Our Wild and Crazy October Adventures

Oh hey! Let's just get some business taken care of before we get to the most picture-heavy part of this post, shall we? 

Big news! After a real roller coaster of events, Aani was offered a spot in the cosmetology program at MTECH at night. The night class is 5 hours a night instead of 8 hours in the day, so it will take longer to complete, but we decided to accept the spot for her so she could get rolling. Otherwise we'd have to wait until January to see if she got a spot. Ugh. She started last week, and is enjoying it so far. We just miss her every night. She also has no classes at the high school except seminary, so that's pretty weird! She said there are two types in her class: Basic white girl, and Emo girl. She likes everyone. :) 

Ava had her first band concert of the year last night. She likes band and playing the clarinet. 

She also finished out her tennis season for fall. Her coach this season was really great. He offered private lessons, which we took advantage of, and Ava improved a whole lot. In fact, she qualified for the state tournament (by winning in region and sectionals)! She wasn't able to play in the state tournament because we were going out of town the night before it was held, but it was still so fun to see how well she did this season. 

Nils and Scott ran the St. George 1/2 marathon and did great! 

         

We took a trip to Orlando for our 1 Million Subscriber Celebration! Universal Orlando/Harry Potter world has been on Nils' wish list for a long time, so we thought we'd go for it, and do Disney while we were at it. We'd never been to either place, so it was a little intimidating. I did a lot of research and tried to understand the WDW ecosystem as best I could before we went. We're Disneyland people, ya know, and they're different in lots of ways. 

ALSO. Hurricane Milton was posing a big threat the week we were supposed to be leaving, so we were pretty uncertain if this trip would even happen. Every couple of hours we would look at our flight status, and it remained "on time" and didn't change ever, even though they closed the Orlando airport for 2 days. The hurricane rolled in on Wednesday night, and by Friday, everything was operating again, so we hopped on our on-time flight and everything was great. We even flew on Spirit for the first time, sort of expecting the worst, but it was actually totally fine.     

Photo Dump:     

2 Days at Universal: 

First time butter beer drinkers. That froth is something special. 

The girls met Gary. 

And Patrick.

We met Shrek, Donkey, and Fiona, and that was really fun. Donkey was talking real-time to everyone and it was very entertaining.

I was fortunate to capture this precious moment as we waiting in line for the Hagrid ride. We were all pretty wiped out- jet lag, getting up super early to get to the park at opening, walking miles and miles and miles. Pooped. When they saw me taking a picture, they stopped this instantly. 

3 Days at Disney: 

We did Hollywood Studios, Magic Kingdom, and Epcot. 

These pictures from the Spaceship Earth ride cracked me right up. 
                                                

Aani in China

Anders looking special at the hotel. 

All the ride pics. We did single rider whenever possible, hence the many strangers. 

Aani in Italy

Aani in Japan

Best picture opp from the pinnacle of Tiana's Bayou Adventure. Hello! 

Oops, a straggler Universal pic.

We had a lot of fun. We didn't love love Universal. The Harry Potter stuff is fun, and they have some good roller coasters, but they have so many virtual reality rides that just make you wanna puke. It was still a good time and a learning experience! 

WDW was fun, we liked it. The parks are so far away from each other, so that's very different from Dland. We rode all the rides we wanted to and managed to not spend too much time in line. We liked the food and treats. We felt like a lot of the rides were 3/4 as good as Disneyland. It could just be our prejudice, but we've heard the same from others as well. Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion, Pirates, etc. are all a little different between the two coasts. Our last park was Epcot, and we had a fun day there doing the things, visiting the different "countries", trying the food, looking at the shops, and then riding the cool rides in the park. Oh yes, I'm just going to say it. The Tron ride in Magic Kingdom is way over hyped. All of our kids love Tron and we were all way excited to do that ride. It needs to be twice as long! If you're going to go to the trouble of building a cool ride, do it right, we said! That's our rant. 

Alright, I think that's about it from this month. Other than the fact that we switched accountants and it's been a bigger deal than we expected. 

Welp, see ya.