Thanksgiving in January (HOL 111)

House of Laughter 111

How do you pick up after five months of not writing? Halloween, Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year’s Day, and now Martin Luther King Day have all come and gone and there has not been an update to the blog. A friend of mine at church, Jennifer, told me that she started reading it and gently chided me for no writing anything in a while.

Here’s the deal. I’m going to start writing tonight and see if anything worth while comes out.

In November, Isaac and I rode with our friends Tim and Gabe down to Florida to see a football game. Florida was playing one of the smaller schools that pad out the schedule (I think it was UNC Wilmington) so I was reasonably sure that Isaac would get to see a Gator victory.

I was worried how he would do with the crowd, noise, heat, and length of the game, but he did really well and even was good for a post game walk to Lake Alice to see the alligators.

I asked Isaac what he wanted to do on Sunday and he told me that he wanted to go to the St. Augustine Alligator Farm (which is a little over an hour away). My folks, in an all time classic grandparenting moment, took Isaac and myself to the St. Augustine Alligator farm after church Sunday afternoon. We watched the zookeepers toss giant frozen rats to the big gators, fed the little ones “gator chow”, and watched a crazy lady dance seductively for an audience consisting of one disinterested king cobra. This was perfect time spent with my folks. I know that my mom wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of watching giant reptiles fight over hunks of rat, and dad spends almost every work day driving around North Florida, however they knew how much Isaac loves alligators and never once gave the impression that they would have preferred to do anything else with their Sunday.

On Monday, the boy and I went to Epcot and Magic Kingdom. He has developed a taste for wild rides and at the end of the day, he declared his favorites to be “Mission Space” and “Space Mountain”.

Nancy came down later in the week and we had multiple giant family meals and Isaac had lots of cousin time. On Friday, we got up early in the morning to go down to Universal Studios. Isaac complained that his stomach was a little upset when we arrived, but he perked up after a couple of rides on the “Woody Woodpecker” roller coaster. We watched the animal show and afterwards he asked to go to the bathroom where he promptly vomited all over the floor. We wondered if the sickness was motion sickness or did he catch the 48 hour “Two Exits No Waiting” bug that had been working it’s way through the rest of the family?

Several projectile vomits later, the suspicion was confirmed that this was no rehash of the “David-Cravey-New-Years-Eve-Back-to-the-Future-Ride-Memorial” motion sickness, but something much worse.

There comes a time when you just have to say, “I know we spent money and made a long trip, but staying here is not going to be fun for anyone.” He just looked and felt pitiful and besides that the line for the new Harry Potter ride was really long.”


Strength and Honor
Big Matt