We decided to surprise the children at Christmas this year by planning a trip to Florida! On Christmas morning, as their very last presents we gave 3 clues...Bree's was a stuffed alligator, Miles's was a toy airplane, and Tess's was a tourism book on Florida. They thought they were weird gifts and didn't figure it out right away. (Miles even asked if they were white elephant gifts!) So we kind of helped explain it and then they we sooo excited! The hardest part was waiting 6 weeks before we actually left!
It was the kids' first time on an airplane (Bree actually flew once when she was only about 8 months old, but that doesn't really count.)
Day 1: fly to Florida and then drive south to Boca Raton. Our hotel there was the one crummy hotel we had the whole time. Dirty and smelly and we couldn't get out of there fast enough! Luckily we were only there for about 11 hours.
Day 2: drive further south to Everglades National Park. We rented a canoe for a 4-hour paddle up a canal and into Coot Bay. In the Bay it was pretty windy, so not very fun to paddle in, but back in the canal it was calm and nice. Our little Miss Tess is such a tough cookie. She paddled and paddled--at least as much as, if not more than, me! She is a strong little girl. We saw our first alligator in the water and right as we were getting ready to turn in the canoe at the end of our time, we saw a bunch of manatees; just their little noses poking up for a quick breath of fresh air.
Day 3: First we decided to go to church... I'll admit that we don't typically go to church when we're on vacation. But this trip spanned over two Sundays and our sweet, newly baptized boy mentioned on Saturday night that we should go. He said, "isn't it bad to break the Sabbath Day?" and he was right. So we went to a Sacrament meeting (not even in church clothes, but I knew they wouldn't kick us out.) It turned out to be a bi-lingual meeting and a testimony meeting too. So there were a whole bunch of testimonies in Spanish, which was cool. It made me think back to Denmark where we had several Americans in our ward. They would wear headphones and a Danish member would quietly translate everything into English for them. It brought back happy memories for me. I'm glad we went.
Then, back to the Everglades for hiking (walking really, Florida is flat.) The kids did the Junior Ranger program and along the way we saw a turtle, a whole bunch of blue herons and egrets,
... and another alligator! (You know, I thought I would be a little frightened of them, but they really just sit there, still as a statue, for who knows how long? We watched this one for probably 20 minutes or more and it never moved. Ever. Maybe it's still sitting there today. Anyway, I didn't feel scared at all.)
Then we took a drive out to Key Largo for some authentic Key Lime Pie. We forgot to take a picture beforehand, but here we are with our empty plates. (There was raspberry syrup garnishing the plate, so that's why our plates are all red in the pic.) It was really yummy!
Day 4: We went to Biscayne National Preserve and looked around a bit. It was pretty cold so we mostly stayed at the Visitors' Center. (Unfortunately we visited Florida during a week of unusually cold weather. Whomp, whomp... In fact, check out this picture of the temps--the HIGH temps, mind you. We had a few lows of 40 degrees! I think it was warmer in Utah! We were there from Feb. 5-15. It's like Florida knew we were coming and played a joke on us!)
Anyway, inside the Visitors' Center they had sea turtle shells to wear...
...and a conch shell to blow. Miles did it really well! I could never really get it to sound right. (I couldn't help but think of 12th grade English class--
The Lord of the Flies--each time he blew on the shell. Poor Piggy...)
Then as we drove north, we stopped at a beach for lunch. It was called Fletcher Beach. Bree and Tess collected lots of neat shells and Miles had fun getting wet in the waves.
Day 5: Universal Studios! I was so excited to go here! I had heard so many great things about the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Universal Studios is actually made up of two parks; Diagon Alley is in one park and Hogsmeade is in the other. You can ride the Hogwarts Express train between the two. (They even had you board at Platform 9 3/4, where there was a cool hologram screen thingy--see how technical I am?-- that makes it look like you're disappearing right through the brick wall. Makes for a fun video.) They were both amazing. We bought a wand at Ollivander's and enjoyed some Butterbeer. I could have looked around in the shops for much longer than I did, but there was little time to waste when there were rides to be ridden! Universal has tons of great roller coasters. Bryan was sufficiently sick by the afternoon, poor guy.
In this picture of Diagon Alley, you can see the dragon up on top of Gringott's bank. Sorry, not a great picture...
Day 6: Epcot Center. The kids really wanted to go to Disney World, but I figured that the Magic Kingdom was pretty similar to Disneyland, which they've been to, so we decided to do Epcot instead, which is very different from Disneyland!
Epcot was lots of fun. Not full of roller coasters, but still tons to do and see, with lots of cool hands-on exhibits. It has two parts: "Future World" (with sections about land, sea, technology, and engineering innovation-y stuff) and "World Showcase" (which has 12 different countries to visit, complete with that country's architecture, food, music, souvenirs, etc).
Everyone's very favorite ride was called Test Track. During the first part you get to design your own vehicle on these huge touch screens. It was neat to be able to choose and change everything (Miles and I let Bree choose the color of ours, so of course it's purple-pink.) Then you get in the ride-vehicle and it's supposed to simulate the one you created. At the end they rank your cars to see whose is best. Bryan's and Tess's car beat ours, just barely, by a score of 201 to our 199. It's a little hard to describe, but believe me, it was fun and we all loved it!
