Nicole and Shannon Take Orlando: Day 2, Conquering The Wizarding World of Harry Potter and Universal Like Champions!

The main draw to make this whirlwind trip to Orlando, for Nicole -- aside from me, of course -- was the fact that we could visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Islands of Adventure.

For us Harry Potter nerds, nothing could be more wonderful!

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.

Truths About the Cold

It's been COLD here for about two months.

By cold, I mean usually -30.  For eight weeks.

-25 with no wind is, regrettably, considered an awesome day for being outside.

-45 is just mean, and keeps happening with the windchill.  Over and over again.

It think we can all agree that temperatures beginning with "minus forty" should have "freakin'" crammed in the middle:  example:  minus forty-freakin'-five.

Here are a few truths I've discovered about the arctic cold temperatures:

Best of 2012

Happy 2013!

This is 2012 in review with my most popular blog posts from 2012.

Out of the 111 posts I wrote in 2012, these were the most popular...