Disney day 5 and 6

So here we are it is now New Years Eve. We went to Magic Kingdom. We made sure we left even earlier than 2 days before because this is the busiest time of year for all of the Disney parks especially Magic Kingdom and since you have to either take a boat or Monorail it takes awhile when things are extra busy. And boy were they busy we have never been to Magic Kingdom on New Years Eve we usually go to Animal Kingdom because we know it wont be as crowded because they close early and wont have any fireworks or New Years celebrating going on. Even the Monorail line was long and this was a while before the park was even going to open. They had to put extra line ropes up to keep the crowd in order. Luckily we did all the main attractions two days before. We headed straight to Fantasy land and did all of that except for Dumbo (we never do Dumbo). I think I have gone on Dumbo once with my kids and that was when I only had 2 of them and I remember waiting and waiting and waiting and then once you get on it and it is so short I thought what a waste. So we do the Magic Carpet rides of Aladdin and triceratops whirl. It's not Dumbo but the same concept but basically no line when we go to these. It usually takes us about an hour to do all of Fantasy land but this time it took us about 20 minutes longer due to it being New Years Eve. Then we headed over to Toon Town. The kids love the Goofy Roller Coaster. Hayden is still to short for this one. We were able to get Payton to go on it this time. She has been afraid in the past. She loved it and went on it a couple more times. Then we headed over to Minnie and Mickeys houses. I think Minnie's house is better because there are more interactive things to do and Mickeys you just to look at. We normally would have skipped Mickey and Minnie's houses but we were waiting for Morgan and Taylor to get there picture taken with Mickey. We thought the line would be much shorter than it was since Toon town opens an hour after the other park opens. So got there only 20 minutes after it had been opened. Oh well the kids had fun running around the houses. Then we headed over to Tomorrow land and did Monsters Inc laugh floor and Buzz light year (with a fast pass of course). We never do the Indy speedway or teacups. At last we were done. After looking at the main street Disney shop we headed out of that crowded place and went to Downtown Disney. As we were driving out of the Magic Kingdom parking lot we saw hundreds and hundreds of cars trying to get into an already full parking lot and this was all before noon. Before noon they were already turning away people. At downtown Disney we ate lunch and had Ghiradelli sundaes (yummy!!). Then we went shopping. The kids wanted to spend some of there Christmas money and there Disney dollars there Grandpa and Grandma Hansen gave them for their birthdays. Connor and my dad were pooped and were waiting for us to be done. Then we headed home for swimming and naps. I think only Jon and Taylor made it to midnight. I could have but knew we had another fun filled Disney day tomorrow so sleep sounded better than saying happy new year. We did a few fireworks at about 10:00 pm so us losers could go to bed.

