A bit of normal life amidst the chaos of visiting Orlando!

We had intended to use our villa to the best of our ability and we did manage to entertain family and friends while we were in the Orlando area.  In addition to the very special weekend Candi spent with us and the fabulous cousin sleepover with my nephew and his darling girls, we also hosted a surprise 16th birthday party!  This was even more special since I had been able to share Kaitlyn's 10th birthday while on a trip to Adelboden, Switzerland with the Guides, hmm..oh - 6 years ago!

It was also my privilege to order her birthday cake!  I know they are much different from British birthday cakes and I had so much fun deciding on what style of cake to get.  I think purple icing with orange animal print is tastefully understated and am so glad the birthday girl seemed to agree with my choice.  And it was a great relief to package up the remainder of the cake and get it out of our villa!  We have enough temptations around here without extra cake!

My friends were in the area the same time as we were, as were a huge part of the population of Scotland.  This timeframe covers the last few days of school and the first weeks of summer vacation.  Consequently, this is the least expensive time to get to the US and I was amazed just how many Scottish people travel at this time.

The schedule of this day was to go to Sea World and leave a bit early.  If you remember Mother Nature helped us with this when we had to leave early due to a terrible storm....so it was no problem to leave this park early, go to Walmart to buy lots of food and finish putting up the decorations Kaitlyn's mother had hidden in my suitcase before we all left Scotland!

An unexpected problem was the language barrier I felt at the deli counter at Walmart.  I have been out of the country for so long now, it always amazes me that so many of the USA feels bilingual now.  And this was very apparent when I was in line to ask for a bucket of chicken.....with the exception of the British people directly before me, everyone had ordered their food in Spanish and were responded to in Spanish. This felt so odd to me....but I was very relieved to listen to the folks from the UK ordering and getting their food (in English) right before it was my turn!  In addition to fried chicken, I also ordered General Tso's Chicken.  This is one of Alan's favourites and seems to only be on offer in the US.  I think I might have to look up this recipe and see what makes it so special to him!


I usually put sayings at the end of my blogs and I found this little message for Kaitlyn:


"At 16, you are a middle-aged teenager. You have 3 years behind you and 3 years ahead of you in your teens. You probably won’t enjoy the next time you are called middle-aged, so have fun on your 16^th birthday and the rest of this special year!"  from hubpages.com