Thursday, December 31, 2015

Graduation Celebration Trip, Day 2

On Sunday morning, we headed over to the Magic Kingdom.  It looked like another beautiful day!  Because we had breakfast reservations at Belle's Castle, we were able to get into the park before most.  I've never seen the park this empty, and it gave some great photo ops.
 We all enjoyed our breakfast at Belle's, especially the hot chocolate; delicious.
 After breakfast, we headed over to meet Mickey.  This was really the only character we wanted to meet, so we had fast passes so we didn't have to wait.  Mickey taught the girls to fly like the birds in the Tiki Room which was fun to watch.
 Big hugs before we left.
 Now it was time to have some fun on lots of different rides.  Ryan took the girls on the tea cups; they all loved it!
 We didn't take pictures on every single ride, but we did on some of them.  How can you not take It's A Small World pictures?!  Mia and I rode the Astro Orbiter together while Ryan and Lily rode together.
 Winnie the Pooh was a pretty long wait, but it was a fun ride.
 We thoroughly enjoyed the Ariel ride and then taking a break for apple slush at Gaston's Tavern.
 We all four enjoyed Aladdin's Magic Carpet ride.
 The girls and I climbed up the Swiss Family Robinson tree house which was neat and gave great views of the castle.
 At the start of Goofy's Barnstormer. Sweet Mia ended up crying and saying she really didn't like roller coasters.  A little while later she said she would try Big Thunder Railroad after learning it was one of Lily and my favorites.  We gave it a go...and she started crying just a minute into it.  Aversion to roller coasters confirmed, but how fabulous is her attitude to always give it a try.
 Having fun on the Speedway!

 We all enjoyed lunch at Crystal Palace.  This was our first visit here.  Great food, comfortable setting, and fun characters to meet.

 We spent the afternoon riding rides too including Dumbo, Toy Story, and the People Mover.  We asked if they wanted to ride the Haunted Mansion.  We weren't sure what the kids would think but they both liked it though I did spend most of the ride explaining to Mia how the "Disney magic" worked on it.

Evening finally came and we watched Elsa turn the castle into a Winter Wonderland which was cool.
We waited for about 30 minutes to get an awesome spot for the Once Upon a Christmastime parade.  The girls enjoyed passing the time with their new hats and magic wands.
 As luck would have it, just as the parade began, it started to pour down rain.  It was crazy.  Because of that, I didn't take a whole lot of pictures.  The girls were pretty tired, and this pushed them over the edge.  They couldn't wait to leave and get into dry clothes!

Mickey and Minnie started everything off.
 Always love Frozen friends!
 We saw lots of other characters, but again, it wasn't worth taking the pictures!  The parade ended with Santa driving down Main Street to welcome in the Christmas season.
 We hustled out of the park after this and were very grateful to be on the monorail.  We were all glad to get back to the hotel, take hot showers and head to bed.  Despite the rain, this was a fun day!

Graduation Celebration Trip, Day 1

After our graduation celebration lunch, we hit the road.  The girls assumed we were heading back home, but a few minutes into the ride we let them in on a secret.  We were heading to Disney World!  Needless to say, their screams let us know how excited they were!  We had an easy though long ride down and arrived around 9PM.  The girls were pretty tired, and took advantage of a nearly empty lobby at the Lowe's Pacific Hotel at Universal while we checked in.
 On Saturday morning, we all felt refreshed and we headed over to Islands of Adventure.  We all enjoy Suessland and wanted to experience "A Merry Grinchmas."  It was a gorgeous day!
 They can't resist trying on fun hats.
 We enjoyed lots of fun rides while we were there.  Here's The Cat in the Hat and Caro-seussal, but we also enjoyed the One Fish, Two Fish flying ride and the Suess Trolly Train Ride in the Sky.
 Decorations around Suessland are so cool!
After lunch and a dessert treat (cat's hat cookie for Lily and the biggest caramel apple I've ever seen for Mia), we headed over to watch a live performance of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  It was great!  The actors did a wonderful job, and they even had a cute little Max.  This was lots of fun!

 After that show, we caught the end of a Suess performance and then met some favorite characters.


 Around mid-afternoon, we decided to head on over to Disney, so we left Islands of Adventure and checked into the Grand Floridian.  Our room wasn't ready, so we left our bags and headed to Hollywood Studios.

Jake!  Still one we enjoy.
 We were all excited to have a fast pass to Toy Story Mania; this is my favorite ride at Disney.  We all had a great time shooting the lasers at the different targets.  In the end, Ryan won by shooting the most targets.
The whole reason we ended up at Disney was because we wanted to see the Osborne Family's Spectacle of Dancing Lights.  This is their final year at Hollywood Studios, so we planned a trip to see them.  It was incredibly crowded, but so cool.  Everything was lit up; it was pretty awesome to see!



What a great way to start our trip!

Friday, December 25, 2015

Congratulations Ryan!

I am so incredibly proud of Ryan!  For the last three years he has been working incredibly hard to get his Master's Degree at Columbia International University.  It was so wonderful to watch him walk across the stage and get his degree a few weeks ago.  Ryan went over on Wednesday evening for rehearsals.  Liz, my parents, the girls and I drove over after school on a Thursday afternoon so we could be there for the service on Friday morning.  We were all surprised when Brian arrived at the ceremony on Friday; he's such a great friend.  We heard a great speech by Crawford Loritts, and were so proud to see him walk across the stage.  It was great!  We had a celebratory lunch at Carrabbas's afterwards which was fun too.  We are so proud of you, Ryan!

Annual Family Pictures

Allison Mauer has once again done such a fantastic job with our family photos.  Here are a few of my very favorites.





 No telling how many secrets these two share.