A Disney Christmas

Well, it's taken me awhile to actually post about our Disney World trip because pictures and words just won't do it justice! We had SUCH an amazing time. We went with our good friends the Taylors, who made it such an incredible vacation, as always! This is our fourth trip to either Disneyland or Disney World with them, and it amazes us every time how much fun we have together and how well we all get along! Nato and Robin are Disney experts, so it's an added bonus for us that we have them to lead the way at the parks and tell us where to go and what we haven't seen yet. Plus, we got to play lots of "Chicken Foot Dominoes" (our favorite game) at the condo every night after the kids were in bed....it takes us back to our BYU days, and it doesn't matter if we didn't get any sleep. It was worth all the laughing!

And we took millions of great photos that I would love to put on here, but I figured I might have to weed some of them out....so I made some photo collages of the ones I HAD to include! Here they are with some of the highlights of our trip:

Everything about this trip was magical. We last came to Disney World with the Taylors a couple of years ago (with only 5 children between us rather than the 7 we had this year), and we were so excited to go back! Our favorite new ride was Toy Story Midway Mania, which is like Buzz Lightyear but with 3-D glasses and really fun games! It was too cool and totally worth waiting in line just FOR A FASTPASS!

We also had a major milestones this trip: McKinley is now 48" tall! That's tall enough to go on EVERY RIDE, and she really did! Here is a picture of her in front of the height sign for the Rockin' Roller Coaster and in front of the ride with me afterwards (it is the best ride EVER!) She also loved Expedition Everest (in picture with Dad) and she learned to like Tower of Terror. The first time she went on it, she was NOT happy about the going "down" part, but she didn't mind the "up" parts, so she agreed to try it again and went on it a few days later and loved it!

Kennedy was just tall enough to ride the little kid roller coaster "Goofy's Barnstormer," and she LOVED it! We knew she would because of her thrill seeking-ways, but it was such fun to see her on it! We wish we had gotten a picture of her in line for the Haunted Mansion though...that was when she started clinging on to us and saying, "spoooook-y" over and over. It was fun finally seeing her scared of something for once! She is still talking about the "spooky witch!"

Kennedy's favorite thing: MEETING CHARACTERS! Whenever people say that they want to wait until their kids are older to go to Disney, I think they're crazy! The little ones feel the magic so much more! Kennedy was entranced by meeting her favorite characters...totally worth the trip just to see the look on her face meeting Mulan! And Mary Poppins even commented that Kennedy was "quite enamored" of her. That's one way to put it. She could not stop staring at whoever we were meeting in complete awe. It really shows the "magic" of Disney!

Here are some of the pictures of all 7 of the kids we had with us! Anytime two of the adults would be on a ride (with the oldest 2-3 kids), the other two would stay behind with the 4-5 little ones. Then, the other two adults would baby-swap with the first two and take the oldest kids on the ride again, so McKinley, Jacob, and sometimes Emma got to ride every ride TWICE in a row! What a great trip! They're not going to know what hit them when we go again when they're old enough and THEY have to watch the little kids for us while all of us adults go on rides together! While we were there, we even got to go to the Orlando temple and take pictures after church, and we got some fun pictures of all of the "walking" kids lined up. The oldest three became especially close (besides two of them being betrothed since birth), so saying goodbye was especially hard!

The kids all got along incredibly well. And Milt and I got used to being asked, "are all these kids yours?" when Nato and Robin were on a ride and we were watching the little kids. But we survived! Here are some pictures of the craziness of having such little kids go without naptime for a week! They just got used to falling asleep wherever we were, and our arms got so tired (see Milt in the pictures...he looked SO funny carrying a sleeping Kennedy AND Maddox!) And I think we only got all four of the little kids to sleep at the same time ONCE, so Robin and I took a picture...we were so proud of ourselves!

Going to WDW at Christmas time was PERFECT! The lines weren't bad and the weather was great! Plus it was so beautiful all decorated up for the holidays. The castle was amazing, and at Hollywood Studios they had a Spectacle of Lights show that was indescribable at night. I've included a clip at the bottom of how they synch the music up with the lights...it really was one of the coolest things we saw there. I had no idea that there could be that many lights in one area...it was really incredible!

The only hard part of the trip was saying goodbye to the Taylors. It is so hard every time we have to leave them at the end of our trips. We love them like family, and we wish we got to see them more (although meeting up at Disney every few years isn't a bad place to get together)! We can't wait until next time!

Here is a clip of the Spectacle of Lights show at Hollywood Studios..it's pretty fun to watch...and way more impressive in person!