Highlights: Islands of Adventure Day One

The excitement in the air on Tuesday morning as we made our way toward the Wizarding World of Harry Potter was electric.  :)  It was everything we hoped for and more.  Beautiful.  Authentic.  Brilliant!  Tuesday was Aly's birthday.  She was excited to be going to Hogwarts on her 11th birthday just like Harry, Ron, and Hermione in the books.  

 Hogwarts Castle

 The wand chooses the wizard.  Aly was chosen for the wand choosing ceremony inside Olivander's.  Her wand:  Holly, 11 inches, unicorn tail hair core.  

 Butterbeer.  Oh! My!  I wanted to bring it home with me.  Think cream soda but better with more vanilla and caramel and this great foamy, sweet top.  Oh! My!  Cold or Frozen.  Um, I had...a lot :)

  

 Aly dressed as close as she could get to Hermione for the park.  She had a sweater vest but it was way too hot and I vetoed it.  

 Skyeler dressed as Luna.  Yes, she spent half the day in the park like this, minus the Spectrespecs.  :)  She bought Luna's wand to complete the outfit.

 Aly and her souvenirs from our first day.  Her wand, a pygmy puff, Spectrespecs, and Crookshanks.

Skyeler and her pygmy puff.

Highlights: Royal Pacific Resort & City Walk

At the moment, I don't have time to post all the pictures and stories from our trip to Universal Orlando, but I wanted to give everyone a small peak at some of our favorite moments of each day.  It was truly an amazing experience!  I'm sure that you all will hear me ramble on about it for more hours than you'd like when we get back :)

 The view from the bridge that leads to the lobby of the Royal Pacific Hotel.

 The hotel upgraded our room to a park view since it was Aly's birthday Tuesday.  This was the view from our window on the 7th  floor.

 We ate in the food court at City Walk the first night.  The Hard Rock Hotel was all lit up (and too loud to eat in).

The Universal logo lit up and spinning in front of Universal Studios.  

Shaker Village

After checking out of the house late Wednesday morning, we were able to get reservations to eat lunch at the village.  While they were getting our table ready, the kids explored.  There was this beautiful spiral staircase in the building where we were to eat.  The craftsmanship of the Shakers is amazing.  

Calleigh, Riley, Tori, Elizabeth, Lindsey, Colin, Skyeler

Lunch was delicious.  We were all starving after sleeping in and skipping breakfast.

We had a little bit of time to explore the village before our riverboat ride.  This is the Centre Family Dwelling. It had 40 rooms and was just under 25,000 square feet.  Many families would live in this house together.  The guide said that often those that lived in the house were the ones who were the most strict.  Different rooms now house a look at all aspects of Shaker life from bedrooms to school rooms to the apothecary.

In the basement we found a map of where the Shakers had established villages in the United States.  

A picture of a Grandfather Clock.  We learned a neat little fact in Bath.  A true antique Grandfather Clock will have the number 4 as IIII instead of IV.  Those with IV are from a later time period.  The clock in the Centre Family Dwelling had IIII.  Actually, all the clocks we saw in the village had IIII.

One of the bedrooms

A dining room

It would have been nice to have had more time to explore the village.  We barely made it through this house!  But we were looking forward to taking the riverboat ride.  So we loaded up the van and drove across the road and down to the river.

Tanyard Brick Shop 1823

We pulled into Shaker Village in Harrodsburg, Kentucky at about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday.  Shaker Village was our destination for Wednesday and they had a house available for us to spend the night in.  An actual Shaker building, the Tanyard Brick Shop.  It was set way back from the actual village so it was a little eerie driving through the fields to it at 2:30 in the morning.  The house was filled with authentic Shaker furniture (with updated baths and mattresses).  I was surprised at how much the kids were looking forward to staying here.  Though we got in extremely late (or early), we were already at our destination and were able to sleep in and take our time in the morning.  

 A picture of the house.  I never quite figured out if it was the front or the back :)

 The living room

Colin, Elizabeth, Riley, Lindsey, Calleigh, Tori, and Skye

Tuesday Fun!

Our Tuesday was pretty packed!  We spent quite a bit of time in the van traveling.  I spent quite a bit of time driving :)  It was brutally hot, so time in the van with air conditioning was not altogether a bad thing.  With so much time in the car, I had less opportunities to take random pictures.  Here is a small sampling of the fun that was to be had on Tuesday...

