Meet the Geckos

Geckos are apparently one of the "new" types of pets that are popular today. I hadn't realized just how popular until recently. My son got a leopard gecko (we call him Buzz) earlier this year. He's done very well in the house and is growing quite well. I call him 'fat tail' more often than not as he stores the extra from his meals (primarily crickets) there. He's not a cuddly pet and he's not particularly fond of handling. He is easy to care for, though and my kids enjoy playing with him.

Recently, though, we've added Scarlett (name for now). S/he's a crested gecko. Crested geckos are different from leopards not just by coloring, but by being more arboreal. Her cage has more vines/logs/sticks to climb as they spend more time off the ground than on it. She also eats what's called 'crested gecko food'. Very simple, add water, mix, serve. She's only about 3 months old, so she's VERY small.

At some point in the future, my daughter wants to add her own gecko. We're watching to see if perhaps we can find a panther gecko. She hasn't totally decide which variety she wants, though.

Seen at the Aquarium

This is a behind the scenes area, over River Scout gallery.

Florida Museum of Natural History

I found out about this place through the book, "Kids Love I-75", which I picked up at a home school conference. It's located between my home and my parents' so when I found out about it, I thought it'd be cool to stop in either on our way down or on our way home. As it was, it took me a year, but we stopped by on our way home this time.

Entry to the museum itself is free, entry to the butterfly garden is extra. They do charge parking during the week, but on weekends that's free. When we were there, they had another exhibit called "CSI Bugs", which we didn't visit. If you're in the area, it's easy to find and a good stop. We spent a bit over an hour exploring. It's off of what I would call a 'main strip' with food and shopping in the area.

EPCOT

Over spring break, my family did a service project which earned us a free Disney park ticket for each of member who participated. We took the opportunity to go on our recent trip to visit my parents. My son and daughter decided that we wanted to go to EPCOT this time. It was somewhat surprising as I thought they'd pick Magic Kingdom, but they had their reasons. My son wanted to check out the countries. My daughter wanted to do the Kim Possible scavenger hunt. We had seen other families doing this the last time we visited, so she wanted to make a point of it this time.

The scavenger hunt itself is fairly easy. There are kiosks located around the World Showcase that you can pick up a 'communicator'. Through the communicator you explore one of the countries in the showcase while helping Kim Possible and her buddies Ron and Wade defeat various villains. There are 7 possible hunts to go on, each in a different country. We did ours in China, France and Japan. It was too hot for us to want to do more, so we turned it back in at that point.

If you've never been to any of the Disney parks, I recommend taking advantage of their fast pass system. On this visit we picked up fast passes for Soaring. As soon as we had this, we took off for Test Track. We still had a 40+ minute wait for Test Track, but it's the only one we had all day. We don't do Spaceship Earth, so it wasn't a problem. The others we rode were pretty much walk-on rides.

As usual, when I went to a Disney park, I took too many photos to post here. So I created a scrapblog.

Old Town

My parents live just around the corner from Old Town which is an old-style amusement park and shopping area. My son has been looking forward to visiting as this year he's big enough to drive the go karts by himself. Two years ago, he wasn't and we noted that he had to be 54" to drive. Last year, he was 54" but they'd up'd the minimum to 56", annoying him vastly. This year he's more than 56" so no problems there. My daughter has another year.

These are some shots of rides and stores along the walk. Right next door to Old Town is "Fun Spot". Different attractions, different prices, tickets on one side don't work on the other.

There's an old arcade on the strip as well. One of these is of the 'fortune teller', the other is an animatronic 'electrocution' thing. Neither are really for kids, but they're interesting to see.

Pleasure Island - Ride Makerz

My mom and I took the kids to Downtown Disney's Pleasure Island AMC theater to see the Airbender movie. Next door is a store called 'RideMakerz'. You custom create your own RC vehicle, pretty neat. On display were some cars, these are a few of what they had.

Sea World's Aquatica

We had a dual pass between Sea World and Aquatica. We took a day and visited the water park. It was a long day and my kids had a blast. A couple of recommendations and notes, though. We had tickets that were unlimited visits for 14 days. If you have one of those, you might consider breaking the visit into two days. The later in the day, we found the smaller the lines to the more popular slides. More of the 'free' chairs were available as well. The later in the day, though, the less likely you are to get a locker. You might consider getting a cabana as well. Reserve it online so that it's there when you arrive. It looks like a lot of money, but you get covered chairs, a locker, towels, and a refrigerator filled with sodas and water. Very convenient, that.

Second, there is a restaurant in the middle front that has unlimited visits for one price. You can pay $20 for one all-you-can-eat buffet visit, or $26 for all you want all-you-can-eat visits. We went all out and it paid for itself in drinks if nothing else. The restaurant is the Banana Beach Cookout. Primarily hamburgers/hotdogs for cuisine, but our second visit they had put out nachos.

