Holidays 2015

 Thanksgiving was spent with my side of the family this year.  There are 22 grandkids so there are always plenty of cousins to play with when we get together.  It was quite a drastic turn around for us because we got home from sunny, summer-like Florida a week before Thanksgiving.  The timing was kind of weird but I'm always ready for some turkey and mashed potatoes.  We hung out and played games and headed home the next day so we could get our Christmas tree!

 

 We went to the spot we've gotten our tree for the last three years but the trees were massive and there weren't many left to chose from.  We'll have to find a new place next year.  We planned on going smaller than last year, and we thought we did, until we tried to haul it up the hill and onto the top of our car.  It was a monster.  I don't know how Paul ever got us home safely because it was very difficult to see out the front windshield.  We got lost of looks and points and laughs on the highway heading home.  It does look pretty ridiculous on the car, but lots of fun!

 This is how it looks staged in the living room.  Usually Paul will squat and push the tree up with his back while I have a 2x4 I use to push it at the top.  This time around the tree was too darn heavy and tall that neither one of us could push it far enough up to get it to stand.  We ended up calling in reinforcements to help.  Oh the shame!  I think the tree was around 20 feet.  We had to cut the top off because it was scraping our vaulted ceiling.

 

 One evening not long after we put the tree up, Mason and I watched it slide down the wall where, thankfully, it stopped on its own.  Drew was sitting on the couch at the time and would have been crushed if it hadn't stopped.  Scary!  So, along with bolting the stand into the floor as per normal, Paul also put eye hooks on the wall and strung car tie-downs from the wall to around the tree.  As stable as it was after that, it still scared me that we might lose it.  If it fell again it would have been chopped into fire wood and no more Christmas tree!  We will definitely go smaller in 2016!  I think.

Also during the season, Drew had her first band concert!  Hot Cross Buns . . . It was awesome!  Bree was just about as excited as Drew was!

 
 Christmas morning was at home, like usual.  The night before we did our Christmas program and had 2 piano accompaniments (Mason and Darcy, who started lessons in the fall) and a clarinet to add a little flavor to our off-key singing.  The Ericksons are not blessed with singing talent.  We had some excited kids, as usual.  6 am comes early.  I hope they sleep in a little later as teen-agers but I'm not counting on it.  Bree got a Lego Cinderella Castle set to remind her of Disney World.  Darcy got her Little Live Pets stuff which she had been coveting for months.  They worked for about an hour and haven't been played with since.  Shopkins don't do anything but they are all the rage at our house right now so she was thrilled to add to her collection.  Mason got a huge new Nerf gun to shoot his sisters with, and an OSU football jersey.  Drew was hard to shop for.  She ended up with lots of new books and a Chudley Cannons t-shirt that only a true Harry Potter fan could appreciate.  I got Paul a drone with a camera on it and its pretty fun to have a bird's-eye view of our property. 



 

Later that day we went to Paul's sister Carmen's house for more Christmas fun.  There are also 22 cousins on this side so lots of kids to play with wherever we end up for the holidays.  We had a fun ornament exchange and a delicious dinner.  Always a good time at Aunt Carmen's!

New Year's Eve we spent at my sister Candace's new place in Dallas, OR.  Its never been my favorite holiday and this year was no different.  After filling up on a bunch of junk, I proceeded to throw it all up and was sick all night and the next day.  Luckily no one else got sick.  I guess I took one for the team.  We had lots of fun with cousins again.  Mason had his first taste of our old family recipe for slush.  It has orange juice concentrate, bananas, sugar, and lemonade all mixed together and frozen.  Then you scoop out some of it and mix it with 7-up in your cup.  Its good but it pretty much eats away your moth if you drink too much.  Good stuff!


So 2015 came to an end and I will say it was a pretty darn good year.  We had so many fun adventures and different kinds of entertainment to experience.  We truly were blessed this year.  And as a follow up on the whole identity theft fiasco, the bank returned the money stolen out of our checking account.  Even though it was not the most pleasant of experiences to fight through, there was no lasting harm done.  Knock on wood.

