Back to Disney World…our second day was spent at Epcot.  This is possibly my favorite park.  It has lots of grownupy things to do.

We started our day with a Little Nemo ride.  It was slow moving, which I liked, and had tons of bright lights and colors, which the kids liked.

We also had brunch with Snow White, Cinderella, Belle, Sleeping Beauty, and Ariel.   Magei thought it was the coolest thing ever to have princesses coming over to chat with her while she was eating.  Thanks to my mother-in-law’s advance planning, we got reservations months ago to eat at Akershus Royal Banquet Hall.  It had great food and a totally enchanting atmosphere.  We got pictures with everyone, but I wont make you look at the millions.  Here is Sleeping Beauty:

Magei and Sam resting while we were waiting in line to do…something I can’t remember…

We spent a good chunk of our day visiting all the different countries at Epcot.

Magei and Sam also met Marie.  Magei has loved Marie for the last few months since she saw Aristocats, so this was super fun for her.  She even left the park with a stuffed Marie that has since become one of her favorite toys.

Nate and I took Sam to play the video games at Mission Space while Magei rode the ride for the second time.  Sam was so sad that he was too short to ride, but the chance to play video games cheered him up.

Our last ride of the day was Spaceship Earth.  That is the ride inside the giant golf ball.  This one was fun because it took your picture during the ride, had you answer some questions, and then put your faces on bodies and did a little show about your future…pretty cool.

Blogging protocol would suggest that I finish my Florida series of posts before I switch to a different topic - However I interrupt the regular scheduled posts and bring you Sam’s birthday.  My baby turned 3 today!  We had such a fun day celebrating, especially since it was a Saturday and had Nate and Magei home with us.  We surprised Sam with a Mickey Mouse theme since he has been totally obsessed since we got back from Disney World.  I was laying in bed this morning when I heard Sam get up and go out into the living room and exclaim “WOW!” when he saw his decorations and presents.

I made Sam a birthday hat out of felt to go with his Mickey ears.  He  thought that was awesome and wore it around all day.

I also had these cute little Mickey decals to put on his presents.  Magei claimed these the second she laid eyes on them.  I’m sure we’ll see them popping up in her creations soon enough.

Magei also got in on the decorating.  The popcicle stick looking things are streamers.  She made this for Sam’s door:

And this for the living room:

We let Sam open one present right away, and he was super excited to get a new Mickey Mouse shirt to wear on his big day!

Sam begged me for days to make him a wand for his birthday party, so this is what he got:

Next, it was off to Krispy Kreme for donuts and chocolate milk for breakfast…Sam was still insisting on wearing his party hat.

Sam’s dream came true and he actually got to play outside in the snow this afternoon since Nate was home.  He was so sad when I made him come inside!  We had his official party this evening.  “Party” is a relative term in this case, since it was just the four of us.  Unfortunately, that’s how it rolls when your birthday is a week after a slew a holidays and mom is tired!  At Sam’s request we had pizza and breadsticks.  We brought out the Mickey pizza plates for the occasion.

Sam waited patiently while we sang him some birthday songs, but finally it was time to open presents!

After presents, there was more singing and then cake and ice cream.  I made the Mickey heads for these oversized cupcakes by dipping regular sized oreos and mini oreos in chocolate.

We finished off the party by playing with all of Sam’s cool new toys!  Especially fun: the new Toy Story Mania wii game!  I asked Sam what he was most looking forward to about being 3.  He said sitting on the potty.  At this point, I think he’s lying because I have yet to see any evidence that he’s taking this potty training thing seriously.  Happy Birthday Sam!!!

I should start this series of Disney World posts by saying that we drove to Florida this year.  I’ve been dreading this drive for a year now…and rightly so.  It was not fun.  Especially the drive there.  I am, however, thankful that the kids did awesome and didn’t complain at all.  The drive there lasted 21 long hours.  I’m not going to complain, because we eventually found out that all the traffic was due to a major accident…so at least I was only stuck in traffic and not involved in the accident.  However, it did add 4 hours to our trip and we only went about 10 mph (when we were moving at all) for 150 miles.  Ok, now on to the fun:

We spent our first day at Hollywood Studios.  We went to see the Playhouse Disney show, which was awesome.  Sam was beside himself watching Little Einsteins, Tigger and Pooh, Mickey and friends, and Handy Manny!  (Excuse any terrible pictures.  You know the drill: no flash photography.)

We also saw the Little Mermaid Show, which Magei loved.

One of our favorite rides was the new Toy Story Mania ride.  It took two hours of standing in line to get on!  It was totally fun, though.

