lucky 13!

we officially have a teenager in the house today!!  big sister turned 13!!  one of her best friends came over and spent the day with her, and she was grinning ear to ear.  she was super excited to finally open presents and eat cake, too.

birthday party!!

little sister plus 5 of her closest friends had a blast roller skating for her birthday party.  although it was a friday night, we almost had the whole rink to ourselves.  she was the only one having a party that evening, so it was super stress-free.

i picked up all the girls and we rode together to the party, which was from 6-7:30pm.  so you could say there was a pre-party in the car, and an after-party on the way home. :-)

birthday birthday!!

 is that a flaming donut tower? no, it's just sweet little sister's 11th birthday!!

and little has changed as far as her birthdays go.  all she wants to do is open her presents....

 

 

and eat cake!!

week at the lake

after only two nights home in their own beds, the girls were whisked away by grandma j to the cabin for a week of fun with cousins at the lake.  having to return to work ourselves, we had to wait and make it thru the work week before driving up to join them.  the girls went tubing every day and had a blast!

day 7 - our last day

for our last day of parks, we chose to repeat.........islands of adventure!  daddy was really hoping to talk us all into riding jurassic park river adventure.  instead, we were able to talk big sister into the bilge-rat barges, skull island: reign of kong, poseidon's fury, 

 we headed back to seuss landing for lunch, and ate at circus mcgurkus cafe stoo-pendous.

day 6 - another free day

our last free day, we mostly lounged around the hotel.  i started packing up things like souvenirs, and the girls went swimming again.  we explored a different side of orlando, ate lunch at chick-fil-a, and drove by gatorland.  not super impressed at the curb appeal, we decided not to pay full admission with only a few hours left of the park being open.  so instead we headed back to disney springs and rode a few of the disney buses to different resorts to scope out maybe our next resort destination in a few years.  (because we are definitely going back to disney one day soon....)  we checked out the swan and dolphin, caught a boat to hollywood studios, got on another bus to the caribbean beach resort, then headed back to disney springs.  we didn't find anything super cool, so i'm thinking we'll stick with the value resorts and try out art of animation next time.  we ended the day with more swimming, which was cut short by a sudden thunderstorm.  we ate subway in the room while watching a movie.

day 5 - islands of adventure

today we visited the last of the 3 parks at universal - islands of adventure. 

 we started out by exploring seuss landing a bit.  most of the rides had no wait times, so it was a nice change to just hop on rides and immerse into the fantasy.  even if they were kiddie rides!

but our real destination today was hogsmeade & the hogwarts castle.  daddy and little sister rode harry potter & the forbidden journey, while big sister and i kept exploring.

we found honeydukes...full of every sweet treat you remember from the books.

we didn't have park-to-park passes to ride it, but we could still examine a replica of the hogwarts express.

cooling off with another butterbeer...

once leaving hogsmeade, we headed over to jurassic park.

 ready to cool off, daddy & little sister braved the wettest ride yet - popeye & bluto's bilge-rat barges. big sister & i watched from the bridge.  they got soaked, even with ponchos!!

we headed back thru seuss landing and cooled of by going thru the cat in the hat ride a few times, which was indoors and had no wait.  

found a fun spot to take a family selfie...on a giant inchworm!

we finally talked big sister into trying a ride: the amazing adventures of spiderman.  she loved it!

our last stop before heading back for the day was the gift shop.  the girls really wanted gryffindor robes!