Back for more.

For anyone who's interested (ahem...Kat...), I have a few more pictures!

The Goblet (of fire). Disregard the scantily clad woman in the background. Also, there are blue flames that come out of the goblet. The camera did not capture that, unfortunately.

I love how this looks so Cyrillic. They had all these banners leading up the walkway to one of the rides.

All of the "warning" signs for each ride were designed to look like the "Educational Decree" signs put up by the Ministry in Order of the Phoenix. So funny.

Zonko's joke shop!

Ad for Puking Pastilles. The thing you can't see is that there's actually something mechanical coming out of that little character's mouth.

...sensation that 's sweeping the nation. Gross. And funny...

Extendable ears. It made me miss Fred...

Hagrid's cabin.

Bludgers and Quaffle. And broom wax.

Our true colors.

Brad's true colors...he's not happy that he was sorted into Ravenclaw.

Appeasing Brad by letting him pose with the Gryffindor flag...

I have one more post from Florida before getting back to real life. It's a good story, though; it'll be a true saga- in picture format. Get excited!

Hogsmeade!

All of the rooftops are covered in snow. Daddy thinks they did that partially to make you think it's not actually quite as hot as it really is...

Sometimes it even has real smoke coming out of it.

We all took turns posing in front of various shop fronts (most of the shops are for show/you can't go it). This is my interpretation of an owl.

Mom's excited about quills and parchment.

Amiee's wanting Hermione's Yule Ball dress.

Daddy's mulling over all of the books in Tomes and Scrolls.

Brad's wishing he was a Seeker. He hasn't quite come to terms with the fact that I'm the Seeker. He can be anything else he wants on the team except Seeker.

Paying for lunch at the Three Broomsticks. It is GOOD food, too. Not your typical amusement park fare. The ribs are particularly excellent.

This was lunch. There was a LOT of it...and this doesn't include the bowl of salad.

Brad decided to finish off the salad. It was too much work to put the last little bit onto his plate, so he just ate straight out of the bowl.

Trifles. Exceptionally yummy.

Lamp post at the bottom of the "Dragon Challenge" ride.

Lamp post near Hagrid's cabin.

Ollivander! They do a little show inside of his wand shop.

Mom with McGonagall's wand...

Dad with Dumbledore's...he wanted the elder wand for some reason...

Me with Hermione's...

Amiee with Luna's (Luna's her favorite)...

and Brad with Sirius'. He took his pose very seriously.

Brad's first experience with Butterbeer.

I caught him doing this a few minutes later. I think he liked it.

Gilderoy Lockhart's "Travels with Trolls"

The "Monster Book of Monsters." It would occasionally snap. Yikes!

There's more to come! We took lots of pictures. Kat, I wanted to make sure you had a good sampling of what's available before our trip in the future. :)

I never really grew up.

I had to write a senior thesis to complete my English degree in college. Throughout my junior year, I started thinking of things I'd want to write about (I had to turn in my proposal 2nd semester junior year...I wasn't that extremely nerdy). Lots of English majors before me had done lots of different themes, but honestly, none of them sounded interesting to me. I don't even really like Faulkner or Flannery O'Connor. I know I should, but I don't. Shoot me.

Anyway, much to my mother's (initial) chagrin, I read the Harry Potter series (the first 6 books- the 7th didn't come out until the summer after my junior year) and fell in love. They are so well-written and thought out. The themes are deep and rich, and Rowling's use of literary devices and conventions is quite brilliant. Spring semester, I wrote a paper about Harry. In a different class, I also wrote one about Narnia, which has always been a favorite series. I even blogged about it once while in Ukraine. You know, just because I was sitting around and thinking about it. The series overlap a LOT and are somewhat interconnecting.

Thus, when it came time to choose a theme for my thesis, I proposed to write about these two series and their place in the canon of children's literature: how they conform to children's literature's natural pattern of teaching moral and faith-based lessons through narrative.

I LOVED the whole process. That summer, my family read through the books together (we took this one really long family road trip to Texas and had lots of car time), and I got a lot of ideas from the discussions sparked through reading together. Since that time, I have read and re-read the books an embarrassing number of times. I won't even tell you the shenanigans that my bff, Kat, and I get into when we start ruminating about Harry and his friends. This Harry-ness has been beneficial for Dad, too, with all of his pediatric patients and parents. It opened up this whole realm of knowledge that he did not previously possess. I feel responsible for that.

Anyway, when Universal Studios created Harry Potter's Wizarding World, I needed to go, and last year, Mom and Dad schemed and surprised Amiee and me with a trip that was magical and full of merriment for the whole family! I've been jonesing for it since then. Mom had the BRILLIANT idea to hop over to HP World after the wedding. SOLD! And now, I will document our magical adventure (I think I'll just do castle-ish related pictures today so that I don't overwhelm you):

Seriously. How incredible is that? The main attraction ride of the park is inside the castle (The Forbidden Journey).

