Florida Day 2

We (Zack's parents, sister Amy, plus Zack and I) got up early to get to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure when it opened. We went straight to Harry Potter world and waited in line for a long time to ride the castle ride, which was pretty great (the ride was great, not the line).

Harry Potter world as a whole was way cute. I know I enjoyed it. But it was so so crowded, and while we were there, we decided that there were several things they could've done better to pare down some of the crowds. Oh well. Fun anyway. There are only 3 rides in the Harry Potter section: the castle ride, which we ultimately ended up riding twice; a hippogriff roller coaster, which is "family friendly"-- we chose not to ride that; and a dragon coaster that has 2 "dragons" running at the same time-- high thrills, short line= fabulous ride.

Here are some photo highlights.

The Hogwarts Express

Waiting in line to get into the castle. Here I am in the Hogwart's greenhouse

The Sorting Hat

A funny sign

Hogsmeade

We ate lunch at the 3 Broomsticks

We drank butterbeer... and more butterbeer... and more butterbeer.

Although we spent the bulk of our day in Harry Potter world, Islands of Adventure had other attractions. We saw a really corny Simbad show. We rode the Jurrasic Park ride. Zack and I were wimps and wore ponchos because we didn't want to get wet. We're not big fans of water rides.

Here's Zack by the Incredible Hulk coaster. We never did ride that, but it's a cute picture. I know he'll be just THRILLED about me posting it on here.

The kids' section of the park was Seuss-land and was absolutely adorable. Here's Zack being sad that he doesn't have a star on his belly like the other Sneeches.

The Lorax

One Fish, Two Fish

And, in the spirit of the old people that we are, we wrapped up our theme-parking relatively early in the evening, hit up an Outback Steakhouse for dinner on the way home, and then bummed around for the rest of the evening. I think we watched Megamind. Yay!

Florida Day 1

I know that there are probably those of you out there who are not at all interested in hearing a day by day account of my trip to Florida. You may find "first I did...., then I did....." posts to be boring. If you are one of those people, you may want to excuse yourself over the next several posts. My blog doubles as a journal/scrapbook and I want to remember what I did day by day, so I am going to write about it. If you stick with me, kudos to you.

Our first day in Florida (Monday) was easygoing, which was nice because the day before was long. I still had to go to work, then we caught a flight and got into Florida around 11 PM. So we were tired and grateful for the chance to sleep in a bit. We drove about a half hour from where we were staying to watch the Phillies play some spring training baseball. The park was packed full of Phillies fans even though it wasn't the Phillies park. I believe it was the Astros place. Zack will correct me if I am wrong there. Anyway, the weather was just gorgeous.. 80 degrees and sunny. And the Phillies won. I didn't get any really great pictures but here's one of Z and his dad at the baseball park.

That evening, we went with Zack's dad to Downtown Disney where we ate some dinner at a yumy (but way too loud) restaurant, and then just looked around. Again, I didn't get many pictures, but I did get this one of a dragon that was in the water--

it's made out of Legos, which is pretty cool. I also got this picture of Woody made completely out of Legos. I promise we didn't just look at Legos the whole time. That's just all I have pictures of.

All in all, a delightful and relaxing day.

Have you played pandemic?

We have. The Becks were wild about the game, so we played with them. I was excited to try it but also a little reluctant because I'm not usually a big fan of strategy games. I ended up really liking it. It's a cooperative game, which means everyone works together to beat the game. It is also not as long as most strategy games. It only takes about 45 minutes to play. Anyway, the object is to cure 4 diseases before they can outbreak across the game board. Doesn't sound too bad, right? Well, it's hard. Really hard. We played probably a half dozen times or more before we finally won. We were 1 card away from losing, but we pulled it off. Way to go guys! Here's our winning game board.

And here are the triumphant disease conquerers.

Oh yeah!

Here's my fancy certificate thingy