Orlando and St. Augustine, FL {Travel Diary}

This trip was the best vacation! I had such a fun time and though we were busy most of the time it was a refreshing break from life. I was in Florida from May 26th- June 6th.

I wanted to first clarify a few things before I take you on this journey. Our best friends live in Florida and we used to home school with them. Their oldest son was graduating so we came down for that and we stayed and went on a vacation with them.

DISCLAIMER: I’m not trying to brag about this trip or anything like that. I am so thankful I had this opportunity with my family.

Now I can tell you about my trip!

Day 1 (Friday)

 

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Bright and early at 4am we started our 14 hour journey to Florida. It ended up taking us 14 hours the first day. We stopped in Savannah and coincidentally stayed at the same hotel as we did last time we went to Florida again.

We also stopped at South of the Border which if you are going to Florida you must stop there! It is pretty cheesy but the pictures are worth it.

Day 2 (Saturday)

After a delicious continental breakfast we jumped back on the road. We finally made it to our resort (Tropical Palms) at four or five. It was such a nice place and I loved staying there. Our friends own an RV so we all stayed at an RV park, though we stayed in a cottage. Here’s what our cottage looked like.

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We unloaded that evening and then we went and saw everyone who was there for the graduation. Many of their family and friends had come to Orlando for Josh’s (the guy graduating) graduation. I loved getting to see some of their extended family again and meeting some other people who had a big part in their lives. That evening we played a game about who knew Josh the best and had a pre-party for him.

We also went for a walk that evening and saw an alligator!!

Day 3 (Sunday)

Sunday we went to Josh’s graduation ceremony and then to his party. The ceremony was a home school convention held at the Gay Lord hotel. The ceremony was held the day before Memorial day and the man speaking was fought in the Vietnam war. He was such an amazing speaker!

Later that day, we went to the graduation party. We ate plenty of India food, danced, and listened to Josh, his brothers, and cousins sing and play different instruments. It was a great time and I’ve never danced so much 🙂

Day 4 (Monday)

This day we had the opportunity to meet a woman who my mom lived with while she was teaching in the intercity. We also were able to meet the man (and his family) that introduced my parents to each other! It was a privilege to meet people so influential in my parent’s lives. Plus, we went swimming! I played water football which was different for someone who isn’t a big sport person.

Day 5 (Tuesday)

Tuesday we ended up doing my favorite activity of the week and I conquered one of my fears! We went to Aquatica (Sea World’s water park). This was definitely my families favorite place we went! They had so many fun and refreshing water slides.

^^Breakaway Falls

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I’m not a roller coaster person but I love water slides. There was one that I was terrified of doing. It is called Breakaway falls. You are in a capsule and the floor drops out from under you and you shoot down into a waterside. After a bit of peer pressure, I decided to do it and I ended up going first out of our whole group.

I’m so glad I did it though I would not do it again. I was so surprised as I began dropping the I flung my arms back instead of crossing them over my chest, therefor inhaling a ton of water. All in all it was a great experience though.

I think our favorite all around things were Whala Wave ( a family ride with twists turns and drops) and Rao Rapids (you float around in some fast rapids). I would recommend this completely if you are ever in Florida!

Day 6 (Weechi-Watchee)

So many of our friends went to Weechi-Watchee and said it was their favorite part of their vacation. Plus it was a state park so the tickets were inexpensive ($13 for adults/teens and $8 for kids).

Mermaid show

The dock and swimming area

It was a natural spring (like where bottled water comes from) and they had shows, a riverboat ride, water slides, and swimming area. It was a really different activity than where we would normally go but it was so cool. It was even worth the two-hour drives (both ways)!

Day 7 (Thursday)

The Crucifixtion

The Prodigal Son

On Thursday we went to the Holy Land. When we entered the park, it looked like we had stepped back in time. We went around and saw different performances and toured replicated buildings. We also went to a place called the scriptorium where we learned all about how the Bible was created and evolved. At the end of our time, Ms. Zuli (Josh’s mom) bought us each cross necklaces from the trip. I wear mine all the time.

