Polishing off vacations

Anyone else up for me giving up on finishing a detailed description of my vacation?

I'll just say that we spent our last day in Florida at the Animal Kingdom with Zack's parents. We had a complete blast. We rode all the best rides several times. We especially like Expedition Everest.

And we owe Zack's family a big huge thank you for making our Florida trip possible and for making it so much fun. Love you guys.

Just for the sake of getting caught up, I'll mention that less than a week after returning from Florida, we headed to Utah. My little brother Matthew gave his pre-mission talk in church and we wanted to be there. He did such a great job. I was really impressed. I can't believe my little Bubba is old enough to go on a mission. But he is. And he's out of the MTC now, in the California Roseville Mission. I am so proud of him. We really enjoyed getting to spend more time with family while we were visiting Utah also.

Florida Day 4

This time it was just Zack and me. Amy had gone home and Zack parents went to Clearwater to watch the Phillies play some baseball. We started the day back at Epcot again. We did ride some rides, but spent the bulk of our time exploring the part devoted to different countries. We ate a very delicious lunch in a very cute little restaurant in Mexico. There was a plant show of sorts going on at Epcot while we were there, and they had many Disney characters in topiary, which was pretty great. Here's some photos for you to check out.

Daisy duck topiary

The scenery at the Mexican restaurant

yummy chips and salsa

China

Zack loves pandas

Lady and the Tramp

Mickey and Minnie

I can't even remember what country this was supposed to be.

France

Tigger

Eeyore

We left Epcot mid-afternoon and headed for the Magic Kingdom. It was crowded. We decided to just do some of our favorite rides... Haunted Mansion, Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain, Buzz Lightyear, etc., which is what we did. We got to ride most of them at least twice. We stayed there until quite late, making the whole day 16 hours or something like that. We were pooped. But in a good way. Here is the 1 picture we took at the Magic Kingdom.

Florida Day 3

We wanted to squeeze a lot in on our 3rd day in Florida, so we (Zack, Amy, and I) started at Disney's Hollywood Studios right when it opened. We made our way right to the new Toy Story Mania ride first thing, and we only waited maybe 10 minutes to get on.

Since we didn't have long to hang out in the park, we had to pick our very favorite things to do. We decided on the Rockin' Rollercoaster. We had a few minutes to kill so we did the backlot tour, which was actually pretty cute. Here's a picture of Herbie the Lovebug split in half.

And of course, we polished things off by riding the Tower of Terror. Love it!

In the afternoon, we watched the Red Sox beat the Braves at Disney's Wide World of Sports.

In the evening, Zack and I decided to hit up Epcot.

We didn't get the chance to go there 3 years ago when we went to Florida so we thought we could at least carve out an evening for it this time. We liked it so much that we decided to go back the next day. And we took approximately 2 bzillion photos while at Epcot. That'll be the next post.

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