As most of you know, my parents are in the middle of a move to Roanoke, VA. My mom was transferred there for her job, and they have been going through the painful process of selling their house in this horrible economy. It looks like they are going to take a buyout from her company and my dad will probably be moving in with us for a few months until he can get a job down there.

Joe and I recently took a trip down to Florida, and on our way we dropped in for a few days so my mom could show us around. We got to eat at a pretty good Brazilian restaurant, and got to see the sites, including a lot that my uncle bought (at least my parents won’t be alone).

My mom took us up to “the star” which is this big attraction.

That’s her and the view.  Aw. Mommy.  :(

And there is the star. It lights up at night. My mom was yelling at me while I was taking this shot because apparently the place where I was standing wasn’t a very safe place to stand (there was a bit of a drop). But I gotta get me a good shot!

After we saw the star, we went downtown and visited the market. Every Saturday they have all sorts of vendors from the area set up shop downtown and sell stuff – lots of veggies, and arts and crafts. It was fun. Plus we got to see the bedazzled car:

I particularly enjoyed the license plate. This was a car that belonged to one of the people selling items. I believe she was selling mosaics. Go figure.

On Monday we all packed up the Element once again and back-tracked north to Orlando. Mom had already made reservations for the Disney Caribbean Resort. Having left her driver’s license back home, and my brother overnighting it down to the hotel, we needed to get there early to pick up the package. Everything went pretty successfully, and we even got to meet a three year old alligator when we went to pick up the tickets for Universal.

The guy from Gatorland said that they can grow about a foot a year. He said that even at this size, they can do some pretty good damage. Hence the very effective rubber-band muzzle.

Since we wasted a good deal of the day traveling and sorting things out, we decided we would use our two waterpark and more tickets and go to Downtown Disney.

While wandering, my dad ran into an old friend and business associate. I think they used to manufacture springs or something…

We also stumbled upon some giant Lego sculptures, where my mom got to spend some time with some Lego dogs. Degos. Legogs.

And Joe got eaten by a Lego Shark.

But what we were really there for, was to go to DisneyQuest, an “indoor interactive theme park”, and sheer disappointment. We thought it sounded really great. A roller coaster you can build yourself, other interactive booths, games, a virtual jungle cruise. Boooo. It was only a glorified arcade, not worth the time or money. One thing to stay away from if you find yourself there: Ride the Comix, which is supposed to be a virtual reality game that puts you in the shoes of a comic book superhero. It is completely and utterly lame, but aside from that, the attendants don’t spray down the helmets or anything. The helmet itself almost had all of us throwing up because it smelled so badly and there was other people’s sweat running into our mouths. One of the most disgusting things I have ever encountered.

The most enjoyable ride was the Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for Buccaneer Gold. I’m not just saying that because I’m a pirate, either. We had fun. I got to be the captain of the ship (and rightly so), and I also manned 2 cannons when needed (try steering a ship and shooting a cannon some time – not the easiest task in the world). It was crazy insane fun. We did so well blowing up ships and gathering booty that we got the highest rank you can get.

That night we headed over to Pleasure Island to go to the Comedy Warehouse. It was super-lame improv comedy. There were two comedians who weren’t too bad, but they couldn’t be as funny as they probably would have been because they had the “Disney Restraints”. After the disappointment there, we headed over to the Adventurer’s Club, which was an audience-participation comedy club. It was a lot better than the Comedy Warehouse, although, I enjoyed the pre-show comedians better than the show itself.  We’ve theorized that the key to enjoying anything in Pleasure Island is being drunk.  Not being very big drinkers (I think I had 2 whole drinks the entire vacation), we didn’t enjoy much.

We then went back to our hotel room. Four adults sharing one room. Aside from the close quarters, my dad was snoring so loudly that neither Joe nor I got any sleep. In fact, at 1am we drove to the lobby of the hotel (it was a large resort) and asked what the rates were for the rooms.

Me having only gotten 1 hour total sleep that night and Joe having gotten no sleep at all, we registered an additional room for the following two nights to make our stay more comfortable.

Stay tuned for more Florida vacation stories…

Of course, upon arriving in Florida and making a trip to the nearby grocery store, we immediately realized that something was setting us apart from the locals: Our pasty white exterior. To remedy this, of course we needed to make a trip to the beach. So we all hopped in the Element and ventured out.

What a perfect day. The sun was out, it was bright. There were no clouds in the sky – well, maybe one. We all got a good head start on our tans.

We even went in the water, despite the scary Man-O-War warnings.

The worst were the Rip Currents, which were pulling us all around, and almost pulled my bathing suit off with them. At one point I surfed on a wave, and realized the top of my bathing suit had come up and I was being exposed. Luckily I was still under water, so I fixed myself before anyone else noticed.

When we were too tired to fight the water any more, and too baked to fight the sun, we went back home to make lasagna for Joe’s older brother and his wife. We would have made some for little Byron, but I think his teeth might need to develop a teensy bit more. It was Joe’s first time making lasagna, so my dad supervised. It turned out pretty good, despite Joe’s lack of restraint while adding the ricotta cheese.

That night, we had a special visitor: One of the local wildlife attached itself to the window above the front door. We all had a lot of fun trying to take pictures of it without it jumping on us. It had a lot of colors, and we could tell that it was most likely poisonous.

We left Pennsylvania last night at 8:30pm and arrived at our destination (Sebastian) in Florida at 12:30pm today. It was a long drive. After a quick lunch by the river at Capt Hiram’s, we all took a nap until dinner, when we went to Joe’s older brother’s house.

Joe got to meet his new (and very first) nephew, Byron Bruce Camp. In the picture you can see Byron doing what he does best: Sleeping.

Mister Boogalow has decided to make use of the large tree branch that fell in our yard this past winter.  He has made it his perch to look over the yard, and make sure no baddies try to infiltrate our house.  The thing that got me, was just the way he sits so perfectly.  It looks like it is his throne or something.  Like he is the Lord of the backyard.  Lord Boogalow.