Harry Potter WORLD!!!! and the rest of the trip

So for the most exciting day! We went to Universal studios on Tuesday and got to enjoy the Wizarding World of Harry Potter!! It was absolutely phenomenal! And must I say, I wish I could have a butterbeer with every single meal. It was just absolutely amazing and so worth the trip!!! HAHA, not that there wasn't more amazing stuff. The rides were great, had amazing technology/graphics that just blew me away. Ollivanders shop was really cool, and though I didn't buy a wand because I knew it would just get forgotten and be clutter in my house, the gentleman who did the show before going into the shop and chose the child to volunteer to get a wand did an amazing job at being eccentric. Overall just fabulous! There a a LOT of pictures for this, so I'll just refer you to Facebook where I have all of them posted. But I'll at least post the Butterbeer photos here :)

I was really impressed by all of Universal, and with Dr. Seuss land and all the amazing characters. We also had a Caricature done which was fun and something I had never had done before.

I can't remember much more from the trip. We didn't go back to Universal even though we had one more day with our tickets, mainly due to transportation. Since we had gotten through both parks already, and the tickets were only good for one park per day/no switching in the middle of the day, we didn't feel like we wanted to be there from open to close again, which was the only time the bus from our hotel went there. So instead we spent a day at Downtown Disney to get shopping done for Christmas and see a movie. The movie theatre there had a part that was dine and watch, sort of like the theatre here in Nampa, only way more high tech. There was a button on the table in front of us you'd press when you were ready to order or needed a refill or anything like that and the waiters/waitresses came to you. It was also set up Edwards style, so with big comfy seats and lots of room. We had the 4 seats in our row all to ourselves which was nice to spread out on.

On the way back home our flight out of Orlando was delayed, causing us to miss our connection in Minneapolis. So we ended up having about a 5 hour lay over there. Which gave us plenty of time to make a quick trip to the Mall of America!!! It was cool to see it, and someday we'll go back and spend more time there. We didn't get very far, and only went to GameStop to shop where I got the limited Edition Zelda 3ds. Tee Hee. :)

Well, after getting back to the airport, we had signed up to give up our seats if the flight was overbooked. Well, it was overbooked, but only because they brought the wrong plane to our gate. It was too small and there weren't enough seats for everyone! Josh and I had been upgraded to first class because of the delay before, and the 4th row that was supposed to be first class was actually the first row of coach... Well, we ended up just giving up our seats and getting vouchers for flights, food, and hotel. We flew into SLC instead and stayed the night there before finally getting back to Boise Sunday late morning. It was all totally worth the vouchers we got which helped us go to my cousins wedding in St. George in June and then also got us tickets to Disneyland this coming January :)

More to come later :)

DisneyWorld Continued

We spent Sunday At the Animal Kingdom.We went to Rain Forest Cafe which was a bad idea for lunch. We had gone to Rainforest Cafe in Anaheim when we went to Disneyland for our honeymoon and had horrible service and horrible food. Well this time we had better service but the food was still very subpar. So we have definitely learned our lesson and will not be going back!

There was a ride called Dinosaur that was pretty intense and we couldn't imagine taking children on it. We went on a "Safari" ride and saw a lot of cool animals. Ostrich eggs, the Rhino up close. From far away we saw a female lion though I didn't see that we took a picture. That was really fun. At one point the Ostrich stood in front of the vehicle so we were stopped for a while waiting for him/her to get out of the way.
Next day was Monday and we went to the Magic Kingdom. I still think haunted Mansion was one of my favorite rides because of the cool effects at the end. I have NO idea if it's like Disneyland's or not because that ride was closed when we got there. It seemed pretty crowded in the streets but it wasn't very crowded waiting for the rides.

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The castle was of course gorgeous. Especially at night!! And I love seeing it all decorated for Christmas!! It just makes it that much better. Well this seems like enough for today. I'll post about Hollywood Studios and HARRY POTTER WORLD later this week :)

Only 9 months later...

Well, it seems I've waited a long time to post again, and it seems I have a LOT I need to update.

So First off, we are back in Boise, actually Nampa at this point. I finally moved back to Boise with Josh over the Thanksgiving holiday. We moved into some apartments across from Chris and Jill. I went right back to Primary Health on State Street.

Our trip to Orlando was amazing! We had such a good time. We got there on Friday afternoon and after getting our luggage and our rental car made our way into town to find some grub. We settled on McDonald's, cause we're fancy like that ;-).

On Saturday morning we got up around 6 so we could go to the first session at the temple at 7:30 that morning. Orlanda has such a beautiful temple. It was such a great experience, there were only 4 of us in that session and the spirit was so strong and it was such a different experience with so few of us. Well after the session I talked with one of the ladies that helped direct the session for probably a good 20 minutes. She was so sweet and it was fun to talk to her. She told  me that the first session on Saturday was always empty but after that they never had enough room. It was easy to see this was true, the temple was packed as we were leaving and there were a lot of couples there to get married/sealed or to get their endowments. It is always such a blessing to see so many people at the temple and know it's so right :)

 Orlando Temple

 This was right after the temple picture... but I'm thinking it is from a wedding we went to summer of 2011

Me in front of the fountain at the temple

Anyway, so after the temple we changed and headed straight for Universal Studios Orlando!!

Josh does not let me take pictures often, so I'll try and add pictures of him if I ever find any...

Universal was a lot of fun. The movie scenes were so cool. The Twister was one of my favorites. The Mummy ride was impressive as was, surprisingly, the Simpson's ride. Here are just a few more pictures from this day

 This was at the restaurant we ate at. They had a lot of classic cars, as well as the dog from MIB, though it doesn't seem we took a picture of him... You'll find as this goes on we're not the best at taking pictures.

 Well, I couldn't figure out how to rotate it, but Josh is in this one!!

 The big Christmas tree. Since we came the first week in December everything was decked out in Holiday style. It was very awesome!

Well, I think this is enough for today. I'll try and get the rest of our trip up in the next week or so... This was only day one, but I'm sure the rest will go much quicker, especially as the pictures get fewer. haha.