Celebrating our 240th Independence

4th of July is one of my favorite holidays of the year and of course is especially made better with a 3 day weekend! After a week of not sleeping very well I enjoyed some extra time of relaxation, but also had a great time celebrating in the parks!

Saturday 2nd

My roommate rented a room at the Hard Rock Hotel so we had a ball at Universal! I'd been inside to go to the Velvet lounge during Mardi Gras (Thank you Mardi Gras Universal app for free drinks! What what?!?!) The rooms were even more amazing and we could even see CityWalk and the parks from our room! We had planned to spend the afternoon at the pool but when we first checked in it was pouring rain so we headed to CityWalk to go to one of the best places ever: Red Oven Pizza! It is seriously soooo good. Instead of heading back to the pool we decided to just hang out at the parks. We saw so of the cars cycling at the Hulk so hopefully it means that it will be back up and smoother than ever! I even got to watch part of the 100 years of movies nighttime show that I've never seen before. I'll definitely have to go back and see the whole thing. Before heading in for a relatively early night in we headed back to CityWalk to grab a bite to eat at Hot Dog Hall of Fame (where I of course got the Detroit option!)

Sunday 3rd 

We had such a great night sleep. Those beds at Hard Rock are COMFY! Today is the day that the holiday celebrations really began. Disney knows how to do fireworks so of course they do special ones for the holiday where they come hand and hand at both EPCOT and MK. This might seem to be a torn decision on what to attend, but luckily Magic Kingdom perimeter ones are on the 3rd and 4th, so I of course wanted to get the best of both worlds. My roommates and I met up with my roommate Sam's friends from out of town right before the fireworks at Magic Kingdom, which were amazing. I do have to say the best spot to see them is in the Hub. Afterwards we decided to go show our visitors Animal Kingdom at night. We were only there for about an hour, but we got a ton done including dinosaur twice, Everest, and a great safari where we saw the Hyenas!!!! I was pretty much jumping up and down because I've been waiting forever to see them! After a great night, Sam and her friends went back to MK for extra magic hours until 3am, but Corey, Scott, and I headed over to the new Applebees for some half price apps.

Monday 4th

Finally was the actual holiday! I celebrated by the all american decisions to go to Starbucks for their frappuccino deal and Five Guys for a great American cheeseburger. Then Corey, Scott, and I met up with Sam and her friends again for an evening of fun at EPCOT. We were lucky enough to be able to go on Test Track and the new Soarin', which I do think it is an improvement over the old one. Then we made our way around the world showcase before playing some Heads Up waiting for the fireworks. 

Overall, while we definitely know that summer has hit us with some crazy heat and humidity, it was a fantastic weekend with a good balance of relaxation, friends, parks, and celebrations. I have to say if you are ever in town for the Independence Day fireworks they are totally worth the crowds to watch! Like I said, Disney knows how to do fireworks. :) After such a great weekend, it was definitely hard to get up to go to work on Tuesday! lol

Trying to be a Good Blogger

So I started this blog as all people do, with the best intentions. While it may appear abandoned, like I previously said, I actually have been good about trying to update my bucket list and ride count pages. I have also done a decent job at keeping a record of what I have been doing as well. It is more of a bullet point style that I have kept as drafts all of this time. Therefore, since I was home sick today (stupid fever/flu I have been dealing with since Saturday evening), I decided to be a good blogger and try to actually make those notes readable and post date them. So starting today I have a few "new" posts for June and am going to try and keep updating like this so I have a better record for myself. If others ever find this blog and actually read it, it will also hopefully be more helpful for them as well. Right now I will continue with catching up on some early days stuff, but I might transition to real time posts as well. 

After my fever broke after hours of sleeping, I got bored.
Hence, I channeled my inner 5 year old and took a selfie with my stuffed animals. 

Going back and writing this stuff in complete sentences and adding pictures is helping add to the realization that I only have 2 and a half months left down here and have been here over 4 and a half months. Dana and I were having a conversation about it today and how there are so many things we have left to do while we are here since we possibly could never be back. She leaves in exactly 2 months. I have 3 more weeks than her, but it doesn't seem like a lot at this point. I haven't been going to the parks as much recently and have gotten into a routine with work and coming home and watching Netflix (granted the last month or so was pretty crazy for a few reason out of my control that prevented me from doing much at one point). So we were making a list of some of the things we have yet to do. Luckily we have the same days off now and can hopefully conquer some of these things together.

Here is the list of some of the things we talked about:
-seeing the manatees as they head this way for the winter
-going to the beach before it gets any colder
-exploring the rest of Islands of Adventure (since I have only been to Hogsmead)
-deciding about getting tickets for Very Merry Christmas party (I am definitely going but Dana wants to make sure it is worth it)
-Seeing the Candlelight processional (maybe one that we know people singing in the choir!)

I'm going to end with a picture. I never got a good picture of our apartments massive Halloween decorations (thanks to Amber), but in true Disney spirit I put up our first Christmas decoration this evening (thanks to my mom).

Leah said she wanted to see it everyday.
So she decided it should be prominently hung from the fan chord!