Carmen's birthday party

Carmen chose a superhero theme for her birthday party. We held it in the local park and it turned out to be a perfect day. She invited a bunch of friends from church and school and there was a pretty big crowd.

They started off by decorating superhero capes.

Afterwards, Amber had prepared a series of superhero-themed party games, like Captain America shield throw, Iron Man armor relay, Hulk tug-of-war, Superman hide-and-seek kryptonite, and Flash sack race.

After they were trained up, it only took two kids to defeat the Dr. Octopus pinata.

Even superheroes need to eat, though, and cupcakes and snacks were enjoyed by all.

And of course, Carmen got another pile of presents.

Judging by the filthiness of this boy, I'd say everyone had a good time.

Vacation Part 5 - Florida Caverns and Gator Chateau

Not long after we headed out the next morning we saw signs for the Florida Caverns and decided to stop. We had some time to kill before the first tour, so after checking out the museum, we headed out on a trail to do some hiking.

It was surprisingly interesting (it was far enough north to not feel like Florida) and we were just getting into it when we had to turn around to make back in time for the tour.

The caverns were interesting, but not nearly on the same scale as Luray or Natural Bridge.

We drove the rest of the day and stayed the night in Baton Rouge. The next day we made our now traditional stop in Jennings, LA to hold a baby alligator at the Gator Chateau.

Everyone got their chance to hold this cute little guy.

There's also a nice park with a playground there, so the kids got out their energy before the final haul home.

Vacation Part 4 - Gatorland

After Universal, we had some flex time that we intentionally built into the back end of our trip, so we decided to go to Gatorland.

Hopefully you will not be surprised to hear that this is a park filled with alligators.

We admired the creatures for a while, then went to see "Upclose Encounters", a humorous show where they pulled out various animals like snakes and spiders. We followed that up with feeding the goats, which Miles especially enjoyed.

The next show was alligator wrestling. This is self-explanatory. Probably not fun to do, but it was fun to watch.

Before the next show we took a stroll through the swamps, which might have been my favorite part. It was neat to see what the area looked like before settlement (and hard to imagine taming it).

Finally it was time for the "Gator Jumparoo", where they try to get the alligators to jump out of the water. Unfortunately it was a little too cold for their liking and they were pretty lethargic.

After the shows, we fed the flamingos, checked out the albino/leucistic  alligators, rode the train around the park, and saw lots of other animals. I even tried my hand at alligator wrestling.

The kids were better at it, though.

We were done with Orlando at that point, so we headed north and made it Tallahassee, where we stayed for the night.

Vacation Part 3 - Superheroes, dinosaurs, wizards, and robots

For day two, we started where we left off at the superhero section. I was hoping to catch one of the costume characters, since Miles hadn't been able to do a lot yet and figured he'd like that, and we lucked out. Spider-man, Miles's favorite superhero, was there. Miles was even dressed for the occasion, with a Spider-man sweatshirt and shoes (and cape), but was a little star-struck to actually meet his hero.

Unfortunately, Miles was not tall enough to ride the Spider-man ride, but he was happy to browse the Spider-man gift shop while Amber took the kids on the ride. The kids liked seeing all the characters decorating the buildings.

We took a quick jaunt through comic book land, where Amber found her super hero, Mark Trail.

Then we found ourselves in Jurassic Park, where we went on Pteranodon Flyers. It's designed for smaller kids, so you can't ride unless you bring a small child. We donated three of our kids to some teenagers who wanted to ride, and I rode with Miles, who loved it. Jurassic Park also has a really cool play area full of cargo net passages, slides, and tunnels.

The only way we could drag the kids away was with promises of going back to the Wizarding World. We headed back to Hogwarts, where Amber decided she did want to ride the ride with Olivia. While they waited in line there, Carmen and the boys and I went to Honeydukes for a chocolate frog (we got the Dumbledore card).

They still weren't back, so we caught a performance of the Frog Choir (who were very good) until we all met back up.

The line for the Hippogriff ride was too long to do it again, and nobody wanted to do the dragon roller coaster, so we caught the Hogwarts express (with a different video) back to Diagon Alley.

We mainly just wanted to get back to the other park, but we did do some last minute-shopping, getting souvenirs for Olivia and Carmen, and Amber got to indulge her obsession with motorcycle side cars by sitting in Hagrid's, which we'd forgotten to do the day before.

