I've got Blisters on my Blisters

Wow what a weekend. Dylan and I truly went H.A.M. The military comes with a bunch of benefits, and when you live in Florida you can partake in those benefits more readily. For starters, we drove down to Legoland from Jacksonville, about a 3 hour drive but well worth it. Dylan go in for free simply by showing his military ID at the front desk and I had purchased a discount ticket in advance from ITT on the Mayport Naval Base, well worth it too since I got my ticket at nearly half price. The park was awesome, EVERYTHING is AWESOME! We rode a few roller coasters, Dylan tends to hate coasters but since these were small it wasn't much of a problem getting him to ride them with me. We saw a water show which was really neat and the displays everywhere of legos were just awesome in general. The master builders there truly have talent. Dylan wants to start building awesome lego displays now that he saw how cool their displays were and what it's possible to actually build. It's amazing, I want to design and build a lego book. I think that'd be the coolest thing, they had one at Legoland and I was amazed by it. 

After 3-4 ours we had enough fun and headed out from Kissimee, Florida over to Tampa, Florida for a nights stay and then another eventful day spent at Busch Gardens. Well the hotel was AWFUL. I mean terrible. I would never suggest it to my worst enemy. The TVs were from the 90's the cable was out in the room we were staying in so we went to the front desk to switch rooms, and by front desk I mean Chinese Reasturant attached to a side room they used at the front desk for this place, mind you this was a NAME BRAND hotel, not some random shack, or so I thought. Well they switched our room and the nest one was almost worse. The tub wouldn't drain after I took a bath, and during my husbands shower that morning we were greeted by another guest, the resident roach also staying in our room. It was disgusting but we were too excited about Busch Gardens to let it bother us, well I was excited Dylan was kind of scared. The roller coasters at Busch Gardens are rather epic. We got to the park 15 minutes before it opened so we could park, get tickets and get to the gate right when they opened. I was so excited, we had no clue what sort of day was in store for us. We first went to Walkabout Way where we found an animal encounter where we were given the opportunity to feed kangaroos, and well, who could possibly turn down and opportunity like that. Next we walked around from place to place looking at sights, like baby animals, riding the train through the safari and just getting a feel of the place. We picked a coaster we thought wouldn't be too intense, well let's just say that wasn't true. After waiting in a line for 30 minutes we boarded the Cheetah Hunt and were blasted across a track for 3 minutes, twisting, turning, going upside-down and plummeting steep hills. I had a blast, I must admit there were scary points but over all I was glad I did it, Dylan on the other hand, not so much. He was terrified and had no desire to ride anything more that day. Well excide the Fly Over gondelas. Which of course I wasn't excited about. Rollercoasters are scary, but they only last a few moments, gondelas however take forever. I'm just hanging there on a wire high above the ground. But I'm glad we did it, we saw elephants in a new upclose way and I loved it. And it was really beautiful but that was it for rides. After all that we were ready to eat, especially since we skipped breakfast to get there early. Dylan found this AMAZING BBQ place that served the most amazing brisket sandwich of my life. I can't tell you how delicious this all was. We walked around a little more but were pretty exhausted we'd been there about 4 hours when we decided it would be a good time to start the drive home. And to end the trip our GPS wound up taking us the scenic route. It was beautiful, seeing the Florida countyside. There were moo-cows and little baby moo-cows. Horses and ponies, little mom and pop shops and fresh fruit and vegetables being sold on the side of the road and Dylan and I just talked for hours, sharing laughs and truly enjoying each other's company. Our weekend was marvelous and with Dylan deploying so soon it was much needed.