Disney Day 2

(I seem to have more self-discipline about getting a segment of these pictures loaded and on my blog each day than I do about unpacking our freaking suitcases. So far I'm only managing to curse their presence in the living room/foyer, and that doesn't seem to be getting them unpacked.)

Day Two we spent in the Animal Kingdom, which is the one park I had never been to before. The first section of the park is not really all that great. If I were doing it again, I'd skip it. There are some neat animals but nothing better than you'd see at a zoo, and you can go to a zoo a whole lot cheaper than Disney. There's my tip for the day: skip the front half of Animal Kingdom, and head for the continents.

Disney has more giant Christmas trees than one can even fathom. This one was at the Animal Kingdom entrance and was decorated entirely in an amazing animal motif:



Oh, an exception to the whole "skip the front part" advice: the "Tree of Life." It is a giant tree with hundreds of animals carved into the trunk. These were all taken in or on part of the tree:









There was a section of the park with all kinds of different drums that kids (or adults) could play.


This man is from the Congo and was playing a really cool instrument:


One highlight of Animal Kingdom was a really great petting zoo. (It's on Conservation Island or something like that, and it's the ONLY thing worth doing there. Pet the animals and get back on the train.) One thing that was cool about it was they had brushes available for kids to brush the animals rather than just walking around trying to touch them. They LOVED brushing the goats and sheep:







Another highlight was the face painting. In the past, when we've done "face painting," my kids have only ever had a little football or rainbow or something painted on their cheeks. They were willing to spend their own money (and more than a little of it!) to get these great elaborate face-paintings. (See my post from 2 days ago for close-ups of Joshua's and Lauren's faces.)

Ethan's reaction upon looking in the mirror:




Ethan's favorite ride (and one that was on pretty much everyone's top 10 list) was Khali River Rapids. I think David and the boys rode it 4 times. I rode it once and got completely drenched, so I opted out when they returned to it later in the day.



Lauren and Lane had fun playing together while we waiting for everyone else to come off of the rapids.


We ate a really great lunch at a restaurant called Tusker House in "Africa." It was an enormous buffet with all types of food to satisfy the most adventurous and the pickiest of eaters. I had to take a picture of my brother Ben's plate, because he definitely falls into the latter category. His idea of adventurous eating is to try a wheat roll instead of a white one. Imagine his surprise at learning that the tofu cubes and pearl cous-cous he put on his plate were not chicken and corn after all!



Me, David, and the kids on a bridge in Animal Kingdom:


As we were leaving when the park was closing, there was a giant block party going on at the front gate with entertainment by Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy.



We met quite a few characters at Animal Kingdom, so I've included just a few of them. You can watch the progression of Lauren's comfort level with them as she grew used to seeing them. (We went to Animal Kingdom 2 different times, hence the two outfits.)

This was as close as she would get to Rafiki:


Still not certain about Terk:


Getting comfortable with Timon:


Lovin' on Pluto:

Disney Day 1

Actually, I should start with the night before we arrived at Disney. We spent the night at a hotel outside of Disney World so that we could get started at the park early the next day instead of having to waste a park day with travel. Ethan slept in my mom's room that night, and we thought that would leave in our room one bed for David and me and one for Joshua and Lauren. Then, they discovered the sofa bed. My kids have never slept on a sofa bed, so this was quite exciting. Josh begged me to let him sleep in it, so I did, and then Lauren insisted she wanted to sleep there, too. So, we ended up with an entire empty bed in our hotel room that night. If I'd know a sofa bed would be such a thrill, I could have saved a lot of money on Disney tickets!


In the lobby of our hotel, The Grand Floridian, there was a beautiful tree:


and a life-sized gingerbread house:


Skipping toward the monorail:


We filled up many an elevator:


Riding the monorail:




We spent Day 1 in the Magic Kingdom where we rode Pirates of the Caribbean first as it's what Joshua and Ethan had been most looking forward to. They loved it, but as we would find out during 90% of rides during the trip, Lauren did not like the dark parts. She was scared of the dark parts, the loud parts, the interactive parts . . . you can't even imagine what she was like during the fireworks. She trembled from head to toe the entire time.