Lindsey and Calleigh sitting on the bank of Bath Creek in front of the Bonner House.  

I briefly mentioned in another post that Bath is famous for being the home of the notorious pirate Blackbeard. This historical marker is placed just down the street from the Bonner House.  I, for some unknown reason, kept getting poor Blackbeard's name wrong and called him Blackbird on more than one occasion, all to the hysterical delight of my traveling companions :)  They finally said that Blackbird must be Blackbeard's lesser known brother.  Whatever!

A small section of a house we toured was dedicated to Blackbeard.  The sketch of the pirate was decked out with a plastic sword which the kids found irresistible.  Elizabeth somehow managed to incur the wrath of Lindsey and Riley (maybe one of them was "Blackbird" LOL).  She also was the one who had to try and put the sword back where it belonged.  Most of the items in the gift shop had to deal with pirates.  Colin bought a Pirate Code of Ethics printed on parchment paper.  We brought our Captain Jack loving Aly home some shillings and a Pirate Treasure map.  Interesting note, Blackbeard's treasure was never found.  Dan said that might be our next field trip :)

No, Skyeler is not paying homage to some historical marker at the battleground.  I mentioned it was brutally hot on Tuesday, even in the late afternoon.  Skyeler thought the stone felt cool on her hot head :)

The Battle of Alamance

The Battle of Alamance site was our next destination.  We barely made it there in time.  Tuesday was our fullest travel day and rarely does everything go according to the schedule!  We pulled in fifteen minutes before the visitor center closed.  That was just enough time to see most of the video on the history of the battle.  Dan brought us here because many Baptists were involved in this battle. It is believed by some to be the first battle of the Revolutionary War, though fought well before Lexington and Concord.  Dan told the kids how during the Revolutionary War many of the Baptist that had been jailed for not conforming to the Church of England were released to fight in the war.  After the war, they were thrown in jail again.  This was a quick stop on our tour (and not just because we were running late).  

Another historical marker

The battlefield 

Across the road was this monument for the Battle of Alamance.

Sandy Creek Baptist Church

After leaving Bath we drove to Sandy Creek Baptist Church in Liberty, North Carolina.  It's really cool to see how events tie together here.  If you've read the previous posts, then you are familiar with George Whitefield. After he left Bath, he prayed that God would send someone to the southern colonies.  Enter a man named Shubal Stearns.  Shubal Stearns came to know Christ under Whitefield's preaching.  Cool!  Shubal Stearns was God's way of answering Whitefield's prayer.  God led Stearns to the middle of the wilderness of North Carolina.  He and 15 others began Sandy Creek Baptist Church.  The church grew to 600 then shortly dropped back down to about 16 as men felt the call of God to spread out and begin churches all over the southern colonies.  God doesn't do anything half-way!  

There were more than a couple monuments at this site.  The present day Sandy Creek Baptist Church stands right next to the graveyard where Shubal Stearns is buried.  

I tried to enlarge portions of the monuments so you could read for yourself  some of the history.  I'm not sure how well it will work on the blog, however.

This historical marker was on the side of the road.

This log house (church) was built in 1802.  It stands next door to Sandy Creek Baptist Church.  

Elizabeth, Skyeler, Lindsey, and Victoria in the upper balcony of the 1802 church.  It was around 98 degrees on Tuesday with a heat index around 120. It was so hot inside this old building that when we walked out into the 98 degree weather it felt cooler than when we went in!!

The new marker on Shubal Stearns grave

Elizabeth, Riley, Tori, Calleigh, and Lindsey looking at the new marker.

Calleigh and Dan looking at the original marker on the grave.  

It truly was amazing how the history all tied in and there is so much more that would take forever to write down here.  Seeing these places, walking where these men walked, knowing that they were filled with God's power, it was a bit overwhelming.  The pastor of Sandy Creek Baptist Church was very helpful (and we were grateful for their bathrooms!).  He was surprised that we would be bringing in a youth group, as they get very few youth in to see this history.  How sad!  If those who make up the future of our nation never learn, it might be forgotten.  I am glad Dan was burdened to teach our youth the importance of this special heritage.