Orlando Weekend

To continue the account of our trip... we spent a night in Gainesville with our good friends, Lauren and Danny (and their three children). In the morning, both families loaded up their respective cars and we all drove the 2 1/2 hours to Orlando to join the other two families we would be spending the weekend with. We met them at the Bass Pro Shop on International Drive a little before noon. (Where of course we had to tell everyone about our recent Bass Pro Shop Adventure.) We spent about an hour walking around in there, and then, just as we were about to leave, Marcus stopped to point out something interesting: a representative from Gatorland was standing around with a 4-foot American alligator. The gator's mouth was taped shut with black duct tape, and he was just crawling around on the floor of the Bass Pro Shop. At first, I could hardly believe it, but before I even said anything, the boys (and every other kid around) were petting the gator. We hung around for a while, talking to the guy from Gatorland, and ended up even having a picture taken of the boys holding the gator. (Check back later for a picture.)

The next place we went was the Ginn Reunion Resort, which is where we stayed for our annual reunion with a group of friends from our years in Gainesville, FL. Through the six years that we have done this trip, our families have grown significantly. Now, the kids outnumber the adults! Everyone but us has three kids, so there were eleven kids and eight adults. Add to that the fact that eight of the eleven kids are boys, and you can imagine the mayhem in the condos we rented :)

Nevertheless, we all had a great time visiting, and the kids thoroughly enjoyed themselves in the resort's water park. One day, Ethan even took a nap in my arms while we floated the lazy river in an inner tube. And even with three days in a row in the sun, nobody got a sunburn. When the weekend was over, we piled back into our loaded-up car and headed to the east coast for some time with Marcus's family.