CHRISTMAS

It doesn't seem like a week ago we were in FL! This week has flown by, and I am proud to say I NEVER hit a mall this whole Christmas season! I would be even prouder if I said Disney WAS the Christmas gift. I couldn't imagine NOTHING under the Christmas tree on Christmas day.. so we did buy a "few" things. On the top of the list was "ZHU ZHU's!" I am lucky to have a cousin as ADD and neurotic as I am who was on a Zhu Zhu mission. We pretty much have almost the whole Zhu Zhu set. Here is a picture of the whole set up.





The girls seem to thoroughly enjoy playing with these "faux" hamsters.. Funny, as they don't care very much for their poor guinea pig!


Keelyn and Ryley received a Nintendo DSi for Christmas, nice, as they played with them all day long. Delaney LOVED playing with her Little Tikes workshop.. and Addy, sat on the kitchen floor most of the day playing with everyone's Zhu Zhu's.

I made a butterflied leg of lamb, that, KUDOS to ME, came out FANTASTIC! We all sat and had dinner, now the crew is watching the Polar Express.

Speaking of... we, once again, won tickets for the Polar Express. We headed off on our journey to the North Pole on Sat. Dec. 5th. And, once again, IT SNOWED!!!! It was so magical! It snowed last year too! The girls loved it and we were joined by our good friends the Porters. (Keelyn's "boyfriends" family) boy, we LOVE them!

We were home for a week after that (Jack was in Calgary BC) so I was not able to QUITE complain of the FREEZING cold, snowy weather we were having as it was -25 where he was!.. BUT, we DID get about 8" of cement like snow that I HAD to shovel.

Sat. Dec. 12th came and as we awaited Jack's arrival, we packed and were READY TO GO! It was so cold here anything warmer than 15 degrees sounded WONDERFUL!

We arrived in Orlando, FL, on Sat. Dec. 12th, at midnight. Got our car and headed right to our place. Sunday was absolutely GORGEOUS. The weather was a WARM 82 degrees and we were at the pool ALL DAY. (1 of 7 pools on the resort!)

Monday the 14th we headed over to Hollywood Studios. A very FULL day. Although I feel that most of our days at Disney were FILLED, we still missed LOTS of rides and shows! It is NO "vacation" to vacation in Disney. You are constantly ON THE GO.. NO REST for the weary!

Tuesday we hung around for 1/2 the day at the pool. Made some friends from Winnipeg, Canada. Then off to the very Merry Mickey Parade at Magic Kingdom. Once the "deadline" came for the people who bought day passes PASSED, it quieted down. We were able to get on rides with NO wait. I do think the cost of the tickets for the "special" parade was QUITE excessive! The parade was nice, but I've seen the electric parade and I think the "enchantment" was about the same.

Wednesday, we headed to Animal Kingdom. They close early, so we spent the whole day there, until 5 pm. The girls really enjoyed seeing all the animals. Unfortunately, they didn't get to ride on the Everest roller-coaster since it was a 60 minute wait. Plus, I think it would have been pretty scary for Keelyn and Ryley anyway.

Thursday, we just hung around. It was somewhat overcast.

Friday, we hung around in the morning, I think a bit burnt out from the 1st 1/2 of the week. We went to Epcot around 2:30.. stayed until 5:30'ish. The girls didn't seem very thrilled with Epcot, as it was raining and we didn't do too much. At the end they were able to get on the ride "Spaceship Earth", which they seemed to enjoy.

All in all, I'm glad we took the girls. I think we tried to do too many things in 1 week. If you have young kids, you really need 1 1/2 days at each park. We definitely missed things, which I hope someday we will get to see when everyone is a little older.

here are some of my favorite pictures...
















































































































I have some great video's, but I think they are too big to upload, I'll check it out.