Orlando...again

I love many things about living in Florida (and I keep reminding myself that often when I start to forget). I love the people here, and our ward is so wonderful. Even though we have only been here a little over a year, we feel like we are a part of the ward family and will really miss these people when our time here is up.

One thing I don't love about Florida is the temple here. Please don't stop reading now, thinking I have become an apostate here in the sunshine state, but bear with me. I have posted previously about how I didn't get to do any intiatory on our last visit to the temple because they didn't have enough workers (you can read about it here if you care to). On our most recent trip to Orlando, we had tentatively planned for the men to do a session Friday night and us ladies would get up Saturday morning and go before we left for Sea World. When the guys didn't get out of their lecture until 5:00, we gave up the evening temple trip (the last session is at 8:00--just when we were getting to Orlando), and I called the temple to find out what time the first session was Saturday morning. The sweet lady on the phone told me 7:30 and my heart sank. Sea World opens at 9:00, and we were planning on getting there between 9:30 and 10:00. There was no way we would be able to make it back to the hotel in time, and we decided that we just couldn't do it. I was, again, frustrated. Naively, I assumed that they would have a 6:00 am session, considering that Saturday should be a busy day and Orlando is not a small temple.

Obviously I overestimated the number of people who are going to the temple, hence the lack of temple workers and lack of early morning sessions. I know that we're not in Utah, but I get the feeling that these great people here in Florida could probably do a little more (myself included).

Stepping down from that soapbox now...

We had a great time at Sea World, like we always do. We like Sea World much better than any of the Disney parks (it's less expensive, they let you bring your own food in, if you get hot you can always sit in the soak zone at the shows...) and I won't be sad if we never go to another Disney park again. Here are a couple pics from our day. This is a hungry sea lion. You can buy fish to feed them and they will come right up to you (we didn't have food and this one wasn't too happy about it). Jeff and Greg found it odd that people were willingly paying to do someone else's job.

This is the kids standing by the life size Shamu. We were on our way to the whale show when we ran into him (it?) and we had to get a pic. Jeff was trying to save our seats, practically coming to blows with an English couple behind him who were attempting to steal them, but I think it was worth it to get this cute shot. Allie's shorts are on backwards and one of her hair elastics has snapped, but I still think it's cute.

And here is one of my favorite memories. Jeff took all three kids while Noel and I went on Kraken, the crazy roller coaster that made us both light-headed and a little nauseated. Why is it that roller coasters used to be so much more fun than they are now? The teenagers on the ride with us were racing back to the front to do it again, as Noel and I staggered off, trying to calm our stomachs. We felt rather old just then. But here's Jeff, in a rare appearance on the blog, sporting Kyla in the Baby Bjorn he never liked wearing much.

We bought a season pass (very reasonably priced) and are planning on going back soon. Maybe we will be able to have a better temple experience. I'll keep you posted.