals. We saw hippos walking around underwater and white pelicans perching on their rearends which were sticking out. There were ostrich eggs sitting around on the side of the road. We saw lots of giraffes and the next thing we knew, a baby giraffe was passing in front of our truck and he was so cute! I got some great pics of him. We also had a White Rhinoceros cross in front of our truck and then walk away with his tail curled up because apparently we offended him and an ostrich walked by so close to me that I could not get his whole body in the picture. That was kind of freaky. There is some stupid movie that I've seen parts of where these two guys are looking for their car and they find it in the middle of a herd of ostriches and the ostriches hold them captive in their car. I have heard that ostriches can be kind of mean. Anyway, they also have an entire island of pink flamingoes and tons of rare animals. We saw real life wildebeasts and warthogs. It was great. There were also these really cool trees that they said people called an "upside down tree", I think it's real name is the Beobob Tree (sp?). I took several pictures of those! (Um, maybe I should have just done a slide show - but you can click on these pictures and see them better!)

They have lots of places in Animal Kingdom where you can see live animals like Tigers, Lemurs, Otters, and lots more including live bats (ew). I love the Tree of Life, which is a fake tree in the middle of the park and has all kind of detailed animals carved into it. At Animal Kingdom we also loved riding Everest and we rode it a couple of times because the lines were pretty short. We also did the safari again later in the morning. They had a character greeting set up for Pooh, Eeyore, and Tigger and we waited in line for that because they're my favorite and I think Scott is a big fan too! That was a lot of fun! The sign at the top of this post is the sign we saw just before we went over to look at the tigers like the one you see sleeping in the picture to the left. I loved it because it looked like Tigger in the original Pooh books by A.A. Milne that I grew up reading!

We had lunch reservations at the Sci-Fi dine-in theater in Disney Hollywood Studios, but we wanted to swing by the Caribbean Beach Resort first and get our room keys and also officially have our meal plan stuff before we went to eat. The Caribbean Beach Resort looked just like your typical, nice beach resort. I actually didn't take a lot of pictures in the resort because there wasn't anything exciting, just palm trees and exotic plants.

Disney Hollywood Studios was so cool. I loved all the buildings and the street names were just like Hollywood. We loved the Tower of Terror and the Rockin' Roller Coaster with Aerosmith. We rode each of those twice. I screamed...the entire time! We looked in some of the gift shops and watched the Beauty and the Beast show as well, which was excellent!

This is the picture that was automatically taken of us on the Rockin' Roller Coaster ride. Scott knew when it would take the picture and liked to pose for those shots, hence his cheesy face. I really was terrified...and screaming. I took a picture of the screen with my camera...heeheehee.

We knew that we wanted to watch Fantasmic, a laser/fireworks/character extravaganza with limited seating. So, we got over to the seating area super early and ended up sitting behind a couple of guys visiting from Atlanta as well. We talked to them and people watched and just had a good time. The show was well worth the wait!

We had dinner at a quick service place called Rosie's All-American Cafe which was gross. Don't eat there if you go!

Altogether, it was a great, memorable day!

To those of you whose blogs I read - I am behind on your blogs and hopefully will get caught up in the next few days. I feel very out of the loop! I hope you are all doing well!

Also, check the previous post because I am about to add a slide show in there from our Sunday pictures!

I wanted to add a couple of notes. First, in talking to Lauren tonight I remembered that we saw the Lemurs, live bats, tigers, and the komodo dragon in the Maharaja Jungle Trek. It was something that I wasn't sure I wanted to take the time to do and it was so worth it. So, do it. You'll be glad you did.

Also, Carrie asked if the price difference was worth it for paying to stay in the Caribbean Beach Resort (moderate) as opposed to staying in the Pop Century (Value) and it was worth the extra money and it was actually only about $250 extra for 5 nights, so that's like $50 a night. So, maybe that's a lot, but the beds were much more comfortable. And you get a free fridge!