All set - musically speaking

A few quick pics of Ryan's new guitar - we've had sore fingers this week! Got to build those callouses back up.

Sunday morning golf

Meet our doggie neighbors and see Ryan's office

Meet the newest member of our doggie neighborhood - Baxter. He was barking at us with his mouth full. Every day he looks bigger when I walk past. Toby still looks for Buddy when we walk by but gets greeted by his little bark.

This is the other Toby in the neighborhood - sorry for the bad picture. All of his neighbors are little dogs so his bark is the biggest but once I say his name he quiets down. You can see some residual fence damage from the ice storm.


We met a dog running around campus - never seen him before but this is not unusual around here. Collars and fences are superfluous around here it seems. He wore Toby out running and wrestling - Toby is no Jack Russell for energy it seems. We lost him when a rabbit chase took his attention.

Since I don't think we've posted pics of this before - here's Ryan's office on the gym stage.

We installed the shelves on the wall early this summer so Ryan can organize all of his jerseys and gymnastics uniforms.

The banner is a sample for the sponsorship banners that will be up in the gym shortly! SWAU's is leaning up against the box ready to be hung! The utility shelf (on loan from Mom and Dad) is all intramural jerseys.

Thanks to Dean Magers for the great organizer on the wall for Ryan's homework assignments. And you can just see the edge of one of those great bookshelves from Kingsway College courtesy of Randy and MJ. Ryan's also enjoying using that voice amplifier from them too!

Happy Birthday to ME!

Blow out the candles - turn off the smoke alarm - eat pie - run out the door to work

Ryan drew on my car for the occasion

Ryan has the gym floor sanded down for refinishing - this has been a big project for him over the last two weeks.

Animal Kingdom

On Sunday we decided to check out the Animal Kingdom since it was one Orlando park neither of us had been to previously.



Quite a big hippo skull... These hippos didn't seem to mind the birds perching on their backs. I couldn't believe how many of them there were.

There were at least 3 baby elephants with their mothers in the African safari section. We rode in big open buses through a plains area with lions, giraffes, wildebeast... the lions were separated from the rest of the animals of course. It was a pretty good simulation of Africa but nothing can beat the real thing for sure.

These African trees look like the roots are growing out of the top. They said these would be 1000 years old - so how did they get them there or are they fake?

Meerkat on guard duty scanning the sky

This is the "Tree of Life" - the carvings on the tree are amazing - enlarge it to see how many animals you can find. Disney is so incredibly creative and they definitely go all out.

This African crow was a hoot. My picturetaking may have caused this bird to mess up his stunt. For those of you who haven't heard the story... the bird was supposed to come get the bill from the girl, take it to his trainer, and then bring it back. The trainer wasn't expecting the girl to pull out a $50, nor was he expecting the bird to not bring it back twice and rip the corner off of it. It made for quite a hilarious show though.

The gibbons live in pagoda-like houses on islands but they can swing out over the people between their islands. Isn't that neat?

Not so fond of bats... but I've never been this close to them before.

See how small the people are walking in the foreground? We couldn't believe that they would build a mountain like this in a park!

The Mt Everest rollercoaster was great - we got to ride in the very front car and experience the backwards section followed by a nice drop in the best seats!

The Finding Nemo musical was unexpectedly quite impressive! Having some puppet experience I was REALLY impressed with the fact that the main characters were singing/talking, AND operating a large puppet with a mouth, eyes that opened and closed and a body that moved all while moving around stage. The manta ray in the center was operated by someone on a bicycle underneath.

ALL puppets! The turtles on the sides were each run by one person with 3 rod arms - one for each flipper and then one for the mouth/head - all while they were singing harmony and doing choreography. Now that is true talent.

Unfortunately - we came out of this show to find pouring rain and had to run from the back of the park to our car getting soaked in the process. But we only had about an hour cut off of our stay!

We were blessed to spend some time with Papaw and Gramma at their home on Sabbath and Sunday. We sure had a great time playing games with them and talking and watching Planet Earth.

Final beach week moments

Golfing with the men

Ross is great at skim boarding

What a view!