A Visit from Santa

Santa, his elves, and reindeer must have worked overtime at Christmas this year. Someone in this house must have been very, very good. :)

The boys of course found their presents from Santa and dove right in.

Ryan found his "Mack" truck and Connor found Buzz and friends.

Santa left something for everyone. He filled my stocking with all kinds of goodies including a flamingo pen and screwdriver set.

Kevin got his customary lump of coal.

Grannie and Great Grannie had stockings, too.

So did Grandma, and Grandpa. There were so many presents that we only managed to make it through Santa's presents before we had to break for breakfast.

But never fear we were determined to make it through them all. Though for Ryan we could have stopped with Santa. He couldn't have been happier with his Sheriff and Mack.

Connor was particularly delighted by a bucket of fish and of course some new books, too.

We noticed when we stopped for breakfast that Santa's Reindeer had made a crash landing our patio table sometime during the night.

After a little clean-up Kassidy got to enjoy her gifts from Santa, too.

Wishing you a Very Merry Christmas!

Decking the Tree

The boys were super excited to learn that we had finally gotten a tree up home and were thrilled to get to help put their ornaments on the tree.

Ryan remembered his Lightning McQueen ornament that we picked out for him at Disney World. It was the first one he put on the tree.



He also really liked the new ornament he picked out with Kevin at the Hallmark store - a yellow bus. :)

Connor remembered his Nemo ornament from Disney World, too.

He wanted all of his ornaments right together.

Until he decided that this one should go at the very top of the tree, as high as he could reach.

For days afterwards the boys would run up to the tree and point out their ornaments and tell us that they had put them on the tree themselves.

I think they did a wonderful job, don't you?

Doing a Little Christmas Decorating

The kids goodie bags were not the only thing I procrastinated on... It was nearing mid December and I still didn't have a spec of Christmas up yet. Except Santa, but since he's been out since last year I somehow don't think he counts.

So we took advantage of the nice weather this weekend and pulled out some of our outdoor decorations.


I was heartbroken to discover that my nutcrackers had succumbed to some mold. Apparently Kevin hosed them off trying to get the dirt off the stakes and packed them away inside garbage bags wet. And the rest, the rest is history...



I scrubbed them with some dish soap and a scrub brush, but it looks like if they have any hope of salvation they will have to be repainted. All my scrubbing managed to do was pop off some more buttons, a mustache or two, and even an eyebrow. Oops.

We also pulled out our new banner this year. And lessons learned from last year even rememebred to steak it so that hopefully it will still look the nice when it comes time to take it down.

I just love the glow of Christmas lights. Don't you?

P.S. If you can't make lights straight I have discovered you should make them really really crooked so you can say you meant for them to be that way! :)

Operation: Kids Christmas Treats

I really thought I would have Disney up before now, but I got a little distracted...


The kids' Christmas party at school was at the end of the week and I hadn't figured out how I was going to package everything up.


I knew I wanted to do "snack" size popcorn bags, but I wanted something vertical, not horizontal. Luckily I found these great tall treat bags at the dollar store. I finished them off with a little topper. I loved how they turned out.



I also had some trouble finding bags to get all the rest of the stuff in. As it tuned out standard gallon size ziplocs were a hair too short. Thankfully a trip to Walmart yielded some tie top bags that worked out perfectly. I threw in a Christmas card, coloring book, plush elf, popcorn treat, candy cane, and box of colors. Then I added the piece de resistance - an initial ornament. Topped with a matching topper and voila! Operation Kids Christmas Treats. Done. And hopefully a resounding success.

Thing 1 and Thing 2

The boys just looked so cute in their Thing 1 and Thing 2 stuff. Even if it was a little big... :)

You guessed it.

When we arrived at home our checked luggage was not on the baggage carousel. It was in West Palm Beach Florida.

So after filling out all the lost baggage forms and providing our contact information by the time we got down to the interterminal train in Terminal A the baggage claim was no longer operating. It was luckly (cough, cough) only 3600 feet from Terminal A to Terminal C down under the bowels of the airport in the middle of the night with a stroller and a bazillion bags. Joy. Not. I hate to admit it, but it was probably a good thing that they lost our other bags as I am not sure how we would have managed them as well...

When we finally got to our terminal we took the elevator to our parking level. Only it didn't look right. The car wasn't where it was supposed to be. We guessed another color and walked another 1/2 a mile. It looked even less familiar. I left Kevin, the kids, and the bags and backtracked back to the terminal to find the right elevator, and the car, and then pick them up.

