How is this Spring and Opening Day?!

This is what we woke up to this morning:
Again, apologies for the grainy nature of the 'Berry camera but you get the drift (no pun intended).

The SNOW started last night and certainly made its presence known. Since I'm working from my home office today and the ground was fairly warm, not much shoveling had to be done at 5AM, but it's enough already. Mother Nature is one angry broad, that's all I'm saying. She did the same thing last year - we got a pounding snowstorm in April '08 as well (made for the WORST commute of the year as I recall). I'm really tired of her and her angry ways.

As a result of her big bag of bitter, it hardly feels like Opening Day today. And the White Sox have postponed their home opener here as a result. That's fine as I don't like the Sox, but still...postponed because of snow! Who wants to watch baseball in the snow? It's just not right.

Wrapping up Spring Break

We are back home now - stepping off the plane at ORD yesterday morning into 39 degree temps was a quick ugly slap of reality and I just heard that the weather devils are suggesting snow in the next couple of days, so we are, without a doubt, back home. Spring Break is over. Suffice to say, we had a great time. It was great fun to spend the time with good friends and for all the good times we had together as a family. Now Our Lady of BYU has made it perfectly clear that it was unjust that she wasn't there but I'll just go on record as saying we wish she could have been there too.

So instead of focusing on the hundreds, literally hundreds of email, that were waiting for me from work, or the visit yesterday to the orthopaedic surgeon that resulted in a superfun cortisone shot into my knee (if any of you are familiar with Brian Regan's routine about the ER and 'pressure', I burst out laughing when the nurse asked me if I'd ever had a cortisone shot and when I said no, she said, well you're going to feel a little pressure. All I thought of was Regan saying, Buckle up!) and banning me from running for a month, I thought I'd post a few more pictures from our incredible vacation. Let me make this clear though - Florida is still the capital of crazy and it's still a mess, but boy do they know how to make a break from reality! Here's a few more pictures:
Close up of me and the stunningly patient SML with the kids in the background with their dolphin
The stunningly patient SML, our friend Hannah, and CAL in the lagoon at Discovery Cove
Me, CAL, our friend Hannah, and the stunningly patient SML checking out the manta rays - this was a huge achievement for CAL
PTL going for a manta ray
PTL feeding a bird in the Aviary at Discovery Cove
Riding Kraken at Sea World - this was great fun! We are in the third row in the first car.

So all in all, a great time. We are looking forward to doing it again next year. But now it's back to reality. It's our church's global General Conference this weekend so we'll be at home all weekend watching that event. Should be a good experience - one of learning and of comfort. Looking forward to it.

And so it comes to an end

It's getting late on Thursday night and we are in a hotel near the Orlando Airport asd we have a wicked early departure tomorrow morning. Assuming, of course, that USAirways does not once again work in earnest to destroy the return portion of our trip, like they did on the outbound. My outlook is not positive.

The last day of our vacation was spent relaxing, paddle-boating on the lake at the place we were staying, and watching a couple of movies. Including one of the greatest movies ever...."Ferris Bueller's Day Off." We laughed a lot watching this with our friends. While CAL laid out by the pool, getting a superfun sunburn in the process, and the Boy fished, the stunningly patient SML and I slipped off to Sea World for a couple of hours. We rode Kraken again, which was a good time, and then did the Wild Arctic ride. We also saw the Dolphin show. This was a mistake. This is where Sea World has taken a serious dive. The Orlando Dolphin show has been Disney-fied. It's not about the dolphins - it's a ridiculous display of sappy music, cheesy choreography from a bunch of Cirque d'Soleil castoffs, even worse costumes, and a few divers way past their prime, still looking to earn a buck. The dolphins were secondary bit players at best. Tremendously disappointing! I can only hope that the San Diego show has not turned into this mess. I get what's happened here...the machine that is Disney infiltrates everything here. Sea World is not a Disney Park, but man, the people in this show could have been from the D-list cast of "The Little Mermaid on Ice." It really was awful. Both the stunningly patient SML and I were bummed.

Anyway, it's time to call it a night. 3AM is going to come way too early. I need a few hours of sleep in order to get ready to do battle with the enemy that is USAirways.

Dolphins, dolphins and more dolphins

Now that I've gone through the cathartic experience of posting about the horror that is USAirways, I can move on to much better things - our Spring Break vacation. In a word, awesome. It's been great and it's not over.

Monday was spent at Sea World, which remains our favorite park, whether it's in San Diego or Orlando. Great time. Huge crowds. Clearly, the recession that we are in as a nation has skipped Orlando. This place is packed. We'll be back to Sea World a couple of more times while we are here.

Tuesday was all about Discovery Cove. Call it a water park, call it a marine life adventure. I call it amazing. We spent the entire day there. You have an opportunity to interact with marine life, snorkeling with all manner of fish and sting/manta ray. You get to observe sharks from a safe distance. Your meals, snacks, drinks are unlimited and included. The staff, of which there are thousands it seems, are all graduate from the perky (bot not annoyingly perky) school of service. They seem genuinely interested in you having a good experience (are you listening, USAirways?....I thought not).

The weather was amazing. Sunscreen was a must:
I think the ghostly white is to remind you that you'll be a corpse from the skin cancer you'll get if you don't use this stuff.

The snorkeling was great fun:

However, the piece d'resistance came with the dolphin swim which happened late in the afternoon after a very typical brief thunderstorm. CAL and the Boy had the opportunity to spend some time with Roxie, a ten year old dolphin:


It was pretty amazing to watch the kids interact with these animals and to see the power of the relationship that the trainers had with the dolphins. Their time also included a ride:

We had a pretty good view of the action as well:

Now I'm sure some people will complain that penning in dolphins like this is some kind of cruelty. I would argue that it is not. These trainers are so sensitive to these incredible creatures. If the animal doesn't want to play, that's it. There is no play. It's got to be better than fending for your life, day in, day out.

It made for a great day and we're looking forward to more great days as Spring Break rolls on! We miss having Our Lady of BYU with us, but if you check out here latest blog entry, you'll see that she's having a pretty darn good time as her Winter Semester winds down.