The Current Happenings

What's going on now? Lisa and I just went to Orlando to visit with her Uncle Terry and his family and we also saw her brother Jeff and his fiance Jackie (I hope I spelled her name right but I'm sure it's not). It was a ton of fun! I like Jeff a lot. He's really down to earth and easy to talk to. He and Jackie were nice enough to let us stay with them at their hotel so it was a great weekend! It seemed like all we did was eat! It was definitely a fattening weekend!

Lisa and I went to Magic Kingdom on Saturday and went on a few rides. It was overcast so it wasn't ideal weather for the park but didn't start raining until we were ready to leave. We looked around in some of the shops but decided to just buy food! When we first got there we went to have lunch because it was about noon by the time we actually go in the park, then we hit up Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, Big Bear Jamboree (or something like that), Buzz Light Year, and the Monsters Inc. Laugh Factory. The Monsters Inc. Laugh Factory was really funny actually. They have cameras up and they show different people in the audience on the screen up front and they put jokes up as well like what the person might be thinking and they showed a Mexican guy and it said underneath "I want to buy everyone churros!" We thought that was pushing the envelope but no one seemed to mind.

We continued to eat by getting some ice cream and then went and got candy apples! We didn't actually eat the apples then but we saved for when we got home to Jacksonville. We had dinner with Terry and his family and Jeff and Jackie. We were at Uno for 3 hours just talking and eating. It was nice to meet more of Lisa's family and spend some time together.

On Sunday we met up with Terry and the gang again and had brunch at Waffle House (gut grenades!) and spent some more time chatting. We were then going to meet up with Jeff and Jackie at Epcot for the food and wine festival but Jeff's friend Adam had already gotten there and he was our free ticket in. So we decided to drive out to Cocoa Beach. It's about a 45 minute drive to the coast and we stopped at Ron Jon's Surf Shop and then went and walked on the beach for about 15 minutes and took some pictures. We could see Kennedy Space Center in the distance with the big NASA logo on the hanger/building (whatever it is). After that we drove up the coast on 95 back home to reality. It was so nice to get away and spend time with family and friends. I look forward to more of it when I'm done with school.

ITALY!!!

So Lisa and I are planning a trip to Italy next year and we can't wait! We are hoping to take some time over the Spring break to go. It will be pretty expensive but we figure we won't have the opportunity to go once I'm done with my B.S. and start Graduate school because we'd also like to start a family soon so we are going to jump at the chance to go! We want to go for a week and visit Rome, Vienna, Tuscany, and other places that are rather unknown. This has renewed my desire to learn Italian as well. I took a semester of Italian in college my first year but I never took another semester or used it but now I'd like to try it again since it will actually come in handy in the future.

I'm super excited about going to Europe first but Italy is somewhere that I've wanted to go for a long time. I don't know what it is, it's just the most attractive place to me in all of Europe. I wanted to serve my mission there and that's why I took Italian that first semester out of high school and everyone knows how that worked out... I went to Las Vegas where they have plenty of Italians... well not really but they have the Venetian... but I never saw it. I have no ties there, no family that lives, no ancestors from there (that I know of), no friends have been there, it's just a beautiful mystery and that's part of the attraction!