WHAT? I never blogged Florida!?

I. Fail. Badly.

My First Palm Tree. AWWW

For Mike's gramma's birthday, we headed down to Florida to visit the family. To sweeten the deal, we also headed to Universal studios for HARRY POTTER WORLD.  It was a ton of fun, and the photo albums for the day are available online, if you so choose to peruse them, however, I'll do my best to sketch it out. Cause, yeah, seriously, it was an awesome awesome trip. BUT, never travel US Air. We finally got in super late at night, and basically crashed. Hard. The first morning in Orlando we woke up and went off to HPW. 






They have done a remarkable job of replicating everything. I took dang near 200 photos in that part of Universal alone. There's a Hogwarts express with a conductor as soon as you walk in. He's a very very friendly man and was super charming as I dorkily asked for a picture. Mike also got in full swing with the "lets take all the pictures we want game" and for the price of admission, you really can't do it any other way. There's a Hogwarts ride, that the line is ridiculously long for, but it doesn't phase you because the line weaves through the castle where they have tons of movie props and interactive things for you to see and watch. I'll meet you down near the end of the HP pictures in a minute...

I thought he did a good job..

Hello Butterbeer. :)

Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home. 

 

 No, I didn't get a wand. Yes, I regret it...After  I finally got my fill (only temporarily, I promise.. I already wanna go back) of Harry Potter, Mike and I finally went around the rest of the park. We played some old school arcade games (I was better at skeeball) and even rode the Hulk. My motion sickness was not a fan of the Hulk. I was. There was also an old school comic book land.  Seriously, old school. Rocky and Bullwinkle, Marmaduke, etc. They had these signs all over the park which made for delightfully fun photo ops.

curses!

 Mike's favorite part..this bridge. There was a small water ride going underneath the bridge and if you stood on top you could squirt the unsuspecting riders with water. He had a blast. Seriously. I haven't seen him giggle and run back and forth to plan his attacks like that before.

sneaky

 After all that was said and done, we headed out to dinner at Bubba Gump, and then home to the hotel room. I have never passed out soo quickly in a hotel room like I did that night, but seriously I was gone. 

You have to have the ears picture!

We woke up the next morning to head down to Boca Raton, but we had a few hours to kill so we headed over to Disney for a bit. I mean, you kinda have too.Seriously. They have everything. There's an entire store dedicated to kitchen decor (all Mickey themed), one dedicated to Christmas ornaments, one for Mickey collectable pins, and that's not including the large array of other shops. We popped into ESPN world, for Mike to get a Mets hat, and then in and out of a few others until we found the general "everything" store.  We walked around playing with the Star Wars toys, the Pooh bears, the Princess things, clothes, jewelry, mugs, stamps, .... Yeah, I'm gonna stop now. 

the ceiling

Once we got hungry, we headed over to Rain Forest Cafe. I've wanted to go for a while, and never had the opportunity, but Mike was game so, yeah. They had mechanical animals that would come to life every 15minutes. They also had a rainstorm every half an hour. The sky would get dark and thunder would creep around and lighting would go off. The "sky" or the ceiling, also went around the times of day every couple hours. You would see an awesome sunrise, then mid day, sunset, nighttime (dispersed with the storms). We were sitting right next to a GIANT fish tank, and it was pretty cool watching all the fish come over and stare at us. 

 Before we left, we made one final stop at Goofy's Candy Store. Mike (and a young dork in training) were enamored by the Disney table of elements and the Baking calculus on the wall. I was enamored by the BIGASMYHEAD caramel apples.  As we were leaving, the REAL skies opened up, so it was nice to make it back to our super swanky rental car. On the way to Boca, I finally had a Slushee, and we arrived at his Aunt and Uncle's just in time for tea and B&W cookies. We spent the next few days hanging out with his family, and we had a great time. His family is incredibly warm and friendly and welcoming and I had a great experience meeting everyone. Hopefully we can make it back to visit everyone shortly.

It really was an excellent, excellent trip. And now, that I've finally blogged about it, I feel better :)