Have a Holly Jolly Christmas

Christmas is my favorite. I love the light and the spirit that it brings. I love the magic and wonder that comes along with it too. But my favorite part is remembering Christ. We are all so blessed to have a loving Savior who gave his life so we could live ours. I am so glad to know Him personally and to love Him daily. Christmas is a great time to reflect on all of our blessings throughout the year and to begin the next year with clear eyes and full hearts. We have been absolutely blessed throughout the year of 2015 and I couldn't be more grateful to my Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ. There were good times and bad times, but most of all great lessons have been learned. We made it through with so much joy and love and thats all that I want to remember. I hope you had a very Merry Christmas!

Sunny Dayzzz in Orlando

This year Brandon and I have got to do so many fun things. We decided to top it off with a spontaneous trip to Florida. We found some cheap flights and decided to go for it. Brandon was able to go to Florida earlier this year when he picked up my car in Palm Springs. He took a friend and they went to Harry Potter World and I was so jealous! So I told him it was my turn! He agreed and I am so glad we made the quick trip! It was a blast! The trip started out rough. We were so dang tired. We had a red eye flight and weren't able to check in to our hotel until 3:00pm. We arrived to the hotel at 6:00am in hopes that they could get us in a room early. We were out of luck. So we decided to take a power nap in our rental car for a couple hours. Not very sufficient though. After getting a couple hours of sleep the whole night it was a rough day. Brandon really wanted to go to a car show.. I don't really care about those all that much but we made it work. I guess Orlando Studios was meant for me, so I guess we could swing something less exciting for him haha.  He loved it, to say the least! There were so many cool cars I do have to admit that. We walked and walked around the Ritz Carlton for hours. I was glad to see how much Brandon enjoyed it, it made it worth the ridiculous amount of money haha. 

Prepare for picture overload! For the next 3 days we got to enjoy Universal Studios. We got a park-to-park pass so it was super fun to go to both sides of the parks and experience them both. Of course, the absolute favorite was The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. We spent most of our time there. It was so fun! They made everything look just like the movies and it was magic. I learned that my absolute favorite thing was the Butterbeer ice cream! Oh. My. Heck. I was in heaven. I need more of that in my life and I need to know how to get it! The funniest part about Harry Potter World was that we went straight into the Gringotts to ride our first roller coaster of the trip, and it broke! Good news and bad news was is that we were on it when it broke! Right at the beginning! When we were about to drop down a tunnel.. meaning we were stuck on an incline facing down into a dark tunnel... for a good 20 minutes at least haha. It was quite the story. A little scary I must admit. I was just a little worried that our lap belts would malfunction too and then we all would fall out into the dark hole. But they ended up fixing the issue and we were able to go through the whole ride while every one else behind us was told they couldn't ride until they made sure the problem wouldn't happen again. Lucky us! They gave us a free front of the line pass to use for another ride at the park. So it was a win in my book. 

The rest of the park was still fun too. Brandon is not a theme park kind of person. Which I'll be honest, it makes me kind of sad. I am a lover of all things fun and thrilling. He just does not get the attraction to theme parks. I am sure part of it is because he gets sick on almost every single ride possible. This time around we made sure to drug him up with dramamine and sea bands. I think that they both worked because we were still able to go on multiple rides and have so much fun! We walked so dang much but it was good for our souls. It's pretty fun to feel like a kid again. I know someday when we have our own kids, Brandon will be all about making those memories again. He mentioned multiple times that he is excited to take our kids places like this. Someday we will make that happen!

There were so many things to see when we were there and I wish we had more time to spread out the theme park so we weren't so burnt out each day. We definitely could have done more things if we had the time and drive to do it all. But all in all, it was a great trip and we are so happy that we made it happen! I can't wait to see what our next adventure will be.