Our last few days in Orlando... we're heading home!

Well, it's 11:00 and the end of our vacation is near. We have to head out tomorrow at 5:30 am for the airport. Please pray for our safe travel home. I think we are all ready to get home.

Yesterday, we went to Cocoa Beach and went in the ocean. The water was actually quite warm. Maddie dug in the sand because she didn't like the seaweed and Eric and Zach tried out the 6-8 foot waves until Eric got knocked down and couldn't get himself back up. I was watching them like a hawk because I was afraid that might happen. I ran out there and Zach was crying and holding Eric's head up out of the water. We were able to get Eric up to his knees and up and that was the end of that. It's so hard because Eric loves the ocean so much and it's just too dangerous even only up to his knees. Some things we just learn as we go. It just broke my heart because Zach was so scared he thought he would lose his dad to the ocean. We learned a phrase from Pastor Ed Dobson.... "stupid disease" . We say that often. It's so frustrating sometimes. It doesn't mean we aren't grateful for the things we can do and have, it's just hard sometimes. The rest of the afternoon we relaxed on the beach and collected sea shells and found some strange sea creatures on the shore.

Today, we went to the pool again and swam and then went to Disney for our last hurrah. We went to MGM and rode a couple coasters and then went to Magic Kingdom for Maddie to become a princess at Bippidy Boppidy Botique. Tonight was all about her with her princess transformation. She looks so beautiful and just loved it. She is getting fairy dust all over all of us. We just had such a great vacation and aren't sure we are ready to return to the snow we keep hearing about, but will be glad to be home and see all of our family and friends and get back to our church on Sunday. Take care and see you all soon!
Love,

Lori, Eric, Zach and Madison

Happy Birthday to Eric!

Today we slept in and went to Animal Kingdom. We were there 4 years ago and enjoyed it (the kids only Disney experience but Maddie was only 1), but they added some new rides and shows. Our favorite ride of all of Disney parks is now Expedition Everest. We rode it 6 times today! It is a huge roller coaster that goes into Mt Everest and it goes backwards and through the mountain. There is a Yeti inside the mountain and Maddie covered her head every time we went in the mountain so she would not see him. We have pictures from the ride (I learned to take a picture of the picture they capture on the ride with no flash - it's a little fuzzy, but much cheaper!) I will also attach one from the ride Dinasaur where she again is covering her head. She is a little thrill seeker, but no scary creatures please. We think it is so great that both of our kids love roller coasters! They have a Nemo Musical which was really great too! We took a jungle Safari and saw African animals in the wild. It was a very fun day. For Eric's birthday, we went to Macaroni Grille for pasta. It wasn't as good as we remembered in Minnesota our week at Mayo Clinic. We had a very small table that moved every time we breathed and I spilled my water all over Zach's plate... oops! Anyways, we are full and we have leftovers and cake in the fridge for tomorrow. It is supposed to be 78 tomorrow!!! Hooray! We plan on going swimming while all of you enjoy the wonderful Michigan weather we've been hearing about. Stay warm!
Blessings.
Lori

Last night, we went to the Winter Jam concert at UCF and saw Pure NRG (wow, those kids were bouncing off the wall), Mandisa (beautiful), Skillet(head banging Christian rock) Zach loved this one! Newsong (could worship with them all night), Barlow Girl (rockin as ever - just like when they were at Wellspring church), Connor's Vine (newby's) and last but not least, MERCY ME!!!!(brought down the house for Jesus!) Can't forget the BMX stunt group from Missouri and the message that brought hundreds of teens to Christ. There were over 10,000 people in the Arena praising our God together. No place we'd rather be than praising our Saviour with our kids! It was truly amazing worship. One minor setback was at the beginning when Maddie tried to stand on the seat and it folded up on her and her feet were pinned in the chair. It was very scary because Eric couldn't help her and it was so loud he couldn't get my attention right away and then I couldn't get her feet out. When I tried to move the seat, it would only pinch her ankles tighter and she just screamed. Finally, one foot then the other was freed and we just held her shaking. Praise the Lord that she is alright, just scared. Mercy Me sang all of our favorite songs including Jesus bring the Rain which always puts this disease in perspective for both of us. "to turn my back on you, Oh Lord, my only shelter from this storm. But instead we draw closer through this time." "You who made a way for me, by suffering your destiny, so tell me... what's a little rain?" "I know there'll be days, when this life brings me pain, but if that's what it takes to praise you, Jesus bring the rain!" Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty!!! I could type the whole song. These lyrics really speak to our soul and to anyone going through tough valleys. It can be really tough some days, but God is there through it all and we need to cling to Him.

