Last Leg of Our Journey

Our last night in Orlando, we had to re-pack all of our stuff because it had all had to be cleaned and we had bought some things on the trip.  We stayed up until midnight and then had to get up at 4:00 am!  We had to drive to the Sanford/Orlando Airport (Sanford is where that Martin boy was shot) in the dark, to catch a 6:50 am flight.  It was dark the whole drive and when we boarded the plane and it felt like we were "sneaking" out of Florida!!  We were so tired, we went right to sleep after take-off and didn't wake up until we were landing in Fort Wayne.  Luckily, we didn't have a lay-over on this flight.

Brent and his brother-in-law, Ryan, had taken our car to the airport and left it the day before, so it would be there for us.  That was really nice.  When we got home, we ate some cereal and went to bed and slept until 5 pm!  We had had about all the fun we could stand! lol  It seemed strange being down there with all of those beautiful palm trees and then Whoosh! we're home!  Now our cruise and the rest of our trip are memories and pictures.  We had such a wonderful time!  I really want to go back to Florida again, as it is one of my favorite states now!

We really enjoyed the scenery down there.  Everywhere we went it was gorgeous like this:

And this:

Or this:

But when we drove into our driveway, our little tree out front that we thought might be dead, looked like this:
There is beauty all around us.  It may not be a palm tree, but it is beautiful!!

Downtown Disney

The day we finished our cruise, we drove up to a State Park a little north of Palm Beach and a Park Attendant took us out across a bridge in a little golf cart type thing, to a beautiful area, covered with Mango trees.  He said Mango trees are protected in FL.  If you buy a house or property that has a Mango tree, then you have a Mango tree from then on.  It is illegal to prune them, cut them down or remove them.  He said he knows of a man who bought some beach-front property that had Mango trees and after some years, they had spread so much, he couldn't see his beach, so he had them removed.  He was arrested and is facing a $1.5 million $ fine and possibly prison time.

Anyway, we wore our swim suits this time.  I was taking no chances of ruining anything else!  The beach and the ocean were absolutely breath-taking there!  We spent a few hours gathering seashells, wading in the water and John went out quite a ways, looking for bigger shells.  The Gulf Stream runs through there and the water was so nice and warm.  We loved it there.  I wish all of you could have been there and see that.  Florida is a beautiful state.  I want to go back there again!

After the beach, we drove up to Orlando and checked into our hotel, had dinner and talked about what to do the next day.  Since Disney World and Universal Studios were both almost within walking distance (a long walk!) we were debating which one to go see.  The next morning, we asked the waitress which one she would recommend.  She said if we didn't care about going on rides, we should consider Downtown Disney.  We had never heard of it before.  She said it was in Downtown Orlando and free!  There is a boat ride that takes people from one end to the other.  She said it is free (no admission) and then there are stores, restaurants, etc.  We decided to do there.

It was SO cute!  It is not affiliated with Disney, however, there is a Mickey's 24 Days of Christmas store that is Disney, but it was a whole town of other stores.  One of our favorites was the Lego Store.  There are huge characters made from Lego out front.  There were Buzz Light Year, Woody, a black dragon, a green Lochness Dragon in a little pond in the middle of the shopping area and all made with Legos.  We said Tyson and Cameron would love that.  We wished they were there to see it and play with the Lego in their building.  There were tables all over with kids making things out of Legos.

We spent a good share of the day there, just looking around at things.  We bought a BIG banana split to share and just as we sat down to a table outside, it started to pour and I DO mean POUR!!!  It was incredible!  People were running for cover and luckily we got inside the ice cream store in time to get two chairs, because pretty soon it was standing-room only and we watched it pour for about 1/2 hour!  Then the sun came out and everybody went back to what they had been doing.  We had a fun time there and were very tired, so after dinner, we laid on the bed and watched a TV show.

I kept waking up during the night and couldn't figure out why, because I was so tired.  About 4 am, I got up to get some milk out of our little refrigerator and turned on the lamp by the bed.  As I sat down, I saw a bug on my pillow!  Then there were two more of them on the head board!  I jumped up off the bed and yelled to John that we had BED BUGS!  We called the front desk and they sent a security guard up and he looked at them and cringed.  He trapped three of them on the bed under a clear glass and said we needed to take just what we needed for the rest of the night and then we should call the front desk in the morning to have someone meet us before we went back in there.

So...... we had the Executive Housekeeping Administrator meet us and she and another guard verified that they were indeed, bed bugs.  She said they check each room monthly unless there is a report like ours.  They took all of our clothing, shoes, suitcases, etc. to be laundered and steam cleaned.  Then they gave us plastic bags for what we were wearing then, to put them in after we got our other clothing back.  Needless to say, it ruined that whole day and that was our last day of vacation.

