Florida, days 1 and 2

We are here enjoying ourselves in sunny Orlando, Florida, where it's in the 80's and so beautiful!  We left on Thursday morning and flew on the plane.  We were a little delayed, because the original plane had something wrong with it, so we had to get a new plane, but they could only find a small one.  Therefore, the last 30 people to arrive for the flight had to take an alternate flight!  Luckily, we had checked in early, and took advantage of priority family boarding, so our seats were assured.  The kids did really well on the plane, coloring, reading books, and watching movies on their DVD players.  After we got to our hotel, we got dinner, and then went swimming.  The kids thought it was really fun to swim in the dark!  After swimming, we set up the girls' beds.  We got them special air mattress beds with a built-in tinkerbell sleeping bag.  They were totally thrilled with them, and slept all through the night in their special beds, which is a vast improvement from having them end up sleeping with us in our bed for the whole vacation!

Friday morning we woke up and went to Sea World!  They were having special stuff for Halloween there, so the kids got to have trick-or treat bags and get candy.  Lizzy was also really excited to see many of her favorite Sesame Street characters, but Rachel was too afraid to go up to them.

We went to the Sea Lion and Otter show, and then got lunch.  After that, we went to the Dolphin and Whale show, which was really cool!  Lizzy was very brave and sat in the "soak zone" with Michelle, my sister, and got splashed by the dolphins!  She was very excited!

After that, Michelle and Jason were brave and went on the "Manta" roller coaster ride, which is very wild and loopy, and you hang upside down from it.  The girls and I toured the aquarium while they did that.  Then, we all went to the Shamu show.  Many of you have probably heard about the Sea World trainer who was killed by a killer whale at Sea World last year, so now the Shamu show is much shorter, and no trainers go into the water with the killer whales.  The whales do their jumps and tricks while the trainers cue them from the sides.  It was still cool, though.  What was fun to see is, a new baby killer whale was born there 2 weeks ago, and the baby and its mother were swimming around in the main pool before the show began for people to see, and I got a picture as they swam by.  After Lizzy had so much fun sitting in the "soak zone" at the dolphin show, we all sat in the "zone" for Shamu, but we were in a little wedge of crowd that didn't even get wet at all, but the people on either side of us got totally soaked!  It was sort of disappointing, and sort of good!

After the Shamu show, we took the kids over to the kid's area, where they have rides and a play area.  Lizzy and Rachel were super brave and rode all the rides, except only Lizzy could ride the Shamu roller coaster with Daddy, because Rachel was still too short.  I was really proud of Lizzy for going on the roller coaster!  It didn't loop upside down, but it had a pretty good drop, and lots of good turns!  Jason said she was saying "This is CRAZY!  This is NUTS!"

You can only see Jason in the picture, because Lizzy is blocked by him, sitting on the other side.  This is right before going up the big hill!  After the kid rides, I took the kids to the Penguin Encounter and Jason and Michelle went to ride the other large roller coasters, "Kraken" and "Journey to Atlantis."  Then we were totally tired, and it was dinner time, so we left.

We went back to the hotel and had dinner at the poolside grill, and they happened to have a Karaoke contest!  Michelle, Lizzy, and I all signed up to sing, and Lizzy actually got 2nd place for her rendition of "Barbie Girl" which was so good!  Michelle and I sang "Love Potion number 9" but we weren't cute enough to win, I guess!  And that's the end of days 1 and 2.