The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

I have found another little piece of heaven on earth. It is at Universal's Islands of Adventure. Yes. It is Harry Potter World. It was AMAZING!! Granted, it was hot enough to be hell (99 degrees with a heat index of 110), and the lines were another form of hell (2 hours just to enter that part of the park, another 2 to shop at Dervish and Banges, you get the idea), but what do you expect on opening weekend? My oldest, her friend and my friend (her mother) went to opening day. Up at 3:00am, arrived at 4:30am and waited until opening at 9:00 but were amongst the first 100 in the crowd to enter and they saw most of the cast from the movies. They had a blast. Since I was hosting a party at my house that evening with around 100 guests, I couldn't go. Plus, I usually avoid the theme park scene like the plague in the summer, but I couldn't resist. I headed back with them and Kade on Sat and had the most fun I've had in a long time.

Everything I visualized in the books and the movies was there. Universal has outdone everyone in bringing JK Rowling's books to life. Hogsmeade is so cool. The shops built exactly like you imagine them looking. The castle and ride inside one of the best I've ever been on. And the moving portraits in the castle? Still trying to figure out how they accomplished that. I didn't care for the regular on tap butter beer, but the frozen one is delicious!! Didn't want to wait in line to eat at the 3 Broom Sticks, but the girls did the day before and they loved it. Purchased my Gryfindor robes and tie for the next movie premier, Halloween, the winter at the park (of course I will dress up to go when it is cooler) and I think I'll even go put them on now to read some books. The rides were incredible. Zonkos and Honeydukes amazing, Ollivanders exactly as seen in the movies, the owlry very cool (you can even send mail post marked from Hogwarts...how cool is that?), I could go on and on, and can't wait for it to cool down so I can take the other 2 boys as often as possible. They can't wait to go and have a wand choose them, get their own robes and ties, and join in the fun Harry Potter world.

(You know it has to be amazing when even the cast from the movies are left speechless)


If you love the books and/or the movies, you have to find a way to visit at some point in the future. Let me know when you're planning on coming and I'll visit with you. If I could, I would probably try to get hired to work there so I could dress up and live there as much as possible. It was that amazing. So come and join in the fun with me. Nothing is as fun as being a witch or wizard and not having the muggle world look at you a bit odd.

Moshing in the Mosh Pit...I think I'm getting too old for this

Our friend's oldest son is now playing in a band. They had their debut last Sat. Being the good friends we are, Wade and I went. Not exactly my genre of music, but their son rocks on the bass. The event was held at an old gymnastics facility. Man did that bring back some great memories. I haven't done any tumbling for 10 years. Guess what?! Even though my mind thinks it is only about 25 years old, the reality of being a few months away from 40 hits really hard physically when you throw some round-off back handsprings into the mix. Delusions of grandeur aside, yeah I was feeling it the next day. But I can still do some awesome toe touches and I didn't get hurt. I've decided that I need to look for a facility here that will let me tumble some to get in better shape. Anywho...back to moshing. Some big teenage boys were goofing off and moshing. Looked like fun but I didn't want to get hurt. After they left the scene, I went bounding out onto the floor when out of the blue one of the bigger ones turns and walks right in front of me mid-air. I slammed into him good. "Sorry," I laughed as I bounded away. I saw him rubbing his shoulder the rest of the night and he didn't join back in the moshing when the music started again. Wow. He was owned by someone old enough to be his mother, and I didn't get hurt. Maybe this moshing stuff isn't so hard after all?

Hello...Is It Me You're Looking For?

Yeah, yeah. I'm still here. Alive and kicking, just in a blogging rut. Much has happened, but I couldn't bring myself to sit down and blog about anything. The crap spewing forth out of D.C. is mind numbing. And just like the Obummer wants, my mind is going numb. It has to be that he wants us to be numb and dumb so we will believe his lies. And man does he tell some great lies or what? Which reminds me of a joke I read about his lies.

A man died and went to heaven. As he stood in front of St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind him.

He asked, "What are those clocks?"

St. Peter answered, "Those are Lie Clocks. Everyone on Earth has a Lie Clock. Every time you tell a lie, the hands on your clock will move." "Oh," said the man, "whose clock is that?"

"That's Mother Teresa's. The hands have never moved, indicating that she never told a lie."

"Incredible," said the man, "and whose clock is that?"

St. Peter responded, "That's Abraham Lincoln's clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abe told only two lies in his life.."

"Where's President Obama's clock?" asked the man.

"Obama's clock is in Jesus' office. He's using it as a ceiling fan.."

