Happy New Year!

The day after Christmas

The gang went to see The Godfather at Brattle Theatre in Cambridge so Laura and I went to the gym for an hour.  After they got back, I made some leftover turkey dumpling soup.

Then we had fun decorating a gingerbread house.


And we did a puzzle.  Ymo, ymoboo and I stayed up till 1:30am to finish it.

Ymo made some popovers.
We enjoyed the rib roast that I hauled from Philadelphia last week.  It was tasty.

Christmas

I picked up dad on Christmas eve and bought Bugaboo creek for dinner.

On Christmas, we waited for the rest of the family to arrive.  Laura and Hah dah buh gee snacked on stinky blue cheese.

I made turkey and ham for Christmas dinner.  It was a good spread but I forgot the potatoes which sat in the microwave all night.
Laura only picked at her dinner.  She was too excited about opening her presents.

Presents!


Ymoboo asked for these!  Yogatoes. Don't ask.
Ymo and Ymoboo.

I got the build it yourself Paul Revere house. 

Then we watched Cinderella to end the evening.

Merry Christmas.

Christmas decorations

Last night, we decorated the Christmas tree. Laura was very excited and happy. We had Christmas songs playing in the background and lots of dancing.

Laura decided that she wanted to use all the tinsel for her tree. You can scratch interior decorator from her future.

Then she took my camera and started shooting away. You can also scratch photographer as a career too. Our lovely tree. We're so excited about Christmas and spending it with our family.

Gingerbread men

I made some Gingerbread men last night. Laura didn't want to help me make the batter or even cut out the cookies because she was too busy watching the Peanuts cartoon on tv.
After her bath, she wanted to decorate ALL the cookies.
She had to line them just so.

She was getting exhausted with all of the labor.

I had to give her a cookie to get her to finish!
She had fun decorating. She would tell me which ones she would give to her friends at school. It was very cute. Sorry sister, I dropped all of them off at her school this morning.

Piggy

Laura was wearing her piggy pajamas so I thought it would be cute for her to make a piggy.

She was snorting the whole time.

Saturday

There was too much to do today.  I woke up at 7am and I probably would have gotten a lot more done if Laura didn't get up at 11am.  We went to her dad's coworkers party last night and she stayed up until 11pm so she was tired. 

I got her little tree out.  When she woke up and saw the tree, she was so excited to decorate it.

I had to stop her so she could eat something.  I made some grill cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.  She preferred dipping her sandwich into hot sauce.
We went to the Wrentham Outlet mall and went Christmas shopping.  I got a lot done in about 2 hours before going to Ananda's (our neighbor) birthday party at Plaster Time.  All of the neighborhood kids were there including the boys next door so Laura was very happy. 


Here's her Belle plaster creation in pink.
We went straight to her dad's work for a visit and dinner.  Then we got back home around 8pm so she could continue to decorate her tree.  

She is so excited about Christmas.  She has been singing Christmas songs all day.

Mystery solved

For those of you who were confused as to Elmo's gender, look no further.  Elmo is a girl and a princess no less.  She can be found living happily in Laura's room on her rocking chair.

Monday, December 8: Animal Kingdom and other parks

Laura and I spent Monday morning at Animal Kingdom while her dad returned the rental car. He joined us later.   We did the exploration trail.  She was totally not into it and was bored and kept asking me when we could leave.  Laura is definitely not into animals.  She likes cats and dogs but has no interest in viewing wild animals.

We rode the train to the petting zoo.


The Pangani Animal Exploration Trail.

After her father joined us, they went on a few rides and then we watched the "Finding Nemo" musical.  It was 45 minutes of snoreville.  I'm not sure if Laura really enjoyed it.  
Then we we went back to the hotel.  We splurged and ate dinner at Shula's steak house and then we walked to Epcot.  
Laura liked trying out all the sodas.

She and her dad went on Soarin twice.  Then we took the monorail back to Magic Kingdom to meet up with the boys.  It was nearly 10pm.
They all went on some more rides like the carousel, dumbo and Snow White's Scary Adventures (Laura kept her hands over her eyes for the whole ride).



When the park closed, we took a shuttle back to the hotel.  All the kids collapsed on the bus.  It was very challenging waking them up and getting them off the bus.
The next morning, we had breakfast at the Garden Grove Cafe at the Swan which was good and met Noah's family to say goodbye.  We flew back completely exhausted from the trip.