TRAVELING TO FLORIDA!!!

Today is January 24th- We left the twin cities around 11am. I joked that we wouldn't run into any traffic in Minnesota because everyone would be home preparing to watch the Vikings game. We have decided to take one route down and a different route back to give the kids a change of scenery. On the way down, we are going through Iowa. There isn't a whole lot to look at in Iowa. Lol. No offense to Iowians. We did stop for lunch in Waterloo which is a much bigger town than I thought. While looking for Arby's (we are hoping to limit eating out to once a day or less) we got to discover Waterloo because of bad directions given by a gas station attendant. Oh well, it was cool to see the guitar sculpture at the Waterloo art center. They also have many beauitful brick churches and older homes. Though they are stuck in the car, we are still trying to limit their television viewing. We are interchanging DVD's and books on tape. We listened to "Spongebob-tea at the treedome." Then we turned on "Dear John" by Nicholas Sparks. We are not done with that story yet but the speaking was putting Michael to sleep while driving so we had to turn on the radio. The children are helping us track the map and distances (well the best a 5 & 7 year old can). This basically means they are looking at the map and seeing where each town is and how far we have gone and how far to the next major city.
We arrived in Florida Monday night. The trip was good. I love driving long distances. It is now Friday and we have been soooo busy. We have been to Old Town where the kids road on rides, looked at the shops and collected acorns. We saw a squirel and it came right up to Michael's hand. We went to Downtown disney where they made Mr. Potato heads (and we bought one to bring home) they dressed up my little ponies. We looked at all the different stores including the Rainforest cafe where they had real parrots. We played with legos at lego land. The coolest part was eating at the T-Rex restaurant. It was sooo cool. They have animatronic dinosaurs/ an octopus/ mammoths and bugs. Every half hour there were "meteor showers" where the sky had a screen that showed meteors falling from the sky and the rooms turned red. There is an "ice cave" where you could sit that was blue but turned red during the meteor showers. It was so much fun. We have eaten out WAY TOO MUCH though.