Unwrapping

Christmas was great. We spent the traditional Christmas Eve with the rest of the Headleys, enjoying all our family traditions.

On Christmas day, we opened presents. Laura and I hosted a Christmas dinner, making only the second turkey of our married lives. The Souths, friends of ours, made Christmas dinner complete — great food and great company.

Laura, the chief elf in our household, loves to see the kids open lots of presents. As you can see, she made sure that happened this Christmas.



The "Welcome Home" sign is left over from our house sitter after our return from Disneyland.

Fear and no fear, plus the blue knight

For Saturday, we spent a lot of time at California Adventure. Abigail showed no fear and took Mom and Dad (separately) on the fast roller coaster — Screamin'. And, Laura showed some guts by following everyone else on the ferris wheel. Apparently, there are only some scary rides she likes to go on. We went on a swinging cage. The first time it swung, Laura crawled up into a ball, leaving the boys to slide off from their seats. She caught one, but missed the other. I think the whole family was laughing very hard during that ride. We all enjoyed it, but Laura.

It was fun to go on rides together. We all went on the together. Unfortunately, Gabriel is out of view on these pics, but is sitting next to Laura.








That evening we had dinner at Medieval Times, which was a blast. The kids loved cheering for the blue knight. He came in second place, doing a pretty good job, overall. But, for Laura and I, it was really great seeing the kids get into the performance and cheer for the blue night.



The picture of Benjamin with his blue flag exemplifies how all the kids got into the cheering. I don't know what was happening with Gabriel here, but I love that Collette is ready to smile for any picture.



Family picture at the event:

Genies, water shows, & night sights

Day 2 in Disneyland

Friday, we spent our time at Disneyland & California Adventures. The kids favorite ride (except Gabriel, because he didn't quality), was Soarin'. It was always good to have a ride that everyone agreed to. While the other kids were at Soarin', Gabriel and I watched a Monsters Inc. parade and went on the Monters Inc ride a few times.

We also saw a few other shows, including Aladdin and Playhouse Disney. Aladdin was great, despite the magic carpet ride not working. All the kids really loved it.

We took a break from the park at dinnertime and came back to watch the water show. We tried to race over to see the fireworks, but the line was too long to get back into Disneyland. So, we took the kids, once more, on Soarin'.

A bit from the World of Color water show:


Then, we went over to see the night lights at the castle and decided to spend a late night getting onto Small World.
 

It was a slow moving line. They were doing some recording of the characters with what looked like a news reporter. Then, there was also a line held up so that a celebrity (Chaz Bono and his former girlfriend). Apparently, if you're a celebrity, you get to get a boat to yourself. Well, we probably should have gone on a different ride, since the line here was so long. But we got a good family shot out of it.

Jedi Training

Some time ago, Laura introduced the Good Deed Jar, which we've been adding beans to for a good deed done in the family. We told the kids that at 500 deeds, we'd take them to Disneyland. So, Wednesday, after school, we picked up the girls. They were surprised to see me in the car, since I'm usually at work. Then, Laura mentioned I counted the beans before going off to work, found more than 500, so we packed the car and started driving directly to Disneyland.

Yesterday, Laura & I loved watching Collette and Abigail battle it out in the Jedi training. We took Abigail, Ben, and Gabriel on the Matterhorn. Did all the Fantasyland rides, and overall had a great time.

Off to run for the bus! We'll add more pictures later.

Favorite moments of the kids:

Gabe: Matterhorn


Collette: Star Tours

Abigail: Jedi training


Ben: Buzz Lightyear shooting