Christmas and New Years!!

So, this is a long overdue post. I can hardly believe it is already creeping up on March and I haven't even added Christmas news. Well, here it is. It is quite out of order I know but I barely have enough time to do this post let alone go to all the time of putting it in order!! So here it is.

For Christmas we took a road trip down to Florida to spend the holidays with Greg's mom!! We sure had fun and packed as much fun as possible into the time we had down there.

This is Timothy at the Lego Store in Downtown Disney. He was just amazed that he could take that big cup all around the "wall of legos" and fill it with any of the legos he wanted! At first we lost him for a minute and found him over there building a sword out of the legos. We informed him he would have to take it apart and make it fit in that cup! No worries he was successful and we all left smiling! (although somewhat broke!)
The girls patiently waiting to leave the lego store and do some real shopping at the princess store!

This is the start of our New Year's Eve Activities. We went downtown Tampa for the First Night Celebration. They had all the stuff for everyone to make these masks and the interesting hats.

I can't think of many New Years Celebrations where we didn't have to wear coats, hats, gloves, etc!!! The favorite activities were the "icing" which was a sort of ice skating with no ice on some kind of slick surface. It was definitely no easier than ice skating. Even for the parents with no skates on that had to try to hold the "icing" children up. The other favorite activity was the bubble stomp. The first time in my whole life I have ever seen adults roll out huge rolls of bubble wrap and tape it to the street. There was probable 100 yards of bubble wrap 25 yards wide. They put all that down and then let everyone jump on those bubbles till they were gone. That was a crowd pleaser. Of course for mom on the bleachers, watching the drunk people try to walk and even dance with the marching band was a favorite for me.

The happy group of Lego shoppers. Not sure what Tim is so very happy about but he sure is happy. They have so many huge lego displays around Downtown Disney, I think the boys could have stayed all day. Legoland opening there next spring is definitely on the must visit list for them.

This photo is definitely out of order but makes sense later on. We went to Universal Studios where we were able to meet up with my family from Omaha. We were sitting along the parade route waiting for the parade and an employee (cast member, whatever) came along and asked for some volunteers to handle a balloon in the parade. Being the "supportive" family we are, we "volunteered" Greg and Shawn.

We so nicely volunteered them to participate. We cheered for them as they came down the route. After seeing them in their jumpsuits, we did wonder if they didn't look more like prison inmates.

Here is the happy gang waiting for the parade. That is Taylor in the front striking quite a pose.

Of course no vacation or visit to the theme parks is ever complete unless you completely scare the living daylights out of your children. We went on the Jaws ride at Universal Studios. I am pretty sure we watch our kids more than the actual ride. Maddie was completely terrified. When we got off the ride she was fine but did inform us that she did not want to do that again. To this day she talks about this ride. Only for some reason she thinks it is funny!

While we were in Tampa, we went downtown in the evening to look at the lights. There are some Banyan Trees there. The kids (and adults) were amazed by how big they were. Greg even took a swing on one of the vines.

Christopher climbed right in!! They remarked how great it would be to have one of these in our yard. I am thinking no!!

We took in some miniature golf. I did discover that the most family friendly course would only be 9 holes instead of 18. The kids lost interest in the golf and started using the clubs and balls as weapons! This went well!!

Bowling was another activity. We did discover that this also should have half as many frames for the family bowling. Tim was so funny. Greg would help Tim to get the ball down the lane and then everytime he would lean on Greg and watch his ball. It was so cute. He enjoyed the bowling more than anyone.

We went down to one of the Piers in St. Petersburg for some shopping. We were able to see dolphins swimming right there in the water off the pier.

Oh, Taylor is gonna love me!! This is a picture of the kids in their "Gram Jams". Gram got all the kids jammies for Christmas. I wanted a picture of them all after their bath. Taylor was not too happy with me but kindly obliged. The other 4 were more than happy to jump up and shout "Gram Jams!!!" They wanted to stand in front of the christmas tree every night and get a picture!!

Well, that is up through New Years. We got back from Florida and promptly started our move. We moved across town to a different house. It sure kept us busy. We had good weather for our move. We were able to stay in the same school district. We are in a better location, off the highway now. We are in the country and have spotted lots of animal tracks in the yard. We were eating dinner and saw a whole group of deer cross the street in front of the kitchen window. The kids thought this was pretty neat. The dogs not so much!!!