Orlando!

In early January, Bryan and I went on a "second honeymoon" to Orlando, Florida! We had a great trip. The weather was warm enough during the day for shorts and t-shirts and comfortably cool at night. We also had a couple of short thunderstorms. Bryan's parents and sister Rachel so graciously watched the boys for us. We were there for 3 full days, and tried to keep it cheap (the flights were free from a JCPenney's promotion, our hotel was discounted if we went to a timeshare talk, and we got free tickets to Disney World from the timeshare and to Sea World from our neighbors who work for Anheuser-Busch--thanks Andrew & Bethany!). When we got to our hotel, Bryan asked if they had any "second honeymoon free upgrades," and they put us in the penthouse suite!

Our first day there, we spent the morning attending the timeshare talk. Of course the place was beautiful, but we didn't even consider buying anything--we just wanted the discounted trip! At least we got an amazing brunch out of it, and our "tour guide" wasn't too heavy on sales-pressure tactics. After a nap at the hotel, we went to Downtown Disney and went into some shops. We also explored Disney Quest--kind of like a big indoor arcade and virtual reality gaming place. It was fun--Bryan and I played a lot of video games against each other (he won the wrestling/fighting games, I won the shooting games), but going on Aladdin's magic carpet ride made us a little motion sick (it didn't even move--it just felt like it!) We also went to Lego land and took these photos.

This is what we (and the Lego people) are all looking at--a sea creature in the water, constructed of Legos. Amazing!

Here we are the next day at Epcot Center. We went to a 3-D show called, "Honey, I Shrunk the Audience," which was pretty cool. I had been sick throwing up all night before, so we took it easy this day and tried to take things slow at Epcot. We decided to go back to the hotel early evening.

We did have a nice lunch out at Cafe Marrakesh in Morocco, complete with live music and a belly dancer! We also ran into Jasmine and Aladdin!

We took this photo for Eli--when he saw it, his eyes got all wide and his jaw dropped, "Can I go there?" We'll have to take the kids there when they're old enough to enjoy it more!
The famous Epcot ball. We had a really fun day. One of my favorite things was listening to a concert of "The Voices of Liberty," a group of 8 very talented acapella singers, in the rotunda area of colonial America. They wore period-style dress and sang patriotic songs. It was amazing!

Our last day we went to Sea World. Here we are modeling our new Christmas presents from my parents--our lovely sunglasses--thanks, Mom and Dad!


Sea World has some great shows, we really enjoyed the dolphin show, the acrobatics show, and the seal show (the mime was hilarious!). There is also a roller coaster called Kraken, that Bryan and I rode once together, and after I started feeling sick, Bryan rode about 4 more times! The park wasn't too crowded so there was no waiting in lines!


Notice the rainbow and the beautiful sunset.

The grand finale of the evening was, of course, Shamu!

Hopefully we won't wait another 7 years before taking another trip together. We really enjoyed our vacation and each other! :)