Born to be wild! Preston and Brooklyn receive a last minute gift from grandpa Randall--a new pair of cool sun glasses. Going to Florida, the sunshine state, the new apparel will come in handy.

With a Saturday afternoon flight, the day unfolded smoothly as we had the morning to finish packing and get on the way. Susan's three-day administrators retreat always falls the week we leave for Orlando, so she arrived home Friday night just in time to thrown last minute details together. While this always puts pressure on Greg, Susan usually has the food and clothes packed before she leaves for the retreat, so she just has to worry about what gets unpacked or packed while she is gone.

We had anxiously awaited this two-week trip to Orlando after staying two weeks in 2001. While staying at WestGate last year, one evening when we returned to our condo, we found the resort had rented our third lock-off bedroom to someone else after Randall had left. Though they corrected the mistake immediately by reassigning the people to a different room, because of the inconvenience their mistake caused us, we were given a free week for this year.

Knowing we would be joined by the Browns the second week, we plan to keep the first week at a slow pace. We relaxed, spent some time at the resort, enjoyed a great new adventure at Discovery Cove, and took our time at Islands of Adventure, Sea World, and Wet n' Wild water park. For the second week, we invited Brannon, Trina, Shelby and Bodie to join us. Because many of our adventures would be the same the second week, we did not include pictures from our first week in this web site except our adventure to Discovery Cove.

Discovery Cove is a special part of Sea World which sets adjacent to the main park. We had read about it, but didn't really understand what it was all about. And since it always takes reservations months in advance, we had never visited it. Since we were in Orlando back in March because of our cruise on the Carnival Pride, we decided to drop by and see what Discovery Cove was all about. We fell in love with the concept and made our reservations for June.

Enjoy the following pages. Don't forget to check out the Sky Venture video when you are done.

Leaving our house by 8:30 a.m., we set out on the long journey across country to get to Orlando. It usually takes about 12 hours from door to door.	With the high security alert, we get an early start to the airport hoping to get through without any hitches.
The kids are excellent travellers and come equipped with everything they need to keep them entertained for the trip. With plenty of time to spare, Greg works on the laptop on a new web site he is starting. Susan just sits quietly and enjoys being away after a hectic year and three days of administrator meetings.	Flying Southwest means cheap seats and no entertainment, thus, we always bring our own activities. The kids enjoys StarWars episode II and several other movies on the long flight.
Aboard the airport tram, our first glimpse of Orlando is always amazing as we see water everywhere around the airport--quite a sight when you are from such a dry state like ours.	Sunday, we relax and enjoy the resort. After going grocery shopping and picking up some fresh corn, Brooklyn and Preston learn how to shuck corn.

Overall, the trip went well--up to the point where Greg lost his "Mickey Mouse wallet". When Greg had purchased a cart to carry out our luggage to the Alamo Shuttle, he had left his wallet on top of the cart machine. When he got to Alamo, he knew he had lost it, but couldn't recall where. As we were driving out of Alamo, Suzie, our house sitter, called us and said that our wallet had been found in the baggage area. We were all relieved.

When Susan went to claim the wallet, she asked the baggage representative if a wallet had been returned for her husband. They said no, only a kids wallet had been returned. Susan had to explain that Greg liked his Mickey Mouse wallet a lot. Everything in the wallet was in tack. Thanks to someone for being honest, our vacation was on schedule again.