day 1: animal kingdom

After driving all day Christmas Day, we were ready to hit the ground running Monday morning at Animal Kingdom.

For several weeks I had been obsessed with making a plan for Disney. I read the Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2012 in a day and had signed up at http://touringplans.com/. Best. Decision. Ever. It was well worth the money. It gave you the inside track on what parks are the best to go to on what days and it also gave you different schedules and plans to choose from for rides at the park. We somewhat followed their plan/advice all week except for one day and that one day was the most frustrating day for us at the Magic Kingdom. Unbeknownst to us at the time of purchasing tickets and hotel, was the fact that the week in between Christmas and New Years is the busiest time of the year for Disney. However, because we followed a "plan" we never waited more than 20 minutes for a ride.

When we got to Animal Kingdom, we went straight back to ride Kilimanjaro Safari. As a family, I think this one of our favorite rides because we all enjoyed it. Here we are getting ready to leave...

Some of the animals and scenery we saw as we rode...

Taking a picture after our safari

When then left the Africa portion of the park and headed over to the Asia. The girls stopped to play some bongos in Africa along the way. They had the best time!

The Tree of Life. It was gorgeous!

Emma posing for a picture. If you look closely you can see her face is splotchy from crying. She was determined that she wanted to ride Expedition Everest with Jason. Expedition Everest is a roller coaster that the track had been torn up by a Yeti. At one point of the ride, the track ends and you begin to go backwards through a cave where you hear the Yeti roar and you see flashes of him. She was terrified!

Another favorite ride from the week was Kali River Rapids. I think we rode it 3 times that day. Here is Emma and Jason.

Ava was unsure if she wanted to ride it because she was not thrilled about getting wet. None of us got wet when we rode it, so we assured Ava that she probably wouldn't get too wet. Of course, she as sitting in "that spot". She got completely drenched. Fortunately, she loved every minute of it!

We had our first character experience that morning. Animal Kingdom was the least crowded of all the parks when it came to meeting the characters.

Emma and Mickey

Emma, Ava and Minnie

Emma and Goofy

Emma, Ava and Donald Duck

Emma and Pocohontas

Lila and Pocahontas (she was the only one Lila would take a picture with)

The girls with Thumper and his girl

On our way to Dinoland, we stopped to watch A Bug's Life show in 3D. All of the 3D shows at Disney were so good. This one, however, frightened my kids. At one point we had all 3 kids screaming. In fact, Ava was so traumatized that she refused to wear any 3D glasses in any other 3D shows we saw that week.

They do such little cute tricks in A Bug's Life to make you feel like it is real. They make it stink when the stinkbug come out. They spray a little water on you to make you feel like a bug is spitting on you. At the end, you have to wait for all the bugs to exit the show. You can feel them crawling behind you as they leave!

A happy girl!

Emma in Dinoland

Lila kept yelling, "UP, UP!" on this ride.

After we left Dinoland, we headed to the Finding Nemo show. It was incredible. All the shows are such a production. We all loved any of the shows we got to see. We could never find time that day to see the Lion King show which we were all bummed about.

The last thing we did before we left the park was watch the holiday parade.

Favorites:
Jason: Expedition Everest
Kelly: A Bug's Life 3D
Emma: Kali River Rapids
Ava: Kali River Rapids
Lila: Kilimanjaro Safari
As a family: Kilimanjaro Safari

a christmas surprise

We actually celebrated our Christmas and Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. My family was all sick with a stomach bug, so the Christmas day festivities with them were cancelled. Even though we hated they were all sick, selfishly it worked a little to our advantage. See we had been holding a secret from our girls...

WE WERE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!

Actually, only I had been holding the secret for a few weeks. Jason, however, had been holding the secret for months. He had been planning this surprise for us for a while. His plan to tell us we were leaving the next day for Disney World was to tell me along with the girls on Christmas morning. Well, he ran into some snags with his plan and had to let me in on his secret earlier. Thank goodness he did! I am a planner, and I possibly would have lost it if he told me we were leaving the next day for Disney.

The plan was to do our Christmas and Santa Claus on Christmas Eve and then go to the Christmas Eve service that night. On Christmas day we planned on traveling all day to Disney to be ready to hit the parks Monday morning.

The last present the girls opened was a box that was wrapped up and filled to the top with red and black balloons. At the bottom of the box was an invitation to leave for Disney the next day.

Unfortunately, I have not gotten the video from Jason of them opening the box nor did we take pictures of the event since we did the video. But let me promise you, you are not missing much. It was as if it did not register to them that we were going. I really do not think they even thought it was a possibility. The girls basically shrugged their shoulders did a little "yippee" and went back to playing with their toys. Not the reaction we thought we would get.

Here's some pics of what Santa Claus brought the girls...

birthday cake for Jesus

Our children's ministry put together a "Happy Birthday, Jesus" party kit for our church families. The kit included a birthday cake, icing, a candle, a cake topper and instructions for activities your family could do while the cake baked. We did ours on the 23rd of December. This is one of the girls favorite activities that we do at Christmas. They love to help cook!

The girls with the finished product...We sang "Happy Birthday" to Jesus!

gingerbread houses

One night after we got our PJs on, we all sat down to put together a mini gingerbread village. I had received it at an office Christmas party. We only got 2 houses put together. This kit was not the easiest to put together. We also had a little girl who was trying to eat all the goodies that we were trying to put on the houses.

emma's winter party

This year I am the Room Sponsor for Emma's class. When, it came to finding ideas for her Winter Party, I went to trusty old Pinterest to find some ideas.

Emma with some of her friends...

For their art/craft project, they made a snowman out of mini marshmallows and pretzel sticks. Then, the kids took big marshmallows and dipped them in white paint to make snow.

For our game, we played "Pin the Nose on the Snowman". The kids had a blast! After a while, we realized that they could see through their blindfold. We had an idea to put a Christmas bag over their head. That seemed to work. Please don't call child services on us.

I found a cute snowman cupcake on Pinterest and a mom in Emma's class was willing to make them. They turned out so cute!

At the end, the kids played a game using a wrapped book that they brought from home. They sat in a circle and passed the book as they music played. When the music stopped, they kept they book they were left with.

christmas programs

Emma's Holiday Program at Richland...

She practiced and practiced! I can not tell you how many times we heard, "O, Hannakuah"!

Ava and Lila's Christmas program at 2nd Pres!

When they first got on the stage Lila was all smiles and she was pointing at the Christmas tree shouting, "Tree, Tree!". Then she turned around and noticed all the people, and we never got another smile out of her. Her class sang "Away in a Manger" and "Jingle Bells".

Unfortunately, we could never get a good picture of Ava. She was standing behind a couple of kids. You can just see the tip of her white bow. Her class sang "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer".