vacation time part 7

Wednesday, may 4, part 2

   Here are a variety of pictures for my last post.

This is a frame of Grandpa and Grandma Pena, their children and their spouses.

Grandpa Pena.

Grandma Pena.

Reuben.

Andy and his family.

Best buddies.

The three musketeers.

Willie.

Grandparents, their son, and grandchildren.

Dad and his parents.

The married couples.

Grandpa and Grandma Pena.

This is the mom cat.

Someone's hungry.

Scaredy cats hiding under a bush.

Blackie (Grandpa calls him that.)

The cat that doesn't walk by himself.

These are aloe plants,

in tires.

Plants on the outside looking in.

Part of the yard.

Extreme prickly bush. (Note the finger.)

Zoom up.

Oh, one of maybe five flowers on the pointy bush.

More thorns.

Last but by no means least,

ICE CREAM!!!

Grandpa is always so excited to see us, he prepares a ton of food,

like 5 chickens, or 3 big trays of veggies and dip, or 4 gallons of various ice cream.

To be honest, I didn't really mind that last one.

There was almond pistachio, cherry vanilla, and rocky road.

Dad and Grandma love pistachio, so one of the gallons did get finished off,

but there are still three partially filled gallons in their freezer.

I was glad to visit them again, especially since

I never know when we'll be able to see them again.

vacation time part 6

Wednesday, may 4

   The last two days have been quite interesting, involving traveling from one set of grandparents, to the other and back again. Here is a lengthy-ish version of yesterday and today. (It's kind of late at night, and I'm tired, so what I'm writing may be a little hard to understand.)

   Yesterday, we left Titusville and drove to Tampa to visit my grandparents on my Dad's side. What Dad was not supposed to know, was that his cousin Andy Rodriguez was planning on coming over and surprising him. When we arrived at the house, Grandpa Pena asked us when Papu was going to get there. Come to find out, Grandpa had already told Dad on the phone that Papu was coming or something like that. Oh, so Papu is the Spanish nickname of Andrew Rodriguez, Dad's cousin and one of his best and closest friends during their younger years. Sometime around noon, Andy came over and we went out to eat at Sweet Tomatoes. After eating, we stayed there for maybe 1 to 2 hours just talking, after which we parted, planning to meet at a different restaurant for dinner. Later that afternoon, one of Grandpa's nephews came over. Grandpa is about 87 or something and his nephew is only a few years younger. He stayed and talked to Dad and Grandpa until Nathanael video-called Mom and talked to everyone for a while. Somewhere around 6, we drove to the Cuban restaurant and met Andy, Liana, and Brianna Rodriguez. Liana is his wife and Brianna is his 16 year old daughter. I really enjoyed meeting some of Dad's family, especially since Andy would tell stories Dad when they were young. I also realized that we aren't the only ones in the family that really aren't that Spanish, since Andy and his family don't speak that language and don't even have an accent.

   This morning, we all woke up to a thunder and lightning storm that was so loud and lasted for a while. Our power actually went out for a while. After breakfast, Dad, Mom, and I walked around outside and looked at how things were so different back when he lived there. Oh, Grandpa has been attracting cats. There were 3 grey ones and 2 black ones, although one of the black ones left and I haven't seen it today at all. The friendliest of all of the cats was grey colored and the mom of about three kittens across the street. Grandpa feeds them like once a day. Last night when we came back from the restaurant, as we were pulling up to the driveway, I saw the mom grey cat laying on the grass beside the road with her kittens. As soon as we pulled up, the kittens ran back to shelter and the mom followed them a little later. Today, it was raining pretty much the whole time, and when Grandpa put the food out there for them, they had to eat it fast before it all got soaked.
   This morning, another one of Grandpa's nephews came over and visited with us for a while. Later, while Dad and Grandpa were talking, we found out that we actually are not Cuban at all. That was a big surprise, since we have always thought of ourselves as part Cuban. Grandpa's parents or grandparents came from Spain, immigrated to Cuba, and then to America. After lunch, we made our way back to Titusville to spend the rest of our vacation.

   I will be posting the pictures in the next post.

vacation time part 5

Monday, may 2

   Ok, this is part 2 of the May 2 post.

   Today was a rainy day. We went to the park and I drizzled a little when we first got there, but near the time we were almost ready to leave, it started rainy heavily. Here's some views of the lake before and during the rain.

Ok, so that's that. Thankfully we were under cover when it started raining. There's a path through the park, and there are like two little places where it the path goes off to a little look out place. Well, we all happened to be at the one with a roof.

As it was raining, Dad noticed that when he was wearing his sunglasses, he could actually see the rain drops as they hit the water and they were shiny.

Unfortunately, my camera does not have sunglasses and I couldn't catch a rain drop falling in a picture. This is the best I could do.

So this is the way back to the path. There was a sign somewhere that said "Path Slippery When Wet." Unfortunately, I didn't think it was going to rain and so did not take a picture of it.

Selfie time. 

Ok, so that is not so much of a selfie.

Showing each other what a funny picture that was.

"And we will stand and gazing seriously out over the water."

What you don't know, is that just a few moments ago,

he was laughing at me and making faces at the camera. Too bad all of those pictures turned out blurry since I was laughing, as well.

Another picture of Dad and the water.

The rain has somewhat subsided.

Everyone talking, and Tasha desperately wanting to "go over there".

Ok, so that's all of the people pictures I will be posting, but I do have one last thing to say. Every time we come to Florida, all of us try to see at least one alligator in the water. Usually one of us sees one, but it's gone before the rest of us get a chance to see it. Well, today, while driving on Merritt Island, I spotted an alligator in the ditch filled with water by the road. Immediately I called everyone's attention to it, and we all saw it. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a picture of it as we were driving too fast. This is the only picture I took of an alligator today.

Ok, so as you can see, this guy is dead.

But it was the best picture I could get of an alligator, so be happy.

I hope you all enjoyed a glimpse into the happenings of today.

Goodnight!

vacation time part 4

Monday, may 2

    Hello to all my viewers.
    Today, all of us went to some place that I don't really know the name of. I think it was some park or something on Merritt Island. Anyway, I took a bunch of pictures, mostly of not-people, and I will be posting them and trying to find something to say about the.
    First off, we have a large nest on top of a pole. As we were walking into the park, we saw this and a large bird flew onto it carrying branches. I just realized it might be hard for you to see, sorry about that.

Then we have long cattails and views of the...is it a lake? I'm not sure what that body of water is.

Now there's views of the path. And if you look carefully, you might even see Lydia.

Not quite sure what this plant is called, but there's a picture of it.

Some Spanish Moss.

Here's a bunch of pictures of most of the wildlife I saw.

First is Tasha,

then lizard #1,

lizard #2,

and lizard #3.

In case you can't see him, he is on this palm

tree on the right side of the picture.

If you still can't see him...well, I can't help you there.

Here we have a turtle.

First you see me,

and then...not so much.

Oh, and we end this wildlife tour with this animal again.

I mean, we only came to this park to see an alligator,

but this is way more interesting, right?

(I did see two snakes, but got no picture, sorry.)

Moving on, I also saw a verity of plant life.

Since I probably won't know the names of them,

I won't make very many comments on them.

Palm tree.

Spanish Moss plus apparently dead leaves.

Flower.

Scenery.

More Spanish Moss with leaves. This time they're alive.

Some relation of ferns, maybe.

Plant that bears a resemblence to bay leaves.

Jagged edged leaves.

Leaves that look like rhododendron leaves.

Cat-tails.

Honestly, I didn't take the picture because of the plant.

I did it because I thought "Oh, nice picture."

More flowers.

Don't know what they are, but don't they

almost look like small grape leaves? No? Ok.

Different leaves.

Leaves that hide under water.

More of the scared plants.

And this is another 'only because of the picture' picture.

     Wow, that was a long post. I think I'll have to split this day up into two posts. Hope you enjoy this and just so you know, I will have more people in the next post.