We've been in Florida almost 4 years now. And the girls are getting OLD. It's scary to see how fast time goes by.
However, one of the coolest parts of aging children is that they start actually having their own thoughts and opinions about life and culture. One of Kaitlyn's recent favorites is a singer named Toby Mac. He used to sing with a band called DC Talk. They started as a band when I was in college, and were hugely successful. A few years ago they went their separate ways, and have all gone their separate ways in the music industry.
Toby Mac, who I originally thought would fail as a solo artist, simply because all he could do was rap music back then, has developed tremendously as a singer and artist. Kaitlyn LOVES his music, and it has caused me to really listen to his stuff too. I now have about 3-4 of his songs in my ipod as encouragement for my bike commute.
Anyhow, Chris and I splurged a few months ago, and picked up tickets to his show in Lakeland this month. And the day FINALLY arrived to go up there.
So, here are some of the highlights from our time up there:
First of all, you can see a couple pictures of us in line at the show, and inside the building here: The Joy FM sponsors Toby Mac in Lakeland Shots of us include #'s 2605, 2607, 2608, and 2818.
And then here are a few shots of us hanging out before, during, and after the show:
Another great thing about the girls new tastes in music, is that it has lead me to discover some bands that I would have never normally listened to.
Here are a few free tunes you might check out. These are some of the musicians that were with Toby Mac in concert.
This guy has the #1 song in Christian radio right now - called Something in your Eyes. Shon Lock - is the guy in the 3rd picture from the top (above) You can hear the ShonLock.com song here. Click on the "Enter" button at the bottom. The song auto-plays when you click through. You can download it on itunes here.
And another band that was pretty cool - was a new group called SuperHeRose, click their name and you'll be able to download a couple of their tunes. The girls really liked SuperFreak and We Got That. The first and second pictures (above) are a couple of guys from this band.
It was a great show, and we had a good time together. Toby puts on a killer show. Al
This was a great, males only dolphin show at Clearwater Marine Aquarium. We all really enjoyed visiting this place. The animals were great to watch. And this show was one of the best.
One of our latest ideas, is to take a bike tour as a family. Finally, we're kicking around the idea, after 3 years off the road here in Florida. I'm not sure the girls are too excited about it? I guess we'll have to see how it goes when we get there.
Anyhow, here is a brief, 20 second clip of us test riding a Trek T1000 tandem bike. We're thinking about picking this up for our trip. It's a pretty nice bike. And, it's more expensive than any bike I've ever purchased before ... ouch!
Recently, Kaitlyn celebrated her 11th birthday. Please no comments about how old I am getting, I beg you! I already see it every morning when I get up, I don't need reminders from others.
Anyhow ...
As part of our celebration she asked if we could spend a day at an aquarium. Christy was able to get a great deal on the entry fees to Clearwater Marine Aquarium, so we decided that would be a great place to go.
Turns out, it is a fantastic marine aquarium to visit. While they have sea animals there you can check out, they are also, primarily, a rescue and re-habituate facility. Which means, they are trying to help these animals recover so they can go live back in the wild. And since the Clearwater Aquarium is right down the street from one of America's best beaches, you really can't go wrong paying them a visit.
Here are some of the highlights:
- A petting and feeding tank with rays (they feel like silky, soft, velvet to the touch) - An excellent series personalized touch tanks with live sea creatures (sponges, crabs, and urchins) - Huge sea turtles - And several dolphin tanks
One of the most important visitors to the Marine aquarium is Winter. She is a dolphin who was caught in a crab net at three months old, and had to have her tail fins amputated. She went on to re-learn how to swim without them. And the aquarium also had a new tail fluke donated and designed for her to help her swim again.
In the process of the amputation, she has become a worldwide inspiration to war veterans and other disabled community members who have found, in her, a spokesman who reaches to them across racial, social, and political boundaries. That may be a little over-dramatic, but it is definitely a cool story. So cool, in fact, that there is a major motion picture that will be starting next month based on Winter's tale. It will star Harry Connick, Ashley Judd, and Morgan Freeman.
Here's a video I took of Winter in her tank.
We'll put up some pictures and more videos in a few days, when we get the chance.
If you're ever in the area, the Clearwater Marine Aquarium is definitely a worthwhile stop along the way. Al
One of our primary goals was to get to the Florida Keys again so we could enjoy the great underwater environment with the girls. They seemed to LOVE it last time. So we were decided to splurge a bit and go back out snorkeling with them. But Chris was able to score some great Buy one get one coupons so we got half off our Snorkel trips! Always looking out for a deal!