Hayden and Brenton on Winnie the Pooh ride

Connor

Hayden

Talmage and Hayden at Minnie's house

Hayden in Minnie's house

Payton and Hayden in Minnie's house

Hayden and Talmage with the sun in there eyes by Mickey's mailbox

The whole gang

Dad and Connor resting and waiting for us to be done shopping at Downtown Disney

On our 6th day, we headed over to Animal Kingdom. I was happy to find out that the Disney parks were now back to there normal opening time of 9:00 am. The other days all the parks were opening at 8:00 am. I was happy to have that extra hour of sleep even if I didn't make it to midnight the night before. We headed first off to the Kilimanjaro Safari ride. The animals are more active (not to mention shorter lines too) in the morning especially in the summer when it gets way hot at Disney. The Safari ride and Everest are two of my favorite rides at the Disney parks. After our Safari Jon booked it over to get some fast passes to Everest while my parents, Morgan, Taylor, Brenton, Connor, Talmage, and myself went on the Dinosaur ride. This was Connor and Talmage's first time on this ride and I think they liked it. It is hard to tell because it is so dark on that ride you can't see there faces. Talmage said he liked it but not too sure about Connor since he can't talk. We then met Jon and his little group over to Dino land. There they rode on the Triceratops twirl about 5 times. I went on that once with them and then Morgan, Taylor, Brenton, my mom and me went to the primeval whirl ride. It is a roller coaster that in some spots doesn't have a full set track it goes on so it twirls around and around (if your lucky but not too much to make you sick) my mom and I got a dud one and it didn't spin at all. Oh well. We just missed the Lion King show. So went to It's Tough to Be a Bug. I really like this show but half of my kids are scared of it so we make them sit on the floor and every once in a while at the not scary parts they will peak their head out. It is scary for young ones. After lunch, we headed over to Expedition Everest. One group went on it while I stayed back will all of my kids. Then I went with my mom, Morgan, and Taylor while Jon and my dad stayed with the kids. Then it was time to get in line for the Finding Nemo show. This is a really cute show and a must see. My parents or sisters haven't seen this one so we wanted to make sure we got into it. Then we headed over to Asia and did the animal trek there. They also have a trek in Africa but we usually skip that one since we see all of the animals (except the Gorillas which we have tons of those at our local zoo that we have an annual pass to) on the Safari ride. While walking to the Asia trek and the rest of the time we were at Animal Kingdom, my dad (who is 60) would walk by my sister and hide a little squirt gun in my sisters hood and shoot water at people and we would all watch there reactions as they look around with a confused look on their face. It was funny. Then we headed back to the house for a swim and naps.

Lion on the Safari ride

safari ride
The kids favorite picture I took while on the safari ride. The truck drove faster than my camera could take the shot

Mom, Dad, Connor, Gretta, Taylor, Talmage, Brenton, and Morgan

Morgan, Brenton, Taylor on the Primeval Twirl

Connor, Tayor, Morgan, Talmage, Hayden, Brenton, Kennedy, and Payton

This was the last park my parents and Morgan and Taylor would be at. They go home in the morning because Taylor has a high school JV basketball game on Saturday.

Disney day 3 and 4

I thought I would blog about our Disney vacation in pieces since there are lots of pictures and lots to talk about it would take me forever to get the whole post done and would take readers forever to read it. So on to day 3. The third day we went to Magic Kingdom. Our favorite park as a whole out of all four parks. We knew we would be at Magic Kingdom for 2 days one of them being New Years Eve (the busiest day of the year) so we wanted to get there right when it opened and just kick out as much as we could. We started going to the left towards adventure land. Next we did all the rides in frontier land and skipped past fantasy land and toon town and did most of tomorrow land. We would do the ones we skipped for our other day. We also did all the roller coasters/water rides (splash mountain, big thunder railroad, and space mountain) because we will be back on New Year's Eve (crazy busy day) so we wanted to get those all out of the way. We wont be doing Tom Saywer's Island, Swiss Family Tree House, Country Bears, Hall of the Presidents (I think this one was closed for refurbishing anyway), or Stiches Great Escape. We really don't care for those ones. Here are a few pictures of this day.

Taylor, Kennedy, Morgan, and Payton on Magic Carpet ride of Aladdin

Brenton and Talmage on Magic carpet ride of Aladdin

Payton, Hayden, and Jon

Hayden on Jungle Cruise

Brenton, Talmage, and Hayden on the Transit Authority

On Day 4 we went to Hollywood Studios (I don't think I will ever get used to the new name to me it will always be MGM). Since my parents and Morgan and Taylor were only going to be at this park for one day we decided to all the stuff they wanted to do and we could do the younger kids things the other day we would be there. So of course we got there before the park opened and thought we had a brilliant plan. The plan was my mom and Jon were going to get fast passes for Rockin Roller Coaster and Tower of Terror. Between 11 tickets we had enough to get fast passes at the same time for everyone who wanted to go on either or both rides. Then they were going to meet us at the new ride Toy Story Mania and we would all go on that together (Yeah along with everyone else in the park). As the rest of us were walking toward Toy Story Mania (no need to go too fast because 2 of our party were getting fast passes) along with everyone else we decided we would be waiting in an insanely long line. So we waited for what seemed like forever for my mom and Jon to get back (the fast past lines were way slow because most of them weren't working) and then we went to Great Movie Ride instead. This is one of my kids favorites. After that, everyone but Hayden and I went to Star Tours. Hayden and I got in line to get fast passes for Toy Story Mania. Yes there was a real long line just to get a fast pass. It would have been longer but there were workers at every fast pass station asking you how many you needed and then they would just hand you that number so no sticking your ticket into a machine. Then the group that wanted to go on Tower and Terror and Rockin Roller Coaster headed off that way. Talmage and Taylor did Tower of Terror and then met me and the other 5 kids at Honey I Shrunk the Kids play area. They all played and ran around while we waited for the others to get done with Rockin. Then we did back lot tours and spent a while looking for Connor who we lost for a bit. After lunch, we did lights, motors, action and then we headed back to the house for some naps and swimming.

