Nicole and Shannon take Orlando: Day 1, SeaWorld

Nicole and I spent our first full day in Orlando at SeaWorld.

Our major goal was to visit The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and we decided to do SeaWorld as a second choice, and are we ever happy we did!

It was the BEST DAY EVER.  Seriously.  After our respective weddings and the respective births of our children, I think SeaWorld is next!

From -40 to +30

Through some fantastic luck, a great professional development fund, awesome encouraging husbands and more luck again, I spent the end of January in sunny Orlando enjoying a technology and education conference in January, which also means that I am getting a wonderful break from the arctic temperatures and short days.

My cousin Nicole met me here for my first weekend, but to chronicle our adventures, I will need a few blog posts.

This post is about my flight and meeting my week long home away from home in Orlando, the Hard Rock Hotel. I love you, Hard Rock!

Eli brought me to the airport for my afternoon flight south. 

On the Deck after Dark

And, now it's the cousins' turn...

In A Tree

It's been over a month since I've posted, and lots of things have happened.

First, I think my brain, body and fingers froze in January, which explains the lack of postings... The darkness, and having perma -40 degrees for over a month made for an interesting and sluggish start to 2013.

Then, I had a glorious week in Orlando.  Oh.  So much to tell.  So, so, much... But I feel like I need to back up and take a running start.

So, I'm going to back up.  Waaaay up.

At the very beginning of my blog-- my first post, in fact-- I had a series of pictures from my family farewell before we drove across the country to move to Yellowknife.

In the past few days, one of my aunts asked for a photo from that day, which got me looking at the photos leading up to that particular photo. 

Let's explore the background story of the picture of my mom with her brother and sisters in a tree, shall we?

**All dialogue is paraphrased, completely made up, or otherwise totally accurate... I'm not sure, but it's what plays in my head when I look at this series of pictures.