The trip to our vacation started last Sabbath afternoon as we drove to Camp Sagola for the U.P.’s E-Zone Praise Report.  This was Israel’s first time attending since he was out of town during last year’s.  We had our car packed up since we wouldn’t be going back home for the next two weeks.  Israel invited some students from Tech to share how the campus ministry is going.  (BTW, they are now an official student organization!  Campus HOPE – Michigan Tech!  God is good…)  Well, good thing he invited them, because if he didn’t, it would have been an absolute disaster.  All of the other pastors had prepared Powerpoint presentations complete with statistics on their church(es) growth, goals for the next year, and updates on everything the church had been doing for evangelism for the next three years.  Oh yeah, and all of the pastors brought their church board members.  Israel didn’t prepare anything, nor did any of his board members come.  He was planning on just winging-it.  LOL.  So~, the students being there helped, although, Israel was still so nervous that he forgot to call on 2 of them.  Basically, they drove the 1.5 hours there to simply stand up in the front!  Despite all of that, God did bless the presentation and many people were excited about what is happening up in the Keweenaw. 

To make a long story short, by the next day, we drove down to Detroit and spent the night at my parents’ house.  On Monday afternoon, our flight took off to Orlando.  Israel had Imanuel on his lap (in first class- he got upgraded) and I had Micah on my lap.  (This was the last trip where Imanuel is under 2 – no more free flights for him!)  It wasn’t too bad.  Both kids took good naps on the plane and the flight was less than 3 hours.  We got to warm, sunny Florida and it was great.

The weather has been a bit fickle, however.  We’ve had to turn on both the air-con and the heater during our stay so far.  But we’re definitely not complaining!  It has been so beautiful to see flowers, non-frozen ponds, different species of birds (-not just crows), and green grass all around us.  It has made me think of heaven on more than one occasion. 

We’ve gone to some fun places so far.  We arrived on Monday and just settled ourselves in at our new home for the week.  It happens to be a nice timeshare-community called Oak Plantation Villas.  We found it at cheaptickets.com for a super-cheap price.  It’s basically a one-bedroom apartment complete with full kitchen, living room, washer/dryer, and full bath.  It’s surrounded by walking trails, lots of activities for kids, Internet access, and 3 pools.  We were pleasantly surprised.
 

The next day, Tuesday, was Israel’s birthday.  Now, to be perfectly honest, both of us completely forgot.  I felt horrible.  (So, I decided that we would celebrate his birthday on Wednesday.)  Anyhow, we spent the afternoon at Gatorland with the alligators.  (The good thing for all of the attractions that we got tickets for is that children under 2 are free.  So, Imanuel was able to enjoy all of the animals for free!)  Imanuel’s favorite part, though, was feeding the some African yellow deer.  Go figure. 
 
 
For dinner, we met up with Stephen Row (-he’s in his last year of law
school at UF) at a Thai Restaurant.  He came over afterwards and it was
nice chilling with him and talking politics.  (We watched the
democratic debate.)

On Wednesday, we celebrated Israel’s birthday with a cake and we did whatever he wanted to do.  And that happened to be going shopping at the outlet malls that were just a few miles away.  We went to the Converse outlet store and he wanted all of us to get matching pairs of Chuck Taylor’s.  I agreed, but the stipulation was that they all had to be from the clearance section.  We couldn’t find any shoe that had all of our sizes, so the boys got matching shoes and Israel and I got matching shoes.  That was fun.  🙂

Thursday was Sea World day.  We’ve been to Sea World San Diego and that was really nice.  We were expecting them to be similar, but the shows were so different!  Maybe it was because it had been a few years since we went to the one in San Diego.  Anyhow, it was nice.  The boys both took naps in their strollers so during that time it gave Israel and I a nice break.  They have this offer now that you can get a 2nd day admission free if you go within 7 days, so I think we’ll end up going on Sunday again. 

Friday.  We spend the morning tidying up our place for the Sabbath and then we hung out at the pool.  Israel and Imanuel actually went in and Imanuel got his first swimming lesson.  Micah and I just soaked up some sun.  When we got back to the room, Israel and Imanuel washed up and the boys took a nap.  Then after they woke up, we took a stroll in Downtown Disney.  We admired the amazing Lego sculptures that surrounded the Lego Store, we ate pretzels from Wetzel Pretzel, and we all shared a frozen lemonade.  Anyhow, after our walk, we went home to eat dinner and welcome in the Sabbath. 

On Sabbath morning, we spent family time together in the hotel.  Later on in the afternoon, we drove around to find a nice lake to feed some ducks and spend time outside enjoying nature.  It was a gorgeous day.  Israel mistakenly found the perfect place to do all of those things!  It was at Disney’s Caribbean Resort.  We actually had no idea where we were (except that we were on Disney property) and at the gate, the man told us that we were welcome to go in and check out the resort.  It was HUGE.  We passed through Aruba, Jamaica, Bermuda, Martinique, etc. etc…  Well, we found the perfect place for our stroll in nature.  We also found plenty of birds to feed!  We took a walk through Calypso Cay and enjoyed the exotic plants and flowers.  And imagine, we didn’t have to pay for a thing! 

After that, we went back to our humble hotel room to eat lunch and take naps.  In fact, during Israel’s nap (which he wasn’t supposed to be taking at the time), Imanuel got a hold of the baby powder and powdered the entire bedroom.  Micah was taking a nap in the living room (GOOD THING) and I was taking a bath.  When I walked in, Israel had apparently just woken up from his nap and he too was covered in baby powder and he didn’t even know it.  We have yet to decide what we’re going to do about that…

Updates on the kiddies:

Some of Manu’s new vocabulary words since we’ve been here:
Florida
Alligator Farm
swimming trunks
sunny glasses (LOL)
Micah Christian
Manu Alexander
knee cap (bc he fell and scraped it)
Chuck Taylor’s
orca whale

Manu’s best sentence he’s put together:
“Micah, don’t cry…Manu right here!”

Micah’s greatest accomplishment as of yet:
On Thursday night, he slept 12 hours at night (10pm-10am)!

We still have a couple more days to spend here so the fun doesn’t end yet.  We have really really enjoyed our stay here.  Orlando is the perfect place for families because there are so many different activities/attractions to choose from, airfare is cheap ($200 from Detroit!), AND, there are Walmarts, Targets, and plenty of yummy, affordable restaurants to choose from.  We’re thinking about making Orlando one of our vacation spots each year.

I think that’s enough updates for now.  We prayed that God would bless our plans for this vacation and we feel that He has by far exceeded our expectations!  He is faithful!  We have grown together as a family and have found the much needed peace and rest that we were looking for.   Thank you, Lord!

PS:  More pics from this trip can be found on our photo strip. 

Love from Florida,
the Ramoses