The Christmas cards are just not gonna get done this year. We love everyone and wish you a very Merry Christmas!

Baby girl is walking! She's having a lot of fun trying to stay away from her brother and sister. Of course she looks like she's drunk, but I promise, that's not the type of bottle we give her!

Jessie Anne's official first word is dog. She can say Nacho too (seriously, she knows which dog is Nacho). It comes out very exaggerated, like Naaacho with the emphasis on the cho. She makes it sound like an achoo almost. She can't name the other ones yet and when we try to teach her, this is how the conversation goes:

Jenn: Nissiiii
Jessie: Dog
Jenn: Nissiiii
Jessie: Dog
Jenn: Nissiiii
Jessie: Dog

This can go on for as long as you have the patience to allow it. The exact same thing happens with Cadi.

Some of the most Mickey-themed food we ordered was at Tony's Town Square Restaurant. This is the Lady and the Tramp Italian restaurant. 

Boyd's butternut squash soup was outstanding. 

Mickey ravioli.

The design was in cocoa powder. This is the pumpkin cheesecake. 

The new "line" for Dumbo. Parents get a pager that lets them know when to come get on the ride. The kids get to run around and play in all the cool circus-themed play areas.

Breakfast at Chef Mickey's in the Contemporary Resort.

Maggie Anne is at home sick today, and when Dalton was leaving to go to school, he told her, "I'm going to school and will be home at 6:00. That's how long you have to do princess things."

Maggie Anne told me this morning that Dalton was on the naughty list and wouldn't get any gifts. She followed that by telling me that she would share her toys with him. Sweet girl.

One of my favorite tips I found online before the trip was to buy and bring your own light-up trinkets. There are those carts everywhere after dark with all sorts of very pricey glow items. I found that having my own that I either got from my store (I know that's cheating) or from the Target $1 section, not only kept the kids from asking for stuff from the carts, but it really gave them a boost to get us back to the hotel each night. 

Here is Maggie Anne enjoying one of her treats on the shuttle back "home" for the night.

I just realized that I didn't get any pictures of our lunch destination at Hollywood Studios. We ate at the Sci-Fi Dine-In where we actually ate seated in a car. It was very cool.

Dinner was cool as well at the 50's Prime Time Diner. Here was our dinner table decked out in all it's 50's glory. The wait staff here are in character as a long lost family member - mostly cousins from what we heard. They sass and pick on you and do things like tell you to eat all of your vegetables.

Best part of my dinner was the pot roast. Got a mixture of their three homemade classics (fried chicken & meatloaf, too), and the roast was by far the best!

I was totally impressed with the Beauty and the Beast stage show at Hollywood Studios. It really was a mini-Broadway production. Plus, it was a great place to sit in the shade while Maggie Anne napped. Quite a bit more entertaining that just people watching on a random bench.

The Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground was probably the biggest hit at Hollywood Studios. Lots of secret passages and slides. Had a big rope spider web to climb. Best part for us was that there is one entrance/exit, so the kids could play all they wanted and Boyd and I could take a breather and not run around after them.

I'm home with the baby today, so when Dalton asked me this morning when we could put up the Christmas tree, I told him that I would try to clear the spot for it today.

He quickly used the classic Yoda quote on me, "You either do or you do not. There is no try."

Boyd is so proud.
 

North Little Rock has put up their light pole decorations. At some of the stoplights, there are lit trumpeting angel decorations. I pointed them out to Maggie Anne on the way home tonight. She told me that she saw the angels. 

We got closer and she said, "Those aren't angels! Those are giraffes!" I had to admit that I saw what she was seeing with the horns looking like a head. There was no swaying her. Christmas giraffes they are!

Green Army Man character outside Toy Story Mania. Dalton wouldn't go near him. 

Breakfast Tuesday morning was at Hollywood & Vine in Hollywood Studios. As you can see it was a character meal with a lot of the Disney Junior characters the kids know and love. My number one recommendation for Disney is to do as many character meals as you can. Let them come to you and skip the lines for characters inside the parks.

Special Agent Oso was about the freakiest looking character we came across, but the kids didn't notice.

Handy Manny

Of course I was off fixing the kids' plates when Maggie Anne hopped up to dance with June from Little Einsteins and Jake from the Neverland Pirates. 

A staple at every Disney breakfast is the Mickie waffle. Whatever you do, never pass up the opportunity to have them. They are Dalton's and my favorite. I am hard at work trying to make anything close to them here at home.

Boyd and Maggie Anne flying on Aladdin's Magic Carpet!

A little more hanging out in Downtown Disney. You can't really tell from these pictures, but this was our first shocker that Disney was transforming for Christmas. We were surrounded by Christmas trees and music playing over the loud speakers. That's even a little early for me. It was November 5th!

As soon as I can find where the movies uploaded to on my computer, I'll add the cute video of the kids in the interactive Phineas & Ferb experience that put the kids inside a cartoon with Perry the Platypus. 

