Titusville (Universal Studios, Mote, and more!)

12/1/17

Left New Smyrna Beach closley followed by Catherine, Oliver, and baby Charles on their boat Boreas. They have a 7 foot draft and a fin keel, so we went ahead of them to make sure they would not run aground. We saw manatees for the first time on the trip and we were very exited. We got into Titusville and picked up a mooring. Dad, Stan, and Jessie went in to the playground while Mom and I stayed back on the boat to get some work done. Later we met up with our friends Bob and Meg Zarum, and their two kids Marin and Leanoard, who are Stans age, to go out for pizzia. Santa was visiting the pizzia place so we got the chance to get our annual photos with him.

Sunrise at New Smyrna Beach.

Mom tried to teach Stan how to play guitar. They decided that the ukelele would be a better fit...

Santa!!!

12/2/17

All three familys in our little group rented cars. Catherine and Oliver got one, the Zarums got one, and we got one. The Zarums went to the Space Center before us, and we ended up going to different parts of the Space Center, so we sadly never met up while we were there. We spent the whole day there with Catherine, Oliver, and baby Charles. There were lots of cool things to see so we sadly only got to see about half of the Kennedy Space Center. One of the things that we got to do was the launch simulator. It was pretty cool but really all it did was put you at a 90 degree angle and shake you around alot. We also got to see the space shuttle Atlantis. The bus tour was really cool and we saw lots of alligators. We left after they had closed. Babay Charles was very impressive, he only took one short nap and did not cry once.

This is the building that they build rockets in. It is so huge. It is 129,428,000 cubic feet.

The Saturn V Rocket. It was huge!!!

The Engines on the Saturn V Rocket.

Astronaught tan driving the space shuttle.

Astronaught Jessie pressing all the buttons on the Space Shuttle.

Astronaught Lucy crashing the Space Shuttle.

Asronaught in training, Charles.

The real Applo 14!!!

The 3D part of one of the many movies they showed us.

The real Space Shuttle Atlantis!!!

The Space Shuttle Atlantis withit's cabin doors open and the Canada Arm reaching out.

Climbing through the glass tube over the museum out of the model ISS.

The rocket garden.

Some of the huge rockets in the rocket garden.

12/3/17

Did alot of work around the boat. Jessie and I did schoolwork, Mom did some work on the computer, and we all cleaned. Dad put up the shades on the windows that will be great for keeping down below cool in the tropics.

The boat with the shades on.

12/4/17

Did alot of cleaning and orginizing in the morning to see what we have, what we need, and what spaces we have so we can stock up before we go to the Bahamas. Mom suprised Jessie and I by telling us that we were going to Universal Studios Orlando. We got so exited and quickly finished cleaning. I had wanted to go there since I had read the first Harry Potter book, when I was in second grade. Around lunchtime we wnet and picked up the rental car, and drove there. Jessie and I were squealing the whole time. We stayed at the Cabana Bay Beach Resort, and it was so cool. It was retro, and I loved all the decorations and colors. We checked in and then went to the pool and lazy river. We had tickets to the park for the next day, so we decided to spend the rest of that day in the pool. after the pool we went to City Walk to have dinner. We thought we were lost and ended up in the wrong placebut we were not and we were in the right place. It was so cool. For dinner we went to the Cowfish Burger and Sushi Bar. They had the best kids meals. After dinner we went to Toothsomes Chocolate Eporium for dessert. Jessie and I shared a brownie milkshake. It was so good! Then we went to see the movie Wonder. We all cried, a lot. It was hard falling asleep that night because I was so exited to go into the park the next day.

The Cowfish

A kids meal at the Cowfish. Best kids meal ever!!!

Toothsomes!!!

Brownie milkshake at Toothsomes.

YUM!!!