Magic Kingdom - Day 7

Day 7, Nov 19th, we had enough time before our flight left to spend half a day at the Magic Kingdom.  The other days there we had kept an eye on the wait times for the lines to see either Anna and Elsa, or Rapunzel and Cinderella.  They were ridiculously long so we never attempted it.  Bree is a huge Rapunzel fan, Darcy loves Elsa.  So the plan was to rope drop getting in line to see the princesses.  Paul took Darcy and Drew to stand in line to see Elsa and Anna, I took Mason and Bree to the Rapunzel/Cinderella line.  We didn't tell the girls beforehand in case the lines were already huge.  But Mason, Bree and I  were third in line to see our princesses and our line moved right along.  We got in and out quickly.  Bree was soooo excited to see Rapunzel.  We hadn't seen her anywhere else the entire time so I'm glad she finally got to meet her.  She was chatting with her and gave her a big hug when we left.  She was pretty happy.  I made Mason get in the picture too, even though I told him he didn't have to, just to get him in line with us.  We were even able to ride the carousel nearby 2 times and browse a gift shop before the others were done.  I guess Paul said dads would race to the line which made it look short and then moms and kids would finally catch up and squeeze through to the dad in line.  I call that blatant cheating.  So not fair to the little girls who are in line waiting to have to see all those other girls get to pass them up.  Not cool people.  And that was a line people used fast passes for so it turned out that even though they were near the front of the stand by line, they stood there for at least a half an hour to get  to see Elsa and Anna.  I think it was worth it though.  Darcy looks pretty happy in her pictures.  Score one for mom and dad!

 

 

  After the princesses we had fast passes for Seven Dwarfs Mine Ride, Space Mountain, and Big Thunder Mountain.  We also did some final souvenir shopping and ate lunch at the Liberty Tree Tavern.  It was hard to say goodbye.  By the last day we had it all down to a science and 20,000 steps a day in the 85 degree muggy heat was no big deal.  Kind of.  Bree and Darcy were at each other's throats most of the last 2 days from being cooped up next to each other in the stroller all day every day.  And there were a couple of times we had some arguments over who sat next to whom on rides.  We had a discussion before we ever left for the vacation about seating and sleeping arrangements.  We had two bigs (Paul and I), two mediums (Drew and Mason), and two smalls (Darcy and Bree).  Most of the time the rides required a big to be with a small so the mediums got stuck on the rides together.  They took it very well actually.  Bree and Darcy would switch off on which big they went on rides with.  I think it worked out pretty well but I never really asked them.  The sleeping arrangements worked out so that Paul and I each got our own bed in different rooms.  Then Mason stayed in my room and Drew in Paul's and the littles would switch every night which medium they slept with.  They all survived so I guess it worked in the end.

This is the last picture we took at Disney World.  We had the time of our lives.  If it hadn't been for the theft of my purse, I would say it was darn near the perfect vacation.  We had an amazing time and saw some amazing things.  We have been so blessed with the adventures we are able to participate in as a family and I hope our kids have lasting, wonderful memories of our trip to Florida November 10-19, 2015.

Disney's Animal Kingdom - Day 5

Animal Kingdom is my favorite park at Disney World after Magic Kingdom.  Its kind of strange though, I am not an animal lover and I wasn't looking forward to this day at all.  In fact, we had heard from a couple different people that you could get away with only spending half a day at this park.  So I started the day thinking maybe we would go back to a different park if we got bored here.  Didn't happen!  Our fast pass for Expedition Everest, the best ride at this park we had heard, was for 2:30 in the afternoon so we decided to rope drop this ride to get it out of the way so we could leave early if we wanted to.  IT WAS AWESOME!  Expedition Everest is the best ride in all of Disney World!  Crazy, Crazy ride!  We all rode it the first time and stayed around to ride it again on our fast passes.  Well, Paul, Mason, and I did.  It was a little much for the girls I guess.  Maybe because you go backwards in the dark at a million miles an hours.  It was so good!

 After Everest we rode the Kali River Rapids.  We learned our lesson about soaked shoes and clothes at Universal Studios so Paul made sure we had our rain ponchos and flip flops to change into for the ride.  We got soaked!  Well, Paul and Mason did.  The girls were smart enough to wear the ponchos.  Bree and I rode twice in a row and then the others went one more time for good measure.  The place wasn't packed yet and it was so hot already it was easy to get back on and get cooled off.  That was a nice ride too.
  We found a dinosaur section with some tamer rides for little ones like the Tricera Top Spin and Primeval Whirl, but we didn't ever go on the Dinosaur ride.  It looked a bit scary for Bree and we were running behind schedule because of the three trips on the river ride.  But it was Paul's fault this time, not mine.  We watched the Finding Nemo musical, Flights of Wonder with real birds, Festival of the Lion King, and Its Tough to be a Bug.  We took the Kilimanjaro Safari which was a ride on a huge safari vehicle through acres of protected wildlife.  We saw giraffes, hippos, zebras, a rhino and all kinds of animals I had never heard of.  It was very cool.  At the end of the day we took the Pangani Forest Exploration Trail where we saw gorillas!  I was so excited, I'd never seen a gorilla in real life before.  They were gorgeous!  Amazing animals.  I was thrilled with the opportunity to see them.  And I was surprised at how many they had too.  Its a real animal conservation place they have at Disney World.  I was also surprised at all the hippos they had.  What a great place it was to visit.  There aren't tons of rides at this park but we loved it anyway.  We managed to spend all day there and enjoyed it all.  The kids all found a stuffed animal to buy here too.  I guess you can count Mason's Yeti as an animal.  Bree got some cross between a kitten and a yeti which she calls a keti named Frost.  Darcy chose a snow leopard and named him Everest, and Drew found yet another hippo and named him Tiki.  Now we will never forget the darn Tiki Room and song that went with it.

