Monday, July 20, 2009

Swimming in Hudson & More Disney!

Our family enjoyed yet another busy, fun-filled weekend. After having Laura's side of the family in town last weekend, it was time to hang out with some of my side of the family - cousins, primarily.
My cousin Casey recently bought a house in Hudson, Florida with her boyfriend, Brian, and this was our first opportunity to visit their new home and spend time with them. We spent most of our time in their pool!
Kinzie was a wonderful swimmer, as she always is, and Maeby really enjoyed her second time ever in a pool!
More pool fun...
... Laura took a lot of pictures of the pool fun!
Kinzie was the Queen of the Nile on this poool raft.
... and a mermaid with her noodles.
Maeby practiced jumping in the pool, with my help.
... and not to be out-done, Nala displayed her pool-jumping abilities.
And Mackinzie finally convinced her mommy to join in on the swimming fun.
Casey was happy to finally have another 'Rode' girl in the family.
.... and Nala wanted a 'taste' of the action.
We ended our Friday night with an exciting game of 'Motor Mouth' - a board game from 1990 based on the speed-talking guy from those old 'Micro-Machines' commercials.
We had a great day on Saturday comprised of more swimming and lots of grilling out. There were also lots of games like darts, shuffle board, and Wii Bowling. It was definitely a relaxing weekend in Hudson and it was great to catch up with Casey & Brian.
On Sunday morning, Laura and I got the girls up at 5am and we hit the road back to Leesburg. We dropped Maeby off with Aunt Pat and swapped her out for my coustin, Artie, for the day. Laura, Kinzie, Artie and I headed off the Disney's Animal Kingdom to start off a day at the theme parks.
As soon as we entered the park, we stumbled across Stitch! He liked playing with Kinzie's pig-tails while we took their picture. Our first stop at the park was the Kilimanjaro Safari. We saw lots of wild animals, including a white rhino standing and eating no further than 4 feet from our vehicle. It was awesome!
While at the Animal Kingdom, we also enjoyed the Festival of the Lion King show and the Finding Nemo Musical.
While strolling through the "jungle" we came across Baloo from "The Jungle Book" and took the opportunity to add his autograph to Kinzie's "sign book", as she calls it.
Baloo even taught Artie the proper way to scratch your back up against a tree.
After a rather huge fiasco, Kinzie opted not to participate with the Dinosaur ride and it was probably for the best because it was a pretty scary ride. Instead she mustered up the courage to have her picture taken in front of the T-Rex skull.
Kinzie's bravery only took her so far... she made it inside the theater to see "Its Tough to Be A Bug!" - starring the characters from "A Bug's Life".
We all had a laugh taking pictures in our funny bug-3D glasses...
... but after about 5 minutes of stink bugs, bee stingers, giant grasshoppers, and smokey-fake bug spray, Mackinzie had had enough and she wanted out - immediately!
I guess our next showtime there will have to wait until she's a little older.
Our next stop of the day was Disney's Hollywood Studios where we met "Sully" from "Monster's Inc.".
Unfortunately, Sully's hands were too big to autograph Kinzie's "sign book", so we settled for a picture.
It was also unfortunate that the park closed at 7:00pm. We definitely would have liked to enjoy more of the rides and shows yesterday, but time just ran out too quickly - although we were able to do and see a lot, including the Aerosmith Rock N' Roller Coaster, the Tower of Terror, the Beauty & the Beast show, the Voyage of the Little Mermaid show, the Great Movie Ride and the Backlot Tour. We were also able to catch the new American Idol Experience finale and see some guy named Kevin Dees sing "Go The Distance" and win a "dream ticket" to the front of the line at any real American Idol audition. It was a very cool show altogether and very much like watching American Idol on television. Hopefully we'll make it back to Disney Hollywood Studios one more time before we leave Florida so that I can take the opportunity to audition myself!
I'll close out this blog post with one final picture of Mackinzie, rockin' the pink camo stroller and having another great day at Disney!
-Bert

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