Here's Ben and Renae at the MK entrance: (Renae, if one of your pics of me and David here turned out well, I'd like it. The ones on my camera don't have the MK sign in the background . . . among other problems.)


Lauren on the Mad Tea Party teacups, her favorite ride by FAR:


Ethan on the carousel:


Lauren and her Gaga on the carousel:


Josh and Ethan at the Monsters, Inc. show:


With a nutcracker:


Cinderella's Castle with icicle lights:

We're Back

If you weren't aware of where I've been the past week, we went with my entire family to Disney World. Sorry for not mentioning it. While I'm sure it's unlikely that any burglars read my blog, I really didn't feel like being burgled while we were gone. I figured it wasn't likely given that we don't have much worth stealing anyway. Seriously, you would have to spend more money buying those silly black ski masks and, I don't know, crowbars or something, than the value of anything you would find in our house. Except maybe David's trumpets, but if that's what you're after, spare us the time and expense (and knowing me, injury) of broken window glass, and just let me know. I'll arrange to have them put on the street for you somewhere. (I jest, dear. I love your trumpets.)

So, that's where we were. I will probably be blogging about it for the next six years or so since I have 568 Disney pictures. (That is not one of my typical sarcastic exaggerations; I really have 568 pictures.) For today, I'll just say that we had a fantastic trip and are glad to be home.

Really? Did you believe me? That that was all I would say? Ha!

For the drive down, my mom and I rode in our minivan with our three kids plus one of my nieces. (David rode with one of my brothers in my mom's car, which carried most of our luggage. Yeah, that's right. For some reason I wasn't offered the option of riding with the luggage instead of the four kids. Maybe next year.)

It took us 8 1/2 hrs to get there thanks to the 6 or 7 stops we made on the way down. (Mom and I lost count and aren't sure if we stopped 6 or 7 times, but we both agree it felt more like 100.) The good news is on the way home we drove at night, so the kids slept a lot of the way, and we made it in just over 6 1/2 hrs. Yes, TWO HOURS faster driving at night with the kids asleep. I foresee a lot of Benadryl in my children's futures.

We did not get home until after midnight last night and are all extremely exhausted. My dear dad, who did not accompany us but who did coordinate most of the trip for us, decided to make a pot of his homemade spaghetti sauce for my sister-in-law and me today. When I went by earlier, he surprised me with it and said he figured we wouldn't feel like cooking today. Have I ever mentioned that I have the world's best parents?

For today, I'll just post a few pictures. My plan is to cover different parts of the trip over the next week or so rather than just doing massive Disney photo/story overload. Enjoy these cute faces for now:

My little Tinkerbell:



A goofy hat for a goofy kid:



Since he's missing his own front teeth, Joshua chose a dinosaur face so he could at least have some fake incisors:

Thankful Friday

I should have saved the "All I Want for Christmas" title for today. Josh pulled another tooth out at school today. That's four so far. He looks way too old now.

• All of my kids are great sleepers. They go to bed easily, and they sleep all night.
  
• I got to spend some time catching up with a dear friend this morning.
• We are all healthy right now.
• Joshua's school. He goes to the same Christian school I went to when I was a kid, and I am just so thankful that we are able to send him there right now. I was just looking at a nativity ornament he made in class and realized how blessed we are that he can be in such a great Christian school.
• BEAUTIFUL weather today! After the past couple of days, it is more than welcome.
• David taking off early to spend the afternoon with us
• I was able to finish shopping for the in-law's today and spend some precious time with my kids while doing so. The weather is so nice we decided to walk everywhere we needed to go at the "new" shopping center. Even stopped in at Atlanta Bread to color someting for Grandmom and Granddad so we could get that box in the mail.

All I Want for Christmas

One more and he can sing, "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth . . ."

