More December Stuff

A little more than a week before Christmas, we had the Haun Family Christmas party, and Santa came!  We've been lucky in the past few years that my Grandma is personal friends with "the real Santa," and he has been able to come each year to our party.  I have so many pictures of Santa that he shows up as one of my recognized people in my Amazon Prime Photos App.  Unfortunately, this year, Santa was not feeling well and couldn't make it.  A "different" Santa came and filled in nicely, but Dax and Cora pointed out to each other than it wasn't the "real Santa" this year.  Oh well.  We got some cute pictures anyway.

The problem that happens when two pictures are being taken at the same time is that only half of the people are looking at each camera.  And let's face it.  Dax is practically incapable of looking into a camera at all.  Oh well.

Dax is getting pretty big to sit on the old man's lap, but he still wanted to take his turn!

 I like how my Grandma is photobombing in this one:

 Cora is much more lap-sized.

 Cheese!

 The week before Christmas we followed another tradition and went to see Juanito Bandito's Christmas Carol.  They gave out free mustaches, so we all had to put one on:

I mustache you a question...how good do we look?

 I think Dax was the cutest (and, he's actually looking into the camera!)

Juanito Bandito sang about how he doesn't like Christmas (he loves it!), but then, as he usually does, he comes up with a plan to stick it to Santa for putting him on the naughty list all of those years.  In the end, though, he discovers the real meaning of Christmas and maybe smooches an elf or two.

We waited until Christmas Eve Eve (or Christmas Adam, if that is what you like to call it) to go and see the lights at Temple Square.  Preston needed a break from the kids and also needed to work on our ongoing floor replacement project, so he stayed home, but the rest of us braved the cold and the crowds.  As soon as we got there it started snowing a little.  Cora wanted to catch the snowflakes on her tongue.

We got there pretty early, and they just turned on the lights.  It was still light enough to see the nativity and the kids at the same time.  This time Dax and Cora both forgot how to look at the camera...its contagious!)

 But soon is was getting dark and the lights and the temple looked beautiful...even if it wasn't a "red tree year."

 Kids and lights.  (DAX!  Where are you looking!?!?!?)

After a little bit, the snow turned into slushy rain kind of stuff, so we snapped a few more pictures and headed home to watch a movie and eat through some of the mountain of treats that had been accumulating on our counter.  

The big day was almost here!  More on that later...

Remember Early December

Okay, so wow...Christmas, right?  Takes up a lot of time, but it is so worth it in the end!  I will try and catch up on all things blog, or at least give a very brief summary.

So, in my last post we had just returned from sunny Florida, and it snowed the night we got back.  It was good to see Olive again, and she had fun shoving her face into the snow:

My front-door wreath finally wore out last year, and I couldn't find one I loved to replace it.  So, Cora saw this door decoration at Target for like $5, so this was our wreath this year.

I sure hope it comes off okay :).

We got a gingerbread house kit from Costco one day.  The kids and I had a fun time putting it together, though there were a few squabbles over who was holding the frosting and who was putting which piece of candy where, but we worked it out and it turned out pretty cute!

Of course, my kids are not the kind of kids who want their gingerbread house to sit around for a week or two looking pretty (and getting stale)...oh no.  Our beautiful gingerbread house was pulled to pieces and shoved into three little mouths about 0.002 seconds after this picture was taken.

I was kind of a slacker on Christmas cards this year...hopefully you have gotten yours by now, sorry if they didn't make it in time for Christmas!  I somehow never got around to getting any family pictures taken this year, so I tried to have a quick impromptu photo shoot with the kids at home.  Everyone was willing to smile, except Cora.  Even the dog sat still!

Good dog, Olive!  Isn't she pretty?  She is looking so lovingly into the camera because I am holding a piece of cheese up right behind it.  She looooooves cheese with a deep and abiding love.  Can't you see it in her eyes?

 Arden is pretty!  But we already knew that.

 And Dax is pretty handsome, too.

 I finally talked Cora into sitting down for a picture.  Isn't she sweet when she isn't being sour?

I can't believe how much they have grown up this year!  Arden hasn't said anything to me specifically, but I got the vibe from her this year that she isn't quite sure she believes in Santa this year.  *sigh*  I knew it couldn't last forever, but it was sad for me just the same.  She didn't share her doubts with the other two kids though, and they were still firmly on the Santa bandwagon, which was fun.  I hope they can hang in there for another year or two, I'm not ready for the magic to be over!

I'll blog more tomorrow about more of our December/Christmas activities.

Orlando Cray-cation - Part 3

Are you still with me?  Then you are obviously pretty bored.  Sorry.  But if I don't write it down I'll forget.

Anyway, we were in the home stretch now!  Only a couple of full days left.  Back to Universal we go - Islands of Adventure this time!  Let the adventure begin!

