If we couldn't have Peach Days and Cobbler, we would have to make Hogwarts and Butterbeer do!

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Marc's schedule is set up so he usually has Sunday and Monday off (if he gets time off), and then works Tuesday afternoon to midnight for the weekly inventory. An advantage to this is that we can have a small trip Sunday after church to Tuesday morning. The disadvantage is that the closest temple to us is in Orlando and it is closed Sundays and Mondays. We really wanted to get there, and finally found time to make it to Orlando. We played in Universal Studios on Monday, and then visited the temple for the first session Tuesday morning (8:00am) and just made it back for Marc's work that afternoon. Another advantage to this schedule is that I can blog about the latest adventure right afterwards while I wait up for Marc!

NOOOO!! Not over the cliff!

 Let's begin. We first drove into Orlando as the sun was about to set, and drove by the temple. What a beautiful place! I think they managed to find the only hill in Florida to put it on!

The grounds were closed, so we took this at the stop light. 

Then we were famished and hadn't packed much besides Oreo's for the drive, so we got some tasty food at an Italian place, Bravo, for dinner. It hit the spot, though not extraordinary, and then we found our hotel.

Thanks to Priceline, the hotel only cost $30/night. It was a nice, clean place to stay, plus it was only one mile from the park entrance, so we just walked over.

 A lady next to us with a thick Scottish accent asked if we would like her to take our picture together. After several attempts and no success she finally got the picture below :) In her defense: it was on my phone, her hands were shaking like crazy, and I think she was missing half of her index finger. It's the thought right?

We finally made it to the park! We only had one day, so we decided to go to Universal's Islands of Adventure park. This decision was mostly based on Harry Potter world, though a few other things factored in (Marvel Island being one of those).

I like the picture on the right, because you can see four themes: (left to right) Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, the Lost Continent, Dr. Seuss. 

Starting clockwise around the park our first stop was Marvel Island.

Unfortunately, Iron Man wasn't well represented here, but we did run into a few superhero's:

On our way out, we watched them all jump on their superhero mobiles and drive away.

 The rides were all pretty fun, though we don't have good pictures of them. Above is the Hulk roller coaster. It was a pretty impressive roller coaster. Though I may not be the best judge, since I don't remember the last time I rode a legitimate roller coaster... The spider man ride was one of our favorites. It made you feel like you were in the middle of one of his battles. We even got sprayed by Hydro-Man, and felt the heat from fires sent at us by Doctor Octopus.

And then the comic books theme morphed into the comic strips theme or "Toon Lagoon". We came back here at the end, when it was less crowded, for the water rides. Dudley Do-Right's Ripsaw Falls (pictured at the very top, and a couple pictures below) and Popeye and Bluto's Bilge-Rat Barges got us soaked!

Love this kids expression. I'm sure he's thinking, "who is Pop-Eye and why is he telling me to eat spinach in an amusement park?".

Then we move on to Jurassic Park, cool scenery and dinosaur animatronics, but not the most exciting land.

 And we've made it to Hogwarts and Hogsmeade!

 As anticipated the butter beer was delicious! Like extra creamy cream soda. Unfortunately we forgot to get a picture at the butter beer cart. But we did find Dumbledore in the castle advising us of the adventure we were about to have as we flew through Hogwarts on broomsticks.

We went through a tour in the Lost Continent that turned into an awesome battle between Poseidon and his nemesis throwing fire and water back and forth. This was after we went through a sweet water tunnel to go into Poseidon's temple. (The water spun around us as our tour guide "parted the water" with Poseidon's trident). And then it was onto Seuss Landing:

This is for my students, after ruining The Sneetches for them by turning it into math functions!

Remember, input and output of a function ;)

 It was like reliving my childhood! And Marc was just a good sport :)

We had a fun filled day, and were exhausted as we walked home. (After getting some green apple cotton candy for the walk home. Since I always get some at Peach Days or the Fair, and I missed BOTH!)

It's interesting to note that as fun as all this was, the only real value of it was the time we got to spend together and the memories made. Something that can be done playing Ultimate at Peach Days or catching lizards. (I had a HUGE one give me a start the other day as I walked up the steps to our apartment. I call him gigantor, although I haven't seen him again.)

Gigantor was over a foot long, with a pretty thick body. Especially compared the the normal little lizards that I was finally getting used to running all around me. But that's a side note...

We ended our trip with a wonderful peaceful session in the Orlando temple. We only had 11 people in our 8:00am session, and it was delightful. Such a beautiful temple inside and outside!

A couple side notes if you're not tired of reading yet. We had two other adventures that weren't quite as exciting on this trip. I had Marc hold my driver's license in his pocket so I didn't have to carry my purse. When we got back to the hotel it wasn't there anymore! I called the lost and found and they said to call the next afternoon, after they can log everything in. 

Then we went down to go to dinner and found our car wouldn't start! It sounded a little different then when a battery goes dead, so we were trying to figure it out. Our car has been really reliable through all our travels, and all my travels before we got married, so we had no idea what would have just given up on us. As we were looking into it, these kinda crazy looking guys pulled up next to us. (Long unkempt goatee's, tattoo's, crazy hair, and a bit of a crazy look in their eyes, not to mention their English slang.. do we call that English?) They were real friendly though and asked us what was wrong. By then the battery had died even more, and he assured us the sound was just a dead battery. So they jumped us... haha, luckily just the car and left our valuables ;) They were funny to chat with, and real nice to help us out. Then after they made a joke about coming to Utah for polygamy (I hadn't heard that in awhile), and asking us if we smoked nuggets (which I assured him we didn't, though I wasn't exactly sure what nuggets he was referring to, but since it's usually always marijuana and we don't smoke anything anyway, I figured I was safe to say we didn't) we headed out for a much desired dinner.

After the temple on Tuesday, it was only 10am, but I gave Universal's lost and found another try because we had to leave immediately for Marc to get to work on time. After the guy put me on hold for quite awhile, he came back with the news that he had found it! (I assume while we were on hold he must have had to look through a lot of stuff, bless his soul for not just telling us to call later when they got it all logged.) It took an extra hour to go back to the park and walk up to the entrance and wait in line, but I got it back! So luckily our two misfortunes were corrected without too much trouble.

And since misfortunes usually come in three's, I was on the wrong side of a road split as I was driving home. Luckily both roads were headed to Miami, so it probably didn't add more than ten minutes to our drive. Marc was still pretty close to on time, and we made it back safe and sound, with a car and license. :)