First Day of School 2016 (Part 1)

Today was the first day of school for Max and Tatum!!!  Here they are in all their back-to-school glory:

Max--6th Grade with Mrs. Babcock
Tatum--4th Grade with Mrs. Walters

Vacation Part 2--Universal Studios (Orlando, FL)

So after eating ourselves sick, we were ready to get off the boat and walk it all off!  We arrived back in port and headed right over to our resort--The Royal Pacific.  W-O-W!  This was hands down the NICEST resort I've ever stayed in.  Even Carlie said, "Wow!  This place is HG TV legit!"  This place was definitely not the cheapest place to stay but we stayed here because, #1-It was close to Universal Studios, and #2-We got into the parks an hour earlier than opening AND free "Express Passes" to all the rides---TOTALLY 100% worth it!!!

Check out our resort:

We ran into Gru at check in!!!

So we spent our first day relaxing at our hotel pool.  Then we headed over to the park (using our super cool resort water-taxi that took us from our resort to Universal Studios and back:) to watch The Blue Man Group.  OH MY GOSH!  The Blue Man group was HILARIOUS!!!  We absolutely LOVED this show!!!

Our Water Taxi

Universal Studios: (Days 6 & 7):

We hit the ground running the next morning to make sure we got there in plenty of time for our one hour early entrance.  Most important stop...Harry Potter's Wonderful Wizarding World!!!  I have wanted to go here for years!!!  Our whole family are HUGE Harry Potter fans!!!  And this place did not disappoint!  We LOVED LOVED LOVED it!!!  The attention to detail in the park is impeccable. 

Entrance to Hogsmeade

The Owl Post

Butter Beers!!!

Waiting for the Hogswarts Express

We used the train to get us between the 2 different
parks here at Universal Studio--the train ride
presentation was different each way:)

Inside the train cars!

The Knight Bus!!!

The Hogwarts Castle and Diagonally!

Weasley's Wizard's Wheezes!!!

Tatum got her Luna Lovegood wand
at Olivander's Wand Shoppe!

The "Vanishing Cabinet" inside
Bourgen and Burkes

Gringott's Bank!!!

The chandelier inside the bank--
kinda reminded me of the Gilbert Temple
chandlier:)

The Goblins busy at work inside Gringott's!

We spent most of our time in the Harry Potter section but branched out to all the other rides as well.  We LOVED having our Express Passes.  The longest we waited for any ride was 20 minutes!  I was not expecting that in the middle of summer!  So we seriously rode every ride we wanted and as many times as we wanted--my kids felt so important waving their Express Passes around:)  We hit the water rides in the middle of the day to keep cool.  We seriously spent our entire first day at the park 7 am to 10 pm--only taking a short lunch and dinner break.  Our kids were troopers!

We didn't take many other pictures as we were focused on rides but here are a few more.

Max loves the Simpsons and wanted
a picture with Millhouse.

There were several shows available in the park (we cared mostly about the rides) but we managed to hit just one.  My animal-loving kids wanted to see the animal show.  SUPER cute!  The show highlight was definitely "Frank" the pug star in Men in Black!!!

DANG!!!  He's cute!!!

On our last day of vacation, we again hit the ground running to make sure we took in all our favorite rides at least one more time.  By the time we headed out to get dinner to catch our flight home, we were thoroughly EXHAUSTED!  But it was absolutely WORTH the exhaustion.  We ended this family vacation on a bang!  We got home at midnight and then needed a couple days to recover from our vacation.  It sure stinks getting back to normal life!  Realizing that there's really no Hogwarts:(  But we sure enjoyed it while we were there.  The Wonderful Wizarding World of Harry Potter is the Meeker family MOST favorite theme park we've ever been to!  AWESOME family vacation and AWESOME family memories...CHECK!  Summer 2016 ROCKED!

Meeker Family Vacation 2016!!!

This was a seriously last minute planned trip--we decided the beginning of June that we really needed to get out this summer.  We only have 2 more summers with all our kids at home so we need to make some more awesome memories.

We flew into Orlando the day before our cruise departed.  We had a sweet ride waiting for us--check out our cool rental van:)  This 12 passenger van was $70 cheaper than any SUV or minivan--go figure.  We spent one night in a hotel and kept this baby parked at the cruise terminal waiting for us to get back (way cheaper to rent your own car than to use the cruise bus service--we thought about hanging out at the airport looking for people who needed a ride to the cruise port to make some money on our cool rental--ha ha not really but we did joke about it:)

Our kids (almost) each had a row to themselves:)

Chris is up on all the "cool" things to do while in FL and apparently all the "cool" people go to Ron Jon's Surf shop in Cocoa Beach.  While here, we all got Ron Jon's hats to prevent sunburning that we knew would come our way:)

On the Boat:

We were on the Carnival Victory for 4 days/3 nights.  I like these shorter cruises--less time to over-eat:)  As always, tons of fun stuff happening on the boat.  We spent most our time by the pool.  The kids always had fun things going on.  Carlie, Ethan, and Max were off on their own with their own friends each day as they were allowed to sign themselves in and out of their groups--but we made them meet up with us for meals every day (so we would know that they hadn't fallen overboard or anything:)

Ethan teaching Tatum how to play Chess

Swim, swim, SWIM!!!

A cruise isn't a cruise without TOWEL ANIMALS!!!

The dining experience was always top notch every night!  I love that my kids get the chance to sit down to "fancy" dinners and eat things they normally wouldn't.  Of course they have normal foods like fried chicken and steak but we also tried things like escargot, alligator, and duck:)  Every night the dining staff had some kind of show planned.  They always look for volunteers to get up and dance with them and Max, OF COURSE, joined them every night:)

Here was our "farewell song" on our last night:

SOOO fun every night!  And our waitress was AMAZING!!!  She knew each of my kids names after hearing them only one time.  And she was also so willing to help them make decisions on food choices and was just so sweet making sure we had everything we needed. 

We love Leesom!

Every night they played a movie on the big screen out on the deck by the pool.  So you could sit in a chair, swim, eat, AND watch a movie.  I was trying to catch the perfectness of this night but you just can't do that with an iPhone camera!  This is a shot of "Star Wars--The Force Awakens" playing on the big screen with the most perfect weather and moon in the sky.  LOVED spending our evenings by the pool (eating pizza/popcorn/and ice-cream of course:)

The Bahamas!!!  (Nassau)

This was a first for all of us.  I've always wanted to go on a cruise to the "Bahamas!"  It just sounds cool right?!  Well...it was AWESOME!  I thought Hawaii had the best beaches and ocean, but I stand corrected.  The island of Nassau has the MOST beautiful white sand beaches and the warmest/most crystal blue water I have ever been in.  Seriously beautiful!  Us Arizonians had a little tough time adjusting to this new kind of heat/humidity but as long as we stayed wet, we were good:)

We walked across a large bridge that took us right to the resort "Atlantis."  WOW!  Someday we may need to stay there ourselves but for this day, we went and enjoyed the views and the beaches by this resort.

Turtles in the resort pond

Sharks in the ponds too!

The warmest and most crystal blue water I've ever been in!  

Max and I enjoyed our white sandy toes!

The Capital Building

Oh NO!!!  Captain Hook got Peter Pan:)

We were unsure of why these 2 figures would be by each other???
A knight in armor and Buddha???

Lots of Pirate history here:)

We walked all over the small island and then took a taxi back to our boat.  I would seriously love to come back and stay on this island for several days.  There is a lot of interesting history here--it was a pirate haven for years.  Absolutely beautiful and breath-taking.  LOVED the Bahamas!