The happiest place on Earth

Technically, that is Disney and Harry Potter is at Universal. But I don't care. Twas magical. I'm waiting on M to actually run so that I can. He is doing the taxes, so I can't really complain. Not sure how a former accountant managed to give the job of taxes to her MD husband, but I'm pretty proud of my accomplishment. Since he has like 6 W2s I think this is fair.

So I'm posting pictures to kill time. Enjoy! A bit of warning-these are really only interesting if you love Harry Potter. There are so many little details from the books/movies!

Hogwarts Castle! I'm in full on pushing and running mode at this point. Out of my way small children!

 

I'm pretty sure this is what Heaven looks like. At Honeydukes. There was so much glorious candy. I never wanted to leave.

Candy Stairway!

House points. These are all in line in the castle for the Forbidden Journey ride. It has so many little details and cool things. But it is super dark!

Several of the portraits are actually screens, so they are moving and talking just like in the books. It goes up quite high! Several were complaining about Dumbledore letting so many muggles into Hogwarts.

Dumbledore's pensieve 

His office. You can barely tell but there is another screen projecting from the balcony. Dumbledore talks to you! It actually looks 3D when you are there. The line is all twisty and you go into multiple different rooms. I literally gasped "DUMBLEDORE!" loudly as we walked in. I am such a nerd. 

In front of the castle. There is a nice little bridge where you can take pictures. 

This one is for you, Naomi!!!

We went through the castle twice. The line was super short, so we were moving quickly. If you are going, definitely go through the rides more than once. I saw so much more the second time. Like the dragon skeleton hanging from the ceiling.  Of course, the second time the ride broke while we were on it! We just sat there for about 30 mins until they just turned everything off and drove us out. It was pretty interesting to see all the behind the scenes stuff. The ride was broken for the rest of the day though, so we didn't get to do it again.

 Hogsmeade.

Enjoying a delicious butterbeer! They were like a butterscotch icee. Even M liked it and he doesn't like sweet things.

Ok, I have maybe 100 more, but I doubt anyone really wants to see all the minutia of Harry Potter World. It was great! Rather small though, unfortunately. Most of the shops of Hogsmeade you can't actually go into. So the entire park is basically the castle, a dueling dragons roller coaster which has a bunch of stuff from GoF, 3 Broomsticks, a gift shop/Ollivander's, Zonkos/Honeydukes. And the shops are small since that is how they were envisioned. I wanted it to be like a million times bigger. We were lucky and the crowds weren't bad at all. Helps to go on a Monday in late January!

Putting on my running clothes counts as running, right?

Gung hay fat choy

Happy Chinese New Years! Wishing you a very wonderful Year of the Rabbit. "Gung hay fat choy" is Cantonese for "may you have a prosperous new year". That is how I learned to say it, but there are numerous translations and spellings for the many dialects.

According to Chinese tradition, the Rabbit brings a year in which you can catch your breath and calm your nerves.  It is a time for negotiation.  Don't try to force issues, because if you do you will ultimately fail.  To gain the greatest benefits from this time, focus on home, family, security, diplomacy, and your relationships with women and children.   Make it a goal to create a safe, peaceful lifestyle, so you will be able to calmly deal with any problem that may arise.

It is said that anyone making supplications for wishes to be fulfilled are certain to get what they want... and in the Year of the Rabbit, the wish-granting aspect of the Sun and the Moon combined is multiplied.  

The year of the Metal Rabbit promises to bring some much needed peace and tranquility. If you are like most people, you probably feel like you were on a roller coaster in 2010, the year of the Tiger. That will generally not be the case in 2011, as the Rabbit is everything the Tiger is not.

Let there be peace, and let it begin with me is the Rabbit motto. The Tiger makes waves, but the Rabbit mends fences. Diplomacy reigns. If you want to improve your chances of success, you most often want to negotiate and cooperate rather than try to force your ideas and methods on others. It’s also a time to kiss and make up. Forgive and forget. Let’s all get along. Make love not war. If last year the emphasis was on excitement, it now is on harmony.

Self indulgence is another Rabbit theme. By all means go to the theater, spend time at the spa and patronize those great restaurants you love. On the other hand you do want to be careful about not overdoing it. And, you can bet the Rabbit will put lots of temptation in front of you.There is a common theme here. Active people who always seem to be on the go are likely to be unhappy with the Rabbit’s leisurely pace. They can find themselves in trouble if they try to move faster than the prevailing one. 

I honestly don't really buy in to horoscopes of any kind, but thought I would post snippets from ones I liked for this year. The husband is half-Chinese so his family usually does a little celebration-usually dinner and then red packets. Red packets are awesome b/c they come stuffed with money! It is tradition to give money on New Years to bring about prosperity for the coming year. Bring on the free money, I always say.

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Orlando

I really, really, really love warm weather. I don't even really mind the swampy hot of the summers. I hate winter. Hate, hate, hate. We had FABULOUS warm weather while we were there. Highs about 72-80. I was in Heaven. Our tentative plan is to move closer to home when M is done with residency...or move my happy butt to the beach. I say if we moved to the beach my parents would come, too. It was sunny and warm and beautiful. And then we came home to cold AL. At least we didn't have to go to a town currently experiencing the Snowpocalypse. The airport was deserted b/c there were really not very many places you could fly to or from!

I'll post a few pics from the awesome Harry Potter World soon. It was magical and perfect and wonderful. I squealed, pushed, ran, gaped, and clapped the whole day. Rode a few roller coasters and realized, yeah, we may be too old for coasters. It was fun like the first 30 seconds, and then I just wanted it to stop. And I LOVED roller coasters. Late January seems to be a perfect time to go to the parks. There was definitely a decent amount of people (and a surprising amount of school aged kids, so jealous. My parents would've laughed and laughed had I suggested that!) but the temps were perfect and the lines were short. We didn't wait longer than 25 mins on anything. The lines were actually shorter than where the Fast Passes would've put you in, so we didn't buy one.

I'll be back soon with pictures and a discussion topic, um, amongst myself I suppose, about orthorexia and about what happens when exercise/diet starts really interfering with your life.