12/5/17

I woke up a 5 and started to get ready right away. Mom and Jessie were being lazy and did not get up until six. By the time they had woke up, I had taken a shower, blow dried my hair, and got completely ready. Mom and Jessie quickly got ready so that we could get to the park before it opened. We had to pack all of our stuff and put in the car because we were not staying another night at the hotel. Then we quickly grabbed some breakfast at the Starbucks and got on the bus that brought you to the park. We had to wait in line for a little while but because we were staying at one of the Universal Orlando Hotels, we got into the parks an hour early. It was awesome to be one of the only people in the park. We quickly went to all the rides before there were really long lines. My favorite ride was the Escape from Gringotts. The Hogwarts ride was a little scary but it was still pretty fun. I am glad that the Hippogriff ride only had a wait of 5 minutes, because the ride was like under a minute long. After we went on all the rides we went to do the wand experience. I got picked to get my wand!!! It was so cool. We got lunch at the Leaky Cauldron. We saw everything in the Harry Potter part of the park so we decided to go do some other rides around the park. We did the Jimmy Falon ride. It was really fun. We went back to Diagon Alley after that and went into the Gringotts ride again. It said that it was only a 20 minute wait but we waited for over an hour. Because of that we missed the Hogwarts Christmas light show and butterbeer :( We drove back to Titusville that night.

Here we go!

Hogsmeade

Getting in early. They use your fingerprint.

Hogwarts!!!

The snow on the roofs reminded us of the snow at home!

Me getting my wand at Ollivanders.

The lady working at Ollivanders

Jessie picking out her wand.

Doing some of the interactive wand things.

Mit ice cream from Diagon Alley

Gringotts

12/7/17

Drove to the West Coast to go to Mote. We stopped at a place called Dinosaur World as a bathroom stop. There were life size models of dinosaurs everywhere. Our friends, Lisa and Bill Whalen, let us stay in their house on Longboat Key.

12/8/17

We finally got to visit Mote Marine Labs. We went to the aquarium and saw a lot of the animal feedings. Jessie and I had been wanting to go there since we first heard about it, about it, about four years ago. It was so cool. We saw Hugo and Buffet (the manatees) getting fed, the otter feeding, and the crocodile feeding. It was so cool how they trained their animals with targets. I loved it there. After we went to Mote we went to a beach. It was to cold to go swimming but we stuck our feet in the water and played in the "quicksand". Later, after dinner, we went back to Mote to go to the film festival that started the Youth Ocean Conservation Summit, the reason we were there.

The shark tank!

Manatees!

Garden eels

One of the otters and a trainer

The Gulf!

Quicksand!

The sand there was so white and fine!

Film Festival!

12/9/17

It was the day of the Youth Ocean Conservation Summit!!! Yay!!! We were all very exited. It was amazing seeing all of the inspiring people there, most of them teenagers. It was so cool to meet so many other kids that had similar interests and motives, all about saving the ocean. There were so many cool workshops, and I wish we could have done them all. I loved the experience, we learned so much!

So many young ocean conservationists!

Cetation Stranding Investigation!

Planting Mangroves!

Sharks 4 Kids!

Stan with his decorated oyster shell...and his weird smile

Water testing!

The steel cups that everyone who attended got!

12/10/17

Spent the whole day shopping to get stocked up for the Bahamas. We met a guy named Paul who worked at the Trader Joe's we went to that was a standup base player from Cape Cod. He had played with the Chandler Travis Philharmonic and the Cape Symphony.

12/11/17

We went and visited mom's friend Diana from Marblehead, where she grew up. She was so nice and she had two adorable poodles. We went out to breakfast with her and then got in the car for a long drive back to the east coast.

Us with Diana.

Full car...

More full car...

12/13/17

Left Titusville for Wabasso Bridge. We had stayed there for almost two weeks, the longest stay anywhere so far! We were all getting quite anxious to get moving so we were very glad to be moving south again. We did some exploring in the Mangroves when we got to Wabasso Bridge and anchored out.

The NASA Building from a distance.

Exploring the mangroves in the dinghy