On our second day at Disney we decided to check out the Animal Kingdom. We never seemed to be in the right place at the right time to catch any shows, but we did get to do a few rides and such. Personally, although I am glad to have seen the Animal Kingdom, I don’t think it was as exciting as the other parks.
- Discovery Island Trails – We saw some nice birds in the trees.
- In Dinosaur Land there were some midway games that Bella and Gilli played
- Bella and Gilli met Balloo
- Kali River Rapids – Erin was too little so I went with Bella and Gilli, then Karen went with Bella. Gilli did not like getting wet.
- Kilimanjaro Safaris – A car ride through to see animals we have all seen before.
It was very pretty there, but I guess I was hoping to see more things I had not seen before or were unique.
The Tree of Life
The only downside of the midway games was the one adult who kept playing, thereby making it impossible for any of the kids playing to actually have a chance at winning.
Meeting Balloo
If I recall correctly this was also the night we went into the pool at the hotel. It was actually kind of chilly as it got dark and the wind kicked up. I think that was also the night we played games at the arcade in the hotel. Gillian won about 40 tickets on one game and was very excited about that. We all squeezed into a photo booth for some fun pictures. The girls got to choose some prizes with their tickets at the end. 
Erin also thought it would be fun to put on my socks, which she did all by herself.
Ankle high socks on Daddy = Thigh highs for Erin
After we unpacked and got settled we decided to hold off on eating and get some time in at the Magic Kingdom. We stopped down at the gift store and bought some hats and then caught the bus to the park. After getting in we grabbed a snack and headed to Tomorrow Land at Bella’s request.
While in Tomorrow Land we went to:
- Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor – This was a pretty funny comedy show. The girls really enjoyed this.
- Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin – This was an interactive ride where you had to shoot at targets as the ride went along. Very fun.
- Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress – I was surprised that Bella was as interested as she was in this. Erin did not enjoy it as much though.
- Tomorrowland Transit Authority – All three girls loved riding through the different parts of Tomorrow Land. I wish I could have gotten a picture of the looks of pure joy on their faces.
- Tomorrowland Speedway – We had to take turns on this one since Erin was too little to ride. Karen took Bella and I took Gilli.
While I was riding the Speedway with Gilli, Bella went with Karen and Erin to ride the teacups at the Mad Tea Party. Unfortunately she could not ride alone and by the time Gilli and I were done at the Speedway the park was closing. However, we met up at the Fantasyland Play Area and watched the fireworks show. It was funny because Karen left me a message that they were near the Winnie the Pooh play area instead of by the teacups. But when I asked an attendent where that was he would only tell me that since the park was closing Winnie the Pooh had gone to bed. I finally got directions once I told him I was only trying to find the rest of my family and not meet a character.
The only problem with watching the fireworks at the back of the park was that it took quite a while to get out of the park with everyone else at the end of the night. The girls were remarkable considering we didn’t get a chance to eat until around 10:00 that night once we got back into the hotel. The cafeteria at the hotel was great and we actually ate all of our meals there. (I’ll talk about logistical/advice stuff in another post)
We ended our first day at Disney with some well deserved sleep.
We decided to take the drive down in 3 days istead of 2, so we broke it up into 4.5 hours on Saturday, 9.5 hours on Sunday, and 4.5 hours on Monday without stops. We left Saturday afternoon and drove to Fairport, West Virginia. It was a fairly uneventful trip and we had a yummy dinner at the Cracker Barrel before crashing at the hotel.
On Sunday we had our long day, around 12 hours with stops. The girls liked the tunnels in West Virginia and we stopped at a scenic overlook to take some pictures.
Once we got to our hotel in Georgia we were exhausted so we got drive thru Burger King and called it a night. Luckily we didn’t have as far to drive on Monday so we took it easy and arrived at Disney just at the check in time of 3:00. It was nice to get the car unloaded and change into some shorts for some fun in the sun.
Isabella turned 7 today! 
She had a fun day today playing with her sisters and cousins. We had a bit of snow on the drive home, but the weather warmed up into the 20′s, which felt like a heatwave after the negative temps we’ve had the last few days.
Here’s a shot with her and her present from Mom and Dad:
We’ve had a ton of snow recently. Since today turned out to be very nice, weather-wise, we took a drive to the Jamestown Audubon. The girls had a lot of fun checking out all the things to play with and the animals. I uploaded a bunch of pictures to my Flickr. Here are a few:
As is our tradition, today we opened non-Santa presents. Last year we let the girls open them in the morning instead of in the evening like we used to do. This year we opened in the morning again. It seems like that works out the best. I uploaded a bunch more pictures to my Flickr Christmas set.
Here’s a video of Erin opening one of her presents. She definately has the hang of it now.
Our church doesn’t do a Christmas Eve service, so we go to our old church. I like to get a family picture before we go. Here it is:
I will probably be light on the uploading and blogging for the next couple of days. So I will take this time to wish everyone a peaceful and happy holiday season! Cheers!
We went out and got our tree last night. Erin was big enough to ride the carousel with Karen, although she didn’t really know what to think about it. I don’t think she liked it all that much, but she also could have been grumpy because it was close to dinner time.
When we brought the tree into the house today we discovered it was quite a bit larger than the tree we had last year. It was funny because even though we went to the tree farm a few days earlier than last year they hardly had any trees left. When we picked our tree out I thought it looked kind of small. I guess I was wrong about that, it almost didn’t fit through our door.
Here’s the tree pre-decoration:
While I was out of the house working on my final paper the girls and Karen got the lights on the tree:
Erin had a bottle with me and then I put her to bed while Bella and Gilli trimmed the tree:
Because I like playing with our new camera and its cool macro setting here is a close up of Bob and Wendy, the girls thought it was funny to put those ornaments together like that:
The finished tree:
I started a set on Flickr for the Christmas Season 2008. I’ll be adding pictures there as I can.
Karen was trying to get shots of Erin putting on her own hat, but Gillian kept wanting her picture taken in various silly poses. I think this one was pretty cute
I also liked the action shot of Erin laughing
-
-
www.flickr.com
This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from christophertaverna. Make your own badge here.
-
