This post is to collect the posts I’ve done for our family vacation:
Day 1 & 2 – travel to Florida & detour through campus of the University of Florida, visit to Heritage Village, St. Petersburg Pier & climbing in a Kapok tree
Day 3 – Science Center of Pinellas, International Plaza
Now it’s Friday and again, we slept in before getting a late start out. I had a hard time deciding what we would do this day but eventually decided on the Florida Aquarium. Despite the high admission price it was well worth it. In addition to the aquarium exhibits, they had an outside water play area that the kids played in.
The Aquarium offers scuba lessons which they call “Swimming with the Fishes” – that was interesting to watch b/c they have a tank where you can look at people learning to scuba.
Here is the “No Bone Zone” where you can touch some of the specimens.
Then, the kids went to the water play area for awhile to cool off.
Now, Kaleya was playing with the water squirt machines spraying other kids. I predicted that if she got sprayed she would not like it. Sure enough, she got sprayed and I hear her over there crying so went to see what was wrong. After she calmed down though she went right back over to get in the mix again.
After the aquarium we then headed to Honeymoon Island Beach. I wanted to go to a beach that was not filled with tourists and Honeymoon Island certainly was not. The shore was rocky, but overall the kids enjoyed it – they actively searched and found many seashells and began a small collection.
Day 3 of the vacation started off as leisurely as Day 2. After sleeping in, the kids’ daily walk around the lake with my stepfather, my solo trip to a nearby cemetery for some genealogy work, and lunch, we went down to St. Petersburg to visit the Science Center of Pinellas. I figured I couldn’t subject the kids to more “history” stuff so a Science Center seemed like a good idea.
The Science Center is an older establishment, having been founded in 1959, but they had some interesting things to see. It was actually the first science education center in the United States. We began in their marine room where they had a tank with a few specimens of marine life.
One of the more interesting things in the tank was a horseshoe crab, I’m not sure I’d ever seen one before.
They also had owls.
They had a cabinet with skeletons in it, so of course we had to open it
One of the lovely treasures inside was a skeleton of the horseshoe crab!
and check out the Snowflake Moray Eel
Following the marine room we toured the rest of the inside of the center and saw alligators, a scorpion, a gecko, the wingspan of an albatross (did you know it was almost 15 feet?) and more. We even saw a tarantula and the shed exoskeleton of a tarantula.
Outside of the center they had a wetlands area, a Native American village replica (which had been recently burned down by vandals), and a sidewalk tile exhibit that represented the United States and the years each state entered the union. The boys particularly enjoyed the wetlands; they saw a snake, several lizards, a big spider and a big cricket. yucky.
Of course Kelli had to stand next to her Florida.
After the Science Center we tried to go back home, but Kelli got turned around and we ended up in Tampa. So, we went to the International Plaza so she could visit a particular store. At the mall we waited for her at the children’s play area – it was themed like a Looney Tunes baseball field.
One of the ladies next to me @ the play area started talking to me and she ended up forwarding me a text ad from Bath & Body Works to get $10 in free merchandise w/ a purchase of $10 dollars or more. That resulted in me spending $35 dollars there, but I got $40 worth of free stuff. Can’t beat that! The boys even got a new shower gel, the Oak scent from their mens collection. That was a great social marketing ploy if I can say so myself. I am a little disappointed that their Twitter account has not been updated since April 8th.
And finally, more swimming this night. We’d picked up an inner tube for Kaleya, so she had a great time being a bit more adventurous in the water.
Over the past week, we’ve been vacationing in Florida having a grand time! Kalonji had to work so it was me, my sister, and the kids. We went to go visit my mother in the Tampa Bay area.
Day 1: Tuesday, June 1
To drive from Nashville to my mother is a 12-hour drive, so pretty much the whole day was spent in the car. Lots of conversation, snacks and bathroom stops characterized our day.
We arrived at my mom’s home at about 10pm. However, we did stop at the University of Florida where Kelli did her undergrad so she could have a nostalgic drive-through of the campus. One of the things that was interesting was a wall of graffiti they have and allow the students to paint.