Where to go first...Harry Potter Land, duh.  Here we are entering Hogsmeade.  We are so early the Butterbeer cart isn't even open yet!  Don't worry kids, as sure as gators live in the swamp, there will be Butterbeer today.

Wait, stop and smile in front of this cute Gryffindor snowman!  

Our first ride was the Hogwarts ride (I can't remember the actual name of the ride).  Cora wasn't sure she wanted to ride on it since the Gringott's ride wasn't her favorite, but she wanted to go through the line anyway.  I actually like the line on this one better than the ride.

The line goes all through Hogwarts, through the Herbology greenhouse, by Dumbledore's office, through the portrait gallery, even by the picture of the Fat Lady.  All fun.  But the ride makes me so dizzy I have to close my eyes through most of it, and I'm still a little wobbly getting on the moving sidewalk at the end.  I guess I am just old.

After we rode that ride and the Hippogriff roller coaster, we finally headed to the place Daxton had been anticipating for a long time:

 Preston gallantly sacrificed his arm to this T-Rex to save the kids,  Run, kids!

 Then we went to visit a velociraptor.  He decided that he wanted to nibble on my ear:

 This is me right before I ran away.  Cora isn't too sure about the whole situation but Dax thought it was hilarious.

After Dax rode the Jurassic Park boat ride 3 or 4 times in a row and we waited while the kids played in the Jurassic Play land for a while and rode the sky ride, we ate lunch!  The kids got ice cream with their kids meals, and they were a little bit excited about it.  

After me, Dax, Preston and Grandpa got brave and rode the Hulk Rollercoaster (where they make you take EVERYTHING out of your pockets and even x-ray you to make sure you are free from keys or even chap stick.  I thought this was a little excessive until Cora found someone's earring on the ground that had apparently been flung out of someone's very ear by the force of this coaster), we headed over to Seuss Land.  Arden wanted to stand by the sign and get a picture because Dr. Seuss is one of her favorites, and they even share a birthday:

Look who we found!  The Grinch:

 Silly kids:

After we rode all the rides in Suess-land, we headed over to the new King Kong ride:

 It actually wasn't as scary as we thought it would be, which was good because Cora went on it and was pretty worried.  It actually made her brave enough to try the Harry Potter ride later that day:

I love the portrait gallery!

 They almost decided at the very last minute that Cora was too short for the ride, but they eventually let her on and she loved it.  We then took turns taking the kids on the Hippogriff coaster about 8 times in a row.  Finally, the promised Butterbeer made its appearance.  And we found the perfect bench to eat it on.

 Another great day!

The next day was our last full day, and we saved the Magic Kingdom for last.  Yay for castles!
 

We went to the new Seven Dwarfs Mine Train ride.  They had fun stuff to do while we waited in the superlong line (no Fastpasses...boo!).  The ride itself was fun, but not as fun as I thought it should have been when we waited for about an hour.

That was by far the longest line we waited in.  We walked right on to the Little Mermaid:

And the train had no line either, so we decided to ride it over to the Haunted Mansion, which actually took longer than walking but oh well.

We hit all the highlights.  Pirates of the Carribbean.  Buzz Lightyear.  Even Splash Mountain!

We did wait in line for a while for the Jungle Jingle Cruise, but we got a really funny guide so it was okay.

When the sun started going down, I started getting a little sad.  But we still had time to go on Space Mountain, and Cora made sure we fit in the obligatory "It's a Small World."  

One more carousel ride:

And then our last ride...Space Mountain.  Are you sad this is your last ride?

 Actually, we had time to ride it twice, but then it was OVER.  They were starting up "Mickey's Christmas Party," which we hadn't paid the extra $90 for, so we were oh-so-sweetly shuffled towards the door.  But they can't stop me from taking pictures on the way out!  Here is the pretty wintery castle:

 And it was snowing like crazy on Main Street!  Dax tried catching some on his tongue and quickly discovered fake snow doesn't taste as good as the real stuff.

 Arden one more time:

 We did get one more ride...the ferry back to the parking lot (have I ever mentioned that I dislike the ferry?  I do.  Not as much on the way back as on the way in though.).  I had forgotten that it was the supermoon this week until just then, so I made Cora hold up the moon for me as we chugged across the lake:

 Goodbye Disneyworld!  I'm exhausted!

 We spent our last morning swimming and soaking up the sunshine.  And packing of course.  Yuck.

Goodbye pool!  Goodbye house with palm trees and neighborhood I took boring laps around all week instead of running through the swamp!

It was a super fun trip, but I think we were all a lot more tired when we got home than we were when we left!  Now I need another week off to recover from my vacation :).  But I still wish we could go back and do it all again.