We got back from the Holy Land and decided to go night swimming. It was a ton of fun and the RV park had a nice pool. I did realize I was really out of swim shape when we were racing in the pool!

Day 8 (Friday)

Friday we just hung out around the RV park. We swam more, did laundry, packed up, and then all ate dinner together.

Day 9 (Saturday)

^^Bryn Mawr Ocean Resort, where we stayed for the last part of our trip

Saturday morning we went to the waffle house and met Jon T and Jeff (people our friends had met earlier in the week). They had great customer service. We then hopped in the car and drove two hours to St. Augustine.

In the afternoon, we met Josh’s aunt and 2nd cousins. We had dinner with them.

Day 10 (Sunday)

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^^Look at how tired we were 🙂

Sunday morning at about 6 am we got up to watch the sunrise on the beach. It was so pretty and I got some cute pictures as well.

Sunday we had our own church in the morning and then we spent all day at the beach. I took some pictures and was in the water most of the time. I ended up taking a nap on the beach too.

Day 11 (Monday)

Monday was our last full day in Florida. We played some four square in the morning but we tried to get to the beach ASAP.

^^Here we are digging a really deep hole

It started to rain (extremely hard, it hurt) but we stayed out in the waves. I went out pretty far that day. I even went to a sand bar!

^^Listening to Danny tell a story

That evening, we all watched the Princess Bride. I forgot what a great movie that is!

Day 12 (Tuesday)

It was really hard to leave Tuesday and I will admit I cried a little. Before we left, we watched the sunrise and said goodbye to everyone. We drove straight through and arrived home that night at 10 PM.

I had such an awesome time on this trip and it was really refreshing. I am so thankful for the  opportunity to go on this vacation and I know I will remember the trip for the rest of my life.

I want to shout out my mom for taking the majority of these pictures! Otherwise you would only have about 1/4 of the pictures I posted.

Thank you for reading this post! Have you ever been to any of the places I went to? What was your best vacation?

Have a magnificent day!

-Rebekah

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Beautiful People {June 2017}

I posted a few months ago an excerpt of my book I am Camilla. So that you get more of an idea of who Camilla is I decided to do a beautiful people post. These are are all about Camilla. If you don’t know what beautiful people is, basically it is a questionere hosted by two bloggers (read more here). Every month they post ten questions and writers can answer them. I’ve done this once before and really liked it so here I am. I also love reading these posts by other bloggers. I hope you do too. Enjoy!

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1. What’s their favourite place they’ve ever visited?

The places her family went on their road trip. They went to baseball games, the hall of fame, museums, a horse ranch, and even toured a veterinary clinic.

2. What’s one mistake they made that they learned from?

She learned that shutting other people out never gets you anywhere and that sometimes you need to be vulnerable.

3. What was their favourite subject in school? Or favourite thing to learn about?

Science, but only sciences relating to animals, especially biology and life science. She loves learning about animals, their anatomy, how to cure them, etc.

4. What’s their favourite flower/growing thing?

Palm trees! They only grow in certain parts of the state so she loves when she catches a glimpse of one.

5. Have they ever made someone cry? What happened?

Yes. She made her brother Jake cry because she socked him in the face at age ten when he insulted her riding skills. He was bleeding on and off for three days.

6. Would you consider them a reliable or unreliable narrator?

She can be on the more pessimistic side so she misinterprets people frequently .

7. What do they dream about at night?

She dreams about her family including her mom, baseball, and school.

8. They’ve gone out for a “special meal.” What would they eat?

Shrimp scampi with hot chocolate! Hot chocolate is a major part of their family and Camilla’s mom loved to cook and shrimp scampi was something she made often as a comfort food.

9. What’s at least one thing they want to do before they die?

To figure out who she is.

10. Do they have any distinguishing or unique talents?

She can muck three stables in under thirty minutes. She also has never lost a thumb war because she is always putting lotion on her dry hands.

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Camilla has a big personality and I love writing about her!

Do you participate in Beautiful People? If so, let me know because I would love to read your post!

