Christmas Cookies

Last weekend we went over to my sisters house for a little holiday baking.  It was a fun afternoon with my sisters, Anna & Aunt Mandy.  I have a feeling that we’ll have to do a bit more baking, because I’m not sure how many cookies are actually left. :)  We thought that we should leave the cookies at the Henry house so that the Walker’s wouldn’t eat them all. But, really I think the Henry’s love cookies about as much as we do.  :)   

I was thankful that Rob was there…he took all my pictures for me, except the last few.  It’s pretty obvious which pictures are his and which are mine. :)We made sugar cookies galore!Peanut butter cookies, no bake cookies and molasses…A few glasses of wine were drunk…I wish I could say that it was the wine that caused my measurement errors, but I didn’t drink any.I was thankful that Rob’s Aunt Mandy was there because when it came time to decorate all the sugar cookies she sat with the kids and helped them out.Now aren’t those the most beautiful cookies you’ve ever seen?!? 

Watch out Martha!

Disneyland Adventure Day 5

After being spoiled all week with virtually no lines, today was definitely busier.  I guess everyone decided to head to Disneyland for the long holiday weekend.  :)  Right from the get go, we had lines.  Rides we were walking on over and over now all the sudden had 30 minute wait times.  We quickly decided that maybe it was a good thing we were leaving today.  We made sure to ride our favorite rides one last time and for Hannah that was the Matterhorn and for Emmie, the teacups.I love the lanterns above the teacups.  So festive and fun, especially at night.  Which I told myself I was going to get a picture of them at night and then didn’t make it back for a good one.The girls discovered on our last day there that on a lot of the rides in Fantasy land they could actually sit together, since big sister was 7.  Oh my goodness, you would have thought they had won the lottery.  They were so excited to ride together.  It was pretty amazing how quickly their bickering stopped. Emerson wasn’t sure she wanted to see Harold again.  In all, she went on the ride 4 times.  Each time she thought that maybe this would be the time that he wouldn’t be there.  She didn’t want to chance it one last time. :)  Tom and I did the rider switch which allowed Hannah to go on the ride two times right in a row.  Once with Tom and then with me.  She was a happy girl!Mom and Dad spent the morning doing some last minute shopping.  We ran into them just outside the Alice in Wonderland ride.  He thought this was pretty funny.  It’s always 5 o’clock somewhere.   I particularly love the heart above his head.  Hee hee..As much as I didn’t want to chance getting all wet, we did Splash Mountain one more time.  Our only request was to not sit in the front.  Emerson doesn’t like to be wet, so I made her promise me that she wasn’t going to freak out when she did get wet.  She promised me and she did really good.  Granted we didn’t get very wet.Such a fun ride.  I love that Emmie has her feet up on the seat.  I need to Photoshop Mom & Dad into the picture.  :)On our way to main street we saw Ariel walking.  She didn’t stop so we couldn’t get a picture.  The girls were pretty bummed.  And, then we turned the corner and ran right into this guy.  Oh, he had us laughing!  He made the girls work for their autographs.  Hannah had to spin around in circles and Emmie had to jump. Never a “boring” moment with the Mad Hatter.  Another disappointment for my girls…this was all we saw of Cinderella.  That’s Emmie’s blonde head at the bottom of the picture.  So close.We stopped for ice cream on our way out of the park.  You have to make a sad moment happy right?!?  Hannah went for cookies and cream, Emerson rainbow sherbet, Tom vanilla with strawberries and I went for mocha almond fudge.  Mmm..mmm.mmmm….We finished up our day at California Adventure.  Hannah and I went on Goofy’s Sky School while Tom and Emmie went for the Silly Symphony Swings.  We were going to do Toy Story Mania one more time but it was a 45 minute wait and we didn’t want to chance getting to the shuttle on time.  Our last shop of the park, Hannah found her hat.  She had been looking for the perfect hat and she finally found it.  I think it’s a good fit, don’t you?  So, so cute!

We were out of the park by 4:15 and made our way back to the hotel, stopping for one last trip through World of Disney.  We had to make sure there wasn’t anything that we forgot to buy the night before.  Our flight left at 7:50 and our shuttle picked us up at 5.  We almost went for the 6 o’clock shuttle and I’m really glad we didn’t because the traffic getting to the airport was insane.  I thought Seattle traffic was bad!  Those folks down there are crazy drivers for sure!  Our flight home was uneventful.  Hannah and I fell asleep pretty early on in the flight, while Emerson waited until we were 10 minutes away from landing.  Go figure. :) We won’t be making any reservations on late flights anytime soon.  It made for a LONG day! 

It was an amazing trip filled with lots of memories and fun moments.  We’re already talking about our next trip…in two years.   Thank you for putting up with the insane number of pictures.  And to think, I didn’t even share them all. ;)

Disneyland Adventure Day 4

We’re almost done with our Disney pictures…almost. :)  Today we started our day at California Adventure.  We were told that we could get picnic lunches that would guarantee us a seat in the reserved section for the big World of Color show.  We were also told that they only sell 76 picnic lunches.  We decided that we would go get our picnic lunch first thing so that we didn’t have to worry about it later on in the day.  We went into the park at 9:15 like we did on Monday so that we could be first in line when the park opened.  We thought we’d get to ride on the Ariel ride a few times before we were allowed into the rest of the park, but the ride wasn’t working…again.  So, we had a croissant and coffee and enjoyed the sounds of Disney.  When the park opened we went to get our picnic and discovered that we couldn’t get them until 11:30…

We made our way to “a bug’s land” and watched the It’s Tough to Be a Bug show.  Not my favorite but it was entertaining to watch the girls. We met Chip & Dale and learned one way to tell them apart...Chip has the darker brown nose, like a chocolate chip. On our way out of Bug Land we passed where the new Cars land is going to be.  It looks like it’s going to be pretty cool from what we could see.  Hannah wanted to watch the Disney Channel Rocks show, so we made our way to the Pier for the show. 