The other one should be out by next week. It's extremely loose, but he waits until they pretty much fall out from natural causes.

Murphy's Law

1. If you put clean sheets on every bed in your house, within 48 hours you will forget to tell your baby sitter to put a pull-up on your 3 year-old at bedtime.

2. That will also be the only bed in your house that, for reasons you can't fathom, has no mattress pad on it.

3. If your child asks for a pot to make a mudcake in, and you give him the top to your double boiler because you only use it about once a year, you will forget that and make the buckeyes which require that once-a-year pot. You will also have forgetten to make him bring it back inside, and when you remember you need it, there will be a massive deluge in your backyard, and the pot will be somewhere in the woods behind your house, currently holding a very soggy mudcake . . . which is probably nowhere near as good as buckeyes.

O, Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, Please Give My Kids Something to Do

We finally put up our tree on Monday. I had told the kids we had to wait until daddy got home because the pieces were too heavy for me to get out of the attic alone. However, by around 3:00 Monday afternoon, the kids were in full fight-and-fuss-till-mom-tries-to-sell-us-on-ebay-again mode, and it was clear that they needed a diversion from each other. It was either let them fight each other to the death over whose turn it was on the slide or risk my life climbing into the attic to bring down the Christmas tree.

If you know me at all, the mere thought of me even walking in the attic, much less obtaining an item that weighs more than I do, should cause at least a slight panic. I trip and fall an average of 2-3 times a day just walking around my kitchen. Narrow beams and insulation are an ER visit waiting to happen. Miraculously, I incurred only a minor scrape while retrieving the tree. I think God knew my kids' continued existence my have been dependent on my getting that tree.

So, after the first attempt in which I got the sections mixed up and put the middle of the tree on the bottom and vice versa, I got it up. Given my accident-prone nature, you'd better believe we own the pre-lit kind. So, all that was left was to put on the ornaments. After lecturing the kids soundly on how breakable some of them are and how they are to use two hands at all times and be extremely careful, I proceeded to show them how to hang the ornaments very carefully. You probably guessed it. Slippery Fingers here dropped the first one. So, after a visual demonstration on how glass shatters, the kids put on all the breakable ornaments, and I stuck to the candy canes.



It's amazing how much nicer it looks in real life.

And, since I told him I was posting a picture, Joshua wanted me to show off the tree on his dresser, too:



Lauren has one just like it on hers. Both were assembled and decorated without injury.

Lauren's Birthday Party in Pictures

Here's the cake. It took all day Friday to make since I made each section in a bowl, and let me tell ya, it takes a long time to bake a cake in a bowl. Even longer to bake four. But, I was happy with how it turned out, and more importantly, Lauren loved it. She said, "You're making it colorful . . . I love colorful!"



Playing a game where they had to fly like butterflies and land on a flower when the music stopped. If the number flower they landed on got called, they were out. Last one in won the game.



Making a craft:



Posing with the cake:



Preparing to blow out the candles:



Listening to her Fisher Price "MP3 player" that she got for her b'day. (It's programmed with like 25 songs; it's not actually programmable.) Is it just me, or does she look way older than she ought to?

The Gingerbread House

It looks like they're all getting along so nicely and working together so well, doesn't it? For the most part, they were. But, then there was Joshua.

Mostly I'm blogging about this just for the sake of preserving it for all posterity, so that when Joshua grows up and has a child one day, and that child has a smart aleck mouth and always wants the last word, I can pull this out and remind Joshua that what goes around, comes around. (I feel the need to state, for those of you who don't know Josh very well, that he is, for the most part, a very well-behaved and compliant child. He rarely breaks a rule and often double-checks with me about whether it is okay to do something if he is unsure. I never have to ask if he's gotten in trouble at school, because I know that it's about as likely to happen as pigs flying. But, at home . . . let's just say he inherited a smart mouth and an inclination toward complaint from someone.)

