A trip of dreams

In January, Anna and I flew south for a magical week in Florida with her aunt Natalie. We stayed in an amazing hotel, hit up Disney World, Universal Studios, the swimming pool (in JANUARY), Epcot Center, and Disney's Animal Kingdom. We had SO much fun, and the trip was pretty much perfect. In a phrase, a trip of dreams. I also took approximately one million pictures, so get ready for a barrage. I picked out only the best for you.

First stop, Disney World. 

After a hesitant beginning, Anna warmed up to the big-kid rides. But surprisingly, one of her most favorite things the whole day was a pirate treasure hunt in Adventureland. It wasn't even a ride, just running around finding clues and pirate's booty. 

We had to do It's a Small World because it's a classic. This photo's cute and all . . .

. . .  but my favorite one was with me and my backseat friend while everyone else is looking away. Hey buddy! (He apparently wasn't so amused this time.)

Catching a show at the castle.

This is the one where I realized Anna and I have the same exact nose.

After a long day of rides, raspberry lemonade spilled all over my legs, lots of walking and running and booty finding and general merriment, we were tired and felt the need to take this picture after probably our fifth time on Space Mountain. 

The next day was Universal Studios. Other parts of the park were fun, but I had only one destination in mind that day: the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Anna perfectly captured the excitement I was also feeling the minute we stepped foot into Hogsmeade.

Hogwarts!

Anna chose an official wand, which turned out to be in the style of Ginny Weasley's, and she couldn't have been happier. The train conductor saw us as we passed by and, noting Anna's hair color, said she must be a Weasley. We both beamed. I was about as proud as Molly Weasley herself.

The whole place was SO fun to see, the rides were amazing (and vomit inducing if you ride them several times in a row and have a stomach full of butter beer), and the shops were a delight to visit, but I loved catching the little things, like the U-NO-POO candies and chocolate frogs at Honeydukes . . .

moving chess pieces!

the pensieve!

and of course the fat lady. 

I won't spoil anymore in case you take a trip there yourselves. It was truly magical.

I was like a giddy little girl, eating lunch at the Three Broomsticks.

Like I said, the rest of Universal Studios was fine and even fun, but we ended our night back with Harry again because we loved it so much. In between, we watched a Sinbad show, rode the Jurassic Park boat ride three times (at Anna's request)  . . .

. . . and achieved true drowned-rat status

. . . and Anna lost a tooth over pizza.

The next day was our "day off" because we were EXHAUSTED.

We hung out around the hotel because there were plenty of fun things to do there. It had its own lake and beach, and we were the only ones on it.

I don't think anyone was supposed to play in the water (mostly because it had a mysterious greenish tint probably due to the seagulls who called it bathroom), but it was hard to keep Anna out of it. We did a lot of sanitizing that afternoon.

We swam, we ate hot fudge sundaes, and we collapsed into bed again after a full but fun day.

The next day started at the Wild Animal Kingdom. We saw lots of fascinating animals and went on many more rides. 

This is Anna touching the top of Mount Everest. With a serious look and bright peacock feather face paint. It's just perfect.

Our favorite part was definitely the African safari. We saw SO many cool animals right up close. I could hardly believe it.

We ended the day at Epcot Center because I felt like we just should. Everyone needs to see the giant golf ball. And we saw some cool things. I wish we would have seen more of them in the daytime, but it was still worth it. Walking around to all the different countries was delightful. As soon as we crossed the border into the next one, Anna would try to say hello in that country's language, and she did pretty well.

But after the sun went down, it got COLD. Like really cold. Especially when you thought it was going to be warm in Florida and only brought a sweater and a jacket. We kept walking a lot, hoping that would keep us warm, but it wasn't enough. We ate a cold dinner in an outdoor cafe in Germany, and the cold seemed to settle into our bones. We were trying to hold out for the amazing fireworks show we had heard so much about, but after the hot chocolate we purchased in Norway didn't help a bit, we threw in the towel and went speedily back to our hotel.

It was still gorgeous out, however, and I had to snap this characteristic pic in an effort to capture Florida.

Our plane left the next afternoon, so we had time that morning to mess around a little more. We played some arcade games, took some quality arcade photos . . .

. . . and rented bikes to ride around the boardwalk. It was so warm and beautiful, and we just had to soak it all in before we flew back to the land of ice and snow.

