STS--Disney: Day 1 Animal Kingdom

We arrive in Orlando after a few days at the beach and prepare to visit our first Disney Park on Saturday. We begin our adventure at Animal Kingdom. First stop is the Safari ride that will take us past the animal habitats. We see rhinos, elephants, zebras, crocodiles, ostrich...it's a good start. Or so we think. Once we get off of this "ride," we decide to stroll through some of the Gorilla habitat. This makes Cory less than happy. He lets us know quite plainly that "this is not what I expected! When will we ride roller coasters?"

At this point, he was clearly NOT impressed with Disneyworld. After seeing the gorillas, we oblige Cory and head towards Animal Kingdom's only thrill ride. Somehow Cory meets the size requirements for Expedition Everest. Lucy, Riley and I hang back while Ted, Mary Beth and Cory get in line. I see one of the descents and turns that they're about to take and begin to wonder if Cory should really be on this ride. They come out of it all with their eyes as big as saucers. It had some unexpected thrills, even for Ted. But they seemed to all enjoy it and were eager for more. Unfortunately for Cory, that would be about it in terms of "rides" at Animal Kingdom. There was one other ride, similar to Magic Kingdom's Dumbo that he could go on, but it paled in comparison. However, he seemed okay with it, now that he had ridden his first real roller coaster.

We took in a couple of 3-D shows, which were frightening to Lucy, even though she didn't wear the special glasses. However, she loved the parade, and spent the whole time waving to all of the characters who came by--distance is good.

She also enjoyed identifying the enormous and beautiful puppets that were part of the parade. Some of the puppeters had a hard job, if you ask me.

While here, we were also able to say hello to a few characters. We chatted with Jiminy Cricket

and Pluto, who was obviously very tickled--I bet Mary Beth was tickling him--look, she even looks guilty. It was a good first day, even if it got off to a rocky start. Besides all this, we also saw a Komodo Dragon (which, strangely enough, had come up in our school work last month a couple of times) and dug for "dinosaur bones." And when all was said and done, we were all bone tired ourselves. Time to rest up for tomorrow--MAGIC KINGDOM!

STS--St. Augustine, Florida

Months before we had any idea we'd be going to Florida this spring, I read an article in Family Fun magazine singing the praises of a day trip to St. Augustine. When we began planning out our trip, I remembered the recommendation and pulled out the old magazine to show Ted. At that point, neither of us was sure if this would be plausible, but we kept it in consideration as we did more planning.

As it turned out, the first condo we rented was just an hour or so away from St. Augustine. Also, in a serendipitous sort of way, the weekend before we left I attended a fundraising auction put on by the Spouses' Club here. Among the many items available in the silent auction were 4 tickets for an Old Town Trolley tour good in several different cities, to include St. Augustine. For a mere $15 I won those tickets (worth over $70), and the plans started getting firmer. We would only need to buy one more ticket, since children under 5 ride free. Yay us.

We head out for St. Augustine and navigate our way to a trolley station. Once on board, we head to our first stop, The Old Jail. The kids were apparently immediately identified as criminal...

But they must have made good with the sheriff, because they were later seen hanging out with him (or maybe he was just keeping a really close eye on them).

We had tickets for a tour, which was done by an interpreter in character. Our particular guide was a "Deputy." Lucy was not too sure about this strange guy who was fairly intimidating. When he led us into the dark, dank jail she was really all done. We tried hard to console her, but she would not be calmed, so eventually I led her out. He told some interesting tales, which I assumed to be historically correct. The kids enjoyed some of the outdoor displays of various punishments. The birdcage was probably their favorite. We all took a turn inside it.

Peek-a-boo Lucy!

After this we left, stopping at an old drug store (not as interesting as the locals made it out to be, but, hey, it was free, so no biggie), and then we walked over to an open air pedestrian mall area with shops, restaurants, and some museums. We visited the first one-room wooden school house, and the kids took turns ringing the bell. That was quite annoying--and of course, every child (including ours) who comes through thinks they need to ring it, too.

After lunch we walked across the street to Castillo de San Marcos. This Spanish fort was built to protect St. Augustine from English expansion and is the oldest masonry fortification in the U.S. Cory loved this place with all the cannons, even though by now he was pretty whiny about all the walking.

We proceeded to wait for a trolley, which took much longer than we expected. Long enough that we eventually decided to walk back to the trolley stop where the van was. Along the way Lucy started doing somersaults. Funny kids.

It was a good trip--beautiful day, interesting sites. If you are ever in the area we recommend you spend some time checking it out.

GATLIN STS Mission update

It's been a couple of days since we've been able to post any new photos or trip details. That's because we're on vacation, and while on vacation we are making sure to spend every waking second having fun (the kids probably think this term is used out of place) and taking in the sights. That means that by the time we have the kids in bed, we only have about an hour before we, ourselves, are passed out from exhaustion. And let's face it, Ted and I, being the Type A personalities that we are, have to plan the next day, so that leaves little time for extraneous things. But for our 14 faithful followers, here's a quick post with a few pictures.

We left the beach (collective sigh) for Disney (much rejoicing from the 10 and under crowd). I loved the beach. Much more than I thought I would. Of course, we did have an ocean front condo, with a heated pool only steps from our door. If I could live like that all the time, I would. Hurricanes and all. But until then, sign me up for this vacation every year.

While on the East coast, we visited St. Augustine, the oldest European settlement in America. This really deserves a separate post. Until then, I'll tease you with this fun picture.

Thanks to our handy dandy iPhone with the geocaching app we purchased for it, we've been able to do quite a bit of geocaching, as well.

