Day 2 - Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom

On Day 2 we planned to go to the Animal Kingdom in the morning and then had a dessert party and reserved seats for the firework show at Magic Kingdom.

Jaime wanted to take pictures in front of all the main icons of the different parks.  The one for Animal Kingdom is this very cool tree.

As part of the dining plan we were on we got to do 1 sit down meal per day.  This is different for us because we usually prefer to eat quickly and then get back to doing rides or tracking down characters.  It took some getting used to for us to spend a leisurely 90 minutes for these sit down meals but we definitely grew to appreciate the expertise of the Disney chefs.  In Animal Kingdom we ate at the Yak and Yeti in the Asia section.  Great oriental themed food here.

There were a number of attractions at Animal Kingdom that we wanted to do but our time was limited as we were still getting used to the east coast time and didn't get into the park until lunch time.  Once lunch was done we decided to do the Safari.  Jaime and the kids are big animal lovers and we thought this would be cool.  The park was pretty busy and wait times were long.  We approached the Safari and it said there was only a 45 minute wait.  Great, right?  Well, the line went beyond the entrance to the ride and once we finally got to said entrance the wait time had changed to 60 minutes (it is measured from the ride entrance to the point you get on the ride itself).  That was concerning but we were committed.  We waited, and waited, and waited...well, you get the idea.  All told, we waited about 90 minutes for the ride but it felt like eternity.  Jaime and I noticed for the first time (and continued to notice throughout the trip) that Disney World does a much worse job of line management than Disneyland.  There were no cast members around to explain why we were still in the middle of the line after 60 minutes, there was no ambient music, there was visible litter in places.  Picky, I know, but the bar is set pretty high by Disneyland.  So, we finally got on the ride and it was fun.  Here are some pics:

 Open air vehicle goodness!

 Rhino!

 Great scenery.

 Hippos in the water!

 My wife is so pretty!

 I thought I did a good job of capturing the beauty of the Safari with this picture.

 Jaime would probably take the time to research what animal this is...

 Elephants.

They call this the upside down tree.  (because the branches look like roots, I guess)  

A cheetah. 

A lioness.  There was a lion too, but we could only get a blurry picture of him.

Because we weren't quite sick of waiting we also went to the Expedition Everest ride.  Animals are great and all but I would much rather do a roller coaster and Expedition Everest did not disappoint!  There is some great vertical ascension followed by what you think is the big drop but once you get there you find that the track has been broken by the mysterious Yeti and then...YOU START TO GO BACKWARDS!  Yip, you then do a number of hills and turns while backwards, it was awesome!  So, as you can tell, I really enjoyed this ride.  Here are a couple pics:

The kids standing in front of Everest.  It wasn't as cold in the Himalayas as I thought it would be... 

Harris and I on the ride.  You can't see it but Harris has his stuffed Triceratops, Little Buddy, hidden with him.  Little Buddy's job was to frighten the Yeti away.  It was the only way we could convince Harris to go on the ride... :)

So, to finish up our day we had reserved seating and a dessert party for the fireworks show at Magic Kingdom, Wishes.  The dessert was incredible and the fireworks were beautiful.  The evening is best described pictorially...

 Yum!

 We had difficulties with our new camera and taking night pictures (it's especially aggravating since we bought the camera specifically to take good nighttime pictures).  Anyway, this is us in front of the castle at night.

                          

 The castle really is a sight to see when it's all decorated for Christmas.

 I like this picture...

 So, there you have it.  Day 2 was another great day.  Chet is out, peace!



Day 1- Magic Kingdom

We were up bright and early for our 10 am flight to Orlando and after an hour long plane de-icing we were finally on our way.

The flight goes by much faster if you take a nap. :)

After a 4 hour flight we finally made it to Orlando and took Mickeys Magical Express to our resort, The Caribbean Beach Resort.


On to the Caribbean Beach Resort!

When we got to the resort there was another surprise in store for the kids... A themed room. :) And since we were staying at the "Caribbean Beach Resort" we got a Pirates of the Caribbean room to stay in!


