Wednesday first half

Well here we were...day 3...heading off to Animal Kingdom! I claim the picture below is like it is because of the humidity....well then again...maybe not.

Gee, Troy! We have to walk that far before I see any elephants? Good thing we brought some water with us!

This bird sat on her nest and sat on her nest. Soon her hubby gently nudged her with his beak. Honey its time to move the eggs around...

Katie looked like this quite a bit.

Boy! This dinosaur is huge Mom. I'm only standing next to the toenail!

Check them out! They're not going to fall out are they?

I think we found every resting place there was!

Or.... we were hanging on to something trying to get a closer look at all the weird animals

See!?! What'd I tell you? Doesn't he look funny?

We went on a 2 week long African Safari....I think if you look close enough you might be able to see the rig we traveled in the far distance.

Oops! Giraffe crossing! Gotta wait for them!

Nile crocodiles. Ewww! Did you know they can out run you and reach up to 25 m.p.h.? Guess I won't be poking them with a stick or anything.

Yay! Elephants! It wouldn't be a safari unless we saw one of those.

Ummmmm.....don't have my safari animal glossary with me....so....any guesses what they are?

Flamingos

Black rhinos....don't know what the difference between these guys and the white rhinos.....certainly not the color for that is the same.

I don't know what this is either....he looks starved though.

We were tired and hot. We thought we'd hop on the way out train and take a ride for a change from walking. Guess what! The conductor got all crabby at us. He claimed the ride was for transporting us to a different area of Animal Kingdom. It's for transportation! he yelled. It's NOT A RIDE! Yikes! We hopped off. We walked far enough down the trail for me to take a picture of this monkey. We then turned around and caught the next RIDE back.

All done....wait there's Capt'n Hook or somebody! I've gotta check him out! Ooooohh! check him out!

Tuesday night magic show

Getting to this computer consistently is nearly impossible! But here I am...back again for a short time. Tuesday evening we stayed at Give Kids the World (GKTW) for a magic show they were putting on. A group of professional magicians donates some of their time for charity. It was a cute show. They chose some of the kids from the audience to participate. Kyle had a great time up there!

Thumbs up! Nope...thumbs down. The magicians were trying to teach the audience a trick.

Making wise cracks to the participants.

Each guy was given a coloring book...Now...whose pages are colored? Whose are blank? The numbers stayed the same but the innards always seemed to change. Kyle's book was blank at the beginning by the end he had pictures AND they were colored. Kyle mumbled later....how did he do that? I never let go of my book!

A lot of slapstick humor the kids really enjoyed!

Universal Orlando

I forgot the camera on this day. All these are borrowed. The first ride of the day was the Hulk ride. Brent worked on the software for this ride. Even he had to ride it once AND he is NOT a ride guy! He was very green around the gills after this one. Didn't feel good all day.

The next stop was some loopy-loo spin me around ride. I can't stand them! Amber down to Aaron had a blast on it.

Camp Jurassic

These guys just hang around in the woods here. The little boys were concerned.

Another fun ride. This was an interesting one. The cast member yelled continuously: This is a children's ride! You must have a child accompany you shorter than this, he pointed to a line on a pole, to ride this ride. One adult came by and asked if he could borrow on of our kids so he could try it out.

If a person stood in front of this fountain too long, the mouth would squirt and enormous blast of water on you! It almost soaked Lea.

This "ride" was loud and scary. It was a walking tour through Poseidon's temple. The actors were looking for the lost trident to return to Poseidon. Of course the "bad" guy wanted it too and a huge war developed. It was similar to a haunted house experience.

One of our favorite places. Compared to the Magic Kingdom, there was very few people. It was easy to get around and a lot of fun rides and familiar characters the kids recognized.

I don't have a picture of it...but there was a ride called Sneetches in and Sneetches out. The kids loved it!

Disney World - Monday

This is Monday. Amber snapped this from the van.

We all were so excited to experience our first theme park. We decided to visit the Magic Kingdom. We were given 2 double strollers from Give Kids the World. They were useless. With our special pass, which hung on a lanyard, we were able to rent 2 doubles from the park free of charge. We discovered even that wasn't enough. Ideally we needed 2 doubles and a single for the best results. We slathered on the sunblock 50+ and away we went!

Crowds were intimidating for a group of 13. We figured we'd lose somebody before we covered 50 yards. What do you know, we did lose Henry the first store we stepped into. That first day was quite the learning experience for all of us. Yeesh!

Once we gathered our wits together...we sent Troy and Kyle to the haunted house ride and found It's a Small World for the others. Do you think Aaron looks straight off the farm? He was so fun to watch.

Henry never said a word on any ride. He usually wore a look like this.

Amber and Katie on the Dumbo Ride. Generally all rides had long lines to stand in. The waits averaged 45-80 minutes in time. We would flash our lanyard to a cast member at the ride or event we were interested in and were in the event or on the ride almost immediately.

On our way out we saw the afternoon parade. With a group like ours, we couldn't stay at the park from open to close. The little ones and Katie just couldn't hold up.

We would return to Give Kids the World and spend the afternoon at the pool.

Katie still had stitches from her shunt replacement the previous week and couldn't get completely wet. After this photo, she didn't have much interest in the pool.

After swimming it was always fun to stop at the Ice Cream Palace for....well what ever you might want at no charge! Ice Cream was unlimited so long as an adult was present.

L-R....Amber, Bryan, Katie, Kristine, Lea, Kyle

In the evening we went to the Epcot Center. Very interesting. This is typical of Nathan. Disney hat on and shamu in his mouth recharging for the next round of activities.

Epcot Center

This time we picked up 2 doubles and a single stroller. Aaron didn't have to walk miles of pavement. He's happy about that!

Lea and this man are trying to build an energy efficient city by shuffling discs around the playing board they're standing on. The kids enjoyed all the hands-on activities.