I blinked and totally missed it!
My kids go back to school Thursday already. What?
It's been a weird summer. I feel like I've been super busy. But I also feel like I haven't done a thing!
I obviously have nothing to show for it on my blog! But we haven't done anything to blog about. No fun family stuff or vacations or even just a weekend away besides our little anniversary trip.
Mostly I've been just driving the kids all over town and back. They both had summer school classes for the first 6 weeks of summer. My youngest started Poms in July already. They had one week off of summer school and then marching band camp started up for my oldest and one week later she started tennis.
My husband has been working lots of overtime (thank God), but then I barely see him some days.
The days are already starting to get shorter and I'm not liking it! Though I do prefer the milder weather. But we all know what happens in Wisconsin after the milder weather.
Oh, I am just not ready to think about that yet!
Sorry it's been taking me so long to share my Florida trip! Two more days after this.
On day 5 we originally had plans to hit Clearwater beach for a couple hours before heading over the do some crabbing in the afternoon. Well, the night before they were predicting rain so we changed plans and decided to check out M&M world.
Turns out it wasn't raining though, so my daughter was not happy we didn't go to the beach. But we had slept in a bit later because of it and we didn't have as much time as we originally had planned.
After m&ms and lunch we headed to the Tampa Bay area to jump on this boat...
And catch some crabs in traps like these...
Our guide was Gus, he's been crabbing for 35 years! He's 75 years old and still going strong. He's been giving the tours for the past 3 years now.
Each of us got a turn pulling some traps...
We met some friends along the way...
They followed us everywhere. Hoping for a bite to eat. We did throw them a couple of the bait fish...
Of course part of the experience was eating what we caught. Though none of really cared for much of it except my oldest. Luckily he had also made some hush puppies, fish and shrimp so we had plenty to choose from....
Day 6 was Harry Potter Day!! We were all looking forward to this.
It felt like you were walking right on to the movie set!
Hogwarts castle...
Inside the castle was the forbidden journey ride. The line for the ride first took you through the greenhouse and then the castle. This photo of the greenhouse is all I got...
It was too dark in the castle and all I had on me at the time was my cell phone as you couldn't have any kind of purses or bags. The inside was super cool though. You'll just have to take my word for it!
Honeydukes candy store.....
which was connected to Zonko's joke shop, though not sure why I didn't photograph that!
The kids and I had our photo taken behind the castle...
The tent covered area was the outside dining area behind the Three Broomsticks restaurant. Which dummy us didn't go into. We weren't sure if the kids would eat anything on the menu so we went outside the Harry Potter area to eat. I wish we would have at least checked it out!
One of the stores was the Owl Post where you could buy postcards and have them stamped with an Hogsmeade owl postmark.
The Durmstrang boys.....
The Beaubaton girls...
And of course, no visit to Hogsmeade would be complete without Butterbeer...
Although, I am sorry to say it was kinda gross!! I'm not sure what it was made of, hubby thought it tasted like a cross between root beer and cream soda.
Day 3 we got up to head to IHOP for breakfast. We don't have many of them around here so my youngest was asking to eat there.
The kids spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon hanging around the pool. Hubby and I spent longer than expected on a tour and missed out on one of the better days weather wise!
That night we had reservations with everyone at the Arabian Nights dinner theater....
It was fun but kinda hard to eat in the dark and take pics at the same time! But I got a few.
My daughter fell in love with this horse...
After dinner we walked around Downtown Disney for a while.
Day 4 we had plans for Universal Studios. The weather didn't want to cooperate though. So before heading out we stopped at Walgreens and got our outfits for the day...
Meet the new smurf family...
There was a steady drizzle pretty much the whole day. This storefront caught my attention.....
It was of course just a facade. Inside was actually an office doing taste testing. Hubby made 3 universal bucks to taste some granola bars. Which came in handy at lunch time at Mel's diner. (this is one of my fave photos from the week)
Damn, theme park food is expensive though!
The kids almost got eaten by a shark....
We watched a show featuring TV and movie animal actors and how they get them to do certain tricks.
We got to see the dog from the Men In Black movies.....
We of course went on rides and shopped for souvenirs and ate junk food! It sucked being wet all day but on the other hand it kept the crowds down and there weren't too many lines.
We left fairly early, ordered pizza for dinner back at our place and just lounged around for the night.
She lives! Yes, I am back from my trip. I did not run away and join the circus or anything of the sort. I think I just lost my blogging mojo after my trip and then coming home and having a bit of a cold.
For a couple of days there I was seriously going to quit my blog for good. I talked it out with my good blogging friend Amy, let it simmer a bit, did some other things and finally decided I'd miss it too much. So here I am playing catch up with my Florida trip posts.
I'm going to do it in a few parts but I'm going to try to keep them short and sweet, easy to read with lots of pics. If I leave something out or you want to know more, just ask!
We got up at the crack before dawn to get the kids out of the house with my mom, brother, niece, soon to be sister in law and her daughter. Who I guess will become my niece also! They all flew down.
Then we jumped in the car to start our drive...
We buckled up for safety...
And of course you can't have a road trip without a traffic jam. This one happened to be in the middle of Kentucky, lasted two hours and got us a total of 5 miles...
After a long day of traveling and not getting nearly as far as we wanted, we had the bright idea that instead of stopping for the night, we'd have a leisurely dinner, drive a few more hours, stop to sleep in the car at a rest stop for a couple hours and then drive during the night when the traffic was hopefully better.
Obviously we weren't thinking straight! Because it is virtually impossible to sleep well in the car and traffic jams happen at night too!
So we ended up taking many rest breaks throughout the next day...
Almost got bitten by poisonous snakes....
But eventually arrived safely at our destination....
Being that the kids had already been there for 24 hours they were already enjoying the pool....
We showered, freshened up and my aunt made us some dinner in their unit. Then we took a walk around the grounds. Saw some palm trees....
Had a ghost like portrait taken of me by my daughter....
And checked out the fountain in the middle of the west village....
