Day at Disney

Thank you to my brother Frank and Dave for giving us 

5 tickets to Disneyworld for my birthday.

We finally found the time to go!

We got up early Saturday morning and headed to the parks.

Since the tickets were my birthday present,

I went to the Guest Relations, said it was my bday

and got to wear a Mickey pin that said

"I'm celebrating my Birthday!"

All day long people said "Happy Birthday" to me.

First park we went  to was Animal Kingdom.

This is the big Discovery  Tree in the island 

in the middle of the park.

 The morning and evening were chilly

enough for jackets and layers.

(I for one had 3 shirts on plus my Mickey jacket!)

The day tho was warm enough for t-shirts.

Caleb was very afraid to go on the Dinosaur ride.

Christina told them to make faces. 

I wonder why he was afraid of the dinosaur ride?

See Mike, Caleb and I in the back seat? 

Thats how Caleb rode the entire ride.

Twice.

Christina and Zachary are in front of Mike.

Caleb did not want to go on a twirling coaster

so we let Zachary and Christina go on it while

we took Caleb on one more his style.

"I was brave and conquered the flying dinosaur!"

We got fast passes to return to Mt Everest.

That is Zacharys fav ride.

Here the boys and Christina are waiting

for Mike and I to come back with their

cheeseburgers and drinks.

After lunch we went on a safari ride.

We saw hippos, rhinos, giraffes, lions, gazelles, 

antelopes, elephants,and tons of other animals.

Then we headed back to ride Mt. Everest.

Caleb was not about to go on it,

so we did the child swap.

Zachary got to ride twice.  First with Christina,

then with Mike and I.
 He would of gone a dozen more if we had time!

See Everest in the background?
Its a 3 minute roller coaster thru
Yeti land.

As we were heading out of Animal Kingdom 

a parade was on its way so we stopped 

and watched.

We headed over to Uncle Owiees restaurant.

He's a chef at the Grand Floridian.

Its a beautiful hotel that reminds you

of  Del Coronado in south CA.

He used his employee discount to 

help pay for dinner. He chatted with us

for a few minutes then had to head back to work.

While the boys were waiting for their dinner

they played video games.

This is the inside of the hotel.

It also had gingerbread houses you could

walk thru.

After dinner we headed over to Magic Kingdom.

There we had longer lines and could only ride

 Haunted Mansion and Pirates.

We would of ridden more, but the boys were

getting droopy eyed. And the last thing you want

is to have to carry asleep or sleepy children

across all of Disney, to the monorail and the tram

before getting to the car.  No thank you!

The castle is lit up so beautifully

you just want to stand there and stare 

at it while the colors slowly change.

Thank you bro and Dave for the tickets!

We love going there and we had a 

WONDERFUL TIME!

  If you notice in the pictures that Calebs front tooth is totally crooked,

its because it is.   We are soo happy it is finally out!

Decorating for the Holidays

We decorated our house for the Holidays the weekend after Thanksgiving.

Going thru Christmas stuff is almost as fun as opening presents.

Every item pulled out got an "ooohhh' or an 'aaaahhh'.

The cats even came in to see what all the excitement was.

No dead dry tree for us.  Fake will do just fine.

Last Christmas Mike put the lights away in my closet 

and more of them lasted the year. 

The attic is just too hot and humid in the

summer for the lights to last.

The kids had to decorate themselves first as is 

our tradition dating back to Christina as a young child.

I love how after decorating the tree you find that its

 leaning to the front and right side because 

90% of the ornaments are in that area.

Look at ALL those ornaments

in one area!

"If I hide here they won't see me attacking the ornaments."

"Ouch! Your stepping on my tail!"

And the stockings were hung on the wall with care

in hopes that Mikey will let Santa come thru there.

Mike and Christina decorated the outside of the house.

While they did the lights I was busy planting a bunch 

of new plants and putting down all the free mulch we got.

All thats left is to get some sod, but looks great so far!

The boys and their friends were riding bikes in the cul-de-sac or

 playing in this contraption they built with all these

items from our backyard.

That night Christina made sweet potato casserole for us.

What huge marshmallows!

Yes a marshmallow not an egg coming out of his mouth!

She said, 'the house smells like grammas.'

Yumm!!  Great job Christina! It was wonderful!

The boys got their report cards this week. 

Zachary got an A in Language Arts and B's in all the other subjects.

Then he brought home an Honor Roll certificate.  He is one of 6 (out of 18) that made Honor Roll.

Yay Zachary!!!!

Caleb's report was very good also.  He got an S in everything.

Kindergarten and 1st grade are graded on a S or US for Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory.

But we know he is doing really well by the papers he brings back from class.

He gets 100's on most every paper.

Christina has worked her butt off for her college papers the past  few weeks. 

It is definitely alot more work than high school was. 

Mostly its reports thats she has to write out. 

 But she is working hard and getting thru it very well.

She starts her new job today!!!

She is working at Universal Studios at Burger Digs.

Its in Jurassic Park at IOA.  She is very excited.

  Not only does she have a great part-time, not seasonal, 

job but she gets free admission to Universal,

 IOA, Sea World, Busch Gardens, and several others.

 She will also get a few free tickets so Ben and friends can go with her.

In other news, Caleb lost his front right  tooth last night!

Yay!!  That tooth was so over due to come out.

He was even able to twist it around backwards.  EWW!

It finally just fell out when he was bouncing around the house

last night.  The tooth fairy came and he got $2.

Which is $8 less than Mike bribed him with several weeks

ago to let him pull it out.

Mike has taken over half of the leadership role

and is in training to be a den leader.

 We had Calebs meeting here last week.

 The littler guys are definitely more rambunctious 

 than Zacharys troop.

But overall it went very well and we are looking forward

 to Mike being a leader of Calebs den.