Florida; photos

I’m glad no one thinks I’m overreacting about my previous entry, Jay keeps telling me I am and that I shouldn’t be as annoyed as I am so it’s good to know I’m not going mad. Since I wrote, I’ve found a couple more little things she’s done.
* Thrown out my hand made soap that I almost gassed myself with caustic soda to make.
* Put washing powder in the wrong part of our washing machine drawer and clogged it all up, as well as somehow getting powder spread all over the verandah where it is.
* Jay got a text off his sister saying “I’ve borrowed Shellie’s Jillian Michaels DVDs, I hope she doesn’t mind.” Wait a minute, not only were you in our house, uninvited, when we weren’t there, but you went into one of our bedrooms and stole my belongings, something which I use several times a week. On what planet is this ok??

I’m trying to calm down, but I keep coming across all these little surprises and my rage reappears.

Anyway, we went to see her on Monday to get my birds back and our keys (She better hadn’t have made a copy!) I wasn’t going to mention anything, I hate confrontation. But then she says “Did you see I cut back your garden?” Looking very proud of herself. Did we see?? Well we’re not blind! I just looked at the floor, she said “What, did I go too far?” Jay, trying to be all diplomatic “We’re really grateful for everything you’ve done, but you just went a bit far.” To which she shouted “Stuff you! Stuff you both!” and stormed out of the room crying, saying she never wants to see either of us again. Melodramatic much? She honestly can’t see what she’s done wrong.

Here is a photo of our ‘hedge’ in the front garden. She didn’t understand why we wanted to grow it, so decided that this would look better. Seriously, why the hell would anyone want this in their front garden, instead of a lovely big, bushy, healthy hedge?

Three days later and I’m still trying to calm down from it all…

Anyway, enough of that, I’m sure you all want to hear all about our holiday, other people’s holiday photos are always fascinating, right? ;o)

So we got to Florida on the Sunday, checked in and had an early night as we were five hours behind the UK so not used to the time difference. At 5:30am, dad decided he would start making breakfast very loudly so we all got up. It was still pitch dark so we sat on the balcony and watched the sun come up.

Not too shabby a view, eh? By 7:30am, we were swimming in the sea. I can’t believe the sea was warm enough to swim in at 7:30am! The sea in the UK is never warm enough to swim in. We walked along the beach, collecting shells, watching the ospreys fishing in the sea. To think, ospreys are protected in the UK and there are breeding programmes for them, but there are loads in Florida.
Here are some of the shells we found. I’m going to make a collage for my ‘travel wall’ and give some to various people who’ve asked for them!

I can’t remember what order we did things in, but various places we visited were Brevard Zoo, Kennedy Space Center and a turtle rescue centre. There was a government shut down while we were over there. I understand it’s quite serious, but it meant that there were no tours when we visited the Kennedy Space Center because the tour part of it is on government property. Me, mam and dad have been before, but it meant the Jay missed out on seeing the VAB, the launch pads, Saturn V (which launched the Apollo missions, including Apollo 11) and the lab where they build things for the ISS. So that was a shame.

Have a load of random photos.

Brevard Zoo

Mam and dad have a load more photos, including us feeding giraffes and me and Jay kayaking. It seems I just took photos of birds…

There was a guy in here, feeding the alligator, standing right in front of him! The alligator was about 12ft long! You couldn’t pay me enough to do that…

This is Thor. He was saying “Cracker”, “Chocolate”, “Coconut” and “Hi Thor.”

Kennedy Space Center

These are the SRBs and fuel tank that launched the shuttle missions. The fuel in the orange tank was completely used up in eight minutes!

This is the actual walkway that the Apollo 11 astronauts walked along to board the craft.

Jay flying a shuttle.

Grumpiest astronaut ever!

This is Jay in front of the shuttle Atlantis, which has been into space 33 times!

Oh, while we were at the turtle rescue facility, I saw this and had to share. I tell people to be more careful with plastic bags and reuse when they can because they kill turtles and whales. They laugh at me and say there aren’t any turtles in the Midlands. But they can end up thousands of miles away and this is a very real example of what can happen.

We also had a chance of feeding sting rays both at the turtle rescue and at Brevard Zoo, which was pretty cool. They don’t have any teeth so they were just sucking prawns out of my hand, which felt very strange.

I’m sure you’re sick of me now so I’ll write about our second week in a separate entry :o)