Thanksgiving

As is our tradition, we spent Thanksgiving with Jason's parents and siblings in Indiana.  Pat, Kelly and Lily hosted 16 of us for a DELICIOUS Thanksgiving dinner and Thursday night slumber party!

Jake and his Mimi Cathy made sure there were plenty of boys toys to play with like these super hero costumes.   Lily had plenty of "new to Will" toys as well.  It was tough to pull him out of the basement for dinner time.

We finally got all six grandkids together this year!  At almost 14 and just turned 12,  Ali and Carter were very good to play with the four little kids (all aged 4 1/2 - 5 1/2).  

On Friday morning, all of the kids and most of the adults ventured to Indianapolis to the Children's Museum - the world's largest!  This place was awesome!   It had a fantastic Dinoscape which thrilled the Dino lovers in our family.   We put together this big puzzle!

 While Carter climbed the rock wall, Will kept busy at this quarry scooping rocks - over and over.

Everyone except the Shields family got up early to see Santa arrive in an Indy car.  The three of us slept in an extra 90 minutes and got there shortly after the museum opened.   We did get to see Will in an Indy car!

We had a fantastic weekend with our family, and I'm so excited that Will is getting to know his cousins finally.   I'm sure his stories over the next few days and weeks will be about the fun at Thanksgiving; just like all the stories we've heard since Fourth of July that have included talk about playing with Ali and Carter and Lexi. 

Attraction Photos: Photopass

Since I have all the photos downloaded, I wanted to do this catch all post for the additional attraction photos like our character meals and rides so I can get them printed for my blog book. 

 

Although he insisted on riding each ride he was tall enough for - and we briefed him on what to expect - there are a few that Will did not want to ride again.   Tower of Terror and Dinosaur were his least favorite due to the darkness.  He didn't cry at either but he spent each ride holding on very tight to us.

His favorite ride (that he also says is scary, but good scary) was Big Thunder Mountain railroad.  We rode it at least four times.  There wasn't a ride photo for it though.  He liked Splash Mountain except the getting wet part (I hear ya on that one buddy!)

The ride we got the most photos on was the Buzz ride.  We rode it at least 6 times on our Christmas party night.  At the end of the evening, we took turns where one parent rode Space Mountain while the other did two lap on Buzz.  Check out all of our intense faces!

 

We only rode the "adult" roller coasters once each due to lack of time but also lack of interest.  At Animal Kingdom, we were ready to go back to EPCOT for the rest of the night and at Hollywood Studios we wanted to ride more times on Star Wars with Will!

As you can see, there was no wait for Everest after dark, but we each rode once and then head back to EPCOT for dinner and Illuminations (and more Test Track!).

Jedi Training Academy - Photopass

First the training:

 This boy used the Force on the Stormtroopers: 

 Then it was the last little padawan's turn!

Will took on Darth Vader: 

 

 And with Darth Vader defeated, the students collected their certificates:

 

Hollywood Studios - Photopass

Now that I've received my Disney Photopass pictures, I'm going to add some of them up alongside the original posts of our trip.  This picture is one of my favorites from our entire trip and it was the very last one taken.  I had fun adding borders on the Photopass website, too.  This was one of our Christmas cards this year.

Can you get a feel for the crowd at the Lights now?  It was a lot of fun, but it was a strange feeling with it being nearly 80 degrees and wall-to-wall people and fake snowing!

Jedi Training Academy

Star Tours was the only 40 inch ride we tried to get Will on in May.   He wasn't tall enough.  This trip he was, and he (and Jason) rode it 5 or 6 times!  I think I rode it 4 times with them.  Will knows the stories now since Jason bought the DVDs of all the movies after our last trip, and they watched them together all summer!

In addition to riding the Star Tours ride, Will participated in the Jedi Training Academy for 4-12 year olds.  We had to go straight from our breakfast to the sign-up at park opening.  Even being there that early, he was in the 1:20 performance time slot.  Will was the shortest kid by several inches and his "Yoda-sized robe" was still too long.   We were a little worried that he was going to back out (see shy, short kid below), but he didn't.  We just tried to keep our distance so he could focus on the trainers.

