Birthday Weekend

'Tis the season for Disney theme parks. Over the past few weeks I have seen Disney pictures on a bunch of different blogs so now it is our turn. Those blogs include my cousin Ashley, Michelle, sister Kristin, uncle Chad, Jensen family, and then the Miller's Outpost blog. We took advantage of Jackie's birthday (last Thursday, she's still accepting happy belated birthday wishes) as well as her disney credit card rewards dollars. She got in free both days so we just had to fork out the cash for my admission. We left Miami at about 7:00 am and got to Orlando around 11.

You have to take the Monorail or the boat to get to the Magic Kingdom from the parking lot. Jackie was wearing her birthday badge so we got invited to sit up in the front car with the driver. Yee hah! How many cheesy jokes do you think we heard from the Disney monorail driver in our two minute ride? Honestly, probably around seven.

The Birthday girl at the entrance. After I took this picture the battery light started flashing on my camera. D'oh! That meant I only had about 3 quick pictures left until the camera was done for the day. A bad thing for recording memories, a good thing in that I didn't have to decide if a specific event was worth recording.

I used one to take a picture of Jackie in front of the castle...
...and the other to take one of both of us in front of the castle. (Interest note, Jackie's brother Charlie proposed to his wife inside the castle. Their daughter, Aurora, was named after Sleeping Beauty)
That's all the pictures we have from the Magic Kingdom. It's just like Disneyland but with no Matterhorn, so therefore, not as cool. The next day we were off to Disney's Hollywood Studios.

The big, new attraction there is the American Idol Experience. Anyone can try out. If they like you, then you can actually sing in front of a large crowd. They have three judges and everyone in the audience gets one vote. They have a show every hour or so and then all of the finalists compete in the last show of the day. The winner of the day is awarded a "golden ticket", a pass to get to the front of the line at any American Idol tryout location for the next season. I tried to get Jackie to try out but she wasn't having it.

The Tower of Terror

Herbie the love bug trick car

The stone tablet from the Chroncles of Narnia.

After two days at Disney World, we spent Saturday morning at the Orlando temple. Afterwards we met up with Jackie's friend, David, and had lunch at the Macaroni grill. It was a lot of fun, especially since Jackie is the Mac Grill pro.

From there we drove down to St. Petersburg so we could catch a Ray's baseball game that night against the White Sox.

Tropicana field. I can't figure out if the roof looks like an Orange juicer on purpose

I had to park a few blocks away because the parking lot was "full." Well, I can see three open spots in this picture. I actually wouldn't have been frustrated if I hadn't left the tickets in the car. D'oh! We had to make the trek back to the car once we realized it.

The first thing we did was go straight to the Ray tank. There you can feed and touch the rays in the tank. It was sweet, although kind of scary when they came straight at you looking for food.

Inside the doom it gets pretty loud. The Rays lost the game but we still had a lot of fun.

On the way home we stopped in Naples to check out the Gulf of Mexico

The highlight on the way home was the Ochopee Post Office, smallest post office in the U.S. I had actually read about this place when I was reading about the everglades but didn't see it when we drove by it last month. I was sure to catch it this time.