These pics are from our trip down from a couple of months ago. I'm just finally getting the chance to share them.
Now, we've gone out with 3 different snorkel boats - and we even made it out BEFORE all the oil that BP has released into the Gulf hits the entire coastline and screws up most of the ecosystem. Unfortunately, it turned out to be fairly poor weather, so we had to put up with some super choppy water. However I would prefer vacationing out on the water over almost anything else - even if I had to put up with a little bit of sea sickness.
Here were a few pics from our trip this time: This is one of the boats that we went on.
One of the many Barracuda that we saw. And he is even one of the smaller ones. And this is one of the rare Kaitlyn fish!
As we explained a little while ago ... we were able to pick up some SUPER cheap visits to Disney's Orlando locations by donating a day of our time. On our last day, we decided to head back to Hollywood Studios for two key reasons.
They have two of the absolute best Disney rides - Hollywood Tower of Terror - The Rock n' Roller Coaster Both of these rides turn out to be our family's favorites. They are both absolutely awesome, adrenaline rush rides - for us and for the kids.
We all agreed that we had to take the Disney character drawing classes. We had taken two last time (the Toy Story alien and Bolt), and they were fantastic. On this visit we decided to take as many of these classes as we could.
Here are some pics from our trip. We'll start with the Disney drawing class pictures. As you can see ... in 20 minutes you learn to draw (with pretty amazing results) people's all-time favorite Disney characters.
Here's Dale
Here's the Genie
And Mickey Mouse
And Uncle Scrooge
Finally, here's Tigger Too!
And to top it all off, Keeley had the awesome idea for this sweet picture at Hollywood Hotel Tower of Terror ride. The first time you get on this ride, it's an adrenaline rush because you're not sure what's going to happen or when? It really messes with your head, which is great. The lines to this ride are consistently shorter than most other rides because most people are afraid to ride it.
After five or six trips you come up with something sweet like this:
We have to thank Keeley for such a KILLER idea! Check out the guy right behind Kait. Yep! That's exactly how it feels the first time you ride the Tower of Terror. And his face absolutely shows it. We were laughing so hard at this pic, we HAD to buy it. What a great memory. The girls love it!
We've been planning another trip to the Florida Keys for months. Mostly, so I could forget about office life and all the stresses there. But also because our first trip down was so exciting, when we got to go snorkeling with the girls. We knew, we just had to try it again.
So, this past week, we were finally able to make it happen. In order to save money, we chose to camp at John Pennekamp State Park. Here's a little bit about the experience, and what we would suggest for anyone thinking about doing the same thing in the future.
First of all:
We came in early May (10-13th) in an effort to beat the heat. WRONG idea! Maybe in another epoch Florida was cooler ... but not now. The first day we were there was in the 90's, and even though the other days were cooler, it was still blazingly hot. There is NO WAY you could possibly sit in your campsite exposed to that heat all day, and enjoy yourself.
I suggest planning your vacation so that during most of the heat of the day, you are out doing other activities. You'll want to leave the campsite by about 10 AM, and plan on returning after 5-6 PM. In fact, the heat was so bad, the first night none of us slept well.
Here is out campsite - just to prove we were there.
Point Two:
If you are going to camp at this campground, during the months of May through October, I would suggest you have air conditioning. Otherwise, your camping trip could be miserably hot. We were able to survive the next two nights by buying an oscillating electric fan, so that it blew on us all night in the tent. If we didn't have the fan, none of us would have slept for three nights straight. While that's certainly survivable, it's not really a benefit, when you're on VACATION.
Third Point -
When you look at the picture above, you'll see a couple of blue mosquito repellent devices sitting on the picnic table. We were fully expecting to do battle with swarms of mosquitoes on this trip. Surprisingly, there were hardly any mosquitoes. There were, however, thriving colonies of 'no see 'em' bugs. These are tiny, little fly like creatures (almost to small to see with the naked eye), that bite like piranha. The scariest part is that they come out during the day. From dawn to sunset you will get gnawed on by some invisible force that you can't defeat. Unless you are wearing long sleeve shirts and pants, you will get bitten by these God-forsaken creatures. And unlike mosquito bites which stop itching after a day or two, these bites keep right on itching for days. We have been home for three days now, and we are ALL still scratching as if we have chicken pox or some other rash like illness.