This app is really fantastic--we can geocache at the spur of the moment--checking for a cache while we're sightseeing, and then logging our find immediately after finding it. It has let us cache completely "green." The best example of this is a cache we found while eating ice cream and waiting for our trolley. Cory said, "Hmm...I wonder if there are any caches around here." Ted pulled out his iPhone on the quick draw, and checked the app. Immediately, he saw on the map that there was one right next to our park bench. And just like that, we signed the physical log, and logged our find on the electronically on the website. Bam-no papers, no research, no nothin'!

Today was our first day at a Disney park. The pictures are not yet downloaded, and there's just so much to say, that I'll save that for another day.

GATLIN STS Day 4 (before the launch)

Our trip to watch the shuttle launch put us on the road on Easter morning. Some of our traditional activities were difficult to do, but we did try to mark the day with a few special activities that we could take on the road. We started the morning making Resurrection buns for breakfast.

Mary's "tomb" is ready to go in the pan and be baked.

While our resurrection buns baked we had an Easter egg hunt in the condo. We had to be a little creative with our Easter "baskets" since there wasn't really room in the van for them. So, a couple of sand buckets, Daddy's hat, and an activity box did the trick.

The kids were very excited. To make it easy for them, they each have a certain egg color to find...we hide Lucy's fairly obviously and Riley's are hidden well.

After opening all their eggs and discovering the Easter Bunny brought them money for souvenirs it was time to check on our Resurrection bun "tombs." Before they ate them, I gave each kid the most valuable egg of the bunch and had them all open it at the same time...

Like the Resurrection buns, this egg was empty. He is risen!

Then, it seemed like a fun idea to go hang out at the beach for a few hours.

After that we headed to a Wal-Mart for some last minute things we would need for the launch, and then, as I mentioned yesterday, we settled in for a few hours of sleep. A good Easter. We missed church, although I did stumble upon a sunrise service on the beach when I went out for an early morning walk. The kids won't have fancy Easter pictures this year...don't think that's what it's all about, though, so it will be okay.

GATLIN STS Days 4 and 5!

The real STS! The launch was scheduled for 6:21 a.m. Doesn't sound too bad, until you consider exactly what times you actually have to leave to be in place by then. Here's the run down of our day/night/day.

7:00p.m. We had the kids in bed with strcit instructions not to come out and tell us they couldn't go to sleep.

8:30p.m. After some last minute packing and organizing Ted and I were in bed.

11:30p.m. The alarms wake us up. We had put the kids to bed in their clothes so that all we had to do was lift them out of bed and get them to the van.

12:15a.m. We were on the road heading south to Kennedy Space Center.

1:00a.m. We arrived at KSC and made our way into the Space Center. We wandered around the park, found some snacks and looked at some exhibits--especially the walk through a shuttle. Ted and the kids rode the Space Shuttle Experience which was a big hit for all of them, and really gave them a perspective of the upcoming event.

3:00a.m. We get in the lines to board the buses which would take us to the launch viewing sites.

This was chaos--there were TONS of people, and all with different ticket colors indicating different viewing sites. It was also very slow. While waiting for the buses, we saw a raccoon and a possum roaming around the Space Center grounds--that was a fun diversion. We finally boarded a bus and headed to the viewing site.

4:30a.m. We are at the viewing site, and we settle in for our next wait. Lucy found a way to get comfortable and slept on one of our chairs.

The big kids laid out on blankets and played DS's and Gameboys.

And we all took turns looking at the launch pad (which was over 6 miles away) through the binoculars.

See the white light in the picture? That's the space shuttle--far, far away.

While we waited we heard some of the radio communication between launch control, the shuttle, and others. At one point, during the 45 minute hold that happens 9 minutes before lift off (see if that makes any sense) we heard the dreaded "No Go." Apparently some radio somewhere wasn't working right. It was at this point that I did some serious praying. It had been a long night, and, although I was very much looking forward to seeing a launch, I just wasn't sure we would be able to come back another night and do this all over again. About ten minutes later the problem was cleared and they were back to "Go" There was a lot of cheering.

6:21a.m. An ON-TIME launch! Unbelievable on so many levels. The launch was great. It was very, very bright. We were told we'd see it before we heard it, and even though we both completely understand there is a difference between the speed of sound and light, we were still surprised at just how long it was before we heard any noise.

It was about 30-40 seconds before we heard the sound--go ahead, count for 30 seconds while you imagine watching something shooting up into the sky. So, Lucy slept through the lift off--but, 40 seconds in she was awakened by the noise. :) Can't say she was impressed.

We were. (thanks, NASA for a great picture)

6:45a.m. After this, we boarded our buses while we watched the sun rise. Eventually we made it back to Kennedy Space Center. Ted bought a hot dog (because, what else would you have for breakfast after being up all night long?) and we hung out a little longer before beginning the trek back to our condo. 10:00a.m. We're back at the condo. Ted and I were completely exhausted and ready for a long nap. The kids, on the other hand weren't. Therefor, before long we were all out on the beach. And later that afternoon we were able to join other friends and family of Jim Dutton at a reception. It was the TIME of our lives.

GATLIN-STS Day 2

Williamsburg in Numbers

540--the number of weapons displayed in the Governor's Palace. Cory loved them

2--The number of nails the blacksmith can pound out in a minute

At least 6--the number of refills we got on our $10 mug. Had to get our money's worth!

Greater than 20--the number of times we had to take kids to the bathroom because of the unlimited refills on drinks (were the refills, then, really worth it?)

4--the number of people in America who still make wigs by hand. She is one of the 4.

Too many to count--the number of times we had to stop for Lucy to either get rocks out of her shoes or collect rocks in her admission tag...

Notice Lucy's admission tag compared to one of the others--hers is emptied of the ticket, and in its place are her rocks.

75--today's high in Williamsburg--making it a perfect day to visit!