Category: Unrelated News

Tuesday morning we loaded the whole gang up in a couple of vans and drove to Blue Spring State Park. It is located about 45 minutes north of Orlando. We were told that the best time to view the manatee at this time of year there was in the morning. We had to leave pretty early to get there by 8:00 for the park opening.

They were amazing. I have snorkeled and dived with manatee before. They are super gentle. We were not able to get in the water with the manatee at the park. They had some great board walks that went along the river with platforms out over the water. Most of the manatee were on the other side of the river, but we were able to see them pretty well. There were a few that came right underneath us as we were watching them.

We left the older generations to test out a park bench while we younger kids strolled on to the spring. Manatee navigate about 250 miles of the St. John river from Jacksonville to Orange City to enjoy the constant 72 degree water.

We piled all the cousins up on a tree stump and called it a Peach tree.

After the hiking around we had a nice picnic lunch at the park.

On the way home the two vehicles split up with one going to visit some friends and the other going home to put the older folks down for a nap. I was fortunate enough to drive the nap car.

We spent last week in Orlando enjoying time with the family. I am going to post a series of posts that cover the week. Instead of one long post that will be horrible to read, I will feed this out a little at a time.

“The Family” included my two brothers and their wives and children. They only have one wife each, but there is no better way to say that. Then my parents were there as well as my maternal grandmother and my wife and kids. In all, there were 17 of us hanging out.

We drove to Orlando on Saturday (13th). Mom and Dad rented a house for the week. We contracted for a 3 bedroom house that 13 of us were going to use. But when assignments were made, they gave us a 5 bedroom, 4 bath house. Woot! That allowed everyone to sleep in a bed or air mattress. Our two kids were in our walk-in closet each on their own twin mattress. Big closet.

Sunday we went to church with my younger brother, who lives in Orlando. Later that day my older brother arrived with his family.

We celebrated my birthday a day early by eating cake and beating up a piñata. The kids had fun with it. I assumed that the rules were somewhat understood, but we had a bit of confusion. One of the rules that the Mexican kids surprisingly obey is that you don’t take candy from someone eles’ pile. Amazingly I don’t ever remember seeing a Mexican child steal candy from another child’s pile. They dive in to rake up the candy and once they have it, it is theirs. I had to do a bit of biting and punching to keep my brothers’ and nephews’ hands off my candy.

Today we went over to Newton’s house for Thanksgiving. I don’t use names a lot here, so you probably won’t know that Newt and family are our closest friends. You know, the kind you sit around talking with until 2:00 in the morning for no particular reason. Just to be together.

My parents were there too, along with a total of 23 people. It is tradition that we usually spend one or both holidays with Newt and family when we are in town. It looks like this year we will be spending Christmas with them as well.

We had a good time and ate too much.

After everyone left Newt and I went out to find our first geocache. Geocaching is a worldwide scavenger hunt. You look up on the website where people have hidden a small cache to be found. Then you traipse out into the wild to find it. I have read about the game for several years, but have never participated. Today seemed like a good day to start.

We went out first to find one near the house, but we did not get an early start. By the time we got there, it was already dark. We looked, but was not totally convinced we were in the right spot, nor real sure what we were looking for. So we gave up and went back home to the computer to see what we might have missed.

Not to be dissuaded though, we searched for another one nearby and headed out again. This time we found the cache and were able to sign the log book. The cache was damaged and we played good Samaritans and repaired it mostly to be as good as new.

Now it is time to search for other caches and really get into this game. It is something fun to do in new locations. With our traveling, this could be a fun way to explore the towns we are in.