The Rest of the Vacation

There are other things at Universal Studios besides Harry Potter stuff. Who knew? ;)
Getting off the Popeye ride. Everyone was SOAKED!

Evan had a blast in Dr. Suess land.

We spent the other days at the huge hotel pool.

One of my favorite pictures from the whole week!

Night swim!

Drew's 11th birthday was the last day of our vacation. We had to celebrate just a little.
We had a very fun week. We might have to do this again sometime!

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

We had so much fun discovering things here that we loved reading about in the Harry Potter books. The Hogwarts Express:

This is the town of Hogsmeade. Look at all the visitors! We were nervous that we might lose one of our little Muggles.

Drew and I found Mr Weasley's car while in line for the Dueling Dragons ride.

Pie and Edie on the Flight of the Hippogriffs ride. This turned out to be Evan's favorite ride and was upset when we got in line for anything else!

Mr Olivander in his shop. We waited a long time for a turn to visit him and he did not disappoint! He helps one of the visitors in the group find their wand.

Dean excited for his chance to get a wand.

Butterbeer is delicious! Cheers!

Hogwarts

I've decided that I can't possibly put our vacation pictures into one blog post, so I'll write it in installments. Installment the First, Hogwarts. (Because Adam wants to see inside the castle)

The castle is the setting for the main ride, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. It's an inside ride, similar to the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland, but better! The line for the ride goes through the halls of Hogwarts. But first it hits the greenhouses of Herbology. The Mandrakes were in a cage so an unsuspecting visitor didn't pull one out and kill us all:

This is where the house points are kept. YAY! Griffindor is in the lead!

One of the many doors leading off into parts of the castle that we couldn't go. I suppose Dobby and Winky were in there:

Dumbeldore's office. He was actually there, talking to us, but everytime I tried to take a picture with my flash at the moving portraits or Dumbeldore or the portrait of the Fat Lady, the screens turned out black in the photo.

I got an OK picture of Harry Ron and Hermione without the flash. They were telling us that Hermione was going to put a leviocorpus spell on us so we could tag along while they flew on their brooms, ditching Professor Binns' boring lecture.

The sorting hat in the background.

The ride itself was awesome! I had to close my eyes when the dementors appeared, they were so real! I highly recommend it to anyone, taller than 48" that is.

Next, in Installment the Second: the rest of The Widarding World of Harry Potter.

Twilight Camp

Cub Scout Twilight Camp was the week before last, but I didn't get a chance to get these pictures up before our little vacation (those pictures are coming!) so we are back-tracking a bit here.

Drew was technically still a cub scout, even though the camp fell at the very end of his last year, so we signed him up. It's tons of fun, after all. Dean was there as a Bear scout, his 2nd year. I was there for the 5th year in a row, this time just as a parent chaperone. So much nicer for me than running a station as I did when I was a den leader and again as a Primary counselor over Cubs. I was so grateful many times that week for all the volunteers that put on camp for the boys.

Drew at "Readyman", the first aid station. Learning a lot, I guess.

I think he was at the flag football station in this picture, I'm not sure. I just liked it, so here it is.

Dean is at the water play station, very excited about the "world's tiniest water balloon".

Dean at the BB Gun station. He got 6 bulls eyes!


Drew tried to get chosen for all the "I need a volunteer" things at closing ceremonies every night. He finally got picked for the Wii Dance Off on the final night and came in 2nd in his group. Go Drew!