Tuesday we were at Epcot the whole day. I love Epcot. I love the World Showcase, even though it seems like we never spend as much time as I would like there, but the little mini countries are so cool. Even more cool at Christmas because they share with how each country celebrates the holidays.
Aislynn saw Father Christmas in England and kept calling him the Green Santa:) Here are the pictures:
Shaun was getting our fast passes for
Soarin' while the kids had a little snack. I wish I could have gotten a better picture with their ears, but they really didn't like having them on too long.
This was after we got off the Finding
Nemo ride...
Kieran looooooved the fish! I think he could have stayed a long time watching them swim by!
Aislynn and
Nemo:)
See? The hats didn't last long:)
Here we are in England.
Aislynn wanted to meet Alice. She really wasn't that interested in meeting the characters this year...more into the rides. They had a lot more of the princesses at Epcot than they have had in the past, but she didn't want to wait in the long lines to meet them. She did want to meet Mickey and Minnie as you'll see below.
In Germany, they had this train set which
Kieran also loved. He kept calling the trains "ca" for car and would smile and point every time he saw one!
Playing the drums...
After dinner in Mexico...
This picture is important because it shows what
Kieran kept doing throughout the trip-taking off just one shoe:) Most of the time we saw when he threw it overboard, but one time, all these people started
yelling at us that they saw a shoe and then a lady ran up to us with his shoe. What a stinker that boy is:)
If you remember our Christmas cards from last year, you'll know we had a picture taken in this same spot last year. This was in France.
While in line for meeting the characters,
Kieran kept trying to put his ears on Shaun. Then he kept trying to feed Shaun cheerios. Cheerios definitely helped in the waiting process:)
Meeting Mickey.
Kieran loved meeting Mickey. He kept calling him "Mick-me" and didn't want to leave him:)
A loved meeting and giving hugs to all the characters,
Kieran was weary of Pluto. He didn't really want to go by him, but he was smiling at him:)
Minnie was
Aislynn's favorite character to meet, and
Kieran loved her too...must be the ears he likes:) He could say Minnie and that was so cute!
Donald-again, K wasn't too sure about him!
I love this picture, it makes me smile how they are both running up to Goofy to give him hugs:) I guess K though he was okay, ha ha.
And this was the end of Epcot:) Sleepyheads:)
***
The next day we went to Magic Kingdom. It was nice we went the other night too and had ridden some of the rides, so there wasn't as much pressure to try to do everything,
lol.
Aislynn getting a view of a show that was going on at Cinderella's caste when we got there.
Aislynn and Shaun on Big Thunder Mountain...can you spot them?
We ate at the Plaza on Main Street for lunch. I have to say...I am not impressed with Disney's food at all. We ate breakfast at the hotel, and brought our lunch 2 days to save money. Honestly, if you are going to pay for Disney food...I wouldn't make reservations for the sit down places. The food is just as bland and gross as the quick places to eat and the quick places Disney offers are much cheaper. The upside to Disney food is for the kids they offer a lot more healthier sides then most places (fruit, carrot sticks, salad, etc.).
After lunch we watched the parade. This was good since A didn't really want to wait to meet the princesses, she liked seeing them all in the parade. After the float with Mickey and Minnie went by,
Kieran kept trying to get down...I guess he wanted to hop in the parade with "Mick-me" :)
Nice shot Shaun...love that you can see A and the Fairy Godmother waving to each other:)
After the parade, we headed into
Tomorrowland, and by the time we got there, K was passed out (he slept for about 3 hours!). We went on Space Mountain-A went on with Shaun, then again with me. Then we went on the tea cups. This picture above is probably my favorite picture from the trip. Before we ever went to Disney, when we were showing
Aislynn pictures of the rides, she wanted to go on the tea cups so bad. Well, the first time we went we never made it to that ride, plus I was pregnant with
Kieran so I couldn't ride them. Last year, Shaun went on them with her while I was feeding
Kieran, so I couldn't go then either. But this year, she was so excited to go on them with me:) And I was just as excited:) I made the tea cups spin as fast as I could and I will always remember her giggles from twirling around so fast:)
Cinderella's Carousel. K and A both loved this:)
And this shot is great, it was taken by the Disney Photopass people, but I like it because it has all four of us with the castle in the background. After Magic Kingdom we went to Epcot for dinner and so that Aislynn could go on Test Track with Shaun since we didn't do that the day before. We had such a great trip and I really hope we can continue to do this every year:) The kids love it so much, and it will be so so fun when K is able to go on more of the rides. He actually could go on quite a few and called everything you rode in a "ca" for car:) We are hoping to go again in February since we have passes now.
A and K watching Polar Express. K had been pretty fussy lately and I didn't think he was teething, so since A had just had strep and didn't really show symptoms, I took K in. We started him on antibiotics and he seems to be doing much much better. You can kinda see his red cheekie in this picture...he tripped and bumped his cheek on our ottoman and has a little "joker" bruise on his cheek.
This picture makes me smile:) First, he looks stinkin' cute, but second he is holding what Shaun calls his mortar and pestle. It's this Little People suitcase that is open on the bottom and a block and he mashes the block around in the suitcase then "drinks" from the suitcase and says "mmm mmm." He does this a lot and it totally cracks us up.
At first we thought we were going to have to totally block the tree from Kieran, but overall he has been pretty good about not messing with it. He warns us when he gets close to it by saying "no." He does occasionally get brave and touches the "ba" (balls).
Friday night Aislynn and I went to go see the Nutcracker at the high school. During the intermission, she was showing me their dances in the aisle and was super excited about act 2 in the land of sweets. Well, being overtired and upset that the dancers costumes didn't look like candy (???), she said it wasn't fun. When we got home she changed her mind though.
Saturday we were going to visit Santa, but the line was insanely long...like we would have had to wait an hour. We made a deal to go home and we would write letters to Santa and have hot chocolate. So that is what we did with the promise of coming back on a week day:)
She really wanted to ask Santa for a computer? Finally she decided on Lady and the Tramp, 2 unicorns, a Snow White doll, and a Princess Tiana doll. Hopefully Santa has "selective watching," hee hee. She wrote in her letter for Santa to bring Kieran a train set and a Thomas the Train coloring book.
Today while K-man was napping, we decorated this gingerbread house. I was planning on making one this year, but I got waaaaay to ambitious and was totally thinking unrealistically about how much time I have...so I snatched this kit up from the bakery in our grocery store.
There wasn't much candy, but enough to decorate it without it being too complicated and still some leftover to eat:)
