Orlando trip day 2

So we flew into Tampa, so on Christmas Morning we woke up here...

We had breakfast at a restaurant called "Crabby Bills"

We then picked up our rental car - unfortunately the "8-passenger SVU" we reserved only had 7 seat-belts. "Luckily", they had a 12 passenger van we could upgrade too. (the lady felt bad about the misleading reservation so she gave us the "mini-van" deal which was less than it would have been to reserve the 12 passenger van in the first place)  A brand new van* with 5 miles on it. Made me a little extra nervous driving, good thing I have lots of practice. :o) In the end, we were glad we had the larger vehicle - but we got listen to the kids complain about the "funky smell". When we told them that people pay good money to get the "new car" smell, they thought we were joking. 

The kids were fascinated to see real palm trees. I was surprised at all the different varieties.

So surreal that it was Christmas day. Right after this we loaded up in the van with the Jessee's for the hour drive to Orlando. That was an adventure in itself. Luckily there was a 2nd set of parents to help answer and deal with all the "I'm hungry", "I'm bored" and "are we there yet" coming from the back. 

In Orlando, we meet up with the rest of the family, we ate, visited, sang some carols....

And what would Christmas be without some presents. My awesome parents had a few tricks packed in their package (which explained why my dad got stopped by airport security - 33 autograph books with metal binding with pens stuck in the binding.) There was water bottles, t-shirts, an ornament, an awesome bag, the autograph books that my mom made that had puzzles to do while in line, journal pages, and autograph pages, and some other awesome things...Think of Oprah's Favorite Things on a family reunion level - they even had an presentation that kept us all cheering. I have the best parents. (somehow Kenzie became the "model" which she loved)

*Oh and in case you are wondering - although the extra storage compartments were nice, and the back-up cam and blind spot mirrors were really nice, I really like my Chevrolet way better than the Ford 12-passenger. Mine handles better, has less noise, and has heater settings between freezing and roasting.

Orlando trip day 1

*Ok - so I'm obviously not the most consistent blogger - but we have had some awesome adventures lately that I really should share. But it will probably be pretty haphazard in the way I share so "you get what you get" (you can throw a fit - but I won't listen - ask my kids. You have you heard the "you get what you get and don't throw a fit" saying haven't you? It is very popular with preschool teachers)*

Ok - so did you hear we went to Orlando for Christmas?
We flew out on Christmas Eve. Several of us were a little nervous about flying (mostly me and Tyler) but everything went very smoothly. My kids did awesome on the 8+ hours of flying. The only two hitches came when our checked luggage didn't show up in Florida (no clean clothes for the adults and no toiletries for anyone) and when Kevin and Wendy Kay took a 45 minute detour on the way to the hotel that was 7 minutes from the Tampa Airport all at 11:30 pm (Florida time - only 8:00pm our time -but we had been traveling since 8:30am). Wendy had the fun job of shuttling all of 17 of us to the hotel in her rental car since the hotel's shuttle driver left early.

There aren't many pics from the traveling, but this was one of the funniest moments of the whole trip.

Since we were flying out on Christmas Eve, we got to the airport a good 2 1/2 hours before our flight to make sure we all got through security and made it to our gate. But the crowds/lines were surprisingly small, and we were at our gate waiting for our flight with about 2 hours and 15 minutes to spare. To our surprise, Santa and one of his elves were making the rounds of the airport. Some of the kids were a little shy to go talk to him, but not Mackenzie. She went right up. Santa asked her what she wanted him to bring her for Christmas. Kenzie gets this "what are you talking about" look on her face and says "You already came to my house! You brought my presents yesterday!" The look on Santa's face was hilarious. And then he blamed it on the elves for sneaking out to deliver presents early and not telling him.

Then Santa noticed Sierra's shirt. It says "Love your Elf" and he pointed it out to his elf and said she definitely needed an elf-hug. They started asking her if she wanted to be an elf when she grew up. Since she was already 3 inches taller than the elf, she said she thought she'd be too tall to be an elf. There were also old fashion carolers, a one-man band playing Christmas songs, and some one passing out Hanukkah gifts.  All the kids got coloring books and crayons, most of the grown ups got lip balm, and a few in the group got decks of cards. In case you were wondering - Christmas Eve isn't a bad day to fly.