Some time at home...

Sometimes you just need to be able to enjoy a regular day at home.  After all of the traveling we have been doing the last few weeks, it has been a good break to enjoy some time at home.

We have both Gabrielle and Dallas staying with us this weekend as Tonya and Carl enjoy some time to themselves.  We have still be able to enjoy the day and just basically relax.  Decided to have an impromptu smoke of a chicken and sausage as well.  Mmmm...  I would have to say it was quite tasty.  I certainly does help that chicken and sausage don't take as long to cook in the smoker or we would have had a change in plans for dinner.

Day at home, smoked meat and a homebrewed scottish ale.  It's been a good day

Orlando Trip, July 2011

Our latest family trip is complete.  This year, we headed out to Orlando Florida.  Yes, this is the second time we have been out here for a vacation, but the goal of this adventure was to enjoy our time at Universal Studios.  In particular, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  We are all big Harry Potter fans, and with the movie coming out right around the corner, what better way to cap off the final movie of the series than to visit the theme park designed after Hogwarts castle and Hogsmeade.

We planned this trip well ahead in advance, mainly so we could properly coordinate with Ed and Maria, my mom and Mark and Christa.  The last get together trip we had with Ed and Mark was about 3 years ago, so it was about time we planned another one.  We also had Briana bring her friend Alex with us, so it made for an entertaining week.

We had a week to trade in for ourselves, in which we got a nice 3 bedroom place near the Marriott Grand Hotel.  We also traded a week for my mom, where she stayed at a very nice Marriott with a Nick Faldo golf course.  You know, even though time shares do cost a bit of money, you can't beat the amenities at the vacation resorts.  It makes coming back from long days rather relaxing.  You aren't cramped in your hotel making sure you properly schedule so everybody can get cleaned up, etc.

We left on Sunday, July 3 nice and early in the morning.  Arrived in Orlando in the afternoon, jumped in our rental mini-van and headed to our hotel.  After checking in, we met up with my mom had a nice dinner at Nick's Grill then proceeded to hit the hay for a busy 4th of July.

I'll entertain you with details of our 2 days at Univeral in this blog entry.  If I feel like it, I may enter another post that will provide insight of the days we spent at Disney, the resort and the beach.  Who knows if I will actually get to that post though.  I don't have a good track record at this point with multi-day entries (see post about the 2 days of running for Zane, when I only entered day 1)

The first day was the full day at Harry Potter land.  We arrived bright and early, proceeded to forget our tickets at the hotel and had to head to customer service to get our tickets reprinted.  :)  What a way to start the vacation, eh?  We met up with Ed, Maria and Edison at the entrance to the park and immediately headed in - straight for Harry Potter.  First stop?  Ollivanders.  This is where they do a small presentation of a wand maker going through the motions of finding a wand for a wizard (or in this case, a boy from the audience).  While waiting in line, we met up with El Marko and had ourselves our very first Butterbeers.  Yum!

After the wand show (Joshua didn't get picked :() we perused the wands, robes and other knick knacks at the Owl's Post.  We picked up a wand for Briana and Josh - and also got a robe for Josh.  You can see more of these pictures in my picasa web album.  From there, we headed to the main ride attraction at the park, which I don't remember the name off the top of my head, but you are riding a 'broom' following Harry, Ron and Hermione around in a pretty cool adventure.  This ride is situated inside Hogwarts Castle, so while you are waiting in line, you get to see all the things they replicated to match from Hogwarts Castle.  You see the entrance to Dumbledore's office, the Pensieve, some pictures, that one mirror, etc.  It's all very cool and the design is top notch.  The ride is fun too :)  We were able to do a kids swap with Ed and Maria so we all got to ride the ride.

We hit a variety of rides while in the area.  Flight of the Hippogriff (we did this one many times, as it was one of Joshua's favorites and the line was relatively short) and the Dragon Challenge, which is a dueling roller coaster ride which had virtually no wait.  That was much of the morning until we had a lunch date at Mythos.  Mythos is ranked one of the top theme park restaurants anywhere so we had to check it out.  Ed made reservations 1 month in advance to guarantee us a seat.

That afternoon, we visited other areas of the park.  We rode on Spiderman 3D, the kids rode one of the raft rides twice.  Ed and I hit up The Incredible Hulk as well.  As the day wore on, we rode on more rides then headed to what we thought were going to be fireworks.  Unfortunately, we already missed them so we were just sitting with everybody else just looking at the lagoon in front of Universal Studios.

Once we didn't want to sit around anymore, we headed out.  Stopped by Wal Mart on the way back to get our needed groceries and finally got to sleep pretty darned late.

The next day, we decided to sleep in a little.  This made the second day at Universal a bit more tolerable.  We met up with Ed and Maria at Twister and the day begins.  We watched Jaws, walked around more taking in the various sites at Universal.  The kids got Airbrush tattoos on day 1, so we followed up with Henna tattoos at this part of the park.  We watched Shrek 4D, took in some Nick toons stuff and rode what was the best coaster of the week.  The Rip Ride Rocket.  I went with Briana and Alex.  They have individual MP3 players setup in each seat so you can listen to whatever you want when you are riding.  On top of that, if you sit on the LHS of the ride, you get your whole experience video taped if you want to buy a DVD.  Pretty neat.

After that, we headed back to the Islands of Adventure part of the theme park and met up with Ed and Maria again to do one last ride on Harry Potter.  We closed out the park that day - and what a day it was.  :)