Valentines Celebrations

 We try to have Valentines be a fun day for the family. Both of the kids were excited to give out Valentines at school. Their classes were, thankfully, still doing the tradition. Many of the schools in the area opted to not do it for COVID reasons. 

We sat down as a family to build a Lego Valentines Day box for Lucky Dragon. It turned out really awesome. He was excited and said that all of his classmates liked it so much "they gave me two candies!" 

We had a big week just before this, so we wanted to keep it low key. But when I took the Muggles to Sam's Club with me to get some groceries, they both wanted to choose some flowers for Lady Hiva. They chose some beautiful roses!~ 

We then did some Valentines for their classes and for a family party with Madre and Kell and family. Koala Bear was great in writing all of her own Valentines. I thought she would give up, but she never did. This girl powers through! 

Lady Hiva was so excited that her university offered an online cooking class. They sent her the food and then they all jumped on to cook together. She had so much fun and Koala Bear did too. She is growing into a great cook and baker like her mum. The dish they created was a Thai curry chicken. It was AMAZING! So much so, we went and bought all the ingredients to have it again. I was in class teaching so Lady Hiva saved me a plate of it. When I came down to eat she told me "it is so good that I licked my plate clean..." I laughed thinking she was just using hyperbole. But when I finished my food, I too, licked my plate (Something neither of us ever do!). 

Every time that it is a chance to celebrate Lady Hiva, Lucky Dragon wants to get her flowers and chocolate. He knows that not just any chocolate, but See's chocolate. (She has trained him well with the chocolate. The flowers he chooses roses every time. Something that he likes, but they are not necessarily her favorites). Lady Hiva had gone to Costco while I was working and she came home and told me, "I bought gift cards for See's for you to give to me to save you time!" LOL

I decided to do something funny for Lady Hiva. I took some of our favorite foods and made notes! It was fun. 

Then in the evening we went to eat at a Thai restaurant. Last year we did Indian food, so this year was Thai food! 

We drove down to Beaver in the snow (I feel like we have had more snow in FEB and the end of JAN than we received the rest of winter combined!). 

Lady Hiva's whole goal was to get Ginger's recipes. The two of them had so much fun talking about recipes while we smelled warm fresh bread. 

Puking Pasties In Diagon Alley

We were not sure about going to another Universal park, but we are so glad that we did. The new Diagon Alley part of the park is amazing! We started there at the Knight Bus. The Bus driver and the small head had so much fun teasing us that our "Children did not look happy" and that we should talk to them more! HAHA. They both did look a bit grumpy. haha

We then took photos in front of Sirius' family home, Number 12 Grimmauld Place. If you knock on the door, Kreacher will peak out at you from one of the upper grimy windows! 

Studying spells for the trip. 

We then walked through the brick wall from London into Diagon Alley. The place was SO WELL done! We spent so much time going through all of the stores. Each of them are perfectly done. Weasley's Wizard Wheezes was perfect. 

Lucky Dragon loved going around and using his wand to doing the spells on the windows. 

We had more Butterbeer, of course, ate lunch in the Leaky Cauldron and had ice cream at Florian and Fortescue.  The Sticky Toffee Pudding was amazing and the ice cream flavors were fun and exotic. 

We also loved that we could go into Nocturn Alley. We explored all of the dark alleys and walked through Borgin and Burke. I loved it! 

We watched a retelling of the Deathly Hallows and then watched the Celestina Warbeck sing later. Both were so well done if felt like we were in the books. 

We went on the Escape from Gringotts and the theming was so well done. Going through the line is experience enough to justify trying it. 

They were celebrating Mardi Gras at Universal so we had so much fun dancing for the parades (that were not running because of COVID physical distancing) and getting beads. By the end of the day both Muggles had SO many beads to wear. 

We had fun riding the Minion ride and Shrek. Koala Bear especially loved those two and would come out talking about how amazing they were. 

I made a stop as everyone slept in the car. I loved this view the best! I also loved that there was a spot in the bushes where others have made this same trek even if they cannot go in because of COVID.