the beck family: Disney World

April 13, 2012 – Friday - We went to the Orlando Temple this morning. It is about a 30 minute drive and is in such a gorgeous part of Orlando. The temple itself it just exquisite and stands out. We started out by the oldest 2 being able to do Baptisms for the Dead. Dad Beck, Byron, Tanner, Camille, Mom Beck & Melissa all headed in. I stayed outside with the youngest 5 – we just sat in the van and enjoyed playing electronic devices. After around 15 minutes Melissa came back out to tell me to go in and that she would stay outside with the kids. I was so overwhelmed and grateful I had the opportunity to go in and watch them baptize. I had not experienced anything like this since I was a youth doing them around 20 years ago. I was very emotional as I witnessed it. How awesome to be in the temple with two of your children!!! Byron was able to do the baptisms. It was awesome because they both were able to do 10 names where they normally just get to do around 5 in the Mount Timpanogos Temple.

After the baptisms, Byron went outside to spend time with the kids and Melissa came back in for an endowment session. The workers were all so gracious and overly kind to us while there. We were in a session with 6 total people. It was a little different being in such a small session, but equally powerful and special. I felt so grateful to have had this opportunity to start my day in the House of the Lord. I had a really hard time staying awake, but succeeded (luckily we are getting to bed a lot earlier tonight than the past 4 nights).

We came out of the temple to find Byron walking around the temple grounds with the kids. They had found a lot of lizards and Byron even had one go the bathroom on his hand. We enjoyed taking some pictures then headed out to Wal-Mart. We are always excited to see Disney t-shirts there since they are so expensive in the real place. We had fun all picking one out that we will be wearing tomorrow. I was so excited at the selection for girl and women shirts – they were all really cute.

We headed out to find a Long John Silver’s for lunch. Dad Beck was very excited to eat at one since they are not in Utah anymore. We followed out GPS to a location a couple of miles away to find it was not that anymore, but a Popeye’s. We ended up eating there. I enjoyed a yummy chicken sandwich.

We headed back to our condo to change clothes and enjoy relaxing for one hour. I played a game of pool with Tanner - he is really good – not sure how he learned how to play so well, but he was beating me both games.

We headed out to go to Tom and Jerry’s for an air boat ride. It is about 1 hour 15 minutes away. When we arrived all we could see was a trailer park. Upon calling the company, we found out they were located behind the trailer park next to the water. I wasn’t impressed with the facility as a lady was sitting on a picnic bench with her phone, but no electronic devices or verification that we had prepaid our rides. After her calling the person in charge of the computers, we finally found out the information that supposedly we were supposed to bring with us. From there it just went uphill. We got onto an air boat with 3 other people in our group. We had Captain Ron as our tour guide and driver. He was awesome and so knowledgeable of the area we were in. We started out by going into a swampy grass area and just drove right over all of the green plants – it was crazy how the boat could go through practically anything and not hurt it at all. We found a cool crocodile just hanging out in the sun and plants. Then we had fun for one hour going all over this swampy area to find other crocodiles and other wildlife that lives in the water area. There were moments when he was driving so fast and turning such sharp turns, that we would get splashed with water. It was a moment like this that Bradley was ready to be done. He was pretty nervous how fast we were going and worried we would tip out. He did relax more and ended up enjoying the ride. We saw about 7 adult crocodiles that were about 4-12 feet long. There were also many small 2 feet or smaller babies. I was surprised how some of the alligators didn’t seem to be afraid of the boat and not try to run when we came with this very loud boat. We got some amazing views. The water area with all of the vegetation was absolutely gorgeous. We learned that alligators more scared of us than we are of them which were pretty comforting as we were a couple of feet from some large ones. We also saw cranes, fish, and ducks. It was so fun – unlike anything I had ever done before.

After the air boat ride, we headed back and stopped along the way for some Taco Bell/Long John Silvers (we ended up finding one on the way and had to stop since a Taco Bell was also in the same location). We then headed back to the condo, the boys all jumped into the pool for 20 minutes to have a quick swim – enjoyed playing some fun water games. Then we called it a night and sent them to bed around 8:30 p.m. We have not been sleeping near long enough the past few nights and with tomorrow being such an early morning we are all getting to bed early.

We have had an amazing time so far and have seen such amazing things. I think we will be going home to actually get some sleep, though. We are heading Magic Kingdom tomorrow morning and very excited to experience this first hand.