This is what we saw when we got into the room. This is the divider from the bedroom to the bathroom. It is so cool!

Our pirate ship beds

After we checked out our room we decided to get some dinner at the hotel. There was an entire portion of the hotel filled with restaurants. When we all had eaten we made our way to the resort shuttle to the Magic Kingdom.

When we got to the park it was like being in bizzaro Disneyland! It looked like Disneyland's Main Street but when you got closer it wasn't quite the same. And of course the castle is completely different. I love Sleeping Beauty Castle it's amazing but Cinderella Castle is stunning (and huge)! You can't help but stare at it. It is really magical especially with all the Christmas lights.


Cinderella Castle

Bizzaro Main Street.

 We made our way down Main Street to the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh ride. I was really excited to do this ride because they just redid the whole thing. The line for the ride is now completely interactive. It's great! It was late so the line was only a 15 minute wait but the kids had a blast!

This sunflower is in the music area of the line. There are melon drums, turnip horns and this sunflower is bells that you spin to play music.

This was ping pong balls that you had to get out of the gopher holes

The kids loved this. It is one of those things that you slide the beads along the tracks but this one was bees that you slid into the hives.

This was a very cool spot in the line where they had 4 giant touch screens that looked like dripping hunny that you had to wipe away to see the pictures underneath.

The ride itself is also so fun! It's the whole Blustery Day story. Loved it! After the ride we tried to make our way around the park. It was weird to be in a place that was very much like Disneyland and have no idea where we were going. We were those people! ;) We eventually made our way to some of our favorite rides like Big Thunder, Peter Pan and Haunted Mansion. Which are all different from the originals at Disneyland. Some better and some worse. We actually had a scale of how it compared to Disneyland. :) It was +/- 10, +10 being way better than Disneyland and -10 being way worse.

Haunted Mansion is way more scary on the outside and much better on the inside. We gave it a +3.

We hung around the park until 1AM because we were still on Utah time so we weren't tired. It was so cool because the park was almost empty! It was a great preview for the week ahead!

Letter from Santa

A little surprise...

Disney World here we come!!!

First Snow

Thursday night we had an amazing winter storm! The first one we have been in while in New Mexico. It was awesome! There was so much snow falling all you could see was a wall of white! I was expecting a foot of snow when we got up but there was barely a skiff. I guess that the snow doesn't stick when it has been in the 60's all week. :)


The courtyard before we went to bed.

Even though it snowed all night,  there was somehow less snow when we got up.

The pool doesn't look quite as fun surrounded by snow.

River of Lights

Tonight I was so excited to go to the "River of Lights" at the Botanic Garden and use my new Canon camera that is supposed to take great "night" pictures. I was sadly disappointed when I got home and looked at the pictures. Every single one that was taken on the "night" setting was blurry which was exactly what is says it won't do! :( The camera is definitely going back to Best Buy tomorrow.

 Anyway... The "River of Dreams" is a festival of lights that the New Mexico BioPark Society does every year as one of their fundraisers. There are millions of glowing, sparkling lights and over 140 dazzling light displays and animated sculptures. (Heehee, can you tell that I copied that last sentence from their website.)

If you have read any of my other blog posts on the Botanic Garden, then you might recognize this picture spot. It is the bamboo maze inside the castle. It was so cool!

The sculptures were so fun. There was a whole section of New Mexican themed sculptures. Like this cactus and scorpion.

This Yucca, the New Mexico state flower, was about 10 feet tall.

Even fake this thing gives me the heebie jeebies!

This is a beehive with flowers and animated bees that were flying around it. I guess Harris liked this one because he asked for his picture in front of it.

Who needs "World of Color" when you have the pond at the New Mexico Botanic Garden. ;)

This was the coolest of the animated displays. The shark is my favorite.

We probably could have stayed for another hour or two but we decided to call it a night and head home. We had a great time and look forward to next time.