We arrived at my mom’s house at about 10pm. So, after some catching up chit-chat, it was off to bed we go.
Day 2: June 3, 2010
Sleeping in of course — we didn’t head out for the day until around noon. My stepfather Ron does not go to work until later in the day, so each morning during our vacation he took the kids to accompany him on his daily walk around a nearby lake. Miles took the following picture on their first day out.
After freshening up, we went to Heritage Village, a nearby living history museum where they have multiple historic buildings and they demonstrate how life was lived back “in the day.” There were 28 buildings on the site, but we arrived late so several were closed off and we saw about half of them. What we did see was very interesting though. One of the buildings on campus was the Union Academy, a hand-me down school for black children. It was active around 1915 and the building used to be in Tarpon Springs, Florida and was one of the first “negro” schools in the county.
After Heritage Village we headed down to the St. Petersburg Pier, a local spot for viewing the water and a beautiful view of downtown St. Petersburg, Clearwater, & Tampa. At the top of the pier the kids looked through the binoculars to look at the view.
Even Kaleya got in on the fun
On our way out, the kids fed dead fish to the outside pelicans.
When we were leaving the Pier, we passed an interesting looking tree, a Kapok tree, so we got out to let the kids climb it.
Then it was time to call it a day so we headed back to my mother’s house for the evening. Now, the great thing about Florida is that the pools in her complex are open year-round, so at about 9pm we went swimming and of course the kids loved that!
To continue the posts about our family vacation August 1-7th, 2009…..
On Tuesday of that week, we decided to take the kids over to Birmingham. Birmingham is only about an hour away from Talladega, so it’s a perfect day trip.
Leaving at about 9 in the morning, we headed over to the Civil Rights Institute. The purpose for our visit was to see this museum and to see the 16th Street Avenue church where the bombing took place in 1963 and killed 4 young girls – Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, & Cynthia Wesley. Many others were injured that day, and within a few hours of the bombing, two young boys were also killed during the riots.
Both the Institute & the 16th Street Church are situated on the edges of Kelly Ingram Park. Throughout 1963, the park was the locale of organized civil rights protests & boycotts by Rev. Martin Luther King and Fred Shuttlesworth. After touring the Institute & the Church, we then toured the park, so I’ll come back to that.
The Civil Rights Institute
The Civil Rights Institute was extremely nice and very well put-together. It has been around since 1992. When you begin the tour, they show a short movie and then the movie screen lifts up and you are able to enter the museum. As we went through the exhibits, I learned quite a bit about the history of the civil rights activities in the city and we made sure the kids all understood the significance as well. I think my favorite part of the exhibit was the near the beginning where they have setups of what a typical black classroom would have looked like compared to what a typical white classroom looked like. Very striking.
After the main exhibits, we also toured another exhibit they have called Freedom’s Sisters. This exhibit covers information on 20 women involved in civil rights activities. There were a couple of hands-on activities that I thought created a nice touch — namely, they had one page sheets for each woman that you would collect and put into a folder to create your own “book.” Then, they had a photo kiosk where you could take a picture and create your own profile sheet to add to your book. Very nice touch. Afterwards, the kids took the requisite group pic.
16th Street Church
Across the street from the Civil Rights Institute is the 16th Street Church, the location of the bombing in 1963 that killed the four girls mentioned above. We were able to walk around the church and there was a guide that provided some details and history of what happened there. The room that the girls were in was a dressing room of sorts back then, and it is now a kitchen. Other than a marker outside the church where the bomb was located, there did not seem to be any internal indications of what transpired there. The church converted the space into a kitchen and still uses it today. Group pic of the kids in front of that area:
and, outside the church
Kelly Ingram Park
As we left the church, we then next explored Kelly Ingram Park which is just outside both locations. The park had several statues/reliefs set up to help capture the events of a significant protest that occured there involving mostly children. I was particularly struck by this one that was done in two parts to represent children being jailed. The words along the bottom that you can’t see in this angle say “I ain’t afraid of your jail.”