On to home life:
After hearing about the many times my dad cut the cord on the TV while growing up, my DH has decided that was the best route to pursue in getting the kids away from the upstairs TV (I don't think he would ever do it to the large flat screen, but who knows?) The kids, being the smarties they are, took another power cord and spliced the two and viola. Problem solved until mean ole dad comes along and cuts it again. We have been having a circuit trip on the breaker, the one that sends power to the extra refrigerator. Well, I think I figured out why when I went to let Dan watch a movie upstairs. I was wondering how the kids had fixed the cord the last time around and found out we are lucky the smarty (which would be Kade in this particular instance) didn't burn the house down. He bared the wires, twisted them into two separate lines, and put them directly into the outlet. How he didn't shock the smartness out of himself whilst doing it is beyond me. Needless to say, the cord was cut off at the point where it exited the set and is no longer available for splicing, dicing, or otherwise sticking into the outlet.

Kids have been out of school for over 2 weeks now and I am ready for them to go back. Sigh. All-Stars has taken over our lives, which I didn't want. I can blame my DH again for thinking we needed to spend the summer at the ball park in the hot heat and humidity. Kids and I will be heading to ID for a break regardless of the playing schedule after June.

And finally, Dan told me that if he were a vampire he would suck my blood. As my friend told me when she heard this...isn't it nice to be loved?

Bird Bites

"How did Jacob get those bird bites mom," asked Dan. A bit confused it took me a moment to realize what he was talking about.

Jacob broke out in a rash all over his torso that started to spread to his arms a couple of days ago. Red, bug bite looking, itchy rash. We finally realized last night that it is probably a case of breakthrough varicella, otherwise known as chickenpox after vaccination.

"Oh, you mean the chicken pox on him?" I asked.

"Yeah, the chicken pops. Why did a chicken give him those?"

Kids say the darndest things. I had a good laugh from it too and Dan is still trying to figure out how a chicken gave Jacob those "pops". I tried to explain about viruses and snotty noses but he didn't really make the connection. Oh to see things the way a four year old does. Happy Mother's Day to all of you moms out there who take a minute or two from your lives to read about mine.

Gonorrhea Lectum

Some of you may have already seen this CDC release. I just thought it was very important information and wanted to help spread the word.

CDC Release

Information regarding Gonorrhea Lectem

The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning about a new virulent strain of this old disease. The disease is called Gonorrhea Lectem. It’s pronounced “Gonna re-elect ‘em.”

The disease is contracted through dangerous and high risk behavior involving putting your cranium up your rectum. Many victims contracted it in 2008…but now most people, after having been infected for the past 1-2 years, are starting to realize how destructive this sickness is.

It’s sad because Gonorrhea Lectem is easily cured with a new drug just coming on the market called Votemout. You take the first dose in 2010 and the second dose in 2012 and simply don’t engage in such behavior again; otherwise, it could become permanent and eventually wipe out all life as we know it.

Several states are already on top of this, like Virginia and New Jersey, and apparently now Massachusetts, with many more seeing the writing on the wall.

All I Want For Christmas

Dear Santa:

I know it is only May and I am a little bit early. But I figured you might need some time to work on this one. All I really want for Christmas is a magic house that cleans itself, does it's own laundry and dishes, cooks it's own meals, and magically cleans up after the slobs I live with.

Really, I think 8 months is plenty of time for you to make this happen.

Much love,
Chris

An Extended Case of the Blahs

Yeah. Blah blah blah. I hate it when you're talking to someone and to fill in the rest of the story they blah blah blah. Really? Am I supposed to know that that means? Well, I have had a case of the blah blah blahs which means I haven't felt like doing anything at all, including blogging.

My last two months have been so busy, I really deserve to sit back and have a case of the blahs, as long as I don't feel too sorry for myself whilst being blah.

At the end of Feb. my SIL and her cute baby girl came out to stay wit us for 3 weeks. We ran the Disney Princess 1/2 Marathon. I finished in under 3 hours, which was what I was shooting for. I would've finished at around 2:45, but had to wait in line for the restroom, twice. My knees and the medical issues I have with my feet caused me to want to quit at mile 8. Seriously. It hurt so much to run, but hurt even more to stop running. It was not a good feeling. BUT...we had so much fun. For starters, we had to get up at 3am to catch a bus to Epcot for the start. P.S. We didn't start our run until around 6:30am. P.S.S. Neither one of us could sleep that night and were lucky if we caught 3 hours of zzzzz's. P.S.S.S. Running 13.1 miles on little to no sleep is not fun. P.S.S.S.S. blah blah blah (sorry, just had to throw that in there) There were so many women dressed up as princesses, and a few courageous men accompanying them dressed as villains. The funniest thing was seeing the amount of women who decided they had to "use it" before the race while we were lined up and waiting in the FREEZING COLD (a whole different story). Instead of crossing the street to the wooded area, or walking the 200 yards to the port-a-potties, they headed to the ditch, nearest the roadway full of passing cars, dropped trou, squatted and did their business giving everyone a nice view of the full moon.