Since he was the smallest, he got to stand in the front of the stage which was great for picture taking.  The kid whose back is to me in this picture did start crying during the practice and was escorted off.  

Darth Vader made his appearance to get the kid to join the Dark Side.  But they all bravely battled him with their light sabers and passed their padawan training!  I have a video of Will's 30 second fight.  He was the last kid to go, and it was very cute.

After the training (and a long time in the gift shop picking out toys for Jason, uh, I mean, Will),  they couldn't resist a "ride" on the cruiser. 

And now our house is about all things Star Wars.   Jason bought Will a little bag of Star Wars Legos for being such a great traveler on the way home from Orlando.  They assembled the fighter together the first time, and now Will has taken it apart and re-assembled it himself a half dozen times.  So proud to see my little engineer in action.  And that smile!

Hollywood Studios

We spent all of Sunday - our last day in Orlando - at Hollywood Studios.  I was able to get this almost entirely empty street picture as we walked in for our breakfast an hour before the park opened.  This park has some of our family's favorite rides: Toy Story Midway Mania and Star Tours; and my favorite roller coaster (Aerosmith's Roll 'n Roller Coaster).  And, finally, it has an awesome "spectacle" of lights for the holiday season that we enjoyed seeing. 

The highlight of the day was Will's Jedi Training and all thing Star Wars, but I'll cover that in a separate post.  Since we had such a big breakfast, we ate a late lunch at the Hollywood Brown Derby's newly opened lounge on their patio.  Our wait was zero and the people watching fantastic!  They serve bar foods, but also signatures from their menu.  I tried two of the signatures:  Cobb salad (fantastic!) and Grapefruit cake (kinda gross!)

They also have a margarita flight that they serve at the lounge.  I had pre-screened that on blogs in advance of the trip, but the heat was getting to me that day and I didn't want any alcohol.   Next time!  After we  finished our lunch around 4, we rode Star Tours again (5th time?  6th time?) and then watched Indiana Jones Stunt show.  Just as we were leaving the show, we heard the roar of the crowd of the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights being turned on. 

The lights "dance" to music and fake snow falls from the sky.  We got a few good pictures of us on the Photopass that I'll have to upload after I get the CD.  I'm glad we got to see this. I'm also glad they turned them on a half hour earlier than I was expecting.  Because we were exhausted after getting to the park at 7:45 a.m. and having sunny and 80 degree temperatures.  We left the park at 6:45 p.m:  exhausted but pleased with another great trip!  I was up at 5 a.m. on Monday morning to fly to Dallas for work for the week.  I left the guys sleeping since their flight home wasn't until closer to noon. 

EPCOT and Animal Kingdom: Photopass

Our EPCOT time was rainy, but we made the most of it.  We also made the most of our pre-paid photopass by taking lots of silly pictures!  Jason was sure a good sport!

We met Donald is Mexico while we were waiting for our table for lunch.  I believe this was shortly after Will broke a trinket in the gift shop that they were very generous to not make Jason buy.  I was in the ladies room, so this was just relayed to me later.

We were excited to find a short line for Santa Goofy and Will's favorite friend, Pluto, at Animal Kingdom later that afternoon.  This was going to just be a Will picture but Jason walked up from his ride right when it was Will's turn and the photographer insisted we all pose.

After dinner back at EPCOT we saw that Mickey and Minnie were no wait.  Whoo hoo!  I wouldn't have encouraged the characters so much but for the prepaid pictures and the fact that we had two character meals already planned and autograph book to fill.  I'll be curious to see if our future trips involve autograph books or if he got it all out of his system this trip.

We took two laps on Test Track.  We learned on the first ride that we needed to wait to ride in the front seat - otherwise Will couldn't see anything!