I Googled Orlando and bed bugs and found that they are very common there because of all the people who come from all over to go to Disney World.  Even the Raddison has had reports of them.  We are hopeful that we didn't bring any home with us.  We didn't bring our suitcases into our bedroom.  I guess you can get those little suckers (lol) anywhere that the public sleeps.  We had an incident with them a few years ago in Vegas, so I we are going to check the seams on the mattress edges and look under them for dark reddish stains from now on, when we check into a hotel.  Good luck and I hope none of you go through that!  Just check good them!

This is just a part of that long bridge we went across.

Looking for shells.

Downtown Disney

This is what was right next to our hotel.  I love Florida!   Hope we see it again some day..

The Cruise

Our cruise ship was called the Bahamas Celebration through Caribbean Cruise Lines and it was beautiful.  We had a really cute cabin, but the water was quite rough the 1st night and it was hard to sleep because it felt like the bed was shaking.  After we left Florida, John and I went out on the back of the ship and watched the sky scrapers get smaller and smaller.  The sky was kind of cloudy but it was pretty.  We had a nice dinner and then went to the after dinner show.  They had some girls that were gymnists and a comedian named Dennis Blair.  I hadn't heard of him, but he was funny.

On the Grand Bahama Island, we got on a tour bus that took us all around and the driver told us about everything from how they build their houses there to who owns some of the houses on Millionaire's Row.  One house was built in the shape of a piano and everyone guessed it was Liberace's, but he said it had belonged to Count Basee (I don't know how to spell that).  He showed us John Travolta's house where his son died while they were there for Christmas vacation a couple of years ago.  It is beautiful and the yard is very well kept, but he said they haven't been back since that happened.

Then he took us to the shopping area where they have the Straw Markets.  It's like Flea Markets and you bargain with the shop keepers for things.  We got some fun things there, including a corral and shell bracelet that I love, for $2! John bought a hand-woven straw hat for shade and he looks cute in it.  We ate lunch at a Greek restaurant called Zorba's, of course! : )  Then we walked down to the beach, which was a couple of blocks away, but in the nearly 90 degree heat, it seemed like further.  It really wasn't worth it when we got there, because there wasn't a lot of sand; mostly lava rocks and no shells at all.  We bought  a coconut that had the top cut off and sat and drank coconut milk.  The coconut itself was like eating raw, slimy fish and I didn't like it at all!  A Seagull near us had found one that someone had left and it really liked it.  It left for a minute and some littler birds came over and started pecking at it and when the Seagull saw them, it hurried right back and shooed them away.  It wasn't about to share!

The island wasn't as pretty as I had thought it would be.  It wasn't as green and pretty, with lots of flowers like Florida is and there was trash along the roads.  They had a hurricane in 2004 that had damaged their biggest hotel so badly, that it never reopened.  A lot of the windows are boarded up and pieces of some of the corners were gone.  It looks sad.  The locals build their houses as they can afford to, so there are houses standing looking abandoned, but they are under construction.  They just don't look like it.

The second night on the ship we had another terrific dinner (Cory said cruise ships are floating restaurants) and they are!  There's not a lot to do on the ship if you don't want to swim or hot tub, besides eat and wait for the elevator.  So, we went to the show again and it was a comedian named Steve Zimmerman.  I had never heard of him either, but he was SO FUNNY!!  He said he is going to be on the Tyler Perry show next year as the Brown's youngest brother.

.The water was much more calm that night.  The first night, the ship had been swaying and it was hard to walk around.  My stomach got so queezy I had to drink club soda to calm it down.  I can see why people get sea sick.  I'm glad we weren't in a storm!  I slept much better, too.  Then the next morning, it was up and out of our cabin by 7:30 am!  Homeland Security took control of the ship before anyone was allowed to leave, so it's first thing in the morning.  We ate breakfast outside and it wasn't too warm yet and it was beautiful.  The sky and the ocean were just beautiful.  We just loved it there.

We got to stand in a pretty long line to go through Customs and be cleared by Homeland Security.  They examined our birth certificates, made sure we looked like the photos they took of us when we got on the ship and check the pics on our driver's licenses.  Now if they could be that thorough along all the borders!

John was supposed to be taking a pic of me (see - in the background) but I guess the camera got distracted!

Our Trip

Well, I tried to put some pictures of of vacation to Florida and the Bahamas on here and messed up.  I'm going to try it again. I may have to do this in chapters, but here goes!