We are finally learning our way around here and finding out that every highway is a toll road (no getting around it here). We woke up this morning without really having a plan and Eric said we are going to chuch at about 10:00 as we were all getting up so we looked on line for the church time for Greeneway church (Josh Krikke's sisters church in Orlando) and found out the service was at 11 and it was 12 minutes away. Getting our whole family ready, fed and out the door is one of my hardest tasks every morning, but we were out the door at 10:45 and made it to this small church in time to hear a message from God directly to us. The Pastor spoke on healing and had a time for those in need of healing in their marriage, emotionally or physical healing to come down and pray and the Pastor prayed with us for healing. It was a reminder from God to not stop asking for healing in His name. We believe God can heal Eric and thank you all for praying that God will heal Eric. We sensed God's presence in that church this morning. The Pastor also prayed that God has our future all planned out and we need not worry about it. What an encouragement and a relief to let go of our anxiety about what the future holds. God has it all in his hands (Jeremiah 29:11). God has blessed us with so much and we need to thank Him every day for what he has poured out on us.
We've had many opportunities to talk to people from all over the world while here...one story we need to share is a man Eric met from Canada who saw Eric's BIG GOD Tshirt which started a conversation about faith. His name was Jeremy. They had many things in common, the main thing being Jesus Christ. Jeremy encouraged Eric to keep on fighting and putting his faith in God to heal him. He was diagnosed three years ago with a rare form of terminal cancer. The doctors gave him less than 6 months to live and he prayed that God would heal him not being very religious at that time, but now he shares his testimony of how God healed him. My Sister Kristi is also trusting God to heal her of Ovarian Cancer and giving God praise for all that he has done over this last year. Kristi and Brian's blog is www.briankristi.blogspot.com if you want to read about their journey.

It is late and we just realized that it is Eric's 38th birthday right now!!! Happy Birthday to you, my dear husband! We are doing Animal Kingdom tomorrow and Eric wants to eat at Carabbas or Macaroni Grille (either way, we will roll out of there after all of the bread and oil we eat). This is a very long entry, but we had to share what God is doing. It's easy to get sidetracked from hearing God speak while you are on vacation and we realize that we need to stay focused on Him daily. We'll try to add more pictures and update tomorrow or Tuesday.
God Bless,
Lori and Eric

More Pic's

Pictures of our new room (cheesy I know)

A day at Epcot and a new room

Today we checked out of our one bedroom and into our two bedroom penthouse ( I kid you not) it is huge. We can't even believe the living space we have. It makes us want to just stay here in the room. We never knew what we were missing in our one bedroom timeshare which is still great! Thank you to our dear friends for giving us this week of your timeshare in such luxury. I have attached some photos. The kids were going nuts! they get their own beds and three flat screen TV's and a full kitchen, what to do! We checked into our new room this morning by 11 and were off to Disney again. I'm thinking 6 days may have been overkill, but we do love it. We went to Epcot today and we really enjoyed it. We stayed in the front of the park rather than getting cultural. I never liked that part as a kid so we didn't make our kids go, plus we wanted to do the rides too! We soared in hang gliders over sights, blasted off in a space shuttle and landed on Mars, rode the Test Track (3 times) at speeds of 65 miles per hour, took a tour with Nemo and some dolphins and sharks and more, plus another awesome firework and light show. It was very fun and we are tired. Tomorrow we are sleeping in and hoping to go to a concert at night with Mercy Me, Casting Crowns, Skillet, Mandeesa and Pure NRG we heard about on a radio station. We are so thankful for this time away together. Hope you are all well and have a great weekend!
Blessings,
Lori and Eric and kids

Zach's Birthday

Hey my name is Zach and as most of you know I had my 11th birthday yesterday. This is how it went. First we stayed up until 12:00 A.M. to celebrate the beginning of my fantastic birthday. Then we slept in until 11:35 A.M. but Maddie just went back to bed. Next we went to the pool before it rained. After swimming and going through the waterfalls, my mom and I went shopping at the Florida Outlet Mall and got tons of clothes.Then after all of that we went to "Disney Quest" which is a 5 story building of everything you want to do. It has interactive games that you can do, but my favorite is "Cyber Space Mountain." Here's what you do. First you make your roller coaster as thrilling as you want. Like me and my dad did tons of double loops. Then it tells you how thrilling your roller coaster is by numbers 1 -5. 1 is really not a super thriller, but 3 is probably a good thriller for those who seek excitement. 5 is way too thrilling for most anybody, but my dad and I did. It was awesome. Later we played this jungle game and Maddie got all hyped up because you have to shoot bugs that come after you. Finally, we baught our awesome movie on the Atomic Shredder which is a level 5 roller coaster. See you when we get back, and thanks for checking out our family's blog.

