Holiday Inn Lakeland-South, Fl

... the tower. I went off to view Pinewood Estate (which was, unfortunately, not open because they are preparing it for the holidays) and drifted along a few paths. Given the time of year, very little was in bloom, but it was still pleasant. The temperature was perfect, and the breeze made it ideal.<br><br>The Tower was interesting to view from the outside, but it would have been nice to get closer and to see inside. Still, I circled it a couple of times and paused ...

... only one lady actually, we'll give them a break.<br><br>The main event of the week was the buildup to halloween - a huge affair state side - like almost on a par with christmas in terms of decorating houses with lights and all the adverts in shops for candy and pumpkins etc! Amazing to see and there is definitely excitement in the air leading up to the big trick or treat night. We certainly added to the excitement as this was our first real halloween experience ever and ...

... sat down earlier!<br> We got settled in to our seats. The bathroom was conveniently only 2 rows away, although, as it turns out I only used in once. That's a miracle! 10 hours and I only peed once!!! This could be due to the fact that the one time that I was in there (it was about 3 or 4 hours into the plane ride), the bathroom was so disgusting that I vowed never to return!! It reeked! After that, everytime that the door wasn't closed ...

The rough plan of our trip is as follows...<br><br>Thursday morning, we drive to Orlando and fly to Baltimore. Hopefully, we will get a military flight right out of BWI. There may be one Late PM on Thursday. If we can't get on that one, we will stay the night in Baltimore and head to McGuire AFB, NJ on Friday. It looks like there may be three flights from McGuire to ...

... Bed Bath &amp; Beyond. Must travel with a neck pillow on long flights!<br> Back at Gram's, Conrad is working with Bruce doing fix-it stuff. Owning your own hostel allows you to learn how to fix stuff, whether you wanted to know it or not! I took pictures so that everyone could get an idea of what Gram's ...

... bed (at least I hope)!<br> So we headed to my parents' house to say goodbye. There we got to meet George, the CUTEST little chihauha (is that spelled right)? He is SO CUTE!! I want to take him home with us when we get back. Mom &amp; Dad are just fostering him, but I told her that I want him when we get home ...

... plane, which has cute shamrocks painted on the wings, and saw that the cute seats and the cute carpet and the cute little flight attendant frocks are all emerald green, I sat in my cute window seat and the pilot came on the PA and spoke first in Irish and then said &#8220;Good day ladies and lads.&#8221; I think I giggled out loud with excitement. It also doesn&#8217;t hurt that I have both seats in my row to myself. In fact, now that I&#8217;m looking ...

Friends-- thank you all so much for your support time and time again! Here's the vital update... The total amount that I need to raise so that I may participate in this trip is approximately $3,500. However, it has come to our recent attention that because of the rising costs of airfare I need to have at least ...

... back to the hotel, we went down to the spa again to work out. There was this one anorexic woman there that was there every single time we went. We were all wanting to go stand over by her and eat some cheesecake! Poor woman, bless her heart. That evening, we went over to Toby Keith's place at Harrahs for dinner and then gambled a bit. We all broke even - oh well, guess back to work for all of us on Monday! Friday, we had to leave early, so we decided to head over to the ...

... luggage drop off, we parked both of our vehicles in the parking deck and were off to check in.<br> <br>We arrived at the embarkation area right at Noon. Yes, this means that there was a very large line. The staff worked very quickly and the only hold up was the people not reading signs at the metal detectors and slowing everyone down. In less than 45 minutes, we were checked in with ...