Florida Sun

We had a relaxing and very fun vacation in Florida. There were 27 of us from the Gold family that all met there. Two of Matt's brothers ran in a half marathon that left from Epcot Center. There were 22,000 runners. Crazy! Our family came in two days earlier than everybody else so we decided to check out Daytona Beach. It was fantastic and we want to go back sometime soon. It is very inexpensive there and the sand felt like velvet in between our toes. There is a 10 MPH car lane on the beach there too, so the atmosphere is really fun.

I was checking out all the functions on the new camera I got Matt for Christmas and decided to push a button labeled FORMAT. Instead of selecting cancel I accidentally selected O.K. Little did I know that that erases every picture on the camera. Don't ever touch the format button unless you know what it's for! I shed some tears as I realized I had just erased all of our pictures from Daytona Beach and Disney World. So sad! The pictures that I have posted here are the ones we were able to take afterwards and some pictures that we had taken on our waterproof camera. The pic above is at the biggest McDonald's in the world or the U.S.A. I am not sure what title it holds, but it was HUGE and they had tons of different foods there. Pizza, pasta, gourmet sandwiches and of course all the normals. It was two stories tall and had a huge arcade area and play area for the kids.

Eli got to have two slumber parties with his cousin Nathan and it completely made his day. What a cool teenage cousin to hang out with a six year old.

Eli and Ivy having some bubble fun in the bathtub after a long day.

Some weird dude at Downtown Disney.

Our family at Downtown Disney. Some random guy saw me trying to take this picture and asked if he could take a family picture for us. After he did he told us we owed him 20.00. He was just kidding, thank goodness!

Rylie with the Lego snake. Yes, the entire thing is made from Lego's. Pretty amazing.

Sophia and Rylie being silly.

The kids playing Bongo drums in front of the Cuban restaurant we ate at.

Some big dinosaur at Downtown Disney.

Sophia's attempt to stay warm. The day we went to Downtown Disney and Cocoa Beach was the coldest day by far and compared to Oregon it was still warm. Most days we got mid 70's - low 80's weather.

The best sort of family picture I could get at Cocoa Beach. I was obviously behind the camera, Matt, Sophia and Eli were game for a picture. Ivy was hiding and Rylie was snoozing.

In the surf.

Riding the waves.

Rylie and the pier at Cocoa Beach.

Ivy and Mom.

Sophia getting tossed by a wave.

Matt took this picture. I just thought it was funny and kinda scary.

Eli and his cousin Bethany at the pool at our resort in Orlando. It was a really cool pool area with a huge water slide and a big hot tub. This day was one of our favorites. Relaxing by the pool with all the family was much more fun than trying to coordinate with everybody at the Disney parks. And when all was said and done Eli said that this day was his favorite too. And how much did we spend to get into Disney World? We are learning more and more that even the kids like simplicity.

Mirror, Mirror on the wall. Who is the whitest one of all? Gordon- you win!

This trip we definitely had some camera issues. Aside from my erasing all of our pictures our underwater camera had a dirty lens, so I ended up erasing a lot of the pictures off of that camera because they looked so blurry. You can see the yucky blur in this picture, but the whiteness on these bad boys shined right through:0)

We found this floaty in our condo and Eli loved it, even though it was made for infants.

Sophia's underwater face.

Daddy and Ivy making their mad faces in the pool at Daytona Beach.