After touring around the park, we then left and headed back to Talladega. When we got back, we let the kids swim for awhile in the hotel pool and then we went on another home excursion. More details to come soon over on the genealogy blog!
In the last post, I talked about the beginning of our family vacation where we went to Evansville, Indiana to pick up my oldest two stepsons. Day 2 was spent on the road.
Our vacation destination was Talladega, Alabama, home of my father-in-law and his family. My youngest stepson lives in Atlanta, so we had to pick him up. So, on Sunday Jul 31, we drove through 5 states in one day!
One of the highlights along the way was Jihad’s consumption of dried venison. He’d been asking for beef jerky all week, so Kalonji bought him some smoked venison and smoked elk to see if he would eat it.
And, eat it he did!
it was a sight to see.
The drive through Tennessee was of course beautiful as always when we approached the Chattanooga area. I always enjoy seeing the mountainside.
We arrived in Talladega around 10pm that night and I was very glad to hit the pillows. Road trips are tiring.
We’ve just recently returned from our family vacation and I have a lot to report on! So, I’ll be doing a blog post to cover each day, along with additional blog posts on my genealogy blog for those events that are more genealogy related.
We were fortunate to be able to have all the boys with us for the vacation and I could not have been happier. The boys are 14, 12, 11, & 8 now and it had been a year since we have all been together. Kaleya of course was right up in the midst of everything they were doing and enjoyed being with all of her brothers.
Our trip started on Saturday morning, August 1 with us leaving Nashville to go to Evansville to pick up Kamau & Miles. Unlike many of our trips to Evansville, we actually left pretty early and arrived around noon. When we got there, Kamau & Miles were at a local church taking a cooking class. Kamau is interested in going to culinary school and apparently they’ve been cooking with the church group all summer. The boys made Spicy Chili Mac w/ the help of Granny Kit-Kat and took it over to the church. After everyone had their dishes together, the group sat down to “sample” the food
Here is Miles as he gets some macaroni & cheese another church member made
Meanwhile, I was keen to note that the church we were at was VERY close to the Evansville Public Library. Since I was hoping that I could spend some time at the library to do some genealogy research, this was the perfect opportunity to ask Kalonji if he’d drop me off. He obliged and I spent several hours looking up dead people. It was great! Read my genealogy blog for more details.
That evening we relaxed with the family. Kalonji gave Miles a haircut and of course Kaleya had to try and help.
Notice that she and Kalonji are wearing matching t-shirts? Hip Hop Harry is a show that Kaleya started watching a couple of years ago. Rap is used as an educational tool and the guy who plays Hip Hop Harry is the same one that did Barney. Kalonji ordered matching tees for the two of them so now whenever one wants to wear it, the other has to as well . It’s kinda cute.
The rest of the evening was spent relaxing in preparation for our road trip on Sunday.
Today I have come back home after a trip to Portland, Oregon. I was in Portland to attend the National Library of Medicine Informatics Training Conference. The National Libray of Medicine provides funding for 18 educational institutions in the U.S., who in turn fund students to pursue education and research in informatics (bioinformatics, clinical informatics, public health informatics, imaging informatics, library informatics and more). My institution, Vanderbilt University, is one of the schools that receives the fundings and it is through this program that I am able to pursue my MPH degree. Once a year, the NLM brings together all the trainees for an annual meeting as an opportunity to get to meet one another and become aware of the various research and projects being undertaken. Our hosts for the meeting was Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland.
After two very full Southwest flights to get there, I arrived in Portland Monday evening. I stayed at the Hilton downtown, which offered great accommodations. I was quite tired so ended up ordering room service rather than venture out anywhere. From my hotel room, I had a good view of one of the hillsides in the area.
On Tuesday, our meeting activities started bright and early, with buses at the hotel to take us to the OHSU campus at 6am. The OHSU campus has a prime location – they sit at the top of Marquam Hill, which offers a stunning view of the city of Portland. I was not able to find a recent picture that I felt showed the height of the campus well enough with all of its extensive development now, but here is an image from the OHSU Library Digital Archives of the campus in the 1920s. From this, you can clearly see their positioning at the top of the hill.
