Road Trip: Florida Week

Hey everyone!  Sorry I dropped the blog the rest of the trip, but something had to give, you know?  The up side is that I've got pictures now!

We left off where we made it to Florida, dropped Becca off and stayed in a tent.  Oh, and the river.  Here's a few pics from before:

 This is the end of our tent adventure in Albuquerque.

 This is pretty much all Micah wanted to do in Oklahoma

 Cool giant Superman statue we saw in Illinois.

 Awesome art museum in Nashville.

 Cool park where we played in Nashville.

 Becca getting all her stuff together at Teen Missions Boot Camp.

 Posing when done getting her stuff...because it's Becca and there is a camera involved.

 Becca's tent with a buddy at Teen Missions.

 Zoe swimming at the river.

The Wekiwa River in Florida

Okay, I didn't take the pictures at the river, my mom did.  I was relaxing in my tube.

What happened next?  We decided to go down to Fort Pierce to an Aquarium and beach down there.  It was really great...and cheap.  Finding cheap things to do in a place filled with amusement parks isn't easy, but the challenge was fun.

 The coolest thing about this aquarium was that there were all sorts of activities for the kids to explore and learn about the underwater environment.  The kids loved the hands-on stuff.

After that we went to the beach...and didn't have to move the car at all.  There was a park with grass right behind the building and a beach right in front of it.  I'd heard that there was a museum right there by, but the kids really wanted to go play at the beach, so we had some lunch in the car and then headed out to the sand. 

 Zoe really wanted me to take a picture of her and the coconuts...this is what I could do.

This is the end of the parking lot at the beach/aquarium.

Okay, so I can't find the actual beach photos...I took them on my mom's phone, so they are probably out of reach.  I know you all want to see how awesome my kids were at the beach...sorry.

After we left the beach...because a storm rolled in...we went back to the tent site and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows.

The next day, we decided to go do the only theme park type thing that we were planning on doing...on the cheap.  We went to Downtown Disney.  The kids loved walking through the stores. I'd given them all $10 gift cards that I had earned through the Disney Movie Rewards program.  They were so excited!  I ended up padding the gift cards just a bit because they all wanted $15 stuffed characters, but still, the whole shopping trip ended up costing $15 plus a bit of tax...well, and my stuff that I bought for my nephew who loves Disney.  It was still pretty cheap considering the fact that it was Disney World.

The whole adventure was awesome.  The kids loved messing around at "Disney World."  I'm pretty sure that they would have had a blast if we could have afforded the whole experience, but for now we had some great fun with what we had.

 Rides at Downtown Disney!

The next day, we decided to go to the Harry P. Leu Gardens in Orlando.  My kids love gardens, so I was pretty sure that this adventure would be a winner as well.  I wasn't disappointed.

 Ali saw this lizard's neck and begged me to wait for him to do it again and get a picture.  We sat for 5 minutes just watching this lizard.

 Zoe is pretending to be a princess leaning over the columns.

 Ali is just sitting in the Butterfly Garden waiting to be covered by butterflies...it happened in her imagination.

 This is the house on the grounds.  It's only available when they do tours.  The tour guide was really nervous when I walked in with 3 kids.  At the end she admitted it and complimented them on how well they listened and asked intelligent questions and didn't touch anything!

Ali really wanted to touch this awesome doll house!  She was so good about keeping her hands behind her back.

 Back outside where they could explore some more nature!

The kids had a great time!  It's so great to see my kids love a place that is so much about the wonders of God's creation and not just cartoons that they like.

The next day was Friday.  We decided that since it was raining like crazy (the tropical storm was coming) that we would try out the indoor flea markets that day.  We also tried a mall in Kissimmee.  It was a dud as far as malls go, but the parking lot was interesting.

Good times.  We ended up going to see Brave that day just so we could be inside in air conditioning.  The movie was good.  Micah said he wants to help me blog my review later...we'll get to it eventually.

The next morning was clear (right before the deluge started), so we decided to look for a place to go for a hike.  I'm going to point out that it was Saturday just because the next part is really irritating.  We kept finding hiking trails that were CLOSED FOR THE WEEKEND!  Who closes stuff like that for the weekend?  We drove for hours until we finally came to a interesting...okay, lame...place called Orchid World.  It wasn't a total bust because the kids enjoyed feeding the koi...but other than that it was pretty lame.

 Yes, that is a wall that is painted to look like a rainforest in the back.  It's not a very big place, not as many orchids as you may think, and the outside of the place looked a lot more like a rainforest than the inside...but hey, they had a koi pond and you could feed the fish.

The rain started again and we ended up back at the KOA that night in the Klubhouse watching TV...good times.

Sunday was fun...okay, not really.  The morning was filled with being soaked while we packed up everything in a tropical storm.  Yep, folding up the tent in wind and rain.  It was not so fun.  Also, the KOA was having their bathrooms remodeled, so we all had to wait our turn for a warm shower afterward in a cabin that they opened.  They opened 2 cabins for the entire site...it was a long wait...in the rain.

We then traveled to go get Becca.  It's about an hour and a half to get to her from us and we had no where else to be...even though we ended up getting there really early.  We didn't know that the whole thing wouldn't be over until 9pm.  I would have dropped my mom and the kids off at the resort we were staying at that night and made the trip out myself, but we just didn't know what was going on.

Picking up Becca was a long and great experience.  She was involved in the commissioning service that night, which is a really great experience.  She is making a video to share about her experience at Teen Missions, so I'll let her tell you about it...but I did take a few pics (and so did Micah and each of the twins...I'll let you guess which is which) that I'll share now.

Okay, so then we went to the big commissioning service, which Becca will tell you about later.  After that (it was almost 10pm) we started the hour and a half drive to the resort.  We didn't do much there but sleep because we had to leave by noon the next day and it was pouring outside.  We did have breakfast and lunch nice and hot cooked on a stove...a real treat.

We quickly left Florida after that (as quick as one can in the pouring rain with limited visibility) and the rest I will tell you about later!