Our next favorite thing to do was "Agent P's World Showcase Adventure," featuring Perry the Platypus (Agent P) from Phineas and Ferb. We were given a special cell phone that took us to different countries where we had to do secret missions to see some fun special effects. For example, in Mexico there was a talking parrot who gave us a clue and a funny animation with Dr. Doofenshmirtz getting blown out of a volcano, if we entered the right info into our phone. In Germany we had a mission which made a cuckoo clock chime, and characters from Phineas & Ferb came out and danced around, etc. (If you have never seen Phineas & Ferb this probably makes no sense to you... suffice it to say it was a lot of fun and kept the kids very interested.)
Bree has really taken an interest lately in the Disney movie Mulan on Netflix. She was dying to see Mulan when we were in China. She was not disappointed! Mulan was super cute with her and Bree loved it!
(Mulan gave Bree a kiss on the forehead with her bright lipstick and Bree would not let us wash it off. Even the next day!)
Day 7: Universal again. We spent more time over at Islands of Adventure on this day. One really fun show was called Poseidon's Fury. We had low hopes because they describe it like this: "explore the ruins of Poseidon's ancient temple in this special effects guided tour." Didn't sound that great. But it was actually super cool! Good thing I'm a front-row Joe, too, because we went in and went right up to the front and the tour guide picked Miles as his special volunteer for the entire thing (about 20 minutes). The "tour guide" played this whole story up about a professor doing an archaeological dig when he mysteriously vanished and we needed to try to find him. There were several rooms to walk through where crazy special effects would happen (like walking through a tunnel of water swirling all around and above us, or a bad guy shooting flames all around us, etc). All during this we got to be at the front as the tour guide would say things like, "Miles-from-Utah, come and help me...." whatever. For example, he got to hold Poseidon's magical trident through the water tunnel as he led the whole group through. It was pretty neat.
We met some fun characters at Seuss Landing. Mr. Grinch and Sam-I-Am were pretty silly...
...as were The Cat in the Hat and Things 1 and 2.
Day 8: This may have been my very favorite thing of the whole week! We kept this part secret from the kids until that morning. We drove over to the west coast of Florida, to Crystal River, to swim with manatees! I loved it! It was pretty chilly, even with wetsuits, so poor Bree was miserable at first. Our wonderful boat captain graciously offered to just hang out with Bree on the boat and look for manatees from there. They had a great time while the rest of us snorkeled out to the manatees. They are such cool animals. Super calm and gentle, and also super
big! Where we were, there were probably 20 or so manatees just chilling out, most of them sleeping along the bottom. But there were a few who were very curious about us and they would come right up to us and let us kind of pet them. We even saw a mom with a baby nursing. One friendly guy hung out with us for a long time and even gave Miles a big ol' kiss! I wish I had pictures...our snorkel guide was taking underwater pictures, but unfortunately when we previewed them back at the office, there were none of our family. They were all pics of the other 2 families that went with us. Bryan and I were a little mad about that. Oh well. (I will add a few pictures I found on the internet though)...
Day 9: Kennedy Space Center. I am not going to lie when I say that this was the day I was
least looking forward to. I think space exploration is awesome, and I'm as big a fan of
Apollo 13 as the next guy, but I just don't get as excited by looking at the machines, launch pads, and buildings, as, say, a nerdy aerospace engineer might get. But since we have a nerdy aerospace engineer in the family, I figured we better go check it out. :) It actually was pretty cool. I loved watching the videos of the astronauts talking about their missions and about how it really was for them in space, or on the moon, or building the space station, etc.
(I just included this picture because of Bree's miss-sassy-pants pose! Where the heck did she learn that?)
We stopped at Cocoa Beach after Kennedy Space Center. We were cold so we didn't stay long and nobody got wet this time. But we did play in the sand and make a few sand sculptures. I had to tag the beach with our little "bamatamb" logo too.
Day 10: One last day at Universal, to re-visit our favorites. It was Valentine's Day, so here's a pic with my sweet Valentine (and a Gringott's goblin behind Bryan's shoulder!)
Universal Studios has been celebrating Mardi Gras all during February and into March, and as part of that there are several concerts scheduled. I was thrilled when I saw that on this particular day Barenaked Ladies would be performing! Woohoo! I love them. I actually got to see them during the Olympics in Salt Lake as they performed right after one of the medals ceremonies. It is a favorite memory I have from college, being there with 2 of my favorite roommates, along with people from all over the world. Awesome. So you bet we stuck around to watch them that night at Universal! (It wasn't quite the same feeling since Steven Page left the band...but still lots of fun.)
Day 11: Flight home. We were all exhausted from such a great trip! (We walked 50 miles, canoed about 5 miles, and drove over 1200 miles!) It was a really wonderful vacation. Miles already asked if we could go back. There are so many places I would love to see, so I doubt we will go there again, but I definitely want to plan to go somewhere else soon. Even though I don't travel a ton, every time I do travel, it just makes me want to do it MORE!
