Christmas in Florida

With none of the kids coming home for Christmas this year, Jay, Joel and I decided to head to Florida for Christmas.  After we booked our flight, Janessa booked a flight for her and Kinsley too!  Here we are getting ready for the first flight of the day on December 24th, 2013!

The Orlando airport has a hotel attached to it so we stopped to take a quick pic.

Our hotel was also a Disney hotel.  Across the street from Downtown Disney----restaurants and stores to spend money at.  This was a Lego store.

 

On Christmas day, our plans were to go to DisneyWorld but when we tried to buy tickets, we were told that the gates had been closed at 10 a.m. because the park was at capacity for the day.  Later I found out that capacity is 100,000 people!  The person helping us suggested we go to Sea World because they had some Christmas shows.  For the first part of the day, we just walked around to see the sea animals then we started going to shows.  We found out that the shows were the main attraction and quite good!

Shamu and the kids!

Ready to watch the sea lions and walrus show.  Kinsley loved it.

There were several rides that Kinsley was able to go on with her mommy.

Ready to watch the killer whale show.

Is this Shamu?

The next day, we drove to our Florida property.  Not much to look at but here it is.  106 Bonita Drive Rotonda West, Florida.  We didn't have a lot of time to stay around to look at the neighborhood since we were trying to get to the Everglades but we didn't see the area too built up.  I think it is going to take a developer to come in and just start building homes.

We made it to the Everglades and was able to take an air boat tour to see alligators.  Before we left on the boat, we all got to hold a 3 year old alligator.  I was having a tough time with all of it but I am proud to say I actually held the thing!  Hard on the top of it and soft belly.  Ugh.

 

This one is priceless....notice how the alligator is smiling?!

Someone on the tour asked if this big guy was real.  The tour operator got a kick out of that question!

 

 

 

 

We actually saw several alligators in or near the water.  I believe we were told there are over 10,000 just in the Everglades.  The tour ended as the sun was setting and we left to find our hotel in Homestead, Florida near the Florida Keys.