After a good morning session of presentations and posters (I’ll post later about them), it was time for lunch. Our visit to the campus happened to coincide with the campus Farmer’s Market. Vanderbilt has a Farmer’s Market too, but theirs was more extensive – they had many tables set up with items ranging from fruits, veggies, bbq, gifts, candy even!
They also had performers playing live music. It was lovely, and we all ate lunch out on one of the campus lawns. This was the view from where I was sitting, on the steps of MacKenzie Hall.
After lunch, there were more sessions. To leave the OHSU campus, I took the Aerial Tram – this was definitely a major highlight of the trip! The tram goes back and forth from the top of the hill down to the bottom, where I took the streetcar back to the hotel. The views from the top were absolutely stunning. From there, you can also see the omnipresent Mt. Hood off in the distance.
Of course, my photos don’t even do it justice. As we rode down the tram, Mt. St. Helens also comes into view. Can you imagine that? All that scenery, plus two mountain off in the distance? Gorgeous!
That evening, I went out to dinner with my friend Aimee. We went to Library school together and she is a teen librarian in the area now. We have not seen each other in 7 years, so of course it was good to see her! We ate Mexican and then afterwards she took me to Voodoo Donut, a Portland tradition – a place known for its outrageous donuts. Tell me, did I really need to eat The Old Dirty Bastard (chocolate, oreos and peanut butter) and the Marshall Mathers donuts?
As Kelli said, these were heart attacks waiting to happen. But, they were good
On Wednesday, there were more conference activities, and after I left I had planned to go back to the hotel for a restful last night. However, as I was taking the streetcar back (and yes, I took the tram down again), I saw the stop for the Multonomah County Central Library, and it was very near my hotel. So, I hopped off and had to visit.
And what a great visit it was! First of all, the library is absolutely gorgeous! It is the oldest library west of the Mississippi with this particular building erected in 1913. It has had a renovation since then and the interior is gorgeous. When I walked in, I was immediately taken by the steps of the grand staircase. They are a deep black with engravings and words etched into them. The design was created by Larry Kirkland and is called “Garden Stair,” however, I’ve had difficulty finding any good pictures of it online. I knew I should have taken some myself, but my camera battery was dying. I did get a postcard, so I took a picture of the postcard.
I did not make it over to the Children’s section, but there is a big tree there and the room is named for Beverly Cleary, who is from Oregon. I can’t tell you how many of her Ramona books I read growing up. I didn’t find this out until I was leaving, but if I’d realized this, I would have looked around there too.
I quickly made my way to the periodicals section as I was there on a mission. I will post more about that on my genealogy blog. Free wi-fi access made for a comfortable few hours there before I headed back to my hotel room.
Thursday morning, I overslept so left the hotel in quite the hurry, but I really did enjoy my brief stay. Mabye next time I’ll get to stay longer. While I’ve put plenty of pictures in this post, I have more in my photo album.
I’m writing this post after having returned home, but I wanted to chronicle my 3rd day in Hawaii, Monday, May 18th. We went to Pearl Harbor to visit the USS Arizona Memorial and that took most of the morning, so I wanted to blog about the trip. I desperately wanted to visit Pearl Harbor because one of my great-uncles served in WWII during this time and spent time there. He was only two days off from actually having been there during the attack and was on several navy ships involved in the campaigns subsequent to the Pearl Harbor attack. I have more about it on my genealogy blog for those who may be interested.
Our trip to the memorial went smoothly. We took the bus from the hotel there, a trip that lasted a little more than an hour. It was nice to take the bus though because we were able to see some of the city. We arrived at 8:45 and got tickets for the 9:45 tour. While waiting we spent time looking at the exhibits on site – there were all kinds of displays up that help in understanding the events of that day. From the visitor’s center, you can see the USS Arizona memorial across the water.
At the start of the tour, we watched a documentary that was about 25 minutes long. It was highly interesting and informative and I want to see if I can buy the documentary. Then, we were taken on a ferry across the water out to the memorial.
