A Visit to Santa

We had our annual visit to see Santa at Phipps before Thanksgiving this year (in anticipation of Catelin’s surgery).  I had to wake little miss up from her nap in order to get there on time so she was not a happy camper.



Steve met us at the mall and helped the kids write their Christmas lists.





Then it was time to see Santa up close and personal.  MJ was excited beyond words.  Ty was hesitant but willing to get up onto his lap.  Catelin- well, you can see how that went…






That is Curious George she is holding.  A few months ago she picked him up out of the pile of stuffed animals in the boys’ room and now he is the equivalent of her “lovie.”  She has never watched an episode of the show in her life, but she sure does love that little monkey.  Even he couldn’t calm her down this time.

After the pictures Santa took some time to ask all of them about their wish lists.  Ty was shy but did say he wants a new train track.  MJ asked for a teenage mutant ninja turtle play set, a Crayola light designer and the Joker to go with his Batman set.  Catelin wanted to be in mommy’s arms and admire Santa from afar.

A Disney Thanksgiving

First I just wanted to update everyone on Catelin.  Her surgery was Tuesday and it went very well.  Her eyes and forehead remain very swollen as expected but it should only improve from this point on.  We hope to be home from the hospital tomorrow- the surgeons say she is a fighter and doing even better than expected.  I will do a whole post on this later; thank you all for your prayers during this time.



Right now, I am remembering happier times as I blog on our trip to Disney!  My side of the family decided to have a reunion in Disney World over Thanksgiving.   Unfortunately Uncle Jeff had to work but Ann and Camden were able to make the trip.  We left the Sunday before Thanksgiving and came back on Thanksgiving Day.  The kids were so excited to see their Disney goody bags in the car!





We stayed at Disney’s Art of Animation in the Cars part of the hotel – Ty was especially excited about that



The first evening we went for dinner and a couple rides in the Magic Kingdom.  We woke up on Monday and headed back there for more fun!  Before we left to go to the park I tried to snap a couple pictures of the kids.  Catelin wasn’t in the mood for pictures AT ALL that morning as you can see.




We tried to get a Christmas card picture for my parents but with 4 grandkids under 5 this was what we got…



We had a character breakfast at Ohana that morning- the kids had a blast seeing Lilo, Stitch, Pluto and MICKEY!





We went back to the hotel for a couple hours so Catelin could nap- the boys went to the pool with Uncle Eddie and then we headed back to the Magic Kingdom.



On Tuesday we woke up and headed to Hollywood Studios.  There are two major height cut-offs at Disney: 40” and 44.”  Luckily MJ is 45” so he could ride basically all of the rides; Ty is right at 40” so he got to ride a lot more stuff too (even the Tower of Terror)!



MJ’s favorite ride of the whole trip was the Star Wars ride in that park.


We headed over to Animal Kingdom for the majority of the afternoon and had an awesome time riding Everest, checking out all of the animals, and riding the river rapids!









After a busy afternoon we headed back to Hollywood Studios to ride the Toy Story ride- it is so popular that our fast passes didn’t get us in until evening!



Wednesday was our last full day so we decided to start it off at the Magic Kingdom and ride Ty’s favorite ride- Big Thunder Railroad.







And here is a picture of MJ getting off one of my favorite rides- Space Mountain!



That afternoon we headed over to Epcot so we could ride Soarin’ (and a few other rides of course).  Poor Catelin was so tired she fell asleep on two wooden chairs at dinner.



And if you can believe it somehow we found the energy to head back to the Magic Kingdom that night to watch the parade.



It was an amazing trip but we were absolutely exhausted when we got home!!!!