 
For lunch we ate at the Flame Tree Barbecue.  Excellent of course.  And for dinner we went to 'Ohana at the Polynesian Resort.  It was so good.  Talk about massive amounts of food!  Even Mason was full after that dinner.  Mason, Darcy, and Bree all participated in the coconut broom races and received leis.  Drew was too mature for such antics I guess. Or she was too full of chocolate milk to move.  That was one of my favorite days of our whole trip.  There were also beautiful flowers and bushes and trees in Animal Kingdom.  Did I mention I loved this park!?

Epcot - Day 3

  Epcot!  That iconic ball is recognized anywhere.  When we first saw it I was kind of disappointed.  I thought it would be huge but its really not that humongous.  Epcot was an interesting park.  You enter right at the ball, then there is the amusement park part, then past that there is the World Showcase where you walk around a lake and you find food and small bits of culture from all over the world. 

  We rope dropped Soarin though that wasn't the original plan.  I had overheard the day before a guy telling his friends his favorite ride at DW is Soarin.  So I told Paul and he adjusted our schedule accordingly so we could rope drop it.  It was a really good ride, skimming over the Golden Gate Bridge, fields of wheat, mountains, and cities.  Not my all time favorite but still pretty good.  We also rode Spaceship Earth, The Seas with Nemo and Friends, Turtle Talk With Crush, The American Adventure, and Gran Fiesta Tour Starring the Three Caballeros.  Living With the Land was a leisurely ride through pretty much test labs they have set up to try different methods of farming.  It was pretty cool for me because I love to garden and I came away with a couple of ideas I would like to try in the spring.  We rode Mission: Space, a ride in which 2 people died after riding it years ago.  Since then they modified it and took out some of the g-forces and spins.  If you choose to.  We all chose to ride the wussy version but that was still a crazy ride.  I've developed some claustrophobia as I've gotten older and that ride kind of got to me.  You are strapped in and then they close you in a fake spaceship cockpit and you can't move and even if you could there is no place to go.  Lets just say I will never volunteer to really go to Mars in a spaceship.  It was fun though if I concentrated on looking out my "window" at the martian landscape.  The last, and best ride of the day, was Test Track.  It was cool because we got to design our own vehicle with a bunch of different parameters and then we competed against each other on the track as to whose vehicle performed better.  I'm pretty sure Drew, Bree, and I had the vehicle that won, though Paul, Darcy, and Mason had a nice one too.  At one point on the ride the car you're in just takes off and you are going so fast!  It was lots of fun.  That was a family favorite.  You see how much I'm enjoying it.

The afternoon was spent walking around the World Showcase.  We had lunch in Mexico and dinner in Norway at Akershus Royal Banquet.  We had dinner with the princesses and some very good food.  I was proud of Darcy and her willingness to try all the great food.  She even ordered salmon for dinner.  While Drew drank her chocolate milk.  And a good time was had by all!

We watched a lumberjack show in Canada and looked around France, Japan, and Morocco.  That part of Epcot definitely caters to a more mature crowd.  There weren't many ears on little girl's heads wandering around and the alcohol was flowing freely.  We even got to witness a war of words between some tipsy people about who knocked into whom.  It was a different experience than the other DW parks.  We stayed till dark to watch Illuminations:  Reflections of Earth, which was a fireworks and light show in the middle of the lake.  Pretty cool.  It was very strange while we there having everything decorated for Christmas, but having the weather in the high 80's.  And then it was even stranger when it got dark at 5:30.  It was hard for us to wrap our heads around it being winter, not summer.  Paul and I made a pact that we would never retire to Florida.  Too weird for me.