Start of a great Disney vacation

Tuesday afternoon, November 15 we headed out towards Disney for our annual trip.  Brody was pretty excited and had assisted in packing  - making sure he had the right "big boys" to wear for when he was going to see each character.

This year we were short my dad because he was hunting in Kentucky, but my mom was with us and was pretty excited - can't you tell?

This was before they went to sleep.

This year we decided to stay off property since we don't really spend a lot of time at the hotel.  We were pleasantly surprised with our 2 bedroom suite hotel and once we changed clothes we headed out to Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party.  I had 2 boys who were pretty excited and were ready to see Mickey and ride some rides.

With the Christmas party ticket we were able to get in at 4:00 and stay until midnight.  Our first ride (minus mom and Trevor) was Thunder Mtn - nothing like starting big.  We made our way through a lot of rides and even to a few characters which Trevor LOVED.  The lines were a little long for characters so we didn't see too many.  

It's a Small World

 Playing some of the games

Nini and I don't like riding this but Trevor wanted to so we let the big boys ride so they could spin all they wanted and we sat in another teacup with Trevor

We decided to see the late parade at 10:15 and found a great spot on Main St to enjoy the "snow".  Hard to believe that Trevor was still up and going but this was going to be his first time seeing Mickey so I think he was pretty excited.  It's the cutest thing to see a child's face seeing the wonderful sights of Disney for the first time.

 Neither of my boys like the sound of fireworks so I thought this was so cute.

 Ok, so Trevor wasn't feeling this picture so much

Once the parade was over we gave Brody the opportunity to pick what to do next.  He chose dancing with Woody, so off we went to the Diamond Horseshoe Saloon to dance with Woody and his friends.

 Now, Trevor was my dancer.  He had so much fun showing off his moves, until ol' Buckeye laid his hoof into Trevor's head and he was done.  I don't think it hurt but that it was about 11:30 at night so Trevor had had enough.

 This is really a cool place because there really aren't that many people - maybe because it's late at night or because it's somewhere a lot of people don't know much about.

 Jason even got out there and showed off his moves - what we do for our kids.

 This was right up Nini's alley - she was loving it.

What a beautiful sight!!  

Day 1 of our Disney vacation was a success and finally got everyone bathed and asleep around 2AM - whew!!  Wednesday could be a long day!!

Pj style shopping

This year at the last minute I decided to take the boys to Target to see Santa and have their pictures made.  Everything would have been fine except the pictures were only being done the Monday before we left for our Disney trip.  Oh well, I decided to just deal with it and get it done.

Since I decided at the last minute to do this and I thought it would be cute to have their pictures in their pj's, I had to find matching pj's for the boys.  This is getting more difficult because most of what is out there is the tight ones and let's just say they aren't the most flatering for pictures.  Thankfully I found some even though they were thick fleece and pretty hot since it's still 80 degrees here.  Oh well.

I rushed home from work Monday and quickly dressed them and we were off to Target in their pj's.  Thankfully Jason was able to meet us there.  I'm not sure why I thought I could do this by myself - sometimes I try to be Ms. Independent, but Jason comes to the rescue - LOVE him for that!!

The lady at Target asked if the boys were going to be scared of Santa because if so then Santa could hide first, but I didn't think they would be so we just went with it.  Sure enough they were fine with him and the pictures turned out so cute and they spend more time better with Santa than the 1 at the mall.

The hard part is afterwards - both for picking out the pictures and having 2 boys ready for you to hurry up.  This is where Jason was a life saver because he took them down the toy aisles to "shop".  I'm sure we got some looks, but it made it quite easy to put them straight to bed when we got home since Brody fell asleep 5 min out of the parking lot.

My boys' sweet singing

The Sunday after Busch Gardens, Brody was scheduled to sing in church.  He goes to choir on Sunday nights and really enjoys it.  However, we really weren't sure what he was going to sing because he isn't the type to sing all over the house for us.

Of course there are rules whenever or wherever we go so for singing that Sunday the rules were to keep your hands to yourself and don't pull your shirt up - when Brody gets uncomfortable he likes to twist his shirt up so I thought the rule would eliminate that.  Well, it kind of backfired on me because he didn't do any of the hand motions.

Well, Trevor isn't going to let his older brother outshine him.  Trevor is really our singer and sings ALL the time.  I was finally able to get it on video.  He has several favorites:  Jesus Loves Me, Deep & Wide, Baa Baa Black Sheep, and Itsy Bitsy Spider.

He sings everywhere we go and especially loves to sing when I take him to a public bathroom.  Our nightly ritual is to sing Jesus Loves the Little Children before he goes to bed.  I'm guessing he gets his singing skills from his daddy.

A fun but LONG day

A couple of weekends ago, we packed up and left our house at 5AM and headed down to Tampa for a funfilled day at Busch Gardens with the Cruce's.  We decided to all pile into our vehicle with Tracy & I utilizing the 3rd row.  Since we would be coming back in the same day, John didn't think he could stay awake for the drive so we thought it was best to all ride together - all 7 of us - 3 kids and 4 adults - oh the memories we made (if you could have seen us trying to crawl in the back of the vehicle everytime - thankfully we didn't get any pictures)

We went to Busch Gardens last year and Baylie & Brody were free using a Preschool pass.  Well, BG allowed us to renew the pass for 2011.  We thought this was a great deal until I called on Thursday before we left just to verify a few things and they informed me that we were supposed to renew the voucher at the gate by April 15.  It was just hard for me to believe they were making us drive all the way to Tampa just to renew a voucher.  We tried to fight it but they kept saying there was no way around it.  We figured we just play ignorant when we got there and pray for the best, which is exactly what happened - Brody and Baylie were free.

Heading into the park

Checking out where to go with a little help from their tall friend.

Since we all rode together, there was only room for 1 stroller which Trevor won the seat for, so B&B had to walk but thankfully they did really good.  Our first stop of the day was BG new roller coaster - Cheetah. It is SUPER FAST and one of the best rides ever.  Since the kids couldn't ride it we took turns keeping the kids.

John & Jason finishing up on the Cheetah

Of course with BG comes lots of animals

And then it was the kids turn to ride - and boy did they ride

Oh yeah, all 3 rode it but Brody's face is priceless - he doesn't like to get wet.

Trevor LOVED Big Bird - he is such an outgoing kid

Don't they look like such big kids.

Showing off their kangaroo impressions

Trevor was too small to go in the kangaroo exhibit but he was able to get close to this one near the outside.

Trevor barely holding on.  A couple of minutes later he was out.

On the skybuckets

Cool kids

Aren't they too sweet.

The merry go round has to be Trevor's favorite ride of all.

Brody had waited in line for a ride that showed you had to be 46" to ride, well when he got to the front they measured him and he was about 1/4" short.  Well, Brody broke down when they told him he couldn't ride.  I felt so sorry for him.  So, we gave him the option to ride whatever he wanted as the park was closing soon.  He chose the Scorpion which is an adult roller coaster with an loop.  I was pretty leary about him riding it, but he was all smiles when he was done.

At the end of the night, they were all 3 in the stroller for the ride out to the car.

So, after stopping to eat dinner we got back home around 12:30.  Thankfully it was daylight savings time so we gained an hour of sleep that night.  Also, the kids actually slept the entire way home which was very peaceful since Tracy, John and I did our share of sleeping as well.  Thank goodness Jason can handle driving late at night.