Almost a year later :)

Our magical Christmas trip to Disney World was almost a year ago and I've finally found time to compile the memories into an (almost) complete album. I have had the plan in mind for this album pretty much since we were on the trip. Some of Ali Edwards' digital products caught my eye around that time and I thought a daily record keeping experience was a great way to organize it. Of course, I have plenty of finishing touches to add (like the actual journaling), but here is a preview of the first pages.

Cover:


Title page:


Page 1, day 1, Magic Kingdom:

Daily journaling will be handwritten on the long "Story of Today" journaling card...I used a regular 8.5x11 page protector and stitched a closure to a size for the card to fit right in.


I added the collected maps from each park to the back of the cards...if you've been to Disney you know how huge a part these maps play into your day :)
Day 2, Epcot

I took 668 photos while we were there, so the baseball card protectors were perfect for getting plenty of photos included. I used Basic Grey's Eskimo Kisses Christmas line for papers and most embellishments...I really wanted to convey that this was our family's Christmas celebration, but not be too traditional with colors etc since this was not our traditional celebration.

I hope to share more soon, as I get journaling and finishing touches done. Hard to believe it's almost time for Christmas again! :)

Last day! Hollywood Studios

Here we are! The last big Disney day. We went to Hollywood Studios which was, I think, my favorite park this time. Maybe because I got to meet Mickey :)

Getting to do everything that we wanted to was bit tricky here because a lot of the attractions were "shows" and they had specific times. So that schedule combined with the fast pass schedule was a bit rough. We did meet a lot of characters here, the lines weren't so long. One fun thing we did was take a "test" to see which Disney character we were most like. I was most like Mrs. Potts from Beauty and the Beast. Still not sure how I feel about that one :)

Bill's character was Buzz Lightyear, Parker was Cogsworth (the clock form beauty and the Beast), Emily was Dot from Bug's Life and Molly was, are you ready for it?...Cinderella.

One of the best shows we went to was the big race car stunt show. It was really cool! Lots of crashing and exploding...


My favorite part of the day was winning fast passes to Toy Story Midway Mania. In the History of Animation there was a display of Academy Awards won by Disney. A "cast member" (a.k.a. a guy who worked there) said that 2 out of the ~15 or so in the case were actually the real statues and if we could guess which ones they were, he would give us fast passes for our whole group to the ride. And we got them right! Yay! This ride turned out to be so much fun! You get 3 D glasses and sit in a car with a "gun". When the ride starts it's like an arcade type game, so as you are riding, you shoot the targets and earn points. It was my favorite of the trip.


So, there you have it. The highlights of our Disney experience. We really had such a great time and I am glad our whole family got to go together (we missed you Al). Check out my Flickr page (link to the right) for more pictures. Thanks for tuning in :)

Christmas Day (Downtown Disney)

Here I am, another few days behind in posting. I am determined to report on every single day of our trip if it takes me all year. Which it might.

Christmas morning we woke up to stockings and fairly warm weather. The kids swam, blew bubbles and played most of the morning and early afternoon.




Since we decided to relax most of the day, we decided to head to Downtown Disney for shopping and a nice dinner out. It was so crowded, we just could not believe it! No sign of a recession here. There was some fun stuff to see, the lego displays outside the lego store were amazing. We enjoyed the Pick a Brick wall...it was very satisfying eye candy for a color oriented person like me.

We did lots of shopping. The kids spent their Christmas money on fun stuff.
We ended with a nice dinner out at a mexican type place...I had a cheeseburger :)

Next up: Hollywood Studios our final day of fun!

Christmas eve at the beach

Christmas Eve, we took the day off from Disney and went to the beach. We have family that lives nearby Orlando in Clearwater, and we love this particular beach called Honeymoon Island. It's a state park so it's less crowded and very clean. The kids had such a great time...even though it was only ~60 degrees and cloudy :( Molly literally never stopped running.

The seagulls are insane here. They are everywhere and are not afraid of people. And if you have food of any type, you will get ambushed!

It was a welcome change to just let the kids loose and play. At Disney, I was always so paranoid about losing track of someone that we kept everyone very close. I love just letting them go do what they want. And one benefit of the cold weather was that they steered clear of the water, so I didn't have to worry about that either.


After the beach we went to my cousins house for dinner which was really nice. We hadn't seen each other in a long time and it was fun to see everyone's kiddos and how much they've grown.