When we finally got home the clock read after 2AM. 3AM from the timezone we had just come from. What a long, long day...

Houston, we have a problem.

I will give you 3 guesses, and the first two don't count.

Saying Goodbye to Disney

It was time to say goodbye to Disney. Though the morning got off to a rough start with Connor closing Ryan's finger and thumb in the bathroom door. They were red, and purple and swollen. There were tears all around. After some ice and tylenol we grabbed breakfast and then rushed back to pack our bags before check-out time. After packing Kevin took the boys to the playground while I did some last minute shopping and picked up sandwiches to go.


We grabbed our bags, and boarded the Magic Express Bus to the airport.

We had just enough time to visit the Universal store to pick up Thing 1 and Thing 2 shirts before waiting in the ridiculously long and slow security line. We made it to our gate just as it began boarding.

Wanted: Fast Pass to Toy Story Midway Mania

With several things still left on our to do list as our last day approached we decided to spend the day at Hollywood Studios. We had high hopes of getting fast passes to get in to see Toy Story Midway Mania without having to wait in the 60-120 minute long standby lines that we had seen on our previous visit (even during extra magic hours), but by the time we arrived at the park at 10am fast passes for the ride for the remainder of the day were long since gone.We decided to grab an early lunch at the Sci-fi drive in theater and managed to catch the Lights, Motors, Action show.

Afterwards we opted to brave the standby line now boasting a 2 hour wait for Toy Story. At least the wait allowed us plenty of time to check out the decor. And luckily for us despite Mr. Potato head's warning we managed to get through the line in about an hour.

The ride was one of our favorites. We wished it had a shorter line as we would have really liked to have ridden it again. But alas... we ventured off to the backlot tour, and then decided to let the kids play for 20 minutes or so in the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids playground where we once again lost track of one of the boys for a little while and 20 minutes turned in to a whole hour of playing.

And I am not sure we could have even dragged them out then if it weren't for the fact that the playground were closing.The boys exhausted from the long day and hard play took a nap as we made our way over to be seated for the Fantasia show. Luckily we were able to take the stroller almost to the top and managed to pick the boys up out of the stroller and carry them in without waking them fully up. They slept for the almost hour that we sat waiting for the show to begin. After the Fantasia show we attempted to get into several restaurants with no luck.

We ended up calling reservations and managed to get in at Ohana again as my mom (with the food poisoning) and great grandmother had missed it the previous night. Despite having a later reservation they were able to get us in within about 5 minutes of our arrival. The food was delicious and we even caught the Mickey's Christmas Celebration fireworks from over the water at Magic Kingdom while we ate. It was a wonderful end to the evening.

Day 7: The Boys First Rollercoaster Ride

We spent the day at Magic Kingdom.

We took the train. We caught the Dream along with Mickey and Move it Shake it shows in front of the castle.

We enjoyed fresh baked cinnamon rolls and other delights from the Main Street Bakery before heading off to cover most of Fantasyland.

We caught a quick lunch at Pinocchio Village Haus which turned out to be a big mistake as mom my came down with a case of food poisoning from the meatball sub.

After the Country Bear Jamboree we sent her and Great Grannie back to the hotel to recuperate and took the boys to ride Dumbo and then on to Mickey's Toon Fair to ride their first rollercoaster - The Barnstormer at Goofy's Wiseacre Farm.

We screamed and held our hands in the air. And when it was over we ran back to get in line to do it again before going on to check out Mickey's House, the playground and Donalds' luckily dry boat.

With just minutes to spare before close and fireworks we managed to squeeze in the It's a Small World ride. As we came out the fireworks had begun. Our vantage point from near the carousel was an interesting one as the larger fireworks were well off behind us, but the smaller incredibly bright ones were in front of us coming from nearby the castle lighting up the whole area with dazzling light. A piece of string from one of the nearby fireworks landed on Connor's head as he sat in the stroller watching the fireworks display.

After the fireworks we made our way towards the monorail only to find a train come in, disembark it's passengers, but not open its doors to take on new ones. An announcement came on regarding technical difficulties, and as we waited 3 trains came and left on the other line before another train finally creeped its way in to our depot once again. The once long line which we were towards the back of had been dwindling, and we decided it was time to find an alternate route as well. We caught a boat over to the Polynesian for our late dinner reservations at Ohana. We were treated to the water show of dragons and sea creatures along the way. Despite the almost 45 minute delay waiting on the monorail we managed to make it dinner only 5 minutes late for our reservation. Dinner at Ohana was as wonderful as we remembered from our previous visit. We will definitely add it to our list of all time favorites.