Thoughts from the Ridge: April 2010

11 years ago, Mert, Jean, Jody and Kevin went out to a small farm to look at the puppies. We picked out a very cute, sweet black lab mix, and she was named Shadow.

The last few weeks were rough on Shadow. She had arthritis, diabetes, and her liver and kidneys started to fail.

Thus Jean had to make the heartbreaking decision to put Shadow to sleep on Tuesday. We were all very sad. Even Stormy and Deogi miss her, as they walk around the house and look for her.

Our pets do become like family and we learn their personalities just like people. They bring us much love and enjoyment, and when they are gone we are saddened by our loss.

Here is a picture of Shadow....in order left to right Boo Boo (Doug's dog), Stormy, Deogi, and Shadow.

So here are our pictures for Orlando.....We arrived on Thursday night and it was raining when we got to the hotel. We stayed right across the street from Downtown Disney.

Friday morning arrived, it was sunny and beautiful out. We headed over to Hollywood Studios as we had never visited that park. First stop was to take pictures of the big Sorcerers hat that is the symbol of the park...

And why do we really go to Disney? To see Mickey of course!

At Hollywood and Epcot (it was actually the International Flower and Garden Festival at Epcot), they had great topiaries. This is one of my favorites....it is the Sorcerer's Apprentice. Notice the brooms have buckets of flowers they are dumping and making them grow. Think I need this in my yard....

We had a good time at Hollywood. Rode some good rides...Kevin even had me ride the Hollywood Tower Hote l ride...which is an elevator ride that drops you and drops you and drops you :) They also have some good shows there too.

Then we headed over to the Magic Kingdom.....We did of course go to toon town to see Mickey's house and then a stop in to see Mickey at the Fair

Saturday we decided to go to Epcot. We actually got to the park early, and they let us go in early. We rode the Soarin' ride 3 times before the park opened. (nothing like hang gliding over all of California) That is unheard of as the day before we heard the ride had a 115 minute wait (yes that is almost 2 hours) so we took advantage when we could.

We also rode Test Track and Mission Space and almost everything else there. It was a beautiful day, not too busy at the park.

As I said above, it was the Flower and Garden Festival...so they had all these set up for the various Disney movies...here are some of the best ones...can you believe this is all flowers?

Of course, Mickey is one of the best :-)

Speaking of Mickey, we had to find him at Epcot too....

And Pluto....(we skipped the other characters...can you imagine?)

I think I need this in my yard too. That wouldn't be much to take care of, water, weed...ok, maybe I need a gardener too.

We had a good time at Epcot, and had dinner in France, at Les Chefs de France it was really good. So we had to stop to have our picture taken with the Eiffel Tower behind us...

Not long before we left Epcot, we came across this empty pavilion and then I realized why it was empty how could they ask the expert when I wasn't there :)

After we left Epcot we headed to Downtown Disney for a stroll through the stores before going back to the hotel.

Sunday we only had part of a day since I had to be at my conference in the afternoon. We also woke up to cloudy skies, but that didn't stop us. We went back to the Magic Kingdom and hit a couple of rides we had missed on Friday, and then went over to the Animal Kingdom...I know, I know, that isn't a lot of time, but really it is 4 parks, 1 World (or so we kept seeing).

The safari ride is one of the best things there, so we got to see it and the Finding Nemo Musical

Since it was cloudy out we got to see more animals, I won't bore you with lots of pictures

We left the park around noonish and by the time we got over to the conference it was pouring down rain...So I didn't feel so bad about having to leave the parks for the conference :-)

The conference was the real reason for the trip. The conference was all about course redesign. How to redesign courses for the best student learning kind of things. So we did a small presentation about one of our courses (this course has about 30,000 students a year so it is a big one for us), and how we redesigned it and improved our student success.

So here we are (Betsy and Me).