Our House

Christmas Break - 2022

For Christmas break May had her tonsils out.

It was pretty rough going for a Christmas break, but better than missing a bunch of school. Of course, I'm 100% sure that she would disagree with me. I was missing German Christmas markets pretty bad (it never gets easier), so in addition to our annual gingerbread, I made some Kinderpunsch, currywurst, pretzels, and flammkuchen. It hit the spot.

On Christmas morning my kids continue to let me take the traditional picture of them with their stockings, even though they've just woken up. Bless them. It's what I live for.

And just like that, another year was over.

Disney World - Day 3

We got a park hopper this day, and split it between Hollywood Studios for most of the day, and Animal Kingdom for a little bit. Actually, I don't even have any pictures from Animal Kingdom except for our ride photo from Dinosaur.

We wore matching shirts that we had bought the previous day in the Germany pavillion.

And Cora and I wore matching backpacks that we bought.

We got reservations to eat at 50's Prime Time Cafe, where we were treated like family and had delicious shrimp and grits.

Not a lot of pictures from this day, but I know we had a good time.

On our final day in Florida, Joe and I flew back home a little later than everyone else, so we got to have some time with Cora on our own, and that was really nice. We didn't go to a park, we just hung out at Disney Springs and got some food. It almost made us wish that we had done the whole trip with just her and us, but we still loved being there with our other peeps. I'm so incredibly glad that Cora got this experience, and that she'll have those memories the rest of her life.

Disney World - Day 2

We spent the second day of our trip in Epcot, my favorite park....sometimes. International Festival of the Holidays was underway, and one of the things we wanted to do was the cookie stroll. The cookie stroll is when you go around and try and bunch of different cookies, and then you get a prize at the end. The prize is a cookie. In case you didn't already eat enough cookies. Well, actually there was a pin too, but the funnier answer is just a cookie.

Another fun thing to do during this festival is to go around World Showcase and listen to all the different story tellers talk about different Christmas traditions from around the world. There was the mischievious and magical Barn Santa in Norway.

There was La Befana, a kind-hearted witch in Italy.

There was Father Christmas in the United Kingdom.

And we also caught other entertainment like the Lion Dancer in China and the Women drummers in Japan.

We played around a lot with photo pass this day, as if there wasn't already enough entertainment.

And finally the main thing I wanted to do this day was attend the Candlelight Processional, which is a choir, orchestra, and a celebrity narrator that reads the Christmas story. I didn't want to wait in a huge line to get in, so we did the dining package earlier that day at Spice Road Table in Morocco. Delicious food, if you like that sort of thing (not everyone in our group was thrilled with the flavors here - they're different - but I was on board).

And later that night we headed to the show. The narrator that night was Isabella Rosallini, and I really enjoyed it. I can see why locals come see this every year as a part of their Christmas tradition.

And that was mostly our second day.

Disney World - Day 1

Am I a Disney Adult? Well, I enjoy going to the parks without kids, so I guess I am. Actually, I love it. Don't get me wrong, going with kids is it's own kind of fun, but going without them is so.....carefree. 10 out of 10. Would recommend. So we HAD to go to Disney World while Cora was working there, right? (this was clear back in December of 2022......because that's how far behind I am in updating this blog) But that would have been a really expensive trip if we'd brought the kids, so we didn't. We couldn't leave them for too long though, so we planned 3 days in the parks. Where to start? We flew Spirit Airlines, which we've never done before. Wow. All I can say is, look at the size of the tray table. Have you ever seen anything so small?

The plus side is that discount airlines have the same view as luxury airlines, and you can't beat that.Our hotel was across the street from Disney Springs, so that was