This week we’re in Florida to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with Rachel, and thus far, the holiday has been a success.

That’s mostly because in the 24 hours we’ve been here, we’ve been with Rae, and that alone is great; but it’s also because we just got back from spending the day hanging out at the Kennedy Space Center, where Rae works. Specifically, she works in the Center for Space Education doing digital learning programming for students all over the country. A big part of what she does is working on videos for the students–some are pre-recorded and some are live video chats. She teaches them about science and space and does cool experiments. Today, she showed us around her studio.

Rae and a weird little astronaut

Rae adjusts the green screen (I mean, LOOK! TREVOR IS ON THE MOON!)

So many Trevors! SO MANY TREVORS!

T. and I got frozen on the infrared camera

After the studio tour, Rae gave us another tour, this time of the entire visitors’ center. And it was so cool.

We went on a ride that simulated a space shuttle launch, we saw the actual Atlantis shuttle, a giant slide illustrating glide slope (thanks, Rae, for reminding me what it was called), tons of models, replicas, and videos, and an emotional and quite perfect memorial to the astronauts of the Challenger and Columbia disasters.

Power-nauts!

And the afternoon wouldn’t have been complete without a trip to the gift shop. And it was absolutely worth it, because Rachel got this picture:

Trevor is such a bargain!

We left the park and went to Cocoa Village to meet up with Rae’s friend; we ate dinner, stopped to get wine and beer for Thanksgiving, and now we’re relaxing (I am contemplating bed, T. is reclined on the couch, and Rae is chopping onions in preparation of the stuffing she’ll make to bring to Duarte Family Thanksgiving tomorrow.

We’ll have more from Florida later this weekend, but until then, happy Thanksgiving, you wonderful people!

Happy Thanksgiving from space!