I interrupt these vacation posts to update you on our Operation Eat-All-The-Turkey project. We had two family meals of turkey with the traditional dressing and fixings. Then we had sandwiches with just turkey. Last night I through a bunch of meat into the food processor and chopped it up, then added taco seasoning and made tacos.

Tonight we have the gumbo made from almost everything else. The last of the meat will make turkey salad, which is like tuna salad, but made with crushed pineapple and pecans. There you have it!

Our first stop after checking into the brand new Disney's Art of Animation Little Mermaid room was at T-Rex in Downtown Disney. It's the same concept as a Rainforest Cafe, but with dinosaurs. 

I was not extraordinarily impressed until we were seated in the ice cave as seen below. This was our first off-season trips to Disney and one of the best things we found was we rarely waited to be seated when at our reserved meals. We were about an hour early for this reservation and they still seated us immediately (at noon which is a little more impressive).

Just like at Rainforest, all the animals would come to life every half our or so. The ice cave changed colors. The kids had a blast with it.

Wish the nice foreigner who took this pic had told us that we were completely covering the cool little moving dinosaur behind us.

We had a lot of great food here, but this layered ice cream sandwich dessert had to be my favorite.

They had a lot of themed food. Maggie Anne's chicken nuggets were shaped like dinosaurs and one of the kid's desserts was this chocolate pudding with "dirt" and gummy dinos.

T-Rex is definitely somewhere we will plan on going back to on all of our future Disney trips. 

We took sandwich materials and attempted to only stop at rest areas for potty breaks to avoid all the begging for trash food at gas stations. We found this cool stop just before Pensacola, FL. Kids enjoyed seeing the cool plane.

We did rest-stop olympics to burn energy. It had been many, many years since I played Red Light, Green Light! There was tag and jumping contests. It was exhausting . . . for me anyway!

Such a pretty little face!

Here is Maggie Anne enjoying her road trip goodie bag. Dalton had a matching one and they were filled with all sorts of activities. Of course the biggest hit was the "World's Largest Gummy Bear on a Stick!"

Maggie Anne was far more into the little activities in the bag and created many colorful art projects on the drive. We had a football game in Ruston, after which we drove to Mandeville. Then Sunday we headed out to florida. We got within a couple of ours of Orlando and spent the night. It was a LOT of driving and the kids were fantastic!

Having fun at the ball game before we headed on our big trip.

Love that face!

These were the snack boxes that I made for the road trip from Mandeville (where we deposited the Jessie Anne with her grandparents) to Orlando.

Maggie Anne's box was covered with Disney Princesses.

The funny part is that I forgot to give these to the kids on the road. It all worked out because Tinkerbell left them as treats in our hotel room one night of our trip. More about that later.

Sorry it has been a while. We were on vacation, and yes, I have some fantastic pictures to share, but I've got to get caught up first. I'll be back soon!

Jessie Anne's popcorn costume was by far the biggest hit this morning at the hospital and also tonight at the church carnival!

Dalton watches both Dancing with the Stars and The Voice with me. Dalton has quite the affinity for boobies (yes, he's 6) which is why he puts up with my shows. Just now, I asked Dancing or Voice. Dalton's vote was for The Voice. Boyd said he didn't care, and I sassed that Dalton just wanted to watch The Voice because he like Christina's boobies. Dalton looked at me surprised and asked, "How did you know!?!"

Why NOT to let your kid browse YouTube

Dalton LOVES this obnoxious I'm a Gummy Bear video on YouTube. From there we find some pretty cool videos (and a new hilarious website vat19.com). So I was doing some work not four feet from where Dalton was sitting so I can kind of hear what he's watching.

Obviously, I was not listening close enough. He just brought me my phone and said, "You HAVE to watch this. You and Boyd (a word to the wise, NEVER assume your kid will grow out of calling you by your first name) would totally love to do this." Well, he had brought me a video on how to make Skittles Vodka shots.

Anything they can't drink is called "beer" in our house and this Skittles "beer" looked like the coolest thing he had ever seen. All I could do was shake my head.

I just got thrown for a loop. Maggie Anne always gets to request her bedtime song. Well, Boyd has put her to bed the last few nights, so I was totally thrown when tonight she asked me for Stand By Me. I had to have a little bit of Boyd's help to remember it and to learn what she expects it to be. It's a fun addition to our repertoire.

A very sweet Dalton just read his sister one of his library books. Very, very sweet & cute.

The girls were in the bath tonight, and Boyd came in and told Maggie Anne that she was so pretty. He asked her how she got so pretty, and as always, she answers that God did it. Boyd then asked her if she was this pretty all the time or just some of the time. She put that hand on her hip and sassed that she was always this pretty. She is such a mess!

Jessie Anne wants nothing to do with having baby food fed to her anymore. One of her favorites are these tiny star pastas. This was with my homemade spaghetti sauce. 

She tried with her spoon.

Then gave up on the spoon.

Ended up completely covered in it.

Oh, and yes, there was a bowl to begin with. It was on the floor by this point.

Maggie Anne needed some shade to nap at the Tech game last weekend.