After recovering for a day, we headed back to Disney World, many times during the next few weeks. I finally had a chance to do the Rockin' RollerCoaster. Man is that a great ride or what?!?!

The kids and I headed to the beach for spring break. Since this was a last minute decision for me, I could find no where to stay on our favorite island and settled instead for Ft. Myers. Never again. Too much traffic, too many people, too much of my children bickering for no apparent reason, too many jellyfish, too much algae or sea weed that really stunk the place up, blah blah blah. Ana Maria Island I'm so sorry for forsaking you. I promise. We will be back next month.

I arouse early the last day of spring break, which for some odd reason was the Mon after having the full previous week off (I should've played dumb and dropped the kids off at school that morning anyways just to get rid of them...see ya' at 3:00 suckers) to watch the launch of the space shuttle. There are only 3 or 4 more launches scheduled and the program will end. A sad day indeed. As I stood out in the back yard at 6:20am having only gone to bed at 3:00am, I was wondering where it was. Suddenly, the horizon turned a brilliant orange and I thought, "hmmmm...I thought the sun came up a little further east from there" and then realized, "HOLY COW...that is the light from the shuttle!!!" It literally lit up the entire horizon. Such an amazing site. I captured it on video, but it really isn't as grand to view that way. I will upload it eventually for your viewing pleasure however. I promise. Now I need to check the launch schedule to make sure we will be around for one of the last ones. I will be dragging my kids out of bed very early to make the drive to Cape Canaveral to watch. They will love me for doing that.

I went to Glenn Beck's American Revival a few weekends ago. Wade was supposed to go with me, but wouldn't you know it, they just had to schedule the Pine Wood Derby for that day. P.S. Jacob won in the cub scout division and took 2nd over all. Glenn was AMAZING!! I took a friend from church and we had a great time. Arriving at the campus we followed the yellow event parking signs that led to the fraternity housing area. Many cars were parking in the fraternity lots. We both had a bad feeling about that. I even pulled into one, but seeing the tow away zone signs figured I didn't want to risk it even if the parking signs pointed to that direction. The three parking garages we had passed all said FULL. We drove around for 1/2 hour trying to find a place to park. We couldn't get through to the main arena for parking because they had a road blocked off. So, I pulled into one of the parking garages anyways and guess what? It wasn't full at all. Maybe 20 cars parked on the first level alone. Weird. (Very glad we listened to our "guts" and didn't park in the fraternity lots...click HERE to see why.) We walked to the arena where much to our surprise we were all put stripped searched for entry (not really but we did get a thorough search through bags/purses and wanded...more than they often do at airports...hmmmm) Another surprise. I had somehow purchased premium tickets meaning we sat in a great area, had padded seats, and had use of the lounge. Taking use to buy some water and use the restroom in the lounge who did I run into but Glenn himself. I actually got to talk with him for a quick minute, he gave me a big bear hug, and was off. I did run into him there one more time when I went back out for more water (good thing I was so thirsty) as he was getting ready to enter for his key note address. He had decided at the last minute to use that entrance so it was just sheer luck to run into him again. I didn't say anything to him, but did get a picture that time. Now, my friend and I struck up a conversation with the young man sitting next to us. He was an interesting looking guy, all tatted up, and so I started out by asking him about his tatts. I thought maybe he was military, but no, he was a philosophy major who loved everything about Beck except his stupid religion. hahahahaha Can you just imagine how much he felt like he had stepped in it when I casually asked "why, what part of it don't you like" and proceeded to tell him we were both members of Glenn's faith? He learned about Joseph Smith, the restoration of the gospel through Smith, the pre-existence (which he believed in too) and was left with the challenge to actually read the BofM before making up his mind about its validity. My friend and I both feel he will read it simply as a matter of trying to prove to himself that he is right, and hopefully will end up knowing how wrong he really was.

We are finally a three car family!!! Can I tell you how excited this makes me? I no longer have to drive the kids to and from school. That saves me 2 hours a day of driving around. I didn't know what to do with all of my free time the first day...yeah right!!! It is great having another driver in the family. However, I couldn't help but wonder where the years have gone. I still vividly remember dropping Kyrie off for her first day of kindergarten. I got a little teary eyed, I'll admit it. Now she's going off to prom this weekend, getting her class ring today, and will be graduating next year. How did that happen? Yeah...I know....blah blah blah.