The Weekend part 1

Remember how I said that I was tired of sitting home on the weekends? Well, I was trying to find something to do this past weekend. I looked at some more state parks as possibilities, but the main attraction at all of them was a spring (pretty much about 68F year round & that is really cold for water), lake or beach. I thought about a small amusement park about four hours away. I was actually getting pretty excited about it, but when I went to their website, they are no longer open weekends year round. They are open from Thanksgiving to New Year's and then they close again until sometimes in the spring. So that was out.

Then Friday morning I started considering going down to Orlando, and decided on Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure (and buying cheapy resident annual passes with anyone in their teens being required to pay half their ticket but me paying all the gas, hotel and food this trip) but that's about 7 hours. It was only 4 1/2 from where we lived in GA, but in the panhandle, we have to go an hour north to get a highway east which takes us to I 75 south.

I thought I could do it if someone older could go along to help with the twins. It didn't look like anyone would be able to go though (or want to pay their half), so I scratched that idea and decided just to stay home and work on revising the next Christian Girl's Guide book which is finally going into process after five years.

Then Jessica called and said they had five people on closing shift at the theater for Saturday, so they didn't need her. This was about 4-5:00 Friday afternoon. We planned to leave and drive half way when she got off. She got home at 6:30 and we were packed and out the door at 7:10!! That's with packing for five people. We even remembered our Universal refillable cup and popcorn bucket! And they had a 79 cent special on refills!!!



We drove 3 1/2 hours on Friday and then the other 3 1/2 on Saturday. We got to Orlando about 11:00 and had lunch at a big McDonald's with an arcade area before heading to Universal. (Everyone only got to do one game/ride)

We decided to go to Islands of Adventures first since this was the twin's first theme park experience and Islands has Seuss Landing.

We received commemorative Harry Potter collector cards for getting annual passes.

This place is sooooo awesome!

This is NOT in Seuss Landing and only Jessica went on this.

Spraying water on the riders below.

The moon over Hogwarts.

I have a load of pictures from both days but am not going to post them all because we all know how exciting it is to see 100+ pictures of someone elses' trip. I'll post some of the second day soon.

All in all, it was a good trip. And the twins did well for their first time somewhere this busy and active. And they did great on the rides, well, if you don't count Kayla on the Jaws ride : )