The 'big' draw slide is their Dolphin Plunge. It takes you through a dolphin display pool. The portion of the tube that goes through is clear to give you the opportunity to see the dolphins as you go by. Unfortunately, we found that you go too fast to see much of anything. The rest of the tube is dark and right after the clear section you're done. A bit of a disappointment to us, but still a fun slide.

The rest of the water park is what you'd expect from a water park. Two wave pools, misc. slides, tubing slides, kids play area, etc.

Sea World

When we go to visit my folks, we generally don't get the opportunity to see Sea World. Being a volunteer at the Aquarium, I always want to go see more fish when I travel. So we took some of our timeshare points and got tickets for the family to go.

My daughter and I took the time to feed the sea lions (beware the birds!) and the sharks (at Shark Encounter). The sea lions looked to have been fed quite a bit before we got there, so they seemed to be playing with the fish more than eating it. The birds, of course, knew this so they'd swoop to get fish asap. The sharks and rays were cool to watch eating their shrimp.

We actually were at the shark encounter right at lunch time and were lucky enough to get a 12:15 seating at the restaurant there. Reminiscent of the Living Seas restaurant at EPCOT, one wall of the restaurant was a window into their shark exhibit. We got a really cool seat where we could look directly in. My only complaint was cost of food. Average cost for an adult lunch was about $23. You do, though, get a good size serving and the food was VERY good.

We visited dolphin cove and considered feeding the dolphins, but the cost more than tripled to do so. For $17 per person, you get an 'exclusive' area to feed the dolphins and a chance to touch. We had to pass on that and just watched. One of the dolphins in the cove, though, took matters into his own fins. He decided to jump right in front of us and splash us good. I did get a shot of him doing it, though.

I had too many pictures to post directly here, so I created a scrapblog.

Flat Stanley goes missing - Stockholm

Stanley got to visit City Hall where the Nobel Prizes are awarded and have his picture taken. He was very enthralled with the idea of continuing his adventures. He was disappointed that this was the last stop on the cruise before heading back to Dover.

Sometime during this visit, Stanley jumped out of my dad's pocket and disappeared. We hope he's continuing his travels and enjoying himself. We didn't think about him wanting to go walk about, so his address isn't written on his shirt labels, so I don't think he'll come home. If you see him, though, feel free to let us know.

Flat Stanley - Helsinki

The main place that my parents were able to get photos of Stanley (he was hyper by now) was at a horse farm out in the country.

Flat Stanley's travels continue - St. Petersburg

In the distance is the Church of the Spilled Blood. The church itself Stanley liked the idea of being able to sit on the royal throne.. but did the next best thing and simply had his picture taken in front of it.

Flat Stanley in Germany

Stanley and my parents cruised into port at Warnemunde and did their travels from there.

The paintings on the Berlin Wall were quite impressive. Stanley had to have his picture done in front of one of them.

Flat Stanley in Copenhagen

Stanley got to watch the changing of the guard. He was impressed with their hats.

You can't see her clearly, but there's a mermaid on that screen. Stanley found her swimmingly attractive.

Flat Stanley on the Magic

The trip my parents took was on the Disney Magic. Mickey and my mom posing with Stanley.

The first stop was to Oslo.

Our Flat Stanley

My parents were going on a cruise in the Baltic, so my daughter and I made a Flat Stanley and sent him along. He ended up going on a walk-about in Stockholm and hasn't come back. In the meantime, here's the first set of photos - starting in Dover.

Cyclorama

Since I'd taken my kids to the Southern Civil War Museum in Kennesaw, I decided we needed to balance that with the Cyclorama in Atlanta. You can't really take much in the way of pictures, but we did get to see the Texas, the other locomotive involved in the Great Locomotive Chase that we'd learned about in Kennesaw. The rest of the Cyclorama's show was a movie to set the stage for the Battle of Atlanta and then the painting itself. My son was impressed by the overall thing. My daughter was more impressed by the painting and diorama itself rather than the story it told.

Review: Searching for God Knows What

Miller has created an interesting analysis and point of view with regards to people and their relationships (or lack thereof) to God. He begins by exploring his own relationship with God, how he lost his faith and how it was slowly rebuilt. He points out how society tends to paint God based on rules and formulas, but that God paints a bigger picture and that there is no 'self-help' book to point the way that's perfect for everyone.

By starting with his own fall from faith and then rebuilding it, then turning it around and showing what we expect God to be (based on society) he helps us to find the path to our own discovery. He's not giving you the answer, but he's pointing out some basic truths and misconceptions that society gives us as the "one" truth. Getting to know God isn't easy and it certainly isn't a scientific process. The steps that one person takes aren't necessarily going to lead another to the same place. Everyone on a lifeboat may end up at a different destination.

Society tends to imagine God as a mirror image of themselves instead of seeing beyond the reflection to something bigger. We dissect his message looking for the fine print instead of reading the bigger message that's actually there. We're looking everywhere for God instead of where he actually is. Miller is great at using our culture and society as references to reorient ourselves to our search. Definitely a good read, made me want to go back and reread the passages in the bible as he mentions them with a different point of view.

I received this book free from BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.