We had lunch at the Leaky Cauldron, then after saying good-bye to the Wizarding World, we headed over to Transformers, where Miles and I saw Megatron while Amber took the kids on the ride. Afterwards, Megatron was gone, but we all got to meet Bumblebee instead.

On our way over to the kids' section, we stumbled onto a Spongebob parade. None of us had any idea what was going on, but the roller-skating fish were pretty cool and interacted with the kids.

In the "really old kids-related trademarks" section, the kids all got to ride the E.T. ride, which was a surprising hit, skipped the Feivel section, and rode the Woody Woodpecker roller coaster, which Miles was barely tall enough to ride. He loved it and we went several times before heading over to watch the (mediocre) animal trainer show.

We ended the day at the Curious George play area, where they had a "Ball Factory" full of foam balls you could shoot at each other and vacuums and tubes to suck them back up. They eventually kicked us out and we headed back to the hotel.

Overall, I think the visit was a great success. We saw everything we wanted to see, didn't lose anybody, and didn't even have any major meltdowns. As Amber said, it was more of a "vacation" (i.e., actually fun) than a "family trip", and that's about all you can ask.

Vacation Part 2 - Hogwarts and more

When we finished exploring Diagon Alley, we headed over to Kings Cross Station and took the Hogwarts Express to the other park. The train itself is a fun little ride with a simulated outside window and simulated shadows on the compartment door with voices of the main characters.

The train dropped us off in Hogsmeade, which was just as elaborately decorated as Diagon Alley.

We had lunch at the Three Broomsticks, then headed over to Hogwarts castle, which is another ride.

Only Olivia would have been tall enough to ride, so they allowed to do a quick walk-through to just see the decorations inside. My favorite part was the talking portraits.

We instead waited in the line for the Flight of the Hippogriff, a little roller coaster. They allowed us to all wait in line, then take turns with the kids while one waited with Miles, which was nice.

After trying out a few more spells, we left for the Muggle world. We ended up in Dr. Seuss land, where the kids rode the carousel, the Sneetches ride, and the Cat-in-the-Hat ride.

We just got a glimpse of the super-hero section before the park started to shut down and they kicked us out for the day. We walked back to the hotel, where the kids practiced casting Silencio spells on the TV (with a little help from the magic remote control).

But even wizards have to sleep sometime.

Vacation Part 1 - Wizarding World of Harry Potter

We decided to go to Universal Studios Orlando on a vacation this year, while the girls are still interested in Harry Potter. These kind of places are always miserably crowded during the summer, so we just took the kids out of school and went in early February.

We drove Saturday and stayed the night in Pensacola, where we went to church in the morning then drove into Orlando that night. The kids watched Harry Potter movies and played Lego Harry Potter on the iPads in preparation for the park.

Everyone was very excited. Olivia, Carmen, and Damon wore their robes (Miles would have too, if we'd had one his size). We mainly came for "Harry Potter World", so that's where we headed first. It's split up across the two parks, so we started in London, where we ran into the Knight Bus, talking head and all.

Next we found the secret entrance to Diagon Alley.

And there we were, in the wizarding world. Everything was elaborately detailed, it looked exactly like something from the movies.

We browsed some of the shops, helping the kids get ready for their upcoming year at Hogwarts. Carmen was hoping to make it onto the Quidditch team.

Amber took Olivia and Carmen (who just barely made the height limit) onto Escape from Gringotts, while I browsed the shops of Diagon Alley with the boys (not getting motion sick). After all that excitement we needed a nice refreshing butterbeer.

Next it was time to finish getting the kids' school supplies. They'd need wands, of course, so we stopped by Ollivanders. In addition to the regular shop, they have the wand experience, where they bring small groups of people in and choose one of them to have a one-on-one with the shopkeeper. Olivia, who was wearing her robes and invisibility cloak, was chosen from our group. She tried several different wands to deleterious effect, before she was given the wand that "chose her" (complete with lighting effects).

She was excited and decided to get that wand. Carmen settled on Hermione's wand, and Damon got Harry Potter's. Thankfully, in researching the trip I had already encountered the price, so I was mentally prepared for the bill. The wands are interactive, and they have a couple dozen locations around the two parks where you can "cast spells" (IR cameras) and have things happen.

It took us a while to get the hang of it, but it's pretty fun when you do. Somewhere along the way I found a lost pair of Harry Potter glasses, which I gave to Damon. He got lots of comments walking around like this.