Emmie was excited to see the fountains on.

Tom and Dad went to get our picnic lunch tickets and came back with the actual lunches.  Apparently, you get the lunch when you buy it and get a ticket for the show.  At this point we’re not feeling too great about this whole picnic experience.  Everyone we talked to seemed to have something different to say.  After a few rides we decided to take our picnic lunches back to the hotel and eat by the pool.  We all agreed that it was a good idea seeing as though it was our hottest day.  70 degrees by 11 am.  Oh, I love that!

Hannah and Tom went straight to the waterslide while Emmie and I worked our way into the pool.  They claim it was a heated pool, but that was not my definition of heated. It was COLD!  Usually once I’m in, I warm up, I still had goose bumps after 5 minutes and decided to take a shivering Emmie to the kiddie pool.  The kiddie pool was much warmer, probably because it was so shallow.  How Tom and Hannah managed to stay in as long as they did I’ll never understand.  I was so proud of Hannah for going down the slide.  She thought she’d be scared, but she wasn’t and she did so well.  Although, I would have preferred that she have a life vest on but that’s just the mom in me.  :)  We let the girls play for about an hour and then we rushed them back to the park.  We still had a lot of things to cross off our list on our last full day. 

I loved this cute wreath.  I think I need one for my front door, just a bit smaller.We went to Princess Fantasy Faire, where you wait in line to meet 3 princesses.  Unfortunately for us one of them was Jasmine and we’d already had our picture taken with her.  But…the girls were super excited to see Tiana from Princess and the Frog and Sleeping Beauty.After seeing those three princesses the girls really wanted to wait in line to meet Rapunzel.  So we made our way to her room over by the Carousel.  Emmie was a little disappointed that she was wearing shoes.  Apparently, in the movie she doesn’t wear shoes.I love this picture.  So close…Tom and I (and the girls) were pretty excited with all the non-traditional characters we saw on this trip.  Alice, how nice. :)Tom surprised the girls with a trip to Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique and boy were they excited.  It was so much fun to watch Emerson experience it for the first time.  It brought back lots of memories from when Hannah did it 2 years ago.  She didn’t believe us that her hair was sticking straight up.  Almost done.Princess Emerson…oh was she ever proud. :)While Emerson went for the traditional princess hair do, Hannah went for the Disney Diva and boy oh boy did it bring out the diva in her! :)  I have to go look at our Disney PhotoPass to see if their photographer got a good picture of the two of them together. Disneyland at Christmas is my new favorite time to visit.  So magical.

We went back to California Adventure for dinner so that we’d be ready for World of Color when it was time.  We were told to get in line at 7:15 only to be told, at 7:15, that since we had reserved seating with the picnic that we didn’t need to be back until 7:45.  So we left and did a few Bugs Land rides and came back. We should have just gotten in line at 7:15 because our reserved section was pretty much full by the time we were told to come back.  To say that I was disappointed with the show would be an understatement.  It has the potential to be an absolutely amazing show but only if you have an excellent spot in front to stand.  We couldn’t see over the people in front of us, so we had to put the girls on our shoulders.  They enjoyed it but not the rest of us.  I was so excited to see the show and to not be able to really see it was just so disappointing.  Not a fun way to end our last night in the parks.  Tom made it all better by taking us to World of Disney for some retail therapy.  It worked.  :)

Disneyland Adventure Day 3

Today we used our early entrance pass.  The only sections of the park that were open early were Fantasy land and Tomorrowland.  Tom went and got FastPasses for Star Tours while we got coffee and made our way to Fantasyland.   I stopped to take a picture of Walt and Mickey… …and laughed when I turned around and saw this…the crowd was growing.We stopped for breakfast at our favorite place.  Nothing like a Mickey Mouse pancake to start your day off right. This was supposed to be our very first ride on our first day.  We weren’t too happy about this.After breakfast we made our way to Splash Mountain.  Tom got soaked. Hee hee…My little princess working on her autograph while in line to meet our Hundred-Acre Woods friends.I think this ride was the one we visited the most.  The girls loved this ride.Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas was there.  Every time we saw him there was always a long line of people waiting to see him.  Sadly, we never did make it through the line.Stopping for a quick photo.  She’s such a poser. :)We found the famous Club 33 and had to take a picture.  On our way over to California Adventure we ran into the one, the only, Minnie Mouse!And then we ran into Dug from one of our favorite Disney movies…UP!  Don’t you just want to squeeze him?The Green Army Men from Toy Story put on a little show.    This time both girls went out. I was so proud of Emmie. This was Hannah’s favorite ride.  It’s a little wacky, just like her.Oh my goodness, Emmie was super excited to meet Woody.  She wasn’t quite sure what to do with herself.  :)After a quick stop to get warmer clothes we took the Monorail back to the park.  We read that if you ask, you can usually sit in the front of the Monorail.  We asked and got the front…except it was the back on this  trip.  :)  Nonetheless, it was pretty cool.  Literally…it was freezing in there. :)And just like that we ended our night with the Soundsational parade. 

A great end to a great evening.