SPB – Page 3

Universal

August 21, 2025

At the end of July we had one more summer adventure! A trip to Universal to see the new park, Epic Universe. It was EPIC!

We stayed in one of the new hotels which was really cool…

and had a FULL day at the park riding all of the new rides! It kind of felt like we were walking on the surface of the sun but we survived. Our favorite ride was the roller coaster Stardust Racers and it might be my new favorite roller coaster ever!!

The villian world had a good Frankenstein ride…

Of course this park has more Harry Potter stuff and it’s all very cool to see.

There was also lots of How to Train your Dragon stuff…

Our favorite part of the park was Mario and Nintendo World!

We ate at Atlantic in Epic and it was honestly delicious! Definitely the best theme park food I’ve ever had!

More Universal tomorrow!

Beach and lake

August 19, 2025

The kids are all lucky to have sweet friends that generously take them to the lake and the beach!

Maxwell got to see camp friends in Birmingham…

and then they all went to the Rosemary together. The best!

Samantha got to go to the lake with friends…

and so did Spencer!

and, yes, so did Maxwell!

Living the life!

Wrapping up summer

August 18, 2025

We’re back in school but lots of summer pics still hanging around…

Maxwell got lucky and went to the water park two times this summer, the last time being with all of his friends with the church…

Samantha reeeeeeeaally wanted to go as well so I decided to be mom of the year and took a crew out there the last week of summer…

I have to way, it was really fun – manageable, clean, plenty to do (especially for 10 year olds). We got out there about 1:00 and stayed until 5:30!

Samantha and I were both brave enough to do the Freefall slide! Go us!

Spencer was dying to go as well but when you have football every day from 1pm to 6pm, there just isn’t time! He did manage to squeeze in some fishing with friends though…

Summer fun for all!

Italy – Milan

August 15, 2025

Saturday morning we took a car to Milan and met a guide at The Last Supper. Everyone was really jazzed for another day of touring…

ha! But viewing The Last Supper was totally worth it and way neater than I was anticipating.

We then met with another guide and went to Sforza Castle which is an enormous medieval fotress in Milan. It was very big!

Our guide then who took us all through the The Duomo di Milano, also known as Milan Cathedral. It was very impressive – it is Gothic style and apparently one of the largest churches in the world. I believe it and it was really cool to go to the top and walk around.

Then we walked in the The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II and got some lunch.

We then walked around and went into stores – spending most of our time in the Nike Jordan store.

We then headed out to our hotel by the airport for the night. This was probably the one misstep of the trip. We really should have just booked a nice hotel in Milan and gotten one more good Italian dinner…but instead we went to an airport hotel and walked over to this random mini-mall with an Italian version of Walmart and ended up eating mall pizza that had hot dogs on it. Yep, hot dogs. How’s that for an ending to the trip of a lifetime?! ha!

We made it to the airport with no issues the next morning and started the American re-entry process…

and then had an uneventful flight back to Atlanta!

We were all happy to finally get home that night…but I’d go back to Italy tomorrow if I could! It really was a dream trip. These pics didn’t make it into an earlier post but maybe that’s fitting because they might be my favorite representation of the experience…