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.