Sailing out of Miami

It was a stormy day as we left, but it made for great photos!!!  Nothing could dampen our excitement as we headed out of port!!!

I'm sailing away......

That title from one of my favourite Styx songs is quite appropriate as we have sailed away into the sunny Carribbean. We are currently on a cruise and having a great time!!! (No photos, though, until we get back to Florida)

We have been to Roatan, which is an island off the coast of Honduras, Belize in Central America, and Costa Maya, Mexico. Tomorrow is our last stop, Great Stirrup Key in the Bahamas.

The weather has been awesome and the cruise, amazing!!!!! (Best of all, no driving and no cooking!)

Thanks to everyone who has been sending us messages on our blog - we really enjoy reading them!!!!!!!!

A special thanks to our friend and travel agent, Barb (also the breeder of our wonderful dogs) who made all the last minute arrangements for us!!

We will have some great photos and updates when we get back to our travelling Home Sweet Home.

:)

Warm Welcome in West Palm

After all the excitement of Orlando,  we spent a few days in Kissimee.  (Plus, the campground in Disney was booked solid for the Thanksgiving weekend)  It is still only about half an hour from the Disney area, so still pretty close.

After this we headed for West Palm Beach, where we went to visit my former teaching partner, Miss Collins.  We had a great visit, and I even left the kids with David and had a sleep over in her beautiful home!!  She is still teaching down here and we even went for a visit at her school.  Should have left the kids with her for a while - she would have them whipped into shape in no time!!!!
While visiting West Palm Beach we actually stayed at the Lion Safari campground.  This is a huge animal park, and our trailer was about 200 yards away from where the lion section of the park was located.  We could hear them roar morning, noon and night.  The chimpanzees and howler monkeys were pretty loud, too!

One of the coolest things we got to do here was feed the giraffes.  We were up in a tower so we could look them right in their big, brown, beautiful eyes!  They have a 17 inch, prehensile tongue (that means they can grab with it - there's your word of the day!!)

The Boys Favourite Thing

This was one of Sean and David's favourite Disney places - DisneyQuest.  Five floors of video games, interactive games, virtual reality...... everything from Asteroids to Tron to the latest in video technology.  And it was all free. (Well, no quarters were needed)

It was just like being in high school and watching Keith and David play video games at the arcade!

Rianna and I did one where you create a roller coaster ride, putting together loops, twists and rolls, with the help of Bill Nye the Science Guy.  Then you take that program and they install it in a roller coaster seat. The course you created then plays on the screen in front of you, while you go upside down and turn around while sitting, strapped into your seats.

It was pretty cool, and nauseating at the same time!!!

Christmas Lights and golf

Don't those two things always go together?

We had a lovely round of golf at the Oak Trail course, we just had to look out for the wild turkeys running across the fairway (and I don't mean Sean)

Our favourite thing at Epcot centre was something called the Osborne Family Spectacle of Lights.  Some fellow in the US had so many lights that he put up on his house, and his neighbours' that he ran out of room.  He now has over 5 million lights, and puts them up at Disneyworld instead.  It is very beautiful!!!  There is a whole streetfront of buildings, covered in light.  They dance to music.

They even have "snow" that falls from the roof tops.  It actually made us feel a little homesick for a white Christmas.

Ha - silly me!!!  I don't really need cold and ice to make Christmas.

Favourite Rides

These are two of our favourite rides:  Everest and Toy Story Mania.

Everest is an amazing Roller Coaster ride.  The lines that you can see on the left side of the mountain is the roller coaster going up into the mountain.  It goes through the whole mountain, forwards and backwards and in the dark.  This ride is in the Animal Kingdom, and it looks amazing!!  It is surrounded by little huts and stores that look like they come from Nepal.

Toy Story Mania is a 3-D shooting ride where you collect points by hitting targets.  Our 40 minute wait time turned out to be a bit longer, but it was a really fun ride!

Many of the rides at Disneyworld are the same
as at Disneyland, but these were totally different and a lot of fun!!

Fun in Fort Wilderness

There were lots of things to do at Fort Widlerness!  Rianna and I went horse back riding, Sean tried his hand at archery.

We went for bike rides, and to the pool, and watched fireworks over the lake.  There was a really big dog run where we tried to make friends with lots of other dogs.