Thanksgiving in Arkansas

For Thanksgiving this year we took a road trip to Arkansas to be with Chet's sister and her family. It was a pretty easy drive (besides the wind) since we broke it up with an overnight stop in Oklahoma. We are becoming quite the road-trippers with all the visits to Utah and now Arkansas. :) I actually enjoy looking out the windows at all the new sights there is to see. Like the cotton fields in Texas and the dead cow, on the freeway mind you, in Oklahoma. It's fun to see this beautiful land we live in.

When we arrived in Arkansas it was a fabulous 70 degrees! So the kids immediately headed for the trampoline. They jumped until it was dark and time for a tasty dinner of ham and potato soup. After dinner Liv, Chels and I made a dash to Wally World for a few last minute things for Thanksgiving dinner then it was home to bed. Liv was a little nervous about going to bed because while the weather was great when we got there there was a giant storm rolling through the area and there were tornado warnings in effect. She was kinda freaking out about it. After lots of reassuring that there wouldn't be a tornado she went to bed. While the kids were asleep the adults just sat around and caught up before we headed to bed ourselves.

I had only been asleep for about 30 minutes when the storm arrived. It was crazy! There was freezing rain pounding on the windows, thunder, lightning and  of course wind! I just knew that any minute Liv would come running in afraid of a tornado. She never did though. So after about an hour of listening to the storm I went back to sleep.

Thanksgiving morning the temps had dropped about 40 degrees and there was ice on everything! The kids couldn't understand that the weather wasn't as nice as it was when we got there so they were begging to go outside and jump. We finally relented and dressed them up in their winter gear and sent them out the door to jump on the frozen tramp. They had a blast!




Weeee! Ice! ;)

When the kids were sufficiently frozen they came inside to have a quick bite to eat and then back to playing. This time they played hide-and-seek. This consisted of all the boys counting and Liv hiding and then when they found her there was lots of screaming and running around and then they would start over. I wish I would have gotten some video of it...

When Liv wasn't playing with the boys she was holding Rudy, the Molines' GIANT cat that is almost as big as Liv in length and weight! Love him!

RUDY!

When the kids got bored and thought there wasn't anything to do Chelsie would pull some sort of cool craft out for the kids to make. We made paper bag turkeys, cakes with play dough, and the boys favorite paper airplanes.

The boys would wait in line for Chet to make them a plane



Painting feathers for their paper bag turkeys 



Liv working on her cake

After lots of playing, football watching and cooking it was dinnertime. We had so much food--turkey, jello, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, 2 kinds of sweet potatoes, homemade rolls and 3 pies! It was awesome!

Mmmmmmm pie.

We all slept very well in our tryptophan and pie coma that night. :)

On Friday we went to see "Tangled". It was soooo cute! It is one of my new favorite Disney Movies. I think that the kids really liked it too. They all sat through the whole movie. When it was done though they were all ready to go home and jump and play. The kids all wanted to be together so they all piled into Chelsies' van while Chet and I sneaked away for a "date". All it was was us stopping at the pretzel shop on the way to our car. It was nice to have a moment to ourselves though. :) It was a great day!

When we were planning our trip out there Chels had asked Liv what she wanted her to make while we were there and Liv said bagels. So on Saturday, our last day there, Chels showed Liv how to make them. 

They were so yummy!

Saturday was our last day there. Fortunately the weather had warmed up again so we spent the rest of our time there playing football outside.

Chet showing Ty how to throw the ball

Harris throwing a touchdown pass to Chet

Liv making the tackle while the Moline boys look on wondering if they should jump in too

Chet being attacked by Diz. I love Chets face!

Jackson holding Chet while Caleb and Harris make a dash for the end zone

When all of the kids energy was used up we loaded into the car and headed home. We had a wonderful time! It was hard to leave. Both Liv and Harris cried for quite a while in the car. I guess we will have to add a few more road trips to Arkansas on our calendar. :)

Thank you Molines, we love you!!!