Christmas and Mickey Mouse

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Happy Belated Christmas everyone!! We've been seriously busy with tons of Christmas activities and lots of jovial family time. :) Ben's mom and nephew share a birthday on the 18th and their birthday celebration always kicks off the family Christmas events. We went to see Despereaux (Emma and I read the book prior to seeing the movie and she was very into seeing it on the big screen!). After the movie we did the traditional dinner, presents, and cake. In the following days we went to see the Polar Express in 3D at the IMAX - this has become a tradition and this year Emma actually kept her 3D glasses on the whole time. :) On the night before Christmas Eve we went to Zoo Lights, which was chilly and fun. Christmas Eve we did our last Advent along with the kids dressing up as Mary and Joseph (and Samuel). It was especially fun to throw paper balls at Samuel (Emma's cousin, Adam). Christmas Day was an adventure - we started out early opening loads of gifts (we were combined with Ben's sister and brother and parents... so lots of gifts were exchanged!). After getting ourselves pulled together and eating a yummy lunch of turkey and mashed potatoes, we hopped in the car and headed to California to meet up with my side of the family. We spent the 2 days after Christmas at Disneyland! LOVE Disneyland!! We had a very successful time there this year with our kids. Last year Becca was too little to know what was going on and Emma was scared of all the rides (even Peter Pan!), but this year Becca giggled and excitedly rode all the kid rides with us and Emma was so much more brave than a year ago. We were so proud of her! She even rode Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and was tall enough to ride Soarin' Over California. I think her favorites were Dumbo, teacups, and Gadget's Go-coaster in ToonTown. The weather was very cold the first day we were there (it had been rainy the day before), but the sky was clear and blue both days and the 2nd Disneyland day was much warmer... I even wore short sleeves for a couple of hours in the afternoon. We were bummed to not get to ride the new Toy Story ride in California Adventure - we went over to get in line after eating lunch, but they were having technical difficulties with the ride and it was temporarily shut down for at the least the next couple hours... seeing as we were done riding everything else in that part of the park we decided to skip waiting around and headed back over to Disneyland. Our sadness was quickly compensated for, however, with a surprise turn of events on the Nemo Submarine ride. We never rode this one last year because the wait time was over 2 hours - this time, we decided to give it a try, even though the wait was supposed to be about 70 minutes. Well, we had only been waiting for about 10 minutes, when all of a sudden this Disneyland employee comes up to me and asks how big our party is - I told him we had 8 all together and he then proceeds to have us follow him, so we exited the line and followed him as he takes us the very front of the line! We immediately got put onto a submarine... no way!! He said that since his shift was over for the day they sometimes get to do "magical" things for people they pick out at the park. Yippee!! It must have been my massive prego belly that drew his attention and he probably thought to himself "that poor girl looks like she's about to explode or fall over... there's no way she'll make it through a 70 minute line". ;) See how it pays to be pregnant and pathetic looking?!

So, New Years celebrations are next up on the list. Today we are taking a short hiatus from family celebrations... yesterday we met up with Ben's family again - the boys went golfing and the girls got pedicures. The last time I had a "pedicure" was at a mutual activity when one of the Beehives did my toes. It was fun to be truly pampered and have nice shiny red toes again. :) Thanks Carol! Tomorrow we'll be heading back to Gilbert for New Years partying. Today we are playing catch up doing laundry, unpacking, and putting away new Christmas toys. Ben spent the morning doing a residency interview at the Mayo Clinic nearby. I've been eating lots of chocolate... Santa really spoiled me this year with a stocking full of chocolate. :) Mmmm...