Birthday weekend

Where to start!
It was a fabulous birthday weekend in Disney! I got to see the pretty lights, many decorated trees in the resorts and parks and celebrate in a magical place with my family! It was awesome!

While we were there they were pre taping the parade for Christmas day! We got to see these huge Mickey heads that will be in the parade on TV for Christmas day! Be sure to look for them, we saw them first here!! yay!! We also got to see the cheerleaders that you will see also, it was very cool. Some of the other stuff was being recorded while we were eating lunch so we didn't get to see it all.

In the contemporary resort they had a very cool gingerbread display with hidden Olafs throughout the display. Here is one of them! Cute! I don't have the picture of the whole thing with me right now to post it, maybe I can add it later here.

We went early to Magic Kingdom to get in line for the new Seven Dwarfs mine train ride. We only had to wait about 20 minutes! The boys loved the ride. We were the only ones that knew you could rock the cart you were in, thanks to cousin Len! But no one could see us and follow along since we were in the last car. As we were walking out of the ride Dev was yelling to everyone..."you can rock your car!" LOL...it was cute!

Look closely! The boys are holding Tinkerbell! It's kinda hard to see since they are both wearing green shirts!

One night we saw the Spectacle of Dancing lights at Hollywood studios. The light display was gorgeous and they even made it snow!!!

You gotta love Dev's face on the Expedition Everest ride! He rode it at least 3 times and wanted to ride it more!! We kept getting in the single rider line and only waiting 5-10 minutes each time to ride it!

The boys talked me into riding the river rapids ride! At least we had our ponchos because we would of been pretty wet otherwise!!

I have to give myself props for this selfie!! We are going around on this ride pretty fast!! and...look! I even was able to get the castle in the background as we cirlced!! Wow!!

Mike wasn't too thrilled on the spinning tea cups!! ha ha!

Happy that I got my birthday Disney button! yay!! Now we all have one!!

One of the most spectacular displays was the castle transformation! Wow,, they kept lighting up the castle in different colors, I think I took pictures of at least 22 or so transformations and I know there were more than that! Two of my favorites besides the full lights are the gingerbread and the candy canes!

Truly gorgeous and definitely worth seeing!!!!

Mark has been busy and decorated our door like a snowman!

Our neighborhood had a Christmas party and even had a carriage ride with Clydesdales! The boys loved it. The carriage took us around the neigborhood and the boys even got to ride up front with the driver. After the ride was over both boys even petted the horses! wow! It was very nice!

Bry worked on his rock climbing skills at a jamboree we went too. He got up the wall pretty far, but decided to come down before he got to the top. Man....he almost made it!! Maybe next time!!

We finally got our tree up!!

It was a little late this year with Mike out of town and then we were out of town, but now it's up! Ready for Santa!!

Dev's class had a field trip to see the Nutcracker and I got to go! It was a lot of fun. It was a cute live performance geared for kids and they all loved it! This is our stop light selfie on the way to school the day of the field trip. 

Well the boys only have the rest of this week before Christmas break! Tonight we will finish up the teacher gifts and Bry is in a Christmas program Thursday night. I am actually done shopping for Christmas and have all my wrapping done also! yay!! I'm all set! Now just to get the Christmas menu planned, shopped for and get the cookies ready for Santa next week! I think we will be in the cozy 70's on Christmas day! Perfect to play outside after opening presents!!  Not sure if I'll be back on here before then, so I hope everyone has a Very Merry Christmas!!! 

Monthly recap

Wow, I know it's been a long time since I've been on here. It just seems each week is busy and time just passes so quickly. So let's see if I can recap the last month of what we've been up to.

To start with my girls weekend in St. Louis was fabulous! It was great seeing friends I haven't seen in quite awhile. The cabin we stayed at was amazing and it was so fun just to hang out and laugh and have a relaxing girls weekend. We visited a very nice winery near the cabin and the weather was great. I took my leather jacket with me but the weather ended up warming up so that I didn't need it the whole trip! I also loved see all the fall colors! We don't get to see those anymore here down in south Florida!

One morning we went for a walk on a trail and saw this guy cross the path up ahead of us! Wow!!

Bry tried out for a new soccer team that is just starting up. It's a step above the recreational league he's playing in now and he made the team. His first practice is next Monday. His recreational team made it to the semi finals but lost 2-1 in a very tight nail biting game. The team really improved from the very first game it was amazing to see the progression through the season.

We traveled up to Orlando to spend Thanksgiving with family. It was a very nice weekend. We even went to Epcot to see the first service of the Candlelight Processional with Jodi Benson as narrator. It was a beautiful program with the telling of the Christmas story and the choir and orchestra playing. I am so glad we got to experience such a beautiful event. Bry was singing along for most of the songs! Before Thanksgiving dinner we all had to tell what we were thankful for. Well Dev said he was thankful for having a roof over his head to live...very sweet. Then Bry said he was thankful for Devin! Wow...it was so touching and you could tell he was very serious. It was a very sweet moment! We also visited the Grand Floridian Resort and got to see the life size edible Gingerbread house...wow!! It was very cool. We even bought some samples of the shingles...yum.

The tree lit at Epcot at night was amazing!

I was excited to get my Minnie Christmas hat!! Love it!!

Bry was thrilled to finally get his Stitch hands that he has been wanting for the last several trips. It worked out great this time because the weather was cool and he was able to use them as gloves!! ha ha

I did make some cute little Turkey treats! Very easy and turned out so cute!

One week my dear sweet friend Lisa of many years came down to south Florida for some work meetings. I was able to drive north about 1 hr and 45 minutes to have dinner with her and walk around the mall. It was a nice surprise and a wonderful evening.

Mark our Elf is back and up to antics around the house. The boys love getting up in the morning and searching around the house for him. The boys also got an email from Santa and they both loved it! The house is decorated for Christmas. We just need to get the tree up. Mike has been out of town the last week, so I've done all the decorations around the house and waited on him to put the tree up. Hopefully in the next few days we will get it up.

A few of Marks' antics....

One morning he brought the boys a Lego Advent Calendar. They love opening the little doors everyday and seeing what Lego piece is there to build that is forming a story on the board. Very cute!

One day at school it was story book character dress up day. The boys each picked a character and luckily we had the things they needed to dress up. You could only dress up for school if you brought the book in with you. They both turned out very cute!!

My palm tree decorated winter wonderland! 

Christmas Yoda is our newest addition this year! I love him!!

One weekend we tackled adding organization to the boys closet. It's a long two sided closet but only had one long wire rack hanging all the way across it so it was alot of wasted space. So we added to dress drawers and shelves and some hanging rods. It is now a much more effiecient use of the space! It turned out great in my opinion.

The after pic:

The before picture of one side of the closet after we took down the wire rack.

Well I've started out my Birthday weekend in a fabulous way! I got my free birthday drink from Starbucks and they even spelled my name right!! Now that in itself is amazing!! LOL...

We are headed back to Disney this weekend to celebrate my birthday and to see the rest of Disney decorated for Christmas. I have always want to go around Christmas time but it just wasn't feasible when we lived farther away. Now that we live so close and have our annual pass.....ah ha! Birthday wish granted!! I'm so excited to see all the lights and decorations. I also get to wear a Disney birthday pin!! whoo hoo...yes it's the little things that make a girl happy! 

The weather will be nice at a wintery festive temp at around 80 degrees..ha ha...but that's ok. I don't really mind, I will still be wearing my Minnie hat and enjoying everything!

Toodles!!