Big decision: which one first?? Let's be real. Hogwarts, hands-down.

I'm glad they gave us a warning about the spell limits; we probably would have gotten out of hand otherwise.

Hogsmeade train station. I wish Kat had been meeting up with us in there...

The mysterious conductor of the Hogwarts Express.

Hanging out in front of Dumbledore's office.

It's very dungeon-y in there, so the pictures are dark. One of my favorite parts is that they have the talking/moving pictures. I'm guessing they're fancy tv screens with a top coating that resembles paint.

Since we learned the ropes last year, we're basically veterans. Or professionals. Either way, don't we look really happy? We were.

Trying to give perspective on how big the castle is. Fail.

Retry. Success. See all of the tiny people?

Brassart family photo. Such fun.

Florida. Wedding. Universal. Woo hoo!

Firstly, I'd like to give a belated HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my mamichka! I'm so grateful for her and think she's the best. Love you, Mama!

Secondly, after the last (and fairly whiny) post about our travel issues, I thought I'd include some fun visuals from our trip! I'll do it in two posts, though, because I have one gazillion pictures from Harry Potter's Wizarding World.

Our travel plan started with Ben's and Molly's wedding in Jacksonville. I've been friends with Ben for AGES. And his mama for just as long. I love them and am so happy for all parties involved. Here are a few pictures (I look a little shady...I like to blame it on the travel of the morning):

My beloved Mrs. Tidwell.

My best buddies from age 15 forward (Joseph, me, Ben)

After the wedding, we drove for 2.5ish hours to Orlando and crashed (into bed...not the car). We needed to rest up for our big day. We LOVE Harry Potter World! Thankfully, after our trip last summer, we're like pros at navigate Universal Studios Islands of Adventure. I feel sorry for all the folks that got in our way...I've got that whole Ukrainian-aggressive-elbow throwing thing going on. Watch out.

I'll post the Harry pictures tomorrow, but to tide you over, here are our non-Harry pictures. We had a SUPER time, and thankfully, it wasn't hot on Sunday! (the same cannot be said about Monday, sadly):

Daddy with his favorite: Captain America!

We're cool. We know.

Little known fact about Amiee: She was the star in "Green Eggs and Ham, an Opera." I made her take this one. Bless her.

We LOVE the Wizarding World.

I have a ridiculous collection of lamp post pictures. This one is fun and wonky-looking.

So much fun was had by all.

Changing my name did not change my luck with air travel.

I've said it before and will probably say it one zillion more times before I die: I really really don't like air travel.

I have lots of wretched travel and flying stories that have made me skittish when it comes to flying. It's really not a problem with airplanes so much as airports. And all that entails.

This past weekend, Brad, Amiee, and I joined up with my parents in Florida for the wedding of a good friend of mine. After the wedding, we headed over to Orlando for a couple days at Harry Potter World (pictures of the wedding and HP World to come). Yesterday (Monday/Labor Day), we were to leave the park at 2:00 so we'd have plenty of time before our flight at 4:15. Check. Mission accomplished. We were through security and at the gate with gobs of time to spare (and guess who didn't have a book with her...that's right. Me.). As we get close to our departure time, we see that we've been delayed. That's fine. Happens a lot.

We get closer to our new departure time, and we find that we've been delayed again. They start announcing all of the connecting flights that will be missed in Atlanta, due to the new time. Those folks head over to work on new arrangements. We're still good. Just in case, though, Brad trots up to the counter and confirms. Yep. The Memphis flight is still on.

We get closer to our newest departure time, and we realize that things are about to become difficult for us. This time, the Memphis connection travelers have to go check with customer service about alternate plans. Drat.

Amiee and I sit with the stuff while Brad goes to handle the details. He comes back with the comforting assurance that we a) will definitely not arrive in Memphis at our original time of 7:15 b) we no longer have definite and secure spots on any flight, and c) they're hopeful that the three of us can fly standby on the 11:00 pm flight to Memphis.

Awesome.

We arrive in Atlanta and eat. What else to do when in need of comfort? Then, we wait. Just when we're grumpy enough, our departure time gets pushed back until 12:15 am, rather than 11:00 pm. I start making phone calls to coworkers to make sure things are in place for work in the morning (sidenote: my boss didn't read her emails from me or her text messages until 8:20 this morning. Yikes! Everything worked out in the end, but it was a little Three Stooges how everything played out).

We waited very tiredly and boredly for many hours but did eventually get on the plane. When we walked out of the airport in Memphis, we realized that the temperature had dropped DRASTICALLY, and we nearly froze to death. Then we drove back to Jackson. I think I turned my light off at 2:45.

I was not the most on-top-of-life that I've ever been while at work today. Poor students...