Florida! (Lots more pictures)

Two posts in two days!?  Don't pass out!

This past week my mom and I were able to fly to Florida to visit my sister Jennifer.  We were celebrating her 30th birthday a little early.  I was really excited to see where they had moved to and to see Jen and her family.

Mom flew from Tulsa to Houston and we met up and flew together from Houston to Orlando.  Our plane was delayed because of a cold front and wind change that came through, so we were an hour late. This put us in Orlando at midnight.

The next morning we got up, got ready and went to the Orlando Temple.  It is so beautiful and it was nice to attend a temple session with Mom and Jen.

After the temple we got some lunch and did a little shopping.  Then we headed back to get the kids and get ready to go to Cocoa Beach. 

It was very windy at the beach, but it was a lot of fun.

Ethan did not sit here very long.  Most of the time he was running the beach as you will see below.

There he goes!

Natalie likes to build sand castles.  She kept telling me how good she was at making them and she really is good at it.  I had fun helping her build.  Doesn't she look cute in her yellow!?

Here is one of the sand castles that we built.

Here is Bella and Grandma hanging out and chatting.

Here I am taking Natalie and Ethan to the water.  All the kids were a little timid around the water when we first got there.  Ethan had never liked the water and usually ran from it, but at this visit, he decided the water was great.  He couldn't get enough!  One time I was walking with him and all of a sudden he changed directions and ran towards the water.  Before I got to him he fell face first into the water and sand.  He jumped up like nothing had happened and wanted more.

Bella had played in the water some before, but Natalie was content to sit and build her sand castles.  By this end of this visit, both girls were playing in the water, laying down and letting the waves hit them (see below). Natalie said "This is more fun than building sand castles!"

When we were sufficiently covered in sand, we decided it was time to head home.  Here is a picture of Ethan on the ride home with sand all over his face.  This picture doesn't show how much sand there really was.

On the way home we drove by the Kennedy Space Center.  This picture is taken from the parking lot of the visitor center.

The next morning we got up and spent a little more time at Jen's before venturing out.  Jen had a babysitter come for the kids and Mom, Jen and I headed out for a day of Disney adventure.  We didn't go into any of the parks, but we did a lot of fun things.

We started at Downtown Disney.  We went to the Marketplace, visited the shops and bought some things.  We took pictures and had a great time.  We spent a good 3 1/2 to 4 hours there.

Here we are posing with Mickey and Minney.

Next we found out that we could park at one of the resorts and ride the monorail.  So we got on and rode around.  We saw into Magic Kingdom and it took us through Epcot.  Obviously we could not get into the parks, but it was fun to look at them.  We had to change monorails at one point to get to Epcot.  On the way back we got a little confused, got on the wrong monorail car and ended up riding it around twice before we figured out that we needed to get off and get on another one. When we got off we were at the entrance to Magic Kingdom.  So we walked down to see what we could see. One of the workers took our picture in front of the entrance.

When we made it back to our car we headed over to Disney's Boardwalk resort.  Behind the resort they have a mini boardwalk set up.  There are little shops, restaurants, snack stands and people doing little street shows. 

We were looking for a place to eat and this is where we ended up:

We thought it was funny that on a girl's weekend, we would end up eating at the ESPN Club, but it the other restaurant had Greek food and none of us really liked that, so we had burgers while watching anything sports we wanted to see.

This is a picture of the boardwalk at night from the other side of the lagoon.  It isn't the best picture, but it gives you an idea of what it looked like.

There was a little beach across from the Boardwalk (part of another resort), so we walked over there to look at it.  Then we realized that there was an entrance to Epcot right down from where we were, so we walked over to see what we could see.  We then realized that it was almost 9:00 and the laser/fireworks show would be starting, so we hung out and watched that.  There was a big tree in the way, but what we saw was good.

Then we decided it was time to head back. We were all tired and we had to get up early to fly home the next morning.

On the boardwalk you can rent these surrey bicycles.  It was fun to see families riding them around.

This is looking back at the Boardwalk as we walked to our car.

It was a really fun (although short) trip.  I can't wait until I can take my family back and go into the parks and experience more of the Disney Magic.