Little Projects and Gatorland

Yesterday I finally completed a little project that's been on my mind for quite awhile.  It's a photo album.

Every time we cruise or take a tour of something there are professional photos taken.  Some are given to you for free as part of the ticket price (like our Indian River cruise last month) and some are purchased.  Then we bring them home and put them on a shelf and rarely look at them again.  A few have been displayed in frames or propped up on a bookshelf, but mostly they are hidden out of sight.

I've been thinking about how sad this is for a long time.  So last week I finally bought a HUGE three ring binder and 100 plastic three ring protector sleeves.  Yesterday I blocked out the day to work on it.  It took me awhile to round up all the photos, beginning with our first cruise in 2000.  I organized them by dates and started putting them in the photo sleeves.  It was SO MUCH FUN!  I really enjoyed looking back at all of our adventures.

I could not find any professional photos from our first two Disney cruises or the Carnival Valour in 2012.  I can hardly believe that we didn't buy any from those cruises, so I'll keep looking.  I also couldn't find the ones from the Island Princess with Frank and Alice Pearlman to Alaska in 2006.  I was really sad because I had especially wanted to see those again.  Good news!  While I was at the SOJC choir rehearsal last night, Mark found them for me.  I'll put them into the album tomorrow.

Today is Park 4 in our quest to do 9 in 9.   Gatorland is usually close to $30 for the day, but this month it is only TEN BUCKS for Florida residents.  How could we turn it down?  In fact, the only other time we were ever there was a few years ago on the same deal.  Now they have two Florida panthers in residence, as well, that we are very much looking forward to seeing.  And when we are done, we can go to Private Island Ice Cream.  It's right across the street!

One final thing.  Mark changed my bandage last night.  We were both kind of grossed out by how it looked.  It bled a lot, soaking all the way through the padding.  I was told it would drain all week, so I don't know why I was surprised by that.  I took a good look at the cyst with a mirror while it was exposed.  Big and ugly with a huge gap in it where the packing material must be down inside.  Hopefully it's going to heal up in a week, enough to move to the next steps in its eventual removal.  The good news is that it does not hurt at all.