Hayden's favorite part of Lights, Motor, Action because we had just seen Herby not too long ago

We went back that evening to go on Toy Story Mania. Luckily we had our fast passes that I had gotten this morning because the stand by line was 3 hours long. Who the heck would wait in a line as long as church?? Definitely not me especially with 6 kids. I wouldn't wait in a line that long even if I was never going to be back at Disney but that is just me obviously hundreds of other people disagree with me. That was a real fun great ride. Then we went down the New York sky line and looked at all the million of Christmas lights. They were playing Christmas music and some of the songs were in sinc with the lights. They had a few snow machines on top of the buildings so snow was falling down on us. That is one of the reasons we like to go to Disney at Christmas time. Then we went to the evening show Fantasmic. It's a good thing we have seen this show many times because towards the end of the show the projection TV that projects on the fan of water was down (just on our section the other 3 projections were working just fine) and all we could see was a fan of water. That was a little disappointing. I felt bad for the people who have never seen this awesome show. They got a little ripped off. We then headed back home to sleep.

New York strip with millions of Lights every inch was covered in lights

more of the lights display

Fantasmic night show

The last of the year of a million dreams Day 1 and 2

For the past 2 years (2007 & 2008)Disney has had the theme the year of a million dreams.
2 days after Christmas we went to Disney World. We got an awesome deal on a 6 bedroom house so invited my parents and Morgan and Taylor to come along with us. They had to leave 2 days early because Taylor had a JV basketball game (Who schedules games during Christmas break?). We had a great time. The subdivision our house was in was called Orange Tree. There were orange trees all over the subdivision. The best part about that was it was orange season and the orange trees are for the residence to pick and since we were residence for 9 days we partook of the fruit. They were really good and juicy so good that my mom went out a bought a little hand juicer and strainer and we took turns throughout the whole time we were there making fresh squeezed OJ. It was yummy!!. Right across the street from our house was a little playground and some orange trees. The kids had a great time playing over there.

Our house for 9 days

Playground across the street from our house

Some orange trees across the street from our house

Hayden and Kennedy putting sand on the slide

The weather was great the whole time we were there. I think we only wore pants one or two times with short sleeve shirts, the other days we were in shorts and a t shirt with a jacket in the morning. We arrived at our house around 5 pm. We ran into a little road construction twice on the way down that added about a hour to our time. We did stop off at Fazollis for lunch. I love that place. I was so sad when both of the ones close to our house closed down about 3 year or so ago. After getting all the things unpacked, my parents and I headed off to Publix to buy some food and dinner for that night. Jon and the kids went swimming. The pool was a little chilly but nice when you got used to it even with paying extra for pool/spa heat. The spa was nice and toasty warm.
The next morning we were off to Epcot. We arrived there in plenty of time to purchase our tickets and still make it before the park opened. We like to do as much as we can in the front part of Epcot before the World showcase opens and then once the world showcase opens three hours after the park opens we like to go back there and do that. We were able to do Test track, Mission to Mars, Soarin, and Neamo (some of us 3 times) before heading over to the world showcase. In the world showcase we did the Mexico ride and Norway ride and looked at all the shops. We didn't watch any of the movies (the kids get too bored and we have seen them before). Then we headed back to the house for some naps and swimming.