Zach Fox

A day at MGM Studios

We spent today at MGM (Hollywood) Studios. It was another incredible Disney day. The shows and attractions were incredible. We saw the Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. met Playhouse Disney characters like Jo Jo clown (got a picture for our cousin Emily) Rode the rockin roller coaster and the Tower of Terror (even Maddie rode it and loved it!) Eric and I lost our stomach a few times. We have learned that our kids are both thrill seekers like us and love all rides! We saw Indiana Jones stunt scenes and an awesome Stunt show with fast cars, motorcycles and jumps and flames like right out of a movie. The finale show was a water fountain, laser show with fireworks and all of the characters throughout. It was a great day. Tomorrow is Zach's 11th birthday so we will see what he wants to do as the day goes. There is a 60% chance of rain tomorrow so who knows! I will attach some more pictures below from today. I learned how to rotate them so they are easier to view. Take care!

The Fox family

Eric, Zach & Maddie on the flight to Florida

Fun at Disney World

We went to Disney World yesterday and it was like becoming a kid again. I remembered our trip there when I was in school with my family. Eric and I also went there on our honeymoon. Maddie just saw the castle and wanted to head right there. There was an incredible show with Mickey and Minnie and all the characters including the princesses and princes. The costumes are incredible and look just like out of a Disney movie in real life. We were able to do most of the Magic Kingdom in that day from 10-8pm. We got this test machine for the park which was an interactive map in a Nintendo DS machine which Zach was in charge of which was pretty cool. It knew where we were and told us exactly how to get where we wanted to go. We got a pass that allowed us handicap access to the rides which really helped Eric not to tire out in lines all day. There is no way we could have done as much as we did without that. We only ran into a few problems with Eric not being able to get out of the rides due to the position he was sitting. These are things you don't think about when you've always been able to do things like that. We had a great day and the parade and the fireworks were incredible. You can see why people come from all over the world just to visit Disney.
Today, we relaxed and went to get pedicures and Zach got his hair cut and highlighted (it looks pretty sweet) and went to a few shops. The kids still went swimming tonight although it is about 60 degrees out since the pool is heated like a bath tub. I am going to post some of the pictures below if I can figure it out. We are going back to Disney tomorrow. Hope everything is going well in Michigan!
Love,
Lori and Eric and kids

Hanging out in Orlando

We made it here safely. Our flight was delayed over 2 hours due to switching planes, but we made it here safe and sound and the kids did great. It was 80 degrees when we got here and we picked up our rental car (we got a free upgrade to a 2008 Uplander minivan with a DVD player - the kids think it is the greatest) and checked in by about 5:30 on Friday. I picked up groceries for the two weeks at Costco(feels just like home). It is really a nice place here and the pool is beautiful. I'll try to post pictures soon. Saturday we went swimming and to a church here called Discovery church. It was nice, but not the same as Wellspring. We will miss worshipping at home with our church body. Today, Sunday we are being hit with a big thunderstorm. It is still warm though. Next week is predicted to be a little cooler (high 60's to low 70's and some rain) which is still better than snow! They are showing a family movie tonight at the pool and Zach thinks that is the coolest to be swimming while watching a movie :).
Tomorrow we plan to hit Disney World for the day after a restful weekend. We are all having a great time and so glad we were able to come. We'll try to post more next week!
Blessings,
Lori

Heading on Vacation!! January 10, 2008

WOW, it's hard to believe we're going on vacation tomorrow. We're taken the kids to Disney world down in Florida. We are going to be gone for two weeks, soaking up the wonderful sun taking in the sights relaxing and most of all making memories as a family. The way in which this blog works is the text files will be in blue when Eric writes them and they will will be in black ne when Lori writes them. Lori is scurrying to get things packed up. I will be trying to keep the kids out of her hair. We Thank all of you for your prayers and support. We are truly blessed!