Hyatt Place Orlando/Lake Mary

... on the day of departure I actually cancelled my plans to go because of a cold front that was making its way through the Orlando area this weekend and that was bringing allot of mositure with it, and because I did not think it would have ended up being a good thing to be sleeping in a tent with two young kids in the pouring rain and with temperatures dipping down into the 40's.

After ...

... winter and hence clothed accordingly.On arriving at Orlando a warmer place , people kept giving us glances and some even smiled to ask where we were coming from which ,immedietly made us remove all the extra clothing we were wearing.I was glad to be here and waiting to take in some sun in the latter pat of our trip to Florida.We stayed at a place called Kissimmi , where the Disney World was situated.A small ...

... stream - see video below. Julie stood next to a huge stuffed alligator in a gift shop on international drive (see picture).

In the afternoon went to wet n wild and had another go on some rides. I carefully stayed out of the sun to give the sunburn chance to heal.

all told a lazy day .... but a nice one. Also had some chocolate covered pretzels... yum yum...

... In Grand Cayman we swam with the stingrays and in Cozumel we spent the afternoon at the all-inclusive Playa Mia beach resort. Upon our return from the cruise we had just a few days, again, to re-pack before flying up to Hampton, VA to visit Michelle's sister, Danielle, and their newborn baby, Madelyn Isabelle! Since they were getting ready to be stationed in Hawaii for a few years, we had all of the family come up to visit so we ...

... dark round planets and got our brains, back and eyeballs thoroughly rattled in the severe twists and turns. We rode the "Mad Hatters Tea Party' in spinning tea cups to calm our senses - spinning, yeah !!. We saw the night parade with all the floats and 'Sleeping Beauty Castle' lit up and then just caught 'The Pirates of the Caribbean' ride before the final, magical, mesmerising closing fireworks. We arrived at 10am and left at 9.30pm exhausted. The Disney organisation ...

... and Aladdin are my two favorite Disney movies. The line went by pretty quickly and I just wish they'd do more with the pre-show. Disney's usually great with pre-shows but this one sucks. Everyone just squishes into a huge room and stands there while an audio track plays the voices of Mickey and Minnie. Boring. At least it was only a fifteen-minute wait before we were taking our seats. I can't even describe how much I absolutely LOVE this show. I LOVE IT! A ...

... got separated... and I needed to take a cab back. Or something. When I got back in the car I asked why everyone was rushing me out of the store after only five minutes, and it was because Mike wasn't feeling well. What else was new? That kid had a stomachache every three hours the entire trip! We headed back to the house and were home by 8:00. Dad, Mike and I watched "The Wedding Singer" on VH1 until 9:00, when we watched the voting results episode of "So You ...

... where the water taxis leave for the Universal resorts. This came in handy since we would be visiting the Universal resorts in a few days. When we got to Universal Studios the lines weren't too bad to get into the park, and we were swiping our cards and entering in no time. We walked through the Universal Studios store on the left side of the park to stay in the air conditioning for a little while and then we exited right near Shrek 4D ...

... at 8:30, and we were seated within ten minutes. We had awesome seats! We were right on the left side of the theater, one level up from the floor. They were category 3 seats and I couldn't imagine why anyone would pay so much more money for category 1 seats in such a small theater. We wouldn't want to be on the floor, anyway, since most of the show takes place in the air. The only problem was that the seats were really small. Dad was sitting on the ...

... had to go down a shell hill to get to the sandy part of the beach. mom was playing in the sand and wrote happy 12th birthday jeff in the sand. on our back into orlando i had to work on my biology homework. we passed some funny named streets. like fruitville. we got to see a forest fire.