Day Two in Disney

The next day, we got up early and went to Animal Kingdom. This would have been my mom's 53rd birthday, so we were celebrating. All of us had buttons that said, "Happy Birthday, Beth!" on them. Everywhere we went, people were saying, "Happy Birthday!" and then trying to figure out just whose birthday it was. It was kind of fun to remember my mom that way.

So, inside Animal Kingdom we saw, "It's Tough to be a Bug." That's a 3-D movie with all kinds of interesting other special effects, like stink bombs and acid... After that, John, Josh, Kailey and I went on Expedition Everest. After the Space Mountian fiasco, Julie and Roe decided that they wanted no part of anything "rollercoaster."

So, after that we ate lunch at The Flame Tree barbeque. You can't beat the food at Disney. Thankfully, we got most of our food included in our package, because otherwise it would have cost a small fortune. Then we went to see the Lion King show. It was fantastic. Julie and Joshua got to be in the parade around the theater.

The park closed at five, so we went back to our cabin for a snack and to play at the pool for a while. We had dinner reservations for 8:30pm at a restaurant called "Boma." A boma is a sort of fenced in space in the middle of nowhere in Africa. Something like a campsite. Anyway, the restaurant was a buffet with all sorts of different African foods. My mom would have loved it. They had all sorts of stuff that she had eaten in Africa. One thing they had was "Pap and Sheeba" which was kind of a polenta type stuff... (more or less like grits maybe?) Where Mom had been in Africa they called it "Sudsa." There was a girl there from Gabarone, Botswana who told me that it is only called that in one little place in Botswana.

Roe was quite happy because she finally found out what was in the Kool Slai, which is basically an African version of Coleslaw. The secret ingredient: Coconut milk. Who knew?

The hosts and hostesses there were all from different countries in Africa. The girl at the main desk was from South Africa... when we noticed this, Kailey imediately piped up with, "I know the South African National Anthem," and started singing it for her. She got all excited and called over a bunch of the other servers and hosts. Kailey put on quite the show, singing it several times for them. They were all very impressed at how well she knew it and could sing it. Her grandmother would have been very proud.

Joshua won a prize for answering the trivia question of the day. It was a bead made from what I'm guessing is peridot. He proudly displayed his pin that said, "I answered the trivia question."

In all, it was a great day. I can't think of a better way to have celebrated my mom's birthday.