Harry Potter Weekend

Harry Potter Weekend

So something pretty amazing happened….We went to Orlando. This is the first time I went to Orlando and didn’t get to have any specific “Disney” experience…Not even downtown Disney.  Mickey was quite sad.

We went to Universal Studios for their Harry Potter Weekend Event.  We had a special package to stay on site, park tickets, a special evening event, chance to sit in on a couple Q&As with actors.  It was all tremendous Fun! 

Here are a few favorite pictures. 

We start off in Diagon Alley (in London) to get our items for school.  

Stop into Gringott's Bank...the dragon outside was impressive

Especially when he blew fire...

It was even more cool at night.  

Inside the bank you have to get directions from the Goblin. 

When you are done in Diagon Alley and ready to go to school, you want to take the train over to London to go to Hogshead....but of course you have to get to Platform 9 3/4

The castle....

Seeing the sorting hat...

Listening to some of the actors was really fun.

We met:  Luna Lovegood (Evanna Lynch)

Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon)just after this weekend he announced he was retiring from acting, so likely this may have been one of his last appearances for Harry Potter.

Fred and George (James and Oliver Phelps)

 And of course we drank a lot of Butter Beer

We also got to do a lot of other things at Universal.  One of my favorite areas was Seuss Landing.  This area was so fun...

 

Thing 1 and Thing 2

Sam I am (Green Eggs and Ham)

Kevin met Spiderman

 

And Wolverine

He also got electrocuted in the electric chair

We met the Simpsons

And Shaggy and Scooby Doo

 It was a really fun weekend trip.  If you get the chance to go I think you would really have a great time!

Making Cheese

Jody and I were at the Cheese Importers in Longmont and ran across a kit to make your own mozzarella. So we said to ourselves, "We've seen them make it on TV, how hard can it be". So we decided to get the kit and then off to the store to get the ingredients. Luckily it really doesn't take much: a gallon of whole milk, some rennet, salt, and citric acid.

Gather all the ingredients and instructions

Start heating the whole milk

Once the proper temp is reached and the citric acid has been added, give it a few minutes to start working

Starting to see some curds now, so we start removing them from the whey. Kinda looks like cottage cheese in this form.

Once we have removed the curds from the whey, heat up the curds some more so that it is the proper temperature to stretch the cheese

Drain some more whey out, amazing how much was in there

Make sure it is hot enough to manipulate, it is not hot enough here, so we have to nuke it some more. 

Start forming it into balls. Still not sure it is hot enough here so the texture is not quite right

Some of the finished product

So it was quite fun to make our own cheese, it tasted pretty good especially for the first time trying it. It seemed like we didn't get a ton of cheese out of the gallon of milk we put in, but I guess that is how it works. Anyway, we have at least three more batches to do, because the kit came with enough stuff to do four. So maybe on our next try we will do better.

Cumbres Toltec train

For our anniversary, we decided to take a short road trip to southern Colorado to ride the Cumbres and Toltec Train

We actually decided to ride from New Mexico, so we took a bus down to Chama NM and then road the train back to Antonito CO. 

 Here we are on the bus....we are ready to go....

Our train car had nice tables that we could sit at and look out and the decor was fun too.   

 We saw great scenery. 

 Went over a couple of bridges

 This little car followed behind the train to put out any fires that were started along the track.  Kevin called it our "stalker"

 Some great canyons to see

We went through a couple of tunnels

 And we even saw a group of cowboys