Next up: Christmas Day...Downtown Disney.

Magic Kingdom Day 4

Day 4 was a big day. Bill and Chip got up early to get to Magic Kingdom right away in order to get fast passes for the big rides only to find that they could not get passes for people not checked in yet :P But they got to see the big park opening production which I'm guessing was pretty cool. So, the rest of us got there fairly early (for us). We took the ferry over instead of the monorail for something different.

This was the day we dealt with the most lines/crowds. We stood in line to get to the park and we stood in line while we were there and we stood in line to leave. It was literally wall to wall people. It took us a while to even get down the main stretch. We stopped for photo ops at the statue...

...and happened upon a parade that was actually a "street party". That was fun, dancing in the street with characters. Molly was a bit scared of the guys on stilts, but could not resist the chance to dance.

We tried to hit all of the classic rides and got to most of them. We were so impressed with Emily, she rode all of the big roller coasters and loved them. Parker loved them as well.

Molly's favorite was It's a Small World so we rode that one twice.

All in all this was a fun day. The crowds were starting to get to me at this point, but it was manageable. Emily said to me at one point "Everyone is so nice here, they all call me princess!", so I know she was having a great time :)

Tomorrow, Day 5...the beach on Christmas Eve.

Animal Kingdom day 3

Happy New Year!

On with the lowdown on the Disney trip. Better late than never, right?

On day 3 we ended up going to Animal Kingdom. We got a late start and thought we would not find as much to do at Animal Kingdom. We were wrong about that! This is the biggest park at Disney and has TONS of fun stuff for everyone.

The first thing we did was meet Belu the Bear from Jungle Book. That was fun. We sang Bare Necessities and Belu did a little dance...it was funny. In general, we did not meet a lot of characters because there were such long lines to get to them and the kids were just not that interested.
We spent a lot of time in the dinosaur section...there was a place to dig in the sand for dinosaur bones which the kids loved. Colin found a spoon in the sand area and filled every stray shoe he could find with sand :) Then we went to the dinosaur carnival area where there were games and rides. We rode a roller coaster called "Primevil Spin" which was fun and the girls got their faces painted.



We missed the big safari attraction because we got there late, with the early sunset, they stop those rides early. Some of our group was brave enough to go on the big roller coaster "Expidition Everest". Bill, Parker and Chip went on it 5 times! I could only handle once. With my eyes closed :)

The big tree of life there is really spectacular with the carvings of animals. We really did not get to touch the surface of this park, I would love to go back and spend lots of time there. I posted more pictures from Animal Kingdom on my Flickr page (link on the right). Day 4 is our full day at Magic Kingdom so stay tuned!

Home Again

Whew. What a whirlwind! As you can tell, I totally lost it on posting daily updates during our trip...we just were constantly going. We had such a great time...and we didn't even touch the surface of most of the parks! I'll post a little something we did from each day starting tomorrow...and pics too.

Greetings

Epcot

Day 2 of the Disney madness...we went to Epcot. Our plans as far as a schedule goes have not worked out as we expected. With going to bed so late at night, of course, the kids are not interested in waking up at the crack of dawn to go have fun. So, we went around noon and stayed a bit late. It was fun, not quite as much geared toward kids, but still fun. We rode the Nemo ride along with a couple of others. Molly pretty much hated every ride since it involved being in the dark for some or all of the time. Parker chose to stand in line for Test Track for a couple of hours, so he and Bill did that while the rest of us went around the world :) The last thing we all did was ride Mission:Space which was Emily's favorite.

Next stop: Another day at the Magic Kingdom.

Magic

After a long day of traveling on Saturday...a 2 hour drive, a 3 hour delay and a 2 hour plane ride we made it to Orlando. Or Kissimme to be more exact. The kids finally got to be at 1:30 in the morning!! On Sunday we went grocery shopping and after a delicious grilled supper, we decided to go to the Magic Kingdom to see the lights. When we drove through the main entrance everyone cheered and Parker declared "I feel different!".

Cinderella's Castle looked magnificent with the sparkling lights. We watched the parade, rode a few rides and had a great time. We're off to Epcot today!

And We're Off...

Today we head out to Florida! We will be visiting Disney World this week...Our Family's first time. It has been a shamefully long time since I've posted anything. Not because nothing is going on, but because we have been so darn busy! I'm hoping to document our fun time here over the week, but I'm not sure what kind of internet access I will have. Stay tuned!