The memorial was well set up and very respectful in setting. It astounds me to think that more than 1100 men died almost instaneously as the ship was struck and sunk. The memorial is positioned over the sunken ship but parts of the ship appear above water. This is a picture of one of the gun torrents that is above the water.
I am glad that I visited, it was a moving experience for me. Now, after leaving the memorial, they ferry you back over to the visitor’s center. We were short on time, so I did not stop back in the bookstore, but when I’d browsed earlier, there were a couple of books that I thought I may be interested in getting, so I’ll be sure to look them up.
After getting back to the hotel, I was off to the conference for some official work stuff, and then in the afternoon did some school work. For dinner though, we trekked to a hotel further down Wakiki Beach for Korean.
The street we walked down, Kalakaua Avenue , to get there was crazy – one of my co-workers mentioned it was like Rodeo drive. There were all kind of name brand shops as well as other interesting places like an International Market. We ended up at the Waikiki Resort Hotel for dinner at Seoul Jung Restaurant.
One of my coworkers is 1/4 Korean so she was able to explain the various dishes to us. I selected Kalbi Jjim for dinner, which was like a pot roast stew – it was good and it was hot! It was boiling when they brought it out – I had to take a video of it. Play the video clip to see it boiling.
After dinner, it was then time to head back to the hotel room and prepare for the presentation I had to do on Tuesday. The presentation described some of the iniatives we have ongoing at my library and I shared with the attendees specifically our work on integrating our information resources into our informatics tools and systems. Feedback was good I understand though I had to leave right away to catch my flight. But, on the official MLA blog, a very positive post was made about our presentation that you can read here.
So, after the presentation I came home – my flight was long and up until the end was good. Towards the end of the first leg my ears refused to pop so pressure started to build up. Between legs it started to subside, but started again with my last leg back to Nashville. Have you ever had sustained pressure build up over several hours of flying? It is a horrible, horrible experience. Even after getting off the plane the pressure was still pretty intense and it made me sick to my stomach. I had to come home and sleep the pressure and pain was so bad.
Overall though, the trip was good and I’m grateful for the chance to have gone and participated in the conference and see some of Hawaii. Next month I’m off to Portland, Oregan for another business trip, and hopefully a side trip to San Francisco to visit a friend.
It is almost noon on Monday, May 18th as I write this blog post, but here in lovely Hawaii, it is only 6:40am. Yesterday was my 2nd day here and the fun continued!
I spent most of the morning working on school work. I am a full-time student after all, so being in Hawaii doesn’t even release me from my student responsibilities . For lunch, I joined my coworkers at a nearby restaurant for dim sum. I’m not sure exactly what I ate, but it was all good. On the way to the restaurant, I passed this statue in front of the convention center
The statue represents the welcoming spirit of the Hawaiin people. After lunch I headed to the convention center to look through the exhibits some more, and then had a massage courtesy of one of the vendors. I so needed that massage – it felt great. It was a little painful and my coworker tells me that is b/c I have a lot of tension that needs releasing. I agree I must figure out a way to get another one.
In the afternoon it was back to more school work but along the way back to the hotel I took more pictures. The hotel has a village feel w/ a lot of open areas and spaces, so there is plenty to take pictures of.
After getting more accomplished, it was time to head to the luau hosted by one of our vendors, OVID. When I stopped by my coworkers room, I had to take a picture of their view of the ocean. Absolutely gorgeous!
The luau itself was fun – the food was good. I even ate a Hawaiin Purple Sweet Potato. The purple sweet potatoes are native to Okinawa and in Hawaii are known as ‘uala. It was very good. You can see what they look like by going here. Entertainment for the evening was by way of a group of Polynesian dancers then a band performed several songs too. I took some video clips — one of the group dancing and then one of the guy w/ fire they also had. Here is the group of polynesian dancers – I’ll put the fire guy up later.
Then, afterwards, came back and went to bed. I as pooped! This morning however, we are going over to see Pearl Harbor, which I am very much looking forward to for family/genealogy reasons. I will share more on that later. I did add more pictures to my photo album, so if you looked once, look again! You can see them here.
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