Connor in Mexico

Dad, Morgan, Connor, Brenton, Jon Payton, Hayden, Taylor, Kennedy, and Talmage in Norway

Crane wading in the water in China

Hayden and Kennedy watching the trains in Germany

Italian clown with the freaky eyes

Hayden in a Fez

After dinner, we headed back over to Epcot and some of us went on Soarin again me for the first time this trip (we used the baby swap and fast passes we had left over from earlier) then living with the land, Spaceship Earth and then headed over to find a seat for the night show. The kids love the fireworks at this show. It was a great day and we were able to do everything we wanted even with the big holiday crowds.

Christmas Day

Brenton and Connor were the first to wake up on Christmas morning. I believe they woke up at 6:30 am. I told them they had to wait until 7:00 am before waking up the rest of the gang. Then at 7 the show began. Wrapping paper began flying every wear. I was trying to slow them down but there was no stopping them. After all the presents were opened, we got dressed and let the kids pick a few of their new toys to take over to Grandma and Grandpa's house.

Brenton

Payton

Talmage

Hayden and Kennedy

Connor
Talmage and Kennedy

We always go over to my parent's house for a big breakfast of bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, Cinnamon rolls, sometimes hash brown potatoes, some sort of fruit, and hot chocolate. Then we opened gifts from them and then we played apples to apples jr.

Jon and Connor

Every year at 4:00 pm we go bowling. Every Christmas my dad reserves almost 1/2 of the bowling lanes from 4-6 pm for anyone from our ward to go bowling on Christmas. He hands out flyer's in church the weeks before. There is always a big turn out of members.

Kennedy

Payton

Hayden

After bowling, we went back to my parents house and ate leftovers for dinner and played some more board games. Then it was time to go home and go to bed. The next morning Jon and I went to Target and Hallmark for some after Christmas deals. Then it was time to pack for our Disney trip that we were leaving on the following day.

Christmas Eve

Every Christmas Eve morning we spend with Jon's side of the family. We have been doing this ever since we have been married. This year we went over to Jon's brothers Thomas' house. We started off by eating a brunch. We had donuts, monkey bread, pineapple, potatoes, ham, and 2 kinds of quiche (took me a while to spell that right), and fancy hot chocolate (7 different hot chocolate flavors). It was all very tasty. This is the first time we have done a brunch every year it seems like we do something different but I think we should make this a tradition and do a brunch from now on. Of course, we don't have to have the exact same food but along the same lines.
After eating, it was present time. Here are a few pictures of that.

Payton, Gabby, Talmage, Elizabeth, and Kennedy

Jon, Hayden, Brenton, and Cory

Grandma Hansen

Elizabeth and Hayden

Connor

Then the adults (minus Grandma and Grandpa Hansen they had just left) and the big kids started a game of Life. It has been many years since I have played that game. We weren't able to finish since we had to leave and head over to my parents for Christmas Eve dinner. For the past few years we have gone over to my parents for Christmas Eve dinner. The reason our family has been doing this is because Cheri and her family spend Christmas day at there house. So, if we wanted to see Cheri and her family and exchange presents with them this would be the only time for us to do it. Christa and her family weren't around they go to Kansas every other year to spend Christmas with his family and this year was Kansas for them. Our kids were a little bummed out because they didn't get to open any presents since Christa and her family had our family this year for presents they gave us our presents before they left for Kansas and we were going to be at my parents house on Christmas so they would have to wait till morning to open their presents. How quickly they forgot about opening presents just a few hours earlier. They acted as if they didn't open a thing all day. I didn't get any pictures of the evening. We always have a roast and mashed potatoes for Christmas Eve dinner and then a veggie casserole, some sort of fruit dish/jello, and rolls, and of course pies for dessert. After Cheri and her family left (they have a 45 min. drive home), we read the night before Christmas, and the Christmas story in the Bible. I don't remember if we played games or not. Then we came home and threw the kids into bed and got the house ready for morning. Luckily, most everything was ready just had to throw them under the tree and stuff it in their stockings and then I was off to get some much needed ZZZZZZZZZ.