Family Vacation to Florida

We traveled down to Orlando the week of our first anniversary, not only to celebrate, but also to spend a little time with my mom, 2 of my brothers (Greg and Drew) and Greg's girlfriend Hannah. When we arrived in FL we were being threatened with two hurricanes (Hanna and Ike) Hanna luckily hit way north of us while we were driving down, and Ike went into the Gulf and it did not affect our weather at all (little did we know what we had in store the day we returned to Columbus).

We arrived Sunday to a gorgeous house about 10 minutes away from Disney World. The house was so amazing, it was in a gated community, and it had 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, and a private pool outside on our back deck, along with a full kitchen and cooking supplies - all for less than 6 people could stay at a hotel per night.

Monday Rich and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary, we got a rental car (convertible PT cruiser) and we went to a place called 'Old Town' - easiest way to describe it is think of the State Fair add about 50 more stores you can look around in, and that's old town, one big midway.

Tuesday we all went to Disney World - Epcot. It was amazing as well! We explored the different nations of the world, we even got to eat at an authentic Oktoberfest, of which we had entertainment and really really yummy food! The entertainers played the alp horns, bells, sang, and even toasted us for our anniversary! We also walked through Japan, Morocco, Mexico, Norway, all very authentic to the actual place - they only had people working in the certain areas that were from that place, we learned a lot about culture and the people that were from there.










Wednesday, Mom and I rested at the house and spent a little girl time together by going to Disney's boardwalk, and downtown Disney. While the boys and Hannah went out to Disney for the third day in a row.




Thursday Rich, Mom and I went to Sea World Orlando - Talk about AMAZING!! We got to hand feed sting rays, sea otters and could have fed dolphins however we kept missing the time slot. We also got to see the amazing Shamu in his water show!! We also saw, penguins, sharks (that stalked you when you walked by), and manatees. It rained on and off today, but luckily we were inside or undercover whenever the weather was acting up! Rich also rode a ride called "The Kracken" - I could not due to the pregnancy. He loved it, and wanted to ride it over again.









Thursday night we all had a little fun going putt putt golfing! While Rich tried attacking me with his tongue. YUCK!



Friday we started packing everything back up to get ready to come back home, we returned our awesome convertible to the car shop, and spent a little time together at downtown Disney, where my brother Greg decided to propose to his girlfriend. We then went and had a celebratory dinner at Outback.

At last it was time to come back to Columbus, and get back to the daily grind of things, not that any of us really wanted to. We climbed into our van Saturday morning at 5am and said goodbye to beautiful weather, and took with us a lot of good memories.

We arrived back in Columbus Sunday just in time for the worst of the remnants of Hurricane Ike to blow us away.

Evolution is Dead??

Today I found out that NASA has found water on Mars, and has extended their mission 2 months to explore longer. So, that made me ask the question, if Mars has water and they can't find anything that proves there was, is, or will be life doesn't that kind of disprove the theory of evolution??

So I did an inquiry on Google "No life on Mars+disproves theory of evolution" and found this article - I read a excerpt from this book "Evolution Dead" and found it rather interesting --- "Are we to believe that this thing called 'evolution', which has given earth such a sophisticated organ as the human brain as far back as two million years ago, has to this date not managed to put forth on Mars so much as a dumb a**? Are we to believe that the same evolution which has given earth living creatures the size of dinosaurs 200 million years ago has in a staggering four and a half billion years not given Mars even simple one-celled organisms? Are we to believe that this glorious evolution which has to this date given earth an astronomical total of literally millions upon millions of plant and animal species has in the same period not given Mars even one species of plant or animal?"

Check out the website the book is located at: http://evolutiondead.com/mainline.php

People up north are RUDE!

For Richard's birthday this year we decided to take a trip up to CT to see his brother and sister in-law. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into.

First every store in Clinton, CT only seems to accept cash - have they not heard of something called the debit card?? We went to the beach and had to pay to swim, that is if you dared to swim once you got to the beach front... There were jellyfish everywhere and the beach was DIRTY!!!

On the day of Rich's birthday we went out on Brian's boat and that was fun, except it was very very chilly, and there were jellyfish EVERYWHERE again, definitely not like boating off Florida shores. Rich was going to tube but thought better of it.


Saturday we went into New York city, the day started off kind of rough with Jodi having to tell a McDonald's working to stop yelling at her because she didn't know if Brian wanted cheese on his sandwich or not, and was trying to ask Rich, however the day turned out to be a blast, except it was EXTREMELY busy!!! Everywhere you turned there were more people!!

And what exactly does it mean to "curb your dog"??

Sunday we took a trip to a Submarine Museum - that was fun, and we got to go down into the USS Nautilus, and then pretty much rested the rest of the day because we were still all worn out from NYC.

Monday we headed back into Columbus, not without problems of course. Our car broke down in the middle of New Jersey Jodi's car kept blowing off the oil filter cover and literally dumping all the oil out of the engine onto the ground, so needless to say 3 hours, 2 oil changes, a 95 dollar cab ride, and a 14 dollar part from the nearest Chevy dealership we were back on our way home, morning sick mommy and all.

First Entry

I'm sure once we get a hang of this it will be utilized very well! I have to figure out how to use it, and then show Rich - along with our new baby on the way I'm sure it will be a great tool for family to use so they can be kept updated.