My BROTHER Mark's company, Martello Media, along with Nasa's Kennedy Space Centre, have jointly won Thea awards in Los Angeles for their theme park designs. This is like winning an Oscar from the world's theme attraction association. Martello's budget was well under a million dollars whereas Nasa's -- well, one can only imagine. But, lovely obliging and exciting Nasa invited my brother along to visit the Kennedy Space Centre as he was going to be Stateside for a week any way.

Mark had to go to Texas and then on to New York where he's moving his Life and Work of WB Yeats exhibition to the Morgan Library from the National Gallery in Dublin. I know, I know, such a geek, but a brilliant one and we're all so very proud.

So he bought plane tickets for my daughter Lola and myself and took us along with his son Luke. Then our younger sister Camilla just happened to have her very first script that she's ever written made into a film and the world premiere of this film was taking place at the Miami Film Festival the very same week. Camilla had won a prize at the Hampton's screen writers' conference the year before and it all took off from there. Dear God, I'm breathless even writing all of that, never mind the thrills, spills and mounting bills that followed when we embarked on the trip itself.

We landed in Orlando and spent the first day being shown round the Kennedy Space Centre by the director of operations, the very charming Phillip Clark. Phil gave us a private tour and drove us everywhere, even out to the launch pad of the shuttle where the actual shuttle was standing tall.

I was totally absorbed, along with Mark and Luke. But nine-year-old Lola got bored. When we were little, the space race was the biggest thing in the world. The entire planet stopped when one of the Apollos launched. Everyone watched the countdown on the television. However, to the kids of today, a shuttle launch is nothing compared to the X Factor final, so spending the day standing under a genuine Apollo spacecraft, riding a shuttle simulator, touching a real piece of the moon was "Cool, but can we go now?"

People must be three miles away to watch a space shuttle take off as the rocket blast is so powerful that the noise alone could cause serious injuries. If the shuttle blew up, it would have the effect of a small hydrogen bomb exploding.

But then you see footage of the old Russian space launches and they wheel out a trailer with a rocket on it into a field. Crowds of civilians are pulling at it and patting the rocket and the backs of the cosmonauts as they climb up and get in. The engines ignite and everyone ducks and dives for cover and up it goes. . .

Apparently the Russian rockets were much faster and more effective then any of the Apollos. It just goes to show.

The next day we drove across from the Atlantic coast to the Gulf coast to spend a night with yet another sister who lives in Fort Myers. We took the scenic route through swampland trailer parks with confederate flags and country and western music every where. I'm amazed that this stuff really does exist.

My sister Wendy, who lives in Fort Myers, is a different kettle of fish and deserves an article all on her own, but I'll condense it here. She was the result of an affair which my dad had but she was adopted and grew up in the States. I met her when I was 12 years old and she and the rest of my five 'known' siblings have been thick as thieves ever since.

Wendy is a white witch and she lives with her Warlock hubby in a rambling spread by the Caloosahatchee River with snakes and cats and crystals and cauldrons. She is high priestess of a big Florida Wicca coven (they call it a clan). They drum and perform rituals and cast spells and observe Wicca/Druidic tradition. You would know that she was one of us -- madness, eccentricity or whatever, it's in the genes.

We all set off for Miami the next morning, driving through the notorious Alligator Alley which nowadays is just a very long, straight highway with nothing but flat Everglades swamp on either side for a couple of hundred miles. We had to keep trying to spot alligators to keep Lola amused, but saw none. We'd seen some gorgeous big fat ones the previous day at Cape Canaveral but on this day, nothing.

We got to Miami at sundown and checked into our very posh, art deco hotel on South Beach, then headed for the premiere. The film, Buy Borrow Steal (aka Miss Conception) stars Heather Graham, (Austen Powers, Boogie nights) Mia Kirshner (The Black Dahlia) and Tom Ellis (Buffalo Soldiers) and was directed by award-winning director Eric Styles.

It's a romantic comedy about a woman who finds out she has one ovum left and has four days in which to conceive and all the things that happen on her quest. It went down very well.

Our fourth sister, the workaholic entrepreneur Sammy, had flown in that day so when we all arrived at the Colony Theatre to do the red carpet bit, I guess it was like Dolly Parton and her 500 hick brothers and sisters all arriving down from the good ol' Smokey Mountains in the Borat-mobile.

God love the very important lithe women in their ballgowns who stood so elegantly, pouting and posing with grace and style as the cameras snapped and the TV cameras rolled. Not for long I fear, as we Leslies arrived and booted everyone else off that carpet while we installed ourselves en masse. We had to be dragged into the theatre as the show was about to begin.

At the after-party, I stopped and took a good look at my siblings who were dotted around the place, all of them so delighted and it was really surreal.

Just six years ago, Mark's company was doing great work but it was unrecognised and he was very nearly going under. Camilla had given up her very high-flying job in advertising to look after her mother who lived alone in France after our father died. Camilla announced to us all that she was going to teach herself to write. She was broke and to make things harder, she had a baby, no home of her own and no idea if she would be any good.

Sammy was going through a messy divorce and found herself at the helm of a rundown castle, with huge debts. She too believed at one point that she was going to go under and the place would have to be sold up.

And gorgeous Wendy was struggling to get her spiritual reading and healing centre off the ground.

Everyone was down and the light at the end of the tunnel seemed non-existent.

But on that night in Miami, I just looked at them all now, shining individually in their own way.

Things have really changed.

Next day, while I'm driving back through Alligator Alley with only Lola and Luke, I am thinking that Luke is 20 and attending Dun Laoghaire film school so I guess it could be a case of here we go again. And as for Lola, nothing short of world domination.

But for now, it's "are we there yet?" -- and my answer is, yes!

- Antonia Leslie