Direction Connection

The week before Thanksgiving, Rebecca and I traveled to my parents’ house in Florida to visit with them and my brothers and their families. My brother Matt and sister-in-law Kim and their daughters Naomi (age 8) and Una (age 4) traveled from Portland, Oregon. My brother Mike and sister-in-law Ange and their daughter Mira (age 2) traveled from Minneapolis, Minnesota. So there were 11 of us in all–too many for my parents’ house to accommodate, so my parents stayed at the neighbors’ house!

We did lots of fun stuff while we were there, including a trip to Disney World’s Magic Kingdom on Friday, lots of hot-tubbing on my parents’ screened lanai, swimming in the community pool, and playing miniature golf and bocce ball. We also celebrated two birthdays while we were there–Ange’s on Friday the 17th and mine on Saturday the 18th. We had Thanksgiving dinner a bit early, on Sunday before everyone headed home on Monday.

I also played duck-duck-goose, hide-and-seek, school, and dentist with the girls (mostly Naomi and Una, but sometimes Mira too). I was glad to get to spend some time with Naomi and Una in particular, because it had been a long time since I’d seen them last (I just saw Mira in August, before I knew Mike and Ange were coming to Florida).

Here are some pictures of us at the Magic Kingdom. My parents, Naomi and Una, and Rebecca and I all went. The last one is of Naomi and Una on the teacups. That was our favorite ride for the four of us to go on together. We did it twice, and this is the only picture we have because we were spinning much too fast to take pictures. My parents may have more pictures; if they do, I’ll add them later.

  

                    

                    

And here’s a picture of me playing dentist with Una (I pretended to pull out a loose tooth, and then when she didn’t pay me $1000, I just pulled them all out!). I also later installed braces on Naomi, then on Una.

Here’s another cute one of Una and me:

And one of Naomi and Mira and I (and another of just Naomi and Mira) looking at an e-card my boss sent me while I was away. Mira kept saying “Agin! Agin!” as she took it all in. Mira LOVES her cousin Naomi. She would just wrap her little arms around Naomi’s neck so that Naomi could pick her up, and off the two of them would go!

 

And here are my brothers and Rebecca and me playing bocce ball. Rebecca took all of the pictures, which is why she isn’t in any of them. I’m working on being more proactive in my picture-taking.

   

My brothers won both bocce ball games we played (one of which was an abbreviated game). [Note: An anonymous comment from an IP adddress in Minnesota indicated that perhaps I did not emphasize this point adequately in my previous version of this post.] I do think I have bocce ball potential, though. Rebecca and I have looked into purchasing a bocce ball set, and Rebecca found out that a local community center offers bocce ball.

Here are some pictures of each of the girls on Monday, right before they all departed for the airport:

  

I know there are other pictures that my family took, but these are the highlights of what was on Rebecca’s new camera. I hope to add pictures of duck-duck-goose that Mike took and the teacups at the Magic Kingdom that my parents took, as well as any available swimming pictures.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 25th, 2006 at 11:57 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.