Squirrels love cornflakes

As I sat at my new laptop to write this blog post, Dan and I noticed something dart past out RV door. It is midnight here and the kids are all asleep. We got up and peered through the flyscreen door to see two racoons sniffing their way through our back yard. How exciting! Two wild racoons looking right as us, then carrying on with their business. I never realised how big they are. Obviously, we dont get racoons in Northern Ireland. Our neighbours told us that last night they saw wild deer walk right past our RV door whilst we were all sleeping. I'd love to see that one night before we leave.

Well, here is a photo of our pet squirrel named "Shadow Ranger" by Barney. He came right up to our RV to eat some cornflakes that Luke had left in a bowl. It was an exciting start to our morning, yesterday.

Yesterday was spent mostly shopping. We found a K-Mart and a Walmart and bought many of the things that we need to make life more bareable over the next few months... garden chairs, a barbeque, a cell phone, a potty for Barney, and a satelite navigation system. We have noticed a huge difference between the US and UK supermarkets, and the American way of eating in general. For one thing, no one sells the cordial that you add water to to make orange squash. In Britain each Tesco devotes half an ilse to squash drinks. Over here an entire ilse is devoted to fizzy drinks, and they are so ridiculously cheap that its obvious why people drink so much of it. We are struggling to find something healthy and cheap (apart from water) for the kids to drink. At home they would only get fizzy drinks at a party. Another thing is that the cost of ready made food is much cheaper than foods that need cooking or preparing. Which I guess is why so many people eat out. Today we saw hot deep fried chicken sitting next to uncooked chicken, and the hot chicken was cheaper!

Anyway, having said all that, after our shopping we stopped at 'Dogs R Us' for lunch and had American Burgers and fries. We are determined not to eat out more than once a week, for fear of coming home twice the size we left. So far preparing food in the RV has been easy enough. We have cooked a few hot meals but mostly we are living on salads, cold meats, and bread or crackers. Bread is so expensive here though!

After our burgers we took a little walk over to the Indian River which runs through Titusville. The kids enjoyed walking along the little fishing peir there. That evening we all sat outside in the cool night air, in our new walmart chairs, listening to the sound of a million crickets. The kids put on some plays for us and we had a good laugh watching that before bedtime. Its great to be able to spend so much more time as a family.

Here is a picture of the alligator that lives in the lake behind our RV's, and a pic of the kids and Dan enjoying the pool.

Today we decided to have a quiet day and not do much. In the morning though we drove down to walmart to buy some essentials. Dan went in to get bread and milk, whilst the rest of us all got ourselves washed and dressed, in the Walmart parking lot. This RV is great! When Dan got back we all had breakfast in the RV just parked where we were, before driving 'home'. Today Jim and Pat, our super neighbours (possibly the kindest people on the planet?) invited us round to their place to meet some RVing friends of theirs. Some of them lived here in 'The Great Outdoors' too, and some had travelled many hours to get here. One of the men, Gary, kindly spent a few hours trying to fix my laptop but it was decided in the end that the only solution was to buy a new one. So this evening we headed back to walmart and ate dinner parked in the parking lot, whilst Dan went and spent a huge whack of our budget on a new laptop (although I must say that it was half the price to buy here, than at home). Anyway, I'm rambling off subject again. Dan was presented with a birthday card and Pat started a chorus of Happy Birthday with a big chocolate cake. Barney had a willing (or perhaps captive) audience for many hours and chatted merrily to anyone that would listen. He is rather over tired at the moment as he is going to bed much later here than he would at home. We have had a few tantrums and a bit of bad behaviour from him, but inbetween times he's been having a fabulous adventure.

The pictures above show Pat and Dan with the birthday cake, some of the people outside the RV at their place (Jim is on the far right), Annabelle and Jimmie looking cool, and Barney talking the ear off of Pat.

Right now its almost 1am, and we have to be up by 7am to drive to our spot near Cape Canaveral to see the planned shuttle launch. Its not very far away but we plan to get there early in order to get a good spot. We can spend the whole day chilling out while we wait for the launch (if it goes ahead).