Begin at the Beginning...

I thought and thought over where to begin and what to say about the nearly two weeks we spent in sunny central Florida. I finally decided to begin at the beginning and continue along chronologically... there is so much to say and show that it seemed only right

It starts...

We were prepping for our trip for a week before we left, cleaning the house, packing our things, choosing with care the right things to take, visiting often the TSA web site for what we could and could not take aboard the airplanes. We shopped for gifts. We checked with out phone companies for travel and roaming time. We confirmed our flight plans and our car rental plans. We poured over materials from Busch gardens, Disney World and Universal Studios. We made arrangements with Macy (my niece) to babysit the fish. We spoke with the pediatrician about how best to fly with a toddler. We rushed antibiotics to clear up the last minute ear infection before the flight.

We thought, "hey, lets take an overnight flight, so Indy sleeps the whole way". Yeah, that didn't work. He was a monster. But, he loved flying on the plane, and eventually, with just one change of planes in Atlanta, we arrived in Orlando to discover we had no car. Well, actually, we didn't have the car we reserved. Happily, for no extra fee, the rental company upgraded us to the 2007 PT Cruiser. It had 500 miles on it when we got it. It was black. We adored it.

Driving to Fort Meade from Orlando, Chris was exhausted from 36 hours with no sleep, and a little turned around from 5 years in Oregon. As we made our way inland, things began to come back to him and we traveled some beautiful back roads to get to his grandmothers home, where we surprised her with her first meeting with our Indiana Jones. She loves him! (as do we all)

Our first day we slept a bit, then headed out to the boardwalk for my first glimpse of the Florida backwoods...

there is so much more we saw and did... next installment coming tomorrow: