Florida Day 3

Oh so much excitement!  We were finally on our way to Islands of Adventure aka: Harry Potter World!  Tyler was like a little kid on Christmas morning, only more excited!  We got early admission and headed straight back to get into Hogsmeade.  I could not believe how amazing it was!  We walked in and it seriously felt like we had stepped onto the set of Harry Potter.

 

Tyler was so, so, so excited to finally be here!

We headed straight to Olivanders Wand Shop!  The man portraying Olivander did an excellent job!  The wand shop was really neat!  They take a group of about 20 people into the shop at a time and choose one kid from the group to find a wand for.  Unfortunately, Tyler was not one of the youngest in our group.  It was still fun to watch though!

 

 We then headed straight for the castle!  Oh my goodness did it look like the real thing!  Amazing!

 Inside the castle is the Harry Potter ride!  It takes you on a broomstick ride!  Really cool!  The line for the ride takes you on a tour of the castle.  You can also do an extended tour that takes to parts of the castle that the line does not.  It was so cool!  They thought of everything!  There was so much detail and the ambiance was amazing!  It felt like we were in Harry Potter!  Tyler was in heaven!


We then ate breakfast at the 3 broomsticks, complete with blood sausage, pumpkin juice, and butter beer!  Butter beer is amazing!  We had it chilled and we had it frozen and we had it more than once!  Delicious!  Way better than any imitation I have ever tasted!

Here are just a bunch of random pictures.  We took so many!  

 Of course we had to get a picture in front of the Hogwarts Express!

Hagrid's Hut!

 

 All the buildings had snow on top of them!

Mr. Weasley's car!

We eventually left Harry Potter land and ventured around the rest of the park! 


One the way home to stopped at Sonny's.  A really yummy southern BBQ place! 

Florida Day 2

We got up early and got ready to go to the historic town of St. Augustine. It is about 2 hours north of Orlando. It really is a neat city! We took a fun trolley ride around St. Augustine showing us all of the historic buildings, walked around the city for a bit, ate some delicious lunch, and toured the fort!  We had a delicious taco salad for dinner and relaxed for the remainder of the night.

They had this really cool tree that was a palm tree growing right out the middle of an oak tree!  It was neat.  Legend has it that if you kiss under it you will be together forever.  Luckily, we already believe we will be together forever, but it was fun to do nonetheless!

 

Florida Day 1

The day after graduation we headed to Orlando, FL with Tyler's parents, his Aunt Jan, Aunt Mary Kay and Uncle Curt, and Uncle Ron and Aunt Kathy.  It was a long day of flying, but we were so excited for what was waiting for us in Florida!

Us on the plane!

 

So excited to have landed in Florida!  

 

We got a rental car, which they oh so willingly upgraded us to an SUV for free, because some bonehead sent us to the wrong lot!  It was nice!  We got to the 5 bedroom/5 bathroom house and were in heaven!  We got our own master suite with soaking tub.  The house had a pool and hot tub, and it was amazing!  We're grateful to Tyler's Uncle Curt with so many wonderful military hookups!

Graduation

After anticipating this day for four years it was finally here! I couldn't be more proud of Tyler and all his hard work he has put in these past four years! I am proud to report that the night before Tyler was inducted into the Omicron Kappa Upsilon Honors Society. It is a really neat award to have! When he started dental school Tyler would always say "D is for Dentist". All he wanted to do was pass and get out! Little did he know that he would graduate in the top of his class with honors! So proud!

The weekend before there was a little party with the grownups at someone's house.  It was fun to mingle with people in Tyler's class and the food was great!

Graduation was great! Tyler was hooded by Dr. Greg Jones, who is currently the President of the Oregon Dental Association and the Dentist that Tyler will be working for soon! He is officially Dr. Tyler Reed Bendixsen, D.M.D. It's so weird getting mail that has that on it already!

We made such good friends over the 4 years that we were in Portland.  Graduation was such a happy day, but it was also a sad day.  It was the last day we saw so many of our friends!  We already miss them greatly!

We were so lucky to have Tyler's parents and my mom share in this momentous occasion with us!  So glad that they could make it!