Cindy Ellis Photography » photography, design, and life

We just returned from our long awaited and much anticipated Disney World trip. We did go last year, along with Jason, who had to work the whole time. This year was supposed to be a real vacation. We even made plans to go with some great friends from SC. We drove down early Friday morning to our friends, Larry and Amanda’s house. Some of our other friends from scouts were there to see us for a cookout. We left Saturday morning for Disney. I wasn’t feeling that great but sucked it up. By Saturday night it was obvious something was wrong.

Long story short, I went to urgent care on Sunday while the rest of our crew was at Magic Kingdom. They sent me to the ER where I was diagnosed with gallstones and told I would be admitted so that I could have my gall bladder removed in the morning. So much for a vacation! Anyway, while I was sitting in the ER waiting for a room to open up so I could be admitted, I was absentmindedly running my hands through my hair, when I noticed lots of bumps on my scalp. I thought back to about 3 weeks earlier when two of my sign language students came down with chicken pox the same afternoon after I had them in my class, and realized what was happening.

I don’t even want to rehash the torturous week right now. Suffice it to say that I spent the rest of our time at Disney in the hospital developing more and more spots. My gallbladder pain eventually went away since they starved me under the guise of “gall bladder rest”.

Anyway, it is too painful right now to even attempt to scrap any of the pictures Jason and Grant managed to get with their cell phones. Instead, I am going to post the 70 page album I made after last year’s visit.

Hey, at least I have my health back now. I am very thankful!

Without further adieu, last year’s Disney album:

We had yet another awesome field trip today with one of our homeschool groups. I am not always good about posting pictures but I had to do it for this one. Too cool not to! Kingfish Environmental is owned by Jim Koenig, a biologist and homeschool dad himself. Pretty cool in my book! We learned about erosion, the importance of sand dunes, and we had a chance to seine for creatures in the waves. The kids also were given nets to find creatures in the tidal pools. Everyone LOVED it!

We found lots of interesting sea life!

Uh… a whiting? Kingfish? Oopsie, I forgot.

A whelk.

This little sweetie is actually a sardine anchovie. (My bad- Logan actually set me straight on this).  It was dead so he opened its mouth so we could see the pearly whites.

Friendships were formed. This picture just warms my heart. Such sweet kids in this group.

Jim actually picked up our bucket of seawater that we put all our live finds into so we could keep them happy then return them to the sea after inspecting them. He picked up the bucket and started drinking out of it. Well, he was actually just filling his mouth. Then he popped in a sardine and let us watch it swim around in his mouth. An old trick he used to do as a kid. No fish were harmed in this demonstration. I stood there with my mouth hanging open, still shocked that he would guzzle sea water, until people started saying, take a picture. This was all I got. Trust me, there’s a fish in there.

I normally wouldn’t post out of focus pictures, but this one makes me laugh. Right after I took it, Grant saw me and got mad (he recently decided that I am not allowed to take his picture anymore) and put his face down in the sand so I couldn’t take any more pictures. Suddenly a wave washed right over him, face and all. Ha ha, that’ll teach him to try and dodge camera lady!

After we were done, we jetted down to IOP county park to use the facilities and have a picnic lunch in the shade, since there was no way we were going to make it back to Summerville on time for Karate. Grant enjoyed a chapter of his book while the other 2 played on the playground. He is not as grouchy as he looks, just squinting. It was so beautiful and breezy in the shade. A fabulous morning indeed.

Here is what I saw in my rear view mirror on the way home. It is RARE for this to happen any more. You know it’s a good day when they pass out on the way home.