Like I said, the entire trip was magical. Epic, in fact. And I really, really, really want to go back after they add more to the Harry Potter world this summer: Diagon Alley! Gringotts! Fire-breathing dragons!!!!!!! I want to go to there.

The Summer in Pictures

Since school starts tomorrow, I guess today was the last official day of summer break. We've had an excellent summer, filled with a whole lot of fun and adventures. Besides the requisite activities (swimming lessons, snow cones, picnics, running through the sprinklers, etc.), we did most everything on our special list (the mental one I made, anyway) along with some spontaneous fun, and I feel like it was a total success. And the best way to remember it is through a bombardment of pictures, I think.

Memorial Day hike
not technically summer break, I guess, but I just loved that Anna
chose sitting in the middle of the path for her portrait

The first thing we did once school was out, of course, was go ice skating. Anna has been begging to go for months and months and probably years, but it was strangely more difficult than she imagined and she kind of hated it. I think it was still fun that we went in May.

Then there was that time Anna played in a box for an evening...

It was Anna's idea to have a Country Week, where we learned about one country each day. We decided to make a food from each country at lunch, discuss what we learned, and listen to classical and popular music from all these different places. We loved it! We'll totally do that again. We came away with some foods we will certainly make again (baked ham and egg cups from Australia) and some we will not (pineapple rice pudding from Egypt), but I'm glad to know about it now.

Anna decided to do some writing one day on her white board from school and couldn't have picked a better phrase to accidentally immortalize with permanent marker.

THE PLANETARIUM

We also went to Mars...

... and the moon. That's me in the space suit.

And played with clouds.

While the planetarium was super fun in itself, this was the real reason we went: to see the movie Flight of the Butterflies. It was fantastic and magical. Go see it today. Seriously. We all LOVED it.

Waiting for the Stadium of Fire to start.

Kind of a random pic, but it's the only one I took that day. I went with my sister down to Scofield where a bunch of us met up with the author of a historical fiction novel we all read before coming. It was about the mine disaster that happened there in 1900, and the author took us on a tour of the cemetery and the old school where there is an exhibit about the disaster. It was super fascinating to get the historical perspective of it all and fun to hear about the process from the author. The mine is actually up the canyon to the right, past that small group of white buildings, if you're interested.

CAMPING

We played an obscene amount of games, which I think makes the best kind of camping trip.

LAGOON

This was fun. Anna earned money all summer to put towards a ticket to Lagoon. We went with her Aunt Natalie and had a great time. Now, I have mixed feelings about Lagoon. Kind of a love/hate thing. It's better now, now that I've faced many of my fears there (I was terrified of roller coasters up until about the age of 14), but there are still some things I hate. Like the Wild Mouse. It just makes me angry, getting wrenched around the whole time, and I hadn't been on it recently enough to remember just how much I hate it.

But I love me some bumper cars. (Anna's in the yellow car at the back.)

The sky ride is pleasant at times but paralyzingly scary if you really think about it.

Most think it's an easy ride, one for lightweights, but it still kind of freaks me out sometimes. Look how high we are! I don't have a problem with heights, if I'm behind a guard rail made of steel or something. But one small wiggle and I could slip right through the safety bars on this thing. If that were to happen, I'd try to aim for a tree because that seems like it'd be the softest and nearest landing/something to break my fall, but you never know. It could be straight down into the shallow fountain.

One of the favorite rides, the Dinosaur Drop was ridden several times. This is
like a mini version of The Rocket and much more my speed.

This was taken at a happy moment before I nearly died of the dizzying vomits on the teacups and before my legitimate lifetime ban on the world's worst ride. Nothing actually came up, but I had to work hard to keep it down. I guess I've officially reached old age.

I feel like I have to explain. There are some rides and roller coasters I like and some I like a lot, so I'm not a total scaredy cat. (I was a little terrified of Air Race, or whatever, with the airplanes that fly upside down, but I did it and enjoyed the thrill.) But there are some I will never do, like the catapult thing and the giant slingshot/swing thing. They are not for me.

I took this a few days ago on a shopping trip, and it just struck me how old Anna looks. Maybe it's the long hair and how elongated it seems to make her, but I feel like she's already 17.
Just in time for 2nd grade.