Florida Trip!

Greetings, friends! Happy belated Father's Day to all the dad's out there. :)

On May 30th, my family and I took a trip to Deltona, Florida to visit my grandparents. It was superb. My body really loves the humidity. It makes my skin feel alive (or maybe that was the thin layer of mosquitoes I wore every time I stepped outside....). It had been several years since I had been on that side of the country and even longer since my wife had been out that way. My grandparents had never had the opportunity to meet Paola nor Heidi, so it was an exciting excursion for us. Needless to say, I loved every minute of it and had the hardest time coming home.

I got a phone call at 1:30 AM PST to tell me that our flight on American Airlines from San Diego to LAX had been delayed by 2 hours. That would have had the plane landing in LAX at 8:30 AM. That was the time that our connecting flight from LAX was departing toward Orlando. I tried to call American Airlines to find out if the delay was also affecting the connecting flight (so we'd have time) but they couldn't give me a decisive answer. In the end, we ended up switching to a flight that had a layover in Dallas.

We got to the airport well before the flight was to take off (like good little non-terrorists) but due to violent thunderstorms in Dallas the flight was delayed. In the end, our flight was delayed 4 hours. The airport was cool though....not sure if I ever truly got to sleep, but sitting around doing nothing was relaxing. I was really, really anxious. Not only was I ready to see my grandparents, but I am not partial to traveling by airplane. I pretty much completely hate the idea of being so far off the ground. I'm not afraid of heights but 35,000 feet seems a little bit higher than my definition of "heights".

When we got into Orlando, the Budget car rental didn't have the rental I reserved any more. They had other four door cars, but they would have to charge me more because of the size. We settled on a free upgrade to a 2010 Ford Mustang. It was fun to drive around, but not fun to drive a family around in.

I don't have the words to express all of the wonderful emotions I felt when we were visiting my grandparents. It was a really good time. The best time. I felt so loved and accepted. I felt so proud of the fact that they approved so greatly of my wife and that they'd finally gotten a chance to meet both her and Heidi. My grandma is an incredible cook and my grandpa is one of the wisest men I've ever known. Bottom line: I come from a darn good pedigree.

We saw some neat things while we were out there. We took a day to do the parkhopper thing over at Disney World...that was neat. It poured on us. That was amazing. If you've never seen a soaking wet Peruvian woman, I highly recommend it. It was adorable.

We also took a day to go down to Blue Spring. I always make a point of trying to at least see one alligator when I'm in Florida....a great big sucker decided to oblige as soon as we walked in. That was nice. I tried to upload it onto this post, I guess we'll find out if it worked. We also took a riverboat cruise on the St. John's river and saw about 12 more gators. That was the tourism highlight of the trip for me. :)

All in all, we had a good time. It's nice to be back in California, but I sure do miss my grandma and grandpa (AND the humidity). I should have some news coming down the pipe about WoW soon (fingers crossed) and more posts pretty soon.

Take care all!