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!