And remember this, about these bugs, no matter if you stay in a tent or an RV ... when you walk outside ... they are waiting. You will NOT be immune from their powerful onslaught. So, even if you stay in an RV with the coolest A/C on the planet, you will have to face the 'no see 'ems' eventually. This is simply a friendly word of warning.
All that being said ... John Pennekamp State Park is an outstanding campground. It's a little bit pricey, but compared to the other options in the Florida Keys ... it's a bargain. And the campground itself is superb.
The bathrooms are large.
The bathrooms are clean and well maintained.
The bathrooms have excellent showers.
There is running water at the campsites.
There is electricity at the campsites.
There are dozens of activities right at the State Park
Including scuba, snorkeling, glass-bottom boats, kayak rentals, public beaches, a great visitor center with aquarium displays, and boat rentals.
Killer breezes on the beaches of the park.
In general, this State Park is a top notch park, with amenities that are superior to most parks we're seen in Florida - BUT you have to be able to get over the three hurdles above to enjoy the campground to its full potential.
And finally, there are some additional visitors to the campground. These were also very cool to see, right by our campsite.
The first one ... if you look at the picture above, you'll see a tree just over Kaitlyn's left shoulder. Just beyond that tree, about 8 feet, is a small creek. This lovely creature was right back beside the creek one morning as we were getting ready to head out for the day.
I would guess this iguana was about 4 feet long. Chris wasn't going anywhere near this thing.
I wouldn't want to meet up with one of these out walking on a trail. I was standing about 10 feet away from it, and I didn't want to get much closer.
And this little guy was pretty cute. They build massive holes in the ground, and come crawling out about sunset. Every time this one tried to come out, he saw us standing there ... and quickly ducked back into his hole.
A couple months ago we shared that we were able to be a part of the 'Give a day, Get a day' with Walt Disney World here in Florida. After participating in a local clean-up event, we were allowed to upgrade our one day into 4 days for a small fee. Which we gladly accepted.
One of our days was spent at Disney's Hollywood Studios. In general, this is our favorite park. This is THE park we have chosen as our last place to visit with our bonus days. I'm sure everyone has their favorite Disney park they like to visit. And most likely, Hollywood Studios won't be the favorite park on most people's lists. But, for us, this park has almost everything we are looking for.
And, in fact, there is one super special place that we almost missed out on completely. You see ... at Hollywood Studios you will find an unassuming building that walks visitors through the history of some of their animated movies, and through the processes involved in creating a character. For most visitors, it isn't an actual ride, so it's kinda boring. But if you take a moment and visit a special 'unmarked' room inside of this exhibit, you'll be able to take a short class on how YOU can draw a Disney character. Each class is 20 minutes. And they try not to repeat any characters ... all day. So at every single class, you will learn how to draw a completely new Disney character.
This class was so fun, that it inspired us to want to go back to this park again ... I suppose the Rock 'n Roller coaster, and the Tower of Terror helped as well. But this class ... was in a word ... Inspiring. I highly suggest it for anyone who ever visits this park in the future. It is totally worth it.
Here are some of our drawings - for your ... umm .... viewing pleasure.
One note I would add about drawing pictures, which I never knew before.
One of the instructors told us that every second of a Disney movie is made up of 24 picture frames. Every Disney movie has about 90 minutes of play time. That equals almost 130,000 picture frames for a Disney movie. So, even if your one drawing doesn't look that great ... probably by the time you get done drawing 130,000 of them, you'll be a little better at the drawing process. That's a GREAT thought to keep in mind about the concept of 'practice'.
I totally forgot to add this last little bit of excitement from Disney's Epcot. This was, by FAR, the girls' favorite stop in all of Epcot. They have grown quite fond of fairies, goblins, mer-folk, and other fantasy creatures.
It's really cool.
Anyhow, we wanted to share what we saw of Disney's idea of the fairy world. They paired the Fairy theme with the butterfly exhibit, which I think was absolutely brilliant. If you go ... you should definitely check it out.
You can see a wide variety of different fairies and fairy homes. And yep ... that last one is Stinkerbell ... err ... Tinkerbell.
And one of the most inspired ideas of the entire Fairy world was a series of fairy signature boards. Each fairy had their own signature, with their own board. Disney gave the kids a sheet of coloring paper. The kids were able to walk to each board and get a 'crayon / pencil rubbing' of each fairy's signature. At the end of the exhibit, they had signatures from all the fairies in a different spot on their coloring sheet. Then they could take it home and color each fairy however they wanted, and have the signature right by the fairy.
This is an absolutely KILLER idea. And I think all U.S. national parks should add this to their junior ranger badge programs.
