More pictures...

Okay, this scrapbook site is getting very addicting! And it's so easy!

Here's a card I made for my mom with all the grandchildren. She is going to love it!



Then I made a Thank You card for my cousin Deb who helped us out so much in Ft. Lauderdale when we were on our cruise. I sent this card and a box of cookies through Send Out Cards. I can't wait to hear that she got them!

Our Orlando Trip!

Our trip was AMAZING! This is most definitely the absolute best trip we have ever taken. We all had so much fun and wish that we cold have stayed a few more days... Becca took over 2,500 pictures! No, that isn't a typo! She had purchased a new digital camera before we left and a 2 GB disc that would hold tons of pictures. Each day, she took over 500 pictures and would return to the hotel and download them to her laptop. The hard part is going to be sorting through them all to decide which ones to print! lol!

First of all a HUGE thank you to Make A Wish for making Becca's dream come true. Her wish was to swim with the dolphins. When she asked for this wish, we thought that we'd get one or two days at the ocean and she'd just swim along beside the dolphins. But MAW sent us first to Discovery Cove in Orlando. This place is amazing! We all 4 got to swim with and feed our own personal dolphin, Tyler, and do some tricks with him.


Here are some pictures of Discovery Cove where we went on our first day. Just click on each picture and it will open in a window full size so you can see the detail... some of them won't work for some reason, but most of them do.

This place is an all inclusive resort where you have a half hour personal swim with the dolphins, then the rest of the day is yours to snorkel with the stingrays and thousands of exotic fish in the coral reefs, or just take a relaxing float along their Tropical River that goes the whole way around the area. All food was included for the day, including snacks and beverages, and it was delicious!












The gorgeous pools.












This was another group having their personal swim. The dolphins were waving bye bye!













Here's Jilli with Tyler and a great one of our whole family!

The next day, we went to Sea World. We had the VIP tour, which meant for 7 hours, we had a personal tour guide, Sarah. We got to move to the head of the line at Kraken, Journey to Atlantis and Wild Arctic rides, and had reserved seats at the Shamu and dolphin shows. We got to feed dolphins, sea lions and stingrays and enjoyed an up-close encounter with a penguin!





















Our lunch was ring side seating behind the Shamu show where we got to be right beside the three whale pools while they were awaiting to go out and put on their show! The trainers came out while we were eating and had them do a couple tricks for us and brought them right up to the side of the pool for us to get pictures! We could have reached out and touched them! That's how close they were!!!





























Our tour guide Sarah was wonderful and gave us tons of interesting facts about all the animals. It was an unforgettable experience!

More Vacation!

Becca caught so many action shots of the whales and dolphins, it was unbelievable! She was snapping non stop through the show and just kept saying, "Oh wow! Oh wow! I got it!" Her pictures are fantastic.












The first picture shows 4 dolphins jumping at the same time. The second is one jumping high into the air! The last is one of the underwater shots Becca got.
























I love these Whale shots! They are just gorgeous! The middle one amazed me that she got it! He jumped straight up and right back down again so quickly that I thought for sure she missed it! But it turned out fantastic!

Our next day was at Disney's Animal Kingdom. After two full days of non stop fun from morning to night, we were a bit tired when we arrived at Animal Kingdom. We went on a Safari and saw tons of wild animals. Here are just two of the animals we saw.















I took these two shots of the Tree of Life in the middle of the park and a beautiful waterfall.

















Our last day was spent outside of Tampa visiting some of my relatives. My cousin Rob, who lives in Tallahassee, came down with his wife Lee Ann to stay with their daughter Lisa and grandchildren, Hannah and Matthew. Hannah is a very, very special 4 year old little girl. She was diagnosed a year ago with a rare, inoperable brain tumor. You can read about her struggle on her website at Help Hannah. We have been praying non stop for her since she was diagnosed and were thrilled to finally get to meet her.

We had a wonderful day with them at the beach, on the boardwalk and then had a picnic back at their house.



Here's Hannah collecting shells, and Matthew being just adorable! He's such a sweetie!





Here's Lee Ann and my cousin Rob standing, then their daughter Lisa, her nephew Dalton and Hannah. Matthew was sleeping in the stroller.


It was a perfect ending to a perfect vacation!

Dream Vacations...

With our Florida vacation coming up so soon, a friend and I were talking about going on a dream vacation. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?

Well, for me, the answer was pretty easy.... I would absolutely love to go to Hawaii!!! That is one place I have always wanted to go! But I've always thought that it would be way too expensive for us...

Well.... I've been doing some checking! I found a great site called Hawaiian Beach Rentals.  They offer thousands of choices for Hawaii vacation rentals, vacation homes, villas, condos, hotels, resorts, cottages, apartments and bed and breakfasts on Oahu, Maui, Kauai and the Big Island. You can click on links for each island and find pictures and prices for the vacation homes, condos and hotels.

I found some great condo rental rates in Kauai! I was amazed at their prices! They have a villa rental that sleeps four for only $186 a night!!! It has it's own pool and is only 3 blocks from the beach! There are pictures of each condo with quite a few views of the inside and outside.

They also offer vacation packages that can include airfare and car rental, which we would definitely need ;)

So, now I have to do some serious planning and start saving some money! Hawaii. . . now THAT would be a real dream vacation!

Vacation coming up!

It's hard to believe but our Florida trip is coming up very, very quickly! We're taking this trip for Becca's Make A Wish... she was diagnosed with Bladder Cancer in November 2006. Her wish was to swim with dolphins, so they are sending us to Discovery Cove in Orlando! The girls have never flown before, so they are very, very excited!

We got our final plans last week, and besides Discovery Cove, they are sending us to Sea World and Adventure Island! It's going to be an amazing trip and we can hardly wait! I'm sure I'll be posting lots of pictures when we come back! Until then, watch the ticker to see how many days until we leave!!!