We had lunch at Pizza Planet where Nate and Sam played video games while Magei and I did a little shopping.

We also did the back lot tour and got to see see special effects, props, set designs, and lots of other behind the scenes stuff.

That evening, we walked down Main Street USA to see the festival of the dancing lights.

We had dinner at the SciFi Drive In.  The kids thought this was awesome.  The whole restaurant is set up like a drive in movie and you get to eat in convertible cars.

Magei and Sam also got to meet Lightning McQueen and Mater, which was the perfect end to our fun day!

We’ll start with Christmas Eve.  I can’t for the life of me remember what we did during the day, but I’m sure it was something.  Since I don’t have any photo documentation to remind me, I’ll skip ahead to the evening.  We had the Gurneys over for the traditional Christmas Eve fondu.  For some reason, that took the entire evening, and we never got around to the games, acting out the nativity or reading from the bible.  I think it was becuase of all the fun and chatting.  The kids also had fun playing wii.  And had there been an ugly Christmas sweater contest going on, this guy definitely would have won best in show.

And now on to Christmas Day.  It was very low key this year.  I had actually been prepping the kids for months that they were not getting any presents from us.  And I totally stuck to that!  They had a measly little pile from Santa (that could not be avoided…obviously) and that was it.  The whole thing only took about 5 minutes.  Now before you go feeling all bad for the kids, I should add that they were shown love from extended family.  No, Nate and I are not Grinches or Scrooges…we took the kids to Florida two days later and went to Disney World where they totally made up for lack of gifts!  (Details on that to come.)

Despite the lack of gifts, the kids were still totally excited.  I wish we hadn’t forgotten that we had set our camera up for different shots the day before, because this is the only picture we got of the kids running down the hall…but you get the gist of their level of giddiness.

I should clarify that “Tag” in this context actually means “day” in German.  I see that that could be confusing in the blogging world.  It was about 2 a.m. that Nate and I remembered the kids had set their shoes by the door to see if St. Nikolaus would bring them presents or sticks.  Luckily, St. Nikolaus still had time to get his act together.

And last but not least, here is a photo of the kids in church clothes.  No, they’re not their Christmas church clothes.  This was actually taken before Thanksgiving, but because I forgot to take one of them this Sunday, this will have to do.

Phew…done with Thanksgiving posts!  Now on to seasonally appropriate topics.  I wasn’t able to go to our church’s Christmas party, so I don’t actually have much commentary.  But Nate took the kids and I heard nothing but awesome things about it.  And I have come to expect nothing less than awesomeness from our activities committee…so sad most of them are no longer in our ward.  (Darn boundary realignment!)

Nate’s favorite part of San Francisco was Ike’s Place.  We planned our whole day around it.  He had seen it on Man v. Food (Travel Channel) and knew instantly he had to go there.  I will admit, they had some seriously good sandwiches.  I would totally eat there again.  So would everyone else in San Fran, it seems, because it was super crowded.  But worth the wait.  For the record, I had a California BLT with fried mozzarella sticks (in the sandwich) and Magei and Sam got the ham and cheese.  YUM!  Nate had this:

That 16.61 you see in the upper right hand corner would be the price.  And Nate ate the whole thing.  Again, I was so proud.  Unfortunately, we had a dinner apointment that evening, so Nate still had to eat dinner after this.  I swear, I don’t know how he doesn’t weigh 300 pounds.  That being said, he’s not as skinny as he used to be either! (He’s a guy and doesn’t care, so I can say that!)

Like just about everyone else out there, Nate’s family also has a Turkey Bowl tradition.  And while I didn’t manage to get any pictures of Thanksgiving dinner, I did snap a few of the big game.  I can’t remember if Nate’s team won…maybe for the sake of family harmony, we’ll call it a tie….

Nate’s family has a tradition of eating sourdough pancakes at every family reunion.  I’m not sure how it started, but I know it has to do with their Italian heritage and their Grandpa Borgia.  Regardless, lots of pancakes have been consumed over the years.  Nate holds the current record with 41 pancakes.  He did not break that record on this visit, per my request.

See those two huge bowls of batter below?  There was not a drop left.

Big Sam was the resident chef.

 Magei had lots of fun with her cousin, Aurora.

 Deveren, Sam, and Nate: 3 of the 5 Farley boys.

Sam discovered his older cousin’s Game Boy while we were there.  He didn’t have a clue how to play it or what he was doing, but it entertained him for hours.  He also felt like he could run with the big kids as long as that Game Boy was in his hand.  Jordan and Brady were good sports to include him.