The Beach

We had a wonderful time.  Florida is just beautiful! It is so green and there are flowers and palm trees everywhere. We had two fun afternoons on the Beaches. One afternoon, we gathered shells in Palm Beach near Drew Barrymoore's house.  We hadn't planned to go to the beach that day and I was wearing my Capris, but we parked off the side of the street and walked down to the beautiful Atlantic Ocean.  We were finding shells and I saw a bigger one and ran out to get it when the wave went back.  As I was bending over, another wave hit me and knocked me down.  I was yelling for John and he rescued me, but I was completely soaked.  We decided we couldn't get much wetter, so we continued our search.  Then I remembered my cell phone was in my pocket.  It was soaked, too!  Needless to say, I couldn't use it the rest of the trip.

There were  some little lizards (gechos maybe) along the side walk by the beach and John got a great picture of this little guy.  Well, I had planned for this picture to be further down, but anyway.  Here is a Pelican that was just hanging out watching what was going on at a nearby pier.

Another Day

Wow!  Looks like spring has sprung!  LOL  Well, that was last spring in our yard in Provo.  I can hardly wait until we have flowers blooming in our yard here like this!  

I asked Brent on the phone today, how I could put pics on my blog and he told me how to get into them and Viola!  There's a picture!  This makes me VERY happy and encouraged that eventually I will figure out how to put everything I want to on my blog, all decorated cute.  I'm going to keep working on it, until I can access all the pics on the computer and learn how to add more from our camera.  This is my newest endeavor!  I hope soon I can show everybody how it looks out here and what we are doing. OX

Great Time to Get Sick

Well, I have been busy getting ready to go on our cruise; finding my capris, summer shoes, etc. so I could decide what to take and BAM!  I came down with a cold!  Brent said to be glad it is this weekend, but I am concerned, because it always takes me a while to get over things.  I guess if I'm not better, I will go sick!  Sounds like lots of fun.  We have planned this Christmas before last.  You know what Murphy said.  Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong!  I'd better take that back though, after all the things we've seen on the new the last while about cruise ships!

It has been SO HOT here the past few days, that it has given me a chance to think about what clothes I want to take with me.  Now today, it is back to cooler and overcast again.  I guess that is expected.  Our grass is green and we have crocuses coming up.  Yesterday I noticed there are little buds coming out all over the tree out front that we were afraid might be dead, so it definitely looks like spring is on it's way.  I am looking forward to it after the long gray winter we've had.  But everyone out here has been saying it has been a mild winter.  Well, storm-wise, I guess it has.  I am just used to seeing blue skies and sunshine more during the winter than people are out here.  I am excited about the promise of Spring!

Life in Indiana

Oh, so much time has past since Macy helped me make this blog.  Then I got sick with some stupid virus that lasted for months. Christmas came and went and when I tried to post more on here, I couldn't figure out how to get into it.  FINALLY, I think I have it conquered, but we'll see how well I do on trying to post pics, too!

It seems like we have been out here for a long time.  We had to find the closest place to grocery shop, the closest pharmacy, find a new doctor, figure out where to mail things because there doesn't seem to be a post office anywhere in the whole west side of Ft. Wayne and on and on!  I have actually gotten brave enough to go on a few shopping trips by myself.  It has been very difficult to move to a new place at our ages and try to set our lives up all over again.

There we more than a few challenges with our house, right off the bat, like the furnace and water conditioning system not working and having to have them replaced.  Now John has been working for the past 2 months on turning the little kitchen bathroom back into a pantry and finishing new cupboards we had made.  Brent helped him put them up on the walls, so at least they are in place now!  Hurray!!  John is still sanding and staining them, but they look great and the kitchen is starting to look so much nicer.  I can hardly wait until the whole kitchen is done.  Then we will start renovating the bathroom!  It will all look great!

Two and a half weeks ago we got our 9th grand baby.  Brent, Macy and their family welcomed little Matthew into their family.  It was wonderful to be here when he was born and be able to go to the hospital to see him that very first day.  His big sisters kept saying "He's just adorable!" and they are right.  He is!  All three of the kids are so excited.  They love to take turns holding him and giving him kisses.  He has lots of pretty, dark hair and looks so much like the other kids.  Sometimes I think he looks like Viv and Nathan and other times, like Sophie. They are all peas from the same pod.  They look so much alike and are so cute!

I am going to experiment and learn how to put some pictures on here.  I'll be darned if I am going to have a boring blog now that I can finally access it.  I love all my family and still want to share my life and the things we are doing with you.