Wishing you a super day!

-Rebekah

An Excerpt From My Novel

This past November I took part in my second year of Nano. I’d like to say it’s my first official year because the year before I only wrote a few thousand words (Wanna read an excerpt from that?? Comment and let me know).

This year I tried again. My goal was 15,000 words. I won and I’m so glad I did it. I already have some goals for next year.

Anyway, I’m doing Camp Nanowrimo in April (My goal is to get my book up to a total of 25,000 words). I thought it would be fun to share a summary of my novel and excerpt from it. Are you ready to finally read something?? Read on then (Hmmm, I feel like that was kind of obvious….)

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Synopsis

Camilla is fourteen years old and in 9th grade. She is going through that point in her adolescents where she is trying to find her self. Her mom died two years ago and she’s trying to coping with the loss. Plus, she doesn’t have any female role models in her life and lives with five guys. She feels like an outsider sometimes with four older brothers, especially when she acts like herself. Even her best friend is a boy and she doesn’t connect with girls. Through all of this Camilla has lost her faith in God and hates him at this point. Camilla struggles to find herself, make friends, and restore her relationship with God.

Excerpt

(The book is told from first person view of Camilla)

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^^Camilla

I didn’t expect to spend my Wednesday afternoon having a chicken nugget fight and ranting about peaches (ew, their just so hairy!), but it happened. After last night’s news, I wasn’t particularly cheery to say the least when I plopped down in first period the next morning. Ambrosia slid into her seat right next to mine. “Did you understand any of the homework?” she whispered nervously.

“Ummm,” I replied really intelligently.

“You ok?”

“Sure, just a rough night last night and yes, I did understand the homework,” I said.

“Wanna come over? We can talk about it later,” she asked, flipping her hair off her shoulder.

I was caught off guard but I replied casually, “Oh, well I have homework that I need to get done before youth group tonight.”

“Ok, maybe another time.” she said disappointed.

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^^Ambrosia

The rest of the day I felt sort of bad for lying to Ambrosia. I barely had any homework and nothing else planned other than youth group- which she was probably going to- that evening. I was just not in the mood for talking about my feelings or anything for that matter. Wow, sounded like the definition of my life right now.

The lunch line dragged on and on forever that day and I felt so self-conscious all alone. Ambrosia packed her lunch and was patiently waiting at our table. Dad didn’t have time for that anymore. I had always hated lunch lines and school lunches.

When I finally sat down, Ambrosia interrogated me again. “What’s wrong Camilla? You aren’t your normal self.”

“Nothing is wrong. Why do you think that! Can you please stop asking?” I snapped.

“Ouch,” called Jake who just so happened to be walking by, “and it’s because you bought tomato soup. We all know you hate it!”

“Ignore him,” Ambrosia rolled her eyes, “I completely understand. He was completely correct about the soup part though.”

I’m pretty sure she actually hated me though. I know I would if I were her. Gosh, I had a conscience. Nothing else note-worthy happened throughout the day but right after last period Troy came up to me and told me, “Hey Cam, turns out we have a spur of the moment play practice. I won’t be able to drive you home. Dad can’t either. Sorry.”

A plan began to form in my head. One in which I could show a little more love and not lose my only friend (ok, I’m not including Stan but he doesn’t really count). Hopefully, Ambrosia would hate me a little less after this. “No problem Troy. I’m going home with my friend Ambrosia. I’ll text Dad.”

What’s to lose? I ran over to her locker to tell her. “Hey…. So actually I don’t have homework to do and I would like to hangout if I still can- that is if I haven’t offended you so much that you never want to see me again.”

It sounded like I was begging and apologizing things I never did. Where had this change of heart come from? “That’s awesome! Why would I be offended?” she squeaked, “but before we leave we should go see the duet pairings! C’mon!”

“Wait, they are out???!” I asked.

We raced over to the choral room. The list was there. I scanned it. I didn’t see my name. Great, my fear was confirmed, I am bad at everything, a complete and utter failure– but Ambrosia interrupted my thoughts screaming, “CAMILLA! WE ARE PAIRED TOGETHER! THIS IS GREAT.”

