12.19.05

Our Summers in Orlando

Posted in Memories at 2:33 pm by Tarlie Harris

Since Lucas and I were not even two years apart, most of my childhood memories inlcude him in them somewhere. He was so much better that I am at remembering the smallest of details of being kids and would always remind me of the silliest things that we had done as children. I can’t believe that he isn’t here to help me remember.
I can’t begin to think of childhood without first thinking of our summers in Orlando. Our grandparents always had a huge RV and would take Lucas and I for a week or two every summer and we would drive down to Orlando and stay in the resort that they had a place in. We would play UNO the entire way down with grandmother while Popaw was driving. He definitely had a temper and we were always pushing him to the limit with our constant sense of being in a hurry! We just wanted to get there! We would stop at rest stations and eat whatever they had packed for us, I think we complained about most of the food the whole time. Lucas was always the pickiest eater, he would eat hot dogs, waffles, biscuits with grape jelly and chef boyardee ravioli. That was it!
I remember that as soon as we drove up in the driveway at the resort Lucas and I would start saying “when are we going to disney world?! come on, we don’t need to unpack, let’s just go now!” We were SO hyper about it! We really couldn’t fathom what would take our grandparents so long to get ready to go. And if they decided we weren’t going till the next day, we could absolutely freak out. We were not mellow children. I really don’t know how our grandparents handled it! We would always stay in Disney World the ENTIRE day, never tiring, until the 10pm fireworks, after we had ridden thunder mountain as many times as possible. I would never ride space mountain, but I remember that Lucas did, he wasn’t too scared, he loved it and would always try to get me on, but I never did ride it with him. One year, we convinced my grandmother that I had “hurt my ankle” and therefore it was necessary for her to push BOTH of us around in the same wheelchair all over Disney World! We thought that was so hilarious! I don’t think we felt at all guilty either.
When we weren’t actually in Disney World, we would roam all over the resort on the three wheeled bike that they had for us. One of us driving and one of us in the big basket in the back. We would go to the clubhouse and play shuffleboard and putt-putt golf and swim and we would ride all around the place because there were canals throughout the whole thing so we liked riding over the bridges. And of coarse Lucas liked getting as close into the canals as possible. One time he caught a baby alligator, i am not making this up. He was so much more daring than me, I was always 10 steps behind going “Lucas! Don’t do that!” But of course, my grandad thought catching the alligator was pretty damn funny! I can’t imagine what I would have been like down there without Lucas always stirring up trouble for us to get into. We wouldn’t even wear shoes unless we were forced to when we were actually in Disney World. They always tried to talk us into Epcot Center, which we were totally opposed to, how boring! But they did take us down to Busch Gardens one year too, where there were a lot more roller coasters, I remember I actually started getting some courage by then and we rode em all together.

We got to ride an elephant! I remember we kept standing in line and then passing up our turn because we figured out that we wouldn’t be in the very front, and of course we had to be in the front, so the whole process was about 10 times longer than it needed to be, but we did it! And of course Lucas had to convince me to do this in the first place because I was too scared.

We got our faces painted!

Us on the three wheeled bike, this was probably one of the last years that Gabe came down with us, so Lucas wasn’t driving ME around in the basket like a madman quite yet.

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