Florida week 2: Photos in Diary

I'm joining the Prosebox boat before I miss it and lose everyone, although I'll still also be posting identical entries in OD for as long as possible; I've been there for nine years and the thought of setting up another blog fills me with dread.

I'm finally getting around to writing about the second week of our Florida holiday. We've been back for two weeks and it's already a distant memory.

Thanks for all your notes regarding Jay's mam, I'm so glad to see I wasn't overreacting afterall. He went round to her house last week to try and smooth things over and, although they've made friends again, she still doesn't understand the problem. Apparently she would love it if someone came into her house while she was away, invited the whole family round to ruin the garden and invade her private space. Jay says it was a case of "miscommunication". Because we didn't specifically ask her not to do these things, she thought it was ok to do them. Even though I did ask her to leave the garden alone and not touch the tomato plants. Hey ho, it's done now, nothing we can do but put it behind us.

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Onto the holiday! The second week was in my mam and dad's timeshare in Kissimmee near Orlando. We had a couple of days just to chill out, two days in the two Universal Studios park, one in Wet'n'Wild and one day swimming with manatees! It was great fun and very tiring. Have some photos.

<center>The Hogwarts Express in Harry Potter land


Hogwarts Castle, inside which they had a brilliant 3D ride/ roller coaster.


Optimus Prime outside the Transformers ride.


Simpsons land! Jay was very excited, he looks over the moon to be meeting Millhouse.








This was a real bar!


Jay feeds me to a t-rex


One day we came back to the apartment to find this little guy on one of the lampshades :o)


The day before my birthday, Friday 11th October, which was also the last day of our holiday, we drove 100 miles into the Florida swamps to Crystal River, which is the only place in the world where you can swim with wild manatees. They have very strict laws about it; you have to float quietly on the top of the water and can only touch them if they approach you first. We only saw three manatees as it was too early. They come into Crystal River for the winter so, if you go in January, you'll see hundreds of them. Anyway, it was a great privilege even to see these three and touch one of them. The scars on their backs make me sad, though, as they're all from boat propellors :o( Our Captain, Mike, took loads of photos while we were floating around, here are a few of them :o)




I like this one. We're all floating on top of the water, mam and dad are standing in the boat as they're not confident swimmers so just watched us from there, and you can just see a manatee at the bottom of the photo :o)


Me!


Jay


This was the biggest one we saw that day :o)


Crystal clear water, ready to bottle and drink!


This crab was waving at us with both pincers! :o)


Pretty fish.


You can't see our faces, but this is me and Jay.


And this is me! I recognise my hands...


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Amazing day, it was fantastic to swim with wild manatees in the beautiful water. We even saw a raccoon! None of us have ever seen one before.

The next day was my birthday and also the day we were going home. We had to be out of our apartment by 10am and our flight was at 8:25pm so we spent the day sitting by the pool. Jay gave me my present, an amazing pair of Irregular Choice shoes! I loves them.


Mam bought me a lovely summer dress and dad got me some perfume. Although it doesn't really feel like I've had a birthday this year as it was spent getting ready to come home and sitting on an eight hour flight! After we landed at Manchester, I'd been awake for 24 hours and then had to drive 100 miles home, while Jay did the head-bobbing trying-to-stay-awake dance next to me.

BIG thank you to my daddy for organising the whole thing and for driving us all around for the entire two weeks. I wish I was still there.