AGM 2014 - Orlando

The Annual General Meeting (AGM) for Matt's work this year was in Orlando, Florida at the Ritz-Carlton/JW Marriott Grande Lakes Resort. We were in a rush when we packed up to go to America and were focusing on keeping a lot of space open in our bags for bringing awesome American goodies back to Laos with us, so we regrettably didn't bring our good camera. However, the company hires a pro photographer every year and here's what he caught of the events:

Our kids at registration

The firework show during the opening reception.

Scotty waiting in line for the inflatable slide.

Matt hard at work during a team building exercise. They put together bikes and did a parade of bike floats. The bikes will be donated to some local children's organization--Matt doesn't remember.

The event for the adults on Friday night was a masquerade ball. They provided masks for all of us.

Saturday morning they had a 1-mile family fun run with the theme of super heroes, so we all dressed up and when we got down there, we found out they had hired professional actors to be there dressed as superheroes to cheer us on. They brought in Spider-man, Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman--the same costumes we had packed.

Scott with Spider-man

Bobby with Superman and Wonder Woman.

All of us together.

Saturday night, the company rented CityWalk at Universal Studios for a buffet dinner and then we all walked together through a dark and lonely Universal to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter which was rented exclusively for the company from 8:30-11pm. It was pretty great. Here is a picture the pro-photographer snatched of Scott with the students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. He's holding the sword of Gryffindor we had just purchased for him.

Here are a few more pictures Matt took with his phone:

This is a picture of Bobby in his bug mask. During the adult party on Friday night, they had parties for the kids, too. Bobby's was a bug party and Scott went to a space-themed party, which he mostly slept through.

My brother and his family came to our resort to watch our kids while we were at our party and they mostly slept, but Scott did wake up enough to swim with his cousins for a little while. After traveling around the world, they were pretty beat for most of AGM.

These were our desserts at the party. Above is crème brûlée and below is a molten chocolate cake.

More pictures of the kids with the superheroes...

CityWalk

Hogwarts Express with a sleeping Bobby and a sleepy Scott

The Sorting Hat

I'm sorry we documented this adventure so poorly. We were actually really tired the whole time, so I wish we had more pictures to remind us what we did. I was really upset when I realized I was pregnant and wouldn't be able to go on the rides at Harry Potter World. I did end up going on one ride with the kids--Scott got kind of scared, but Bobby loved it--and I walked through the line for another ride, which was really cool. They had the portraits talking to each other in one room, and Ron, Hermione, and Harry chatting in one room and Ron made it snow by accident (they actually had snow fall from the ceiling) and then Hermione fixed it. So, it was still cool to walk through the castle even though I couldn't go on the ride. Matt said it made him sick anyway. We also had butterbeer, which I didn't love. I thought the foam they put on top was fantastic, but the rest was not so yummy. My only regret is that I didn't go to Honeyduke's for some candy. Oh well. Maybe we'll be more awake for next year's AGM in Las Vegas? We'll see.