Universal Studios and a bit more

A week ago we flew to Florida and had a fun filled family vacation. We had planned on going to Colorado over the summer, but that fizzled out so when we saw that the kids had a 5 day weekend in October we decided to do a trip during that. We decided on Florida when we found plane tickets at a great price and then the resort we ended up booking with had an offer to 3 days at Universal Studio Parks (there are 2 parks) for the price of a 2 day admission. So Florida it was!

We flew in Monday night at 10:30pm, after picking up the rental car, a quick stop at Target for groceries, checking into our place it was midnight. Our place was a HUGE dump!! So nasty! We have pics, but mostly in case the company tries to contact us about the complaint. So we didn't start off on the best foot. I hardly slept that night bc the place was that nasty (and you know me, I had researched! This place had a 4.5 star out of 5 stars on TripAdvisor with over 1300 reviews) Mike said he was the same way with not sleeping well. The next morning he went to the check-in area and requested us to be moved to another unit (we had rented a townhouse bc we like our space and being able to cook our own meals when we can). We ended up being moved into a single family home with its own little pool in the back. The house was better, not great, but a step above where we originally were at. 

As soon as we got to the house the kids wanted to swim, so swim they did! There were floaters to use also! 

We headed to Universal Stuidos Islands of Adventure park later that morning. The Harry Potter portion of the park was very popular and very well done. I felt like I was in Hogsmead and headed to Hogswart for school. It's been YEARS since I've read the books and I've only seen a couple of the movies, but it was still really neat to see this. The fam enterings Hogsmead. 

Mike and Stella rode the big water ride in the background and got soaked. P and I decided to do a different ride. Haha!

The next day we tried out the other Universal Studios park, the original park. There was also a Harry Potter section and it was super cool! I enjoyed this HP area better, even though I think the HP park from the previous day is more popular with other people. In Diagon Alley, take note of the large dragon on top of the building in the background. 

It randomly breathes fire! Crazy and cool!

There was a really cute Despiciable Me ride and a Minion to pose with at the end. Stella is going as a minion for Halloween this year with a friend, they've been planning this for months so it was Minion mania there! Haha!

It was fun getting Rex updates from our cat sitter! This is Stella's good friend, Kathryn and she lives like 1/4 mile from us and she's the girl dressing as a Minion with Stella for Halloween. 

The next day we chilled at our resort and swam. That night we went to the Magic Kingdom for the Mickeys Not So Scary Halloween party. It was from 4- midnight, our only time at a Disney park. The kids said they preferred Universal to Disney.....Universal has more thrill rides, my babies are growing up! 

Our first ride was the Speedway and Stella was a HORRIBLE driver! Not kidding! She's cracking herself up at her terrible driving skills here. 

Mike and P, front and center. Stella and I's car is the red and yellow one on the top right corner...can't see us. As we were sitting there waiting to get off I turn to Stella and say,"is that the Foths up there on the bridge?" Sure enough friends of ours from school (they have a girl in Stella's grade and a boy in Porters grade) happened to be at Disney the same time and saw them on this ride! Michelle took this pic and texted it to me. She saw the boys first and the boys didn't even see the Foths until the last minute. Stella and I were cracking up watching this all unfold! We ran into them again a couple hours later on the "it's a small world ride", it's definitely a small world!!! 

Outside the Haunted Mansion, wanted them to imitate the statue behind them one kid cooperated.....one didn't. Ha!

This was around 10:30pm. Kids had just ridden Space Mountain for the 3rd time in a row and got their 2nd wind!

That 2nd wind quickly diminished and around 11:30 we left. The kids were so done that I didn't even ask them to pose with this backdrop. 

I planned ahead and had their pj's, pillows and blankets in the car for the 20 minute car ride home. They were zonked out. 

Next day! Lazy morning!! Headed over to the resort pools and we brought the floaters from our place. Having fun on the lazy river! 

Layer that day we headed over to Animal Kimgdom Lodge a Disney resort. We had good friends leaving on a Disney cruise the next day and invited us over do hang out that afternoon. We had a great time! We were at the point in our trip when hanging out with other people was a good thing. Hahaha!

Stella and Ella participating in a hoopla hoop contest. Ella and her mom is who we went to the Taylor Swift concert with. 

Welcome to Porter's Gun show! Ha! With Cooper and Owen. 

The kiddies! Owen, Cooper, P, Ella, Hadley, Stella and sweet little Anna in front. There is an adult pic that either Heather or Angie posted on FB. 

Next day was our last Universal day. We started at the original pArk, the one  the kids preferred and then went to park #2. 

Stella with a very large donut!

P's fav ride at this park. 

Stella's fav ride was the crazy huge roller coaster in the background. She rode it every chance she got. 

One thing I was really impressed with was with a lot of rides while you are waitin in line there are interactive things to do or things to see, so it's almost like you're not waiting in line, but it's part of the experience. 

Waiting in line for a Harry Potter ride. 

P's most fav ride. And you can barely see it, but he spent his souvenir money on a wand from Harry Potter. He had been enamoured with these wands from day one, but would not committ until the final day at the park...which is sooooooo P! So glad he actually spent his money we gave him on this! He also got a fake gun at Disney from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie. 

We were done with amusement parks at this point and the next day decided to take a trip to the ocean since it was a little over an hour away and our rental house had a cooler for us to bring lunch with us. It was overcast and windy that day, but we still enjoyed saying hello to the ocean! Not sure when we will see you again!

