Family Vacation!

We are very blessed to enjoy a big family vacation once every few years. We all are Disney aficionados, and with Miss Ellie's mental status that equal to a three year old, she loves Disney, too!

Miss Ellie's health is failing, she continues to progress in her decline. Lately it has been much faster that it was previously. This made me want to take a family vacation sooner than later.

In November I called Disney and made reservations for January. They were offering the Disney Dining Plan for free with your reservation. I intended to stay at a value resort, but when I told their "Special Requests" department of our ADA wheelchair accessible needs was promptly informed there were no value rooms available during our travel times. I was informed we would have to pay the difference to stay at a Moderate resort (costing a few thousand more than the original rate). This story will continue...

Mike and I, Sarah, Ryan, and Emma are a big travel party on our own. Add Miss Ellie and a friend, Melissa S to come along and help me care for Ellie and we fill the van! We are unable to fly due to Ellie's conditions. Mike's Mom decided to fly down and join us for our trip, too. That puts us at a party of 8!

We left for Florida on Saturday at 6pm (originally intended to leave Sun am because the other Melissa had to work, but she ended up not working so we left early!) Not having planned on leaving when we did, I had been up since before 8am that day. Melissa and I kept each other awake with stimulating conversation until about 5am, we had made it to GA. Mike was able to sleep quite awhile during the night and took over driving. I napped on and off (while navigating for Mike) through GA. We rolled into Florida about noon on Sunday. Our first night we had no plans. Having read about Homosassa and Crystal River we decided to jump off the interstate and putter around the gulf side of the state. We ended up at a nice hotel in Homosassa. Mike was beat, as was Ellie. We left Mike and Ellie in the room to nap and Melissa, the kids and I headed off to have some fun exploring.

Our first stop was Homosassa State Park. It was a nice place! It was more of a "zoo" and a state park combined. There were many animals to see.

Rode the tram back to the entrance.   We had a great driver!

Emma likes the baby gators!

and the not so baby gators!   Ryan keep insisting these were fake, til he saw one blink!  

These were NOISY birds!   Every few minutes one would start to vocalize and cause a chain reaction of noise - it sounded much like a car alarm!

The Eagles were beautiful!   All these birds were there due to injury, etc and needed rehab and human care.

Much like me when I was their age, the girls really like pink flamingos!



Excited to see some Manatee!

After we enjoyed the state park, we drove out a very curvy 8 mile long road to another state park on the gulf.   It was a little chilly, so the weren't able or willing to swim.   Ryan and Emma barely touched the ocean, but Sarah pulled up her pant legs and went for a wade.   It was sunset, we got these awesome shots.

No, she doesn't tend to be a "cold" person.

Ryan is at that "cool" stage on this trip.   There is rarely a nice shot of him smiling.   He didn't have attitude, just liked to pose stoically for all the shots.

Sarah holding the sun!