Disney World

What can we say...we LOVE this place!

Christmas

Christmas Eve (Day)

What a great surprise for Christmas Eve...SNOW! We took some time in the morning to play outside. After we were frozen we came in and made some reindeer food to sprinkle on the lawn before heading off to the evening festivities.

Cookies

Mixing up the goodies for Santa's cookies!

Hot Chocolate! Hot Chocolate!

Had a yummy snack today:)

The Shrine

Tonight we headed to the Shrine for dinner, lights and the petting zoo. Maddy was very excited this year because she has been learning about Mary and Joseph's journey to Bethlehem and baby Jesus. She loved having us read each step of the story to her. She was really interested in the manger scene. She just stood and looked for along time (which is really rare for Maddy). It was very touching to see all the pictures and cards that children had placed there. We also had time to dress Maddy as an angel, visit the children's room where we saw a great puppet show. Madylin was sad to have to leave and wants to know when we can visit again:)

Breakfast at the Falls

We had heard from some friends how great the Santa breakfast at the Falls was and since we have a soft spot for that place we went. Breakfast was great and it wasn't crowded at all. Santa came over to our table and talked to Maddy for a long time. I even got to see one of my high school friends and catch up a bit. Maddy took a great picture with Santa and promised him we would leave chocolate chip cookies out for him:)

Eckert's Breakfast with Santa

This morning we headed to Eckert's for our annual Breakfast with Santa. It was the first time Brian and I had seen the new restaurant. It was beautiful! It was hard to even remember what the old one looked like! We enjoyed our breakfast and then headed to get Maddy's face painted, picture with Santa and decorate a yummy sugar cookie. I was happy to hear her Christmas list is pretty consistent and she hasn't shared any last minute changes with the big guy:) Our little fancy girl who loves to wear tights and jewelry did not surprise us when she wanted the Christmas snake for her face painting. This little miss has a mind of her own.

Gingerbread Houses

We snuck in a little Gingerbread house time today. Maddy was super excited and couldn't wait to decorate. She was very interested in sampling the icing (all three colors) and the candy (one of each color of every kind). When she finally stopped sampling she got to work and created three beautiful gingerbread buildings. One is Santa's house, a toy store and also a candy shop. She was so proud of herself! She is getting to be such a big girl and we even spent the evening playing UNO. She loves to play and is even a pretty good sport when she has to draw four:) When she wins she is SO excited we almost want to let her win...but we don't;)

Christmas Tree

We usually like to cut down our own Christmas tree but it seemed like we could never find the time to get it done this year. So tonight we packed up and went to Eckert's to pick out a pre-cut tree. Maddy loved running up and down and looking at all the different choices. We decided to get a small tree this year since it will have to be quickly taken down Christmas night so we can head to Florida on the 26th. Maddy was a big help this year;) She put some hooks on ornaments and even hung some herself. We had to show her how to spread them out since she had four hanging in the exact same spot. She loved checking out all the snowmen ornaments I have collected over the years. She was super excited to find her Ariel ornament and a few that she made too! I wasn't sure how I would feel about our little and lightly decorated tree but Maddy was so excited about it and carried on about how pretty it was. I realized we could have put a bare stick there and still loved it because it was ours:) So our tree gets as Maddy would say "Thumbs up everybody".