So, we started on the gingerbread house with lots of enthusiasm and excitement. It didn't take long, however, before expressions of delight turn to cries of complaint. "She's not letting me put any of those on . . . I can't reach . . . he's got more candies than I do . . . I wanted to do that part . . ." Fill in the rest with any number of whines and complaints, and you've got Josh nailed.

So, about halfway through the decorating, I got a phone call from David. Since the kids did their usual "ratchet it up a couple of notches when mom's on the phone" routine, I told them that no one was allowed to touch the gingerbread house or put any candies on it at all until I was off the phone. When I hung up the phone, one of the kids felt the need to point out to me that Joshua had put a candy on after I said not to. After reminding that child that a better approach would have been to gently remind Joshua to obey instead of tattling, I put Josh in time-out for disobeying. I didn't intend it to be a long drawn-out big deal - just a short time away from the fun of decorating the gingerbread house.

In his usual woe-is-me manner, he suffered less than patiently through his time-out, but even then, I wasn't going to make a big deal. I called him over to me after a few minutes and asked if he was ready to obey and have a good attitude instead of complaining and whining. His response? I kid you not, this is what he said: "Are YOU ready to stop whining about me whining?"

" "

Those empty quotation marks would be me, speechless. Needless to say, this gingerbread house will be remembered as one decorated primarily by children other than Joshua. His afternoon was not a fun one after that. If only I could figure out where he got such a smart mouth from.

(Mom, you'll appreciate this: When I was talking to him afterward about how none of this was the fault of the person who tattled on him for disobeying, but his own fault for making wrong choices, mostly to talk disrespectfully to me, he said, "I bet you used to say things like that to Gaga when you were a kid." Never, right?)

Thankful Friday

• After years of good intentions, we finally made a gingerbread house this year. I'll make a separate post about it.
• Our van repair, which we were told by two different mechanics would cost almost $2,000, ended up costing under $300. Merry Christmas to us.
• Lauren had a great 3rd birthday, and our living room looked appropriately like a pink and purple princess machine exploded therein. (She's pretty sure she's going to be four when she has her birthday party tomorrow despite my explanations that it doesn't work that way.)
  
• Joshua and Ethan earned an extra quarter in their allowance this week by playing so nicely with each other most of the week.
  
• I don't have a headache today, which is good because I have a LOT of work to do getting ready for Lauren's party tomorrow and an open house on Sunday.
  

I don't think gender stereotypes are just that

A conversation I just overheard between Ethan and Lauren:

Lauren, do you want to play football and wrestling?
No. Want to play babies?
No. Want to play dinosaurs?
No. Want to play princess?
No. Want to play Indiana Jones?
No. Want to play leggos?
Yeah!!!!!!!!!

Prayer chains with kids

Thanks to Grandma, my kids love to make paper "countdown chains" out of strips of construction paper. We've been counting down on a Disney World/Christmas chain since early November.

A few weeks ago, I came across a great idea while reading Guideposts magazine. Simply write someone's name (or anything to pray for) on each link, and then each night when you take off that day's link, pray for that person.

The boys and I sat down last week and wrote on theirs, and it has really added to our bedtime prayer routine. I let them come up with whatever prayer requests they wanted, except that they had to be for other people and not for themselves. Their chains include grandparents, cousins, Josh's teacher, kids at St. Jude, friends, the people who ring the bells (Salvation Army workers, lol), etc. It's been a great way to encourage them to think of others this time of year.

Happy Birthday, Lauren

I can't believe my baby is three years old. When she woke up this morning, I said, "Lauren, do you know what today is?" She answered, "Christmas??!!"

As I type, it is 8:42 pm. This time three years ago, Lauren was exactly 20 minutes old. I didn't get to hold her until 8:35. Always wanting to do things her own way, she wouldn't warm up right away, so the nurses insisted on putting her under a warming light. I thought that was a dumb idea and that she just needed me to hold her. Finally, 12 minutes (that felt like hours) after she was born, I held my beautiful daughter on my chest.

My, how the years have flown.