Tiny Kitten

Long story short, my Mom found a tiny, 7 week old kitten all by herself on the side of the road near a canal. Because her cat is feline leukemia positive and the kitten is not, I'm fostering her until the rescue group has an opening to take her.

Mom named her "Sundae" and she's tiny! Less than 2lbs of adorable, orange fluff.

Birthday at the Magic Kingdom

Thursday, May 16th was my birthday so I spent it at The Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World! I had a really fun day riding a bunch of rides, taking several hundred photos (no, really) and Anana was there to celebrate with me!

Silly picture of me my fiance took with my cell phone. And yes, I *am* wearing a birthday tiara! LOL
If you can't be a princess for your birthday at Disney, where can you? ;)

View of Main Street USA and Cinderella Castle from the Train Station right at the entrance to the park!

With the Gaston statue in the New Fantasyland area.

Old school style circus banners for the new Storybook Circus area of the park.

Dueling Dumbo spinners in the background of the new Storybook Circus area.

Mickey and Minnie topiaries!

Anana was amused to find out he was the perfect size to fit in the canon outside Pirates of the Caribbean!

Getting a Dole Whip Float and a Dole Whip swirl at Aloha Isle. Yum!

Dole Whips are SO well loved they even have a shirt about them.

Runaway mine train goes by at Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. This is one of my favorite rides!

Welcome to the Hall of Presidents!

Liberty Belle steamboat on the river in Liberty Square.

Cinderella Castle from the side as the sun was starting to set.

With busts of some of the 999 Happy Haunts inside the Haunted Mansion.

And just because it's pretty, this is the last shot I took of the day. You park 1.5 miles away from Magic Kingdom and have to either take the monorail or the ferry boat out to the park. This shot was taken at the ferry dock with the help of my 55-250mm telephoto lens and shows the entry to MK including the train station and Cinderella Castle.

Ikea Tampa

It's kinda become tradition to take all my Little Visitors to Ikea at least once during their stay. This afternoon we headed over there for a bookcase and I brought Anana with me. Only cell phone pics but hopefully still fun.

View of Tampa Skyline from cafe.

 

 

Another shot of the Tampa skyline as we head home. (In a ton of traffic!)

Mother's Day & My Birthday Celebration

Sunday the 12th was Mother's Day and since Thursday, May 16th is my birthday we decided to just celebrate both events with a family lunch on the same day. So everyone got together at my Mom's house for food, cake and presents!

Ooh, presents!

And Cake!

It was quite tasty!

Mopping

My Mom is disabled with several chronic illnesses like RA and Lupus so I try to get up to her house once a week or so to help clean. Things like vacuum, mop, etc. Friday afternoon I went up to mop. Her whole house is tile so it's a big job. Anana came to help.

Busch Gardens Tampa - Part 2

I got up Monday, May 6th and the weather was unseasonably beautiful. It was 72F outside and cool, with low humidity. So I made the executive decision to take advantage of the gorgeous day and grabbed Anana and we headed over to Busch Gardens for a few hours just the two of us. (Love of course, was at work. This is one of the big perks of working for yourself!)

This bronze baby elephant statue was so cute!

...but of course, the real elephants are pretty cool too!

Here's a replica of an elephant skull.

 

They have this walk-through King Tut tomb in the Egypt part of the park. I didn't even know it was there!

This was set up like the sarcophagus and tomb room and such.
(Sorry the lighting was really weird in there.)

Monday afternoon and the park had very few people in it. We had it practically to ourselves!

This whole area of Timbuktu has games where you can win stuffed animals and such.

More views of how nice and empty the place was!

Tiger topiary. The real ones were totally sleeping under a tree and though I took a pic, you can't see them at all in it. LOL

Here's another one of those cool statues. This one of a lion.

And here's a shot of a real lion I took as well.

I was actually heading out when I saw this dolphin topiary and had to stop and snag a shot. It reminded me of the dolphin statues in VA. This one was actually a little ad for sister park, Sea World, but still. Dolphin!

Magic Kingdom

Saturday, May 4th we went to Walt Disney World again but this time we headed over to Magic Kingdom! Of course, this is what people think of when they think of WDW because it's the classic, iconic park with Cinderella Castle.

Opened in 1971, Magic Kingdom celebrated it's 40th anniversary a few years ago but is still one of the most fun places I know of in the world, entertaining nearly 20 million visitors each year!

Walking down Main Street as you enter the park, you see Cinderella Castle in front of you.

Yay! Cinderella Castle!

Inside Country Bear Jamboree before it begins

Trying on a Disney hat in the surf shop in Adventureland

Heading into Tomorrowland. At night, all these buildings are lined in neon.

See the yellow tower right over Anana's shoulder? It's the same one as the pic above. This is on the PeopleMover which is an elevated loop around Tomorrowland. It's also our "Something High" weekly shot.

We had a lot of fun though we were with Love's brother and girlfriend and unfortunately, she got ill. So I didn't get as many photos as I wanted on this trip. No worries though because we'll be back for my birthday on May 16th and can get more shots  - and bonus birthday shots - at Magic Kingdom then!

Botanical Gardens

Next door to Heritage Village is a Botanical Gardens! So after we had to leave the Village because it was closing, we reparked at the gardens and took a stroll through there as well.

You enter the park through a wooden boardwalk across water.

Ornamental pineapple plants!

Little "faerie" sized carved table and chairs were perfect for Anana!

Lots of pretty mosaic tiles in the gardens all done by local artists.

Hard to see, but this planter bed has a full aquatic mosaic too and is like 12 feet long. There's another on the other side of the path as well!

Stopping to smell the roses!