Huge hole Stella and Porter dug. That's not P, just a random kid. 

Last day we had time to kill before flying home. We stopped by Disney Springs ( formally known as Downtown Disney), it's basically an area with shoes and restaurants and Disney souvineer shops.  It was fun and free and took up a couple hours of our time. 

Lego races. 

On the plane ride home. We had 3 seats together with the 4th seat just across the isle. Stella really wanted her own seat on the way back. She ended up playing Suduko with the lady next to her. With the Minion she bought with her souvineer money. 

What's better than 1 minion?! 2 Minions!! The 2nd one was our gift to our cat sitter and fellow Minion. 

It was great to get back home!

My fav tree on our way to school!

P stared bball a couple weeks ago. His first game was a few days ago. We get there and his teacher was there!! P plays on a team with SFA 3rd graders and one of them invited Mrs Pamperin to his game  that night and she showed up! Of the 10 boys she has 3 of them in her class. Here's Leo and Porter. I can't believe she took time out of her Friday night to watch her students play. Blessed are we!

Last flag football game was on Saturday!

P on the Bears team, in the front row 4th from the left. The Raisers team is the other 3rd grade SFA team. They played each other for the last game and the Bears won!!!!!! They boys were calling it the SFA Super Bowl. Haha! Proud of these boys, the Bears were by far the underdogs!

Loved having a cousin sleepover last night!

Today we went to the Apple Orchard  with the rest of central Iowa! Gorgeous fall day!

Corn pit. 

Tractors. 

Space pillow. 

Picking pumpkins for Rex since they already have theirs. 

Enjoying a Carmel apple from the orchard. 

Stella's 1st concert and our Wii Party!

The last few days have been a whirlwind of fun! Two huge events that we've been looking forward to for almost a year. First, Stella received tickets to the Taylor Swift 1989 concert tour for her birthday in March. These tickets were purchased in January! 10 months ago! I was perhaps more excited than her, but she was pretty darn excited! Second big event, our outdoor Wii party for the school auction. This started as a seed of a thought during drinks with friends last fall and turned into a really fun party that raised a good amount of money for our school. Double win! 

Backing up a bit, mike turned 38 last Sunday. We went to the early movie at Flix Brewhouse and saw The Martian. Great movie. The kids really wanted to see this, too! They are definitely phasing out of animated movies into more gown up movies. For dinner that night Mike requested Chinese food. He's not big on dessert so we put 5 candles in an egg roll (one for each of us plus Rex!) and sang to him! 

The next daywe had the state wide Healthiest State initiative walk (our school did it 2 days early) here's Stella and some of her besties. Clare, Stella, Mary, Megan, Ally and Berlin. Porter and his friends ran way ahead. Porters goal is to pretty much ignore me when I'm at school and I'm cool with that! Haha! So no pics his group! 

So the Taylor Swift concert. Stella and Ella made shirts to wear. I thought this would be really fun for them and get them excited for the concert. Also, I was not willing to drop $40 for a tshirt at the concert. They had so much fun making their shirts and at the concert they received SO many compliments on them. And as we're we're walking around we heard numerous times people commenting on them. These shirts cost less than $7 total to make! 

The back of the shirts. It was the 1989 tour, the year Taylor was born. Stella wrote all the songs from the 1989 album on the back of her shirt and Ella wrote her favoritve songs from the album on hers. 

In front of one of many of the semis moving all of the equipment!

Selfie time! Pumped up for TS!

Being silly!

Our first sight of TS! I have videomofbher coming in stage it was crazy! She's I the purplish-blue in the front. 

We had decent seats and there was a catwalk that elevated and rotated so everyone was up close to her. She was so gracious and just really seemed to enjoy "taking it all in" during the concert. 

The last big concert I attended was in college many, many moons ago. Taylor had a wrist band taped to the back of every chair in wells Fargo.......that's 14,000 seats! The wrist band lit up to her songs, sometimes they were all the same color, sometimes not. It was amazing and made it fun to see everyone all over the place. Here they are all lit up red. 

There was a huge screen set up to see her and the quality was amazing....like she was right next to us!

Amazing finale!!!

Enore! The one song Stella wanted to hear was "Shake it Off" that was the encore it was awesome!

The next morning was Grandparents day at SFA. The kids were so excited to have Papa, Gramdpa, and Grandma attend. They missed Nana, but she was having a great time touring Cape Cod!

No blog post is complete without a cute Rex pic. I thought this was a cute side shot! Haha!

So our 2nd big event.  The Wii Party. We co-hosted with 4 other couples and put on this outdoor Wii party for the school auction. It turned out being a big success! We are planning on hosting it agin next year. We've been planning this since February so it was really fun to host it!

Friday night Mike, Jeff and Spencer set up all the screens. Saturday P had a flag football game at 11. It was windy. We got home and all the screens had blown over. Lots of extra work for Mike. 

The set up, 4 screens plus a big screen for the championship game to be displayed on. 

Blurry, but some of the attendees checking things out. 

Oh yes, the Shotski mad many appearances last night.  Hahaha!

View of the deck. 

People playing Wii games. I didn't take many pics. But Mike put a ton of time and work into this event for our school. It was a super fun night. I'm already looking forward to hosting this party next fall!!