Vacation Pics

If you’re looking for the brilliant theological insight and outstanding religious reflection normally found in this space, you’ll have to check back tomorrow. Today it’s pictures from our recently concluded and barely-recovered-from Orlando vacation. That’s all. Just pictures. Mostly of the girls, of course.

Come on, it’s not nearly as bad as subjecting you to an hour-and-a-half slide show on the wall of our living room after dinner.

Thursday was spent all day driving from Amarillo to Gulf Shores, Alabama. There’s a really nice beach in Gulf Shores and a couple of really nice shops. But the main reason anybody would visit Gulf Shores is to eat dinner at Lambert’s Cafe where the very loud and funny wait staff throw huge homemade rolls across the restaurant to guests at their tables. So, following a relaxing Friday at the beach, we ate at Lambert’s. And ate and ate and ate. It still cracks me up to watch waiters tossing rolls across the dining room. It’s so funny watching them ricochet off the hands of 80-year-old women and off the heads of six-year-old kids. I’m proud to report our table went fourteen for fourteen; no drops.

We drove all day Saturday in a hurricane to reach Orlando just as it was getting dark. Sunday was our last calm day as we worshiped with the First Christian Church in Kissimmee (at the beginning of the service they promoted the upcoming Christian Church Convention which is being held in Orlando this year and put Jerry Taylor’s picture on the screens as one of the featured speakers; at that very moment, Jerry Taylor was preaching in my place at Central!) and took in the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Odditorium. After that, it was four non-stop dawn to dusk days at the three Universal theme parks:

Two days at Adventure Island which features all the Harry Potter rides and exhibits. FYI: you cannot get drunk on Butterbeer. Trust me, we tried. Two of the best rides — and two of the longest lines! — are in the Harry Potter part of the park. The kids flipped out on all the movie set recreations.

One day at Universal where The Simpsons ride is making a killing poking sarcastic fun at amusement parks and commercialization and long lines and high prices and everything that is Orlando, Florida. The best roller coaster we rode all week is at Universal. It’s called the RockIt Roller Coaster and it lets you choose from about 60 different songs in six different categories to listen to as you plunge 150 feet at an 80-degree angle and then loop and corkscrew your way around the track at 50-miles per hour. ZZ Top’s “Gimme All Your Lovin'” was my song of choice. Carley preferred some cover of Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild” I’d never heard before.

And one day at Universal’s Wet N Wild water park which turned out to be mostly just wet and wet after a massive thunderstorm rained out our afternoon.

We drove all the way to Little Rock on Saturday, worshipped with the West-Ark Church of Christ in Fort Smith on Sunday, dropped Valerie off at Oklahoma Christian for Camp Zenith, and then limped home Sunday night where Carley met her Missions in Amarillo buddies for the start of her week.

When I met all the Junior High girls at Matt and Sara’s house this morning, they had all dyed the ends of their hair red. I don’t have pictures of it yet. I’ve got time. There’s no way Carley will get all that washed out this week.

Peace,

Allan