islands of awesomeness.

my parents are super generous and super in love with their only grandchild. so, when they knew they were going to be in orlando for a conference, they flew us down to join them afterwards so choi boy could experience some super awesome theme parks. :)

quite honestly (and to sound like a first world brat), our trip came at a bit of a crazy time. things were totes busy at school and all three of us were battling some nasty winter germs. and our actual trip down to orlando was nutso. we had a layover in miami (which is further south than orlando) that went from 3 hours to 5, totaling our travel time to 10 hours or so. aaaaaand, on top of that, i also lost my camera on our second flight. :( (majorly kicking myself still...we made do with our phone cameras, but man. ugh.)

hilariously enough, this was our welcoming committee once we landed in orlando:

apparently, bruce banner was about to do some serious, kickbutt sweeping.

anyway, needless to say, once we began our first full day and headed off to islands of adventure, we were beyond ready leave all that mess behind us and soak up some fun. and boy did we!

choi boy, who was not entirely sure of what was going on, knew we were in for something exciting and was ready to get the show on the road!


he didn't know why his parents kept grabbing him for crazy photo ops,


but, once he saw this, he was sold!

in fact, just before this snap, he went over and hugged the seuss-y garbage can. ;)

we headed straight to the one fish, two fish ride and cb made the most of waiting in line by using the bars as gymnastic bars:

why stand when you can swing?!

once we got on, he was fascinated by the switches, and i'm pretty sure he thought he was controlling some of the sprays. ;)


and once we got going?

joy.

pure joy!


we took a ride on the carousel,


said a timid hello to some familiar faces,



posed for a killer shot with hahbee,


and then excitedly ran gracefully sauntered over to our next area of the park:


awww, yeah.
this momma's dream come true.

all aboard the hogwart's express!!!

(yep, we all wore stripes. unplanned, natch. again.)

before we left for florida, i was warned not to get my expectations up too high. that hogwart's and hogsmeade might not live up to the hype.

but, oh gosh, it did! it was so awesome. and the details were amazing.



(that ride...was. amazing. AMAZing.)

even the little details at zonko's and dervish and banges were fantastic.




and silhoutted against the cloudy, overcast sky, hogwarts and hogsmeade looked positively magical.





cb began to get a little restless, so we bid adieu to harry potter's magical world and the hogwart's express conductor.

(who told my sister he liked her "hat" ;) )

our next stop was toon town, where cb loved playing on popeye's tugboat and i brought out my inner tiger mom and made him practice his scales.

;)

and we also discovered the most fun 25 cents can buy.

yep, you spray passengers on the log flume ride. ;)

at this point, cb had napped for all of 30 minutes and was getting a little over-stimulated from all the noise and crazyness that comes with a major theme park. and we were beginning to realize what visiting a theme park with a two year-old was really like:

:)

we went back to seuss landing and made the mistake of taking cb on the cat in the hat ride, which FREAKED him out. so we spent them remainder of our time laying low and eating ice cream and funnel cake. holla!

and to end our time at the park on a positive note, cb walked away with a new (familiar favorite) friend.


still, all in all, awesome.

truly.

next up, the happiest place on earth...:)