Our fall break trip to Orlando Universal Studios!!!

 We went to Universal Studios Orlando for the kid's fall break.  We had an amazing time as usual.  I wanted to have documentation of where we stayed.  I forget and we liked this hotel.

                                               Jaws!
"We're gonna need a bigger boat!"

 Oh how we love Harry Potter!

 We wish there was an actual ride for the Knight Bus.  Fun to see though

 And of course the famous Grimmauld Place, so awesome!

 This was in Diagon Alley.  Right here to the left was where you buy the famous (very expensive but amazing "Butter Beer"!

 More of Diagon Alley

 Looking at Gringott's Bank.  You can see the dragon on the top of the bank on the right.

 This was very beautiful!

 The "pupeteering" was fantastic!

 This was actually inside a shop.  Hannah just thought it was a beautiful ceiling, Derek and I thought so too.

 This dragon actually breathed fire every couple of minutes.  Unfortunately we never got the picture, but it was amazing!

And of course we had to get a picture with Dr. Emmett Brown and the DeLorean time machine!

 These pictures were a MUST for the kids, they love Curious George.  I must say, I love him too.  I sure did love reading those books to them.  Great memories!

 Hedwig!!!

 we actually got to ride this train.  We sat in the train and the windows had movies of what we would be viewing on the way to Hogwarts and then we took the train back and it was movies on the window of what we would see on the way back to Diagon Alley.  The line that we stood in for the first trip was INCREDIBLY long

 The famous 9 3/4 platform

 I love this picture!!!!

 Wonderful place to be with even more wonderful kids!

Ah, the castle...

Going in for the amazing ride.

Going into the utterly charming and nostalgic Seuss Land

This picture was specificallly for my Dad, the Grandfather of all things especially these wonderful "things" of mine, thing 1 and thing 2.  We love you Dad, Grandpa, Grandpa Seuss!!!

What a wonderful blessing to be able to make such great memories together.  I hope that we will remember maybe not the details but the feelings of being together on so many crazy, tiring, beautiful, imaginative adventures together.

Nick's 16th birthday!

 Wonderfully silly pictures of my kids celebrating Nick's 16th birthday.  We had some of his favorite food.  We had Sunday Potatoes, cream corn, Caesar salad (he could eat the whole bowl full!), and Compay Pork Roast!

 I love their poses on each of these pictures!

I loe you guys!!!!
Happy birthday to my "spare"son!!!

Beehive!!!!!

 This was SO big!  Bigger than a basketball!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  It was right in our front yard.  We have kids right across the street and many people walk around our neighborhood.

I was afraid it could fall down in a strong wind and really hurt someone.  David wanted to leave it until after it froze but I knew we needed to get it down and not risk having it come down with all the black hornets in it (we found out later after David did get it down)  I was SO glad that he agreed to get it down!! Scary!!!

Derek's Homecoming Junior year

 Derek has been blessed to have wonderful friends.  And his friends are so blessed to have him.

Derek's 17th birthday

We went to the "Old Spaghetti Factory".  Hannah always says she has 3 brothers.  This was a most excellent night together.  Sometimes it just feels like everything is just right and everyone is in sync with being silly and having a great time together and this was one of those magical times together.  Somehow we got started on the game of naming every word that begins with the letter, "p".  I don't know why this was so interesting and fun and silly for us but it was, then even when we started in on other topics someone would always come back with a random word that started with the letter "p" and it would start all over again.  I love our little family!