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Thanks for reading! If you have any writing tips I’d love to hear them below.

What do you think so far? Would you want to see more excerpts or an excerpt from my 2015 novel?

Let me know in the comments!

-Rebekah

A Real Blog Post

Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas (a week early)! I decided to sit down today and just write out a post. I’m going to try not to have to edit this and make it sort of like a YouTube vlog except as a blog post because that’s what a blog is.

I know I’ve been MIA for a little bit. I definitely have a TON of blogging plans for the new year. I started to talk about them in this post. I’d start now (which I have been doing even though ya’ll can’t see) but I would rather not during the Christmas season because that is kind of abrupt and also the posts aren’t very Christmasy so I’m going to wait. I am so excited for the new content though 😀 I hope you will be able to see more of my personality through these post.

In other news, I lost my camera about 8 months ago but i found another random charger that woks for my camera. Unfortunately (wow! I spelled that right!), it’s for our kindle that broke. So, the charger was confiscated (big words, oooh) so that the Kindle could be fixed. This long-winded story’s point? My camera has a very low battery with no way of charging it.

I can’t believe 2016 is almost over! I’ve heard some people saying that 2016 has been a bad year, but for me it has been awesome. I’ve been able to try so many new things this year and grown in my faith. I don’t think I expected 2016 to be so great. I thought it would just be another year, but I’ve had so much fun this year and I’ve grown a lot. Just a year ago I felt so different. Anyway, this is a little taste of what I’ll be posting about in my New Years post probably 😉

I can’t wait for Christmas! I actually only have one more gift to wrap and then I’m done. I just received an email (about ten minutes ago) that the package has shipped. I feel so on top on Christmas presents this year.

I know that Christmas isn’t all about gifts-but I love giving them. I find it so fun and this year present wrapping has become an art form of mine 😀 😀

Well, I hope you are having a merry day and I’ll talk to you soon!

THREE days until Christmas!!

WordCrafter 2

I just finished writing for Nano for the day and now it is time to blog. So much writing 😀 I would say I feel pretty confident about how Nano is going so far, so that’s good. If you want to friend me it’s Bekah_Boo on the YWP site!

Anyway, onto the business at hand. If you don’t know what Wordcrafters is, it is basically where a bunch of bloggers write a collaborative story. Each person gets a turn and writes a part of the story. If you want to know more about it and see a more detailed summary you can check it out on Allison’s blog. I really enjoyed writing this story (it was a refreshing break from my Nano story). So now you can read it! Get going 😉

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Esme stood there and stared at the unicorn. Katri had told her that unicorns were very rare and people hardly saw them anymore. So Esme was shocked to be face to face with one.

“Yo, girly. Watcha starin at? You’re starting to offend me,” the unicorn said.

“Hi,” she whispered softly when finally sound her voice.

“Hiya kid! My name is Daisy. I know what your thinking,” the unicorn said rolling his eyes, “Why is your name Daisy if you are a guy? Don’t get me started. Anyways, I’m here to rescue you.”

“Ok! Will you help me return a baby dragon too?” Esme asked.

“Yikes, this situation is more complicated than I thought. Normally, I wouldn’t even bother to help any human, but I sense something special about you, girly. Yes, I will help you. Now where is this dragon?” the unicorn replied.

“Well, it is with my friends and I don’t know where they are!” Esme said worriedly.

After that he muttered something like, “This is what happens when I help out humans. Why did I decided to help this girl? I don’t want to start sprouting dandelions in my mane like last time.”

Then he sighed before saying loudly, “We must leave now. Lord Zilch will be back any second to take you to his dark dungeons. C’mon.”

 

“How do you know all this?” Esme asked.

“I’m always up in the sky. I’ve been watching you and waiting for a time when Lord Zilch is not around to help you,” the unicorn whinnied.

“Also,” the unicorn added, “I know your friend Devin. He is in danger. We must go find your friends and then go save him!”

As they rode off into the woods Esme clung harder onto the unicorn’s mane. She hoped with all her might that she would find Vivi, Pipin, Katri, but most of all Devin. He had saved her. Now, it was her turn to save him.

*****

Devin’s head pounded and his whole body throbbed. The darkness around him was so thick he thought he might choke. He couldn’t see anything. It felt like he had been in the despicable dungeon for years.

After he had saved Esme, Lord Zilch had grabbed his arm with such force Devin couldn’t move. Then he positioned his spear lightly on Devin’s back. “Not so fast mortal. If you move, you are a goner.”

Knowing he couldn’t get away, Devin used the most used threat in the book, “You’ll never get away with this!”

“Ah, Devin. This is my world. Who will stop me?” Lord Zilch replied haughtily.

“My friends will, that’s who,” Devin announced.

“No, they will not,” Katri’s father lied, “I have already captured them and now that I have you we can complete my plan.”

The old man gave a sinister snicker. Devin had been to distraught and worried about his friends to resist as he was roughly thrown into the dungeon. “What will I do?” he thought, suddenly helpless.

*****

Night was falling quickly. Pipin, Vivi, and Katri hadn’t found Esme or Devin yet. After Vivi had healed Pipin they had begun their search for Devin and Esme again. The problem was, they dared not call out for fear of calling attention to themselves and riding on this beast they now had was also out of the question.

“I hope they are all right!” Vivi said fearfully.

“I’m sure they are. I bet the battle is around here somewhere. We heard it earlier,” Pipin replied assuredly.

All of a sudden they heard a gallop of a unicorn’s hooves coming through the woods.

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What did you think? If you are doing Wordcrafters I can’t wait to read your part! Just a reminder, Suzy you are next. I really enjoy Wordcrafters and I’m so glad I was able to do it.

Look for more posts coming soon!

GUYS. Do you know the band 21 pilots?? They are so awesome!

Pick a Prompt

Hi! You may or may not know that I LOVE writing. I just don’t post my writing very often, but I want to start doing it more. I have found a few prompts that have been sitting in my Pinterest board waiting to be used (Click here to follow me). I have so many ideas but I need your help to decide which one to post first.  Feel free to use any of these prompts (DISCLAIMER: I didn’t make these up, if you want to know where they are from follow the link). Vote using the poll down below and I’ll write a story using the prompt with the most votes.

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That’s all for this post! Have a great day and remember that tomorrow is Friday 😉

P.s. Here is my picture for BIBPC

It’s my cat eating a stink bug, haha. The stink bug is the critter.

Ugh, pollen allergies are not funny. Does anybody else have them?

Writing Prompts

Hi everyone! Today I am going to be sharing some of my writing ideas/prompts. I am participating in the NaNoWriting challenge and was thinking up a lot of ideas. If you want to know more click here. Tell me which one you think I should write about. Feel free to use my ideas, but please ask me first. Thank you Loren for this post idea! Now I’ll stop rambling and get right into it:D

1. A girl is switched from her rich life and is mistaken as a foster kid in a good situation.
2. Maya has always felt different and one day she finds out she is.
3. My sister and I are to be separated. I must treat her like a slave or become one myself.
4. I loved the puppy the moment I saw it, but keeping it was a different story.
5. Where do all the disappearing socks go? To sockville orphanage of course!
6. My best friend had been bullied for a while. I finally had courage enough to tell an adult, only to find out it was too late.
7. She day dreamed quite often and wished for her life to be like what she dreamed. Until she met someone with it.
8. At my mom’s house, I get great grades and I’m really quiet, but at my dad’s house I’m his sassy, social princess.
9. She was an author absorbed in her books. A world of fantasy at her fingertips and it became real.
10. The day I had dreaded for so many years was here.
11. I always thought my life was pointless and a big joke until I came to live with the Hardy’s.
12. There is a typhoon on my island.

What did you think? I can’t wait to participate in the Writing challenge but I need a good story and plot first:)  Please comment any prompts you have! Also, my storage on WordPress is 97%. Does anyone know how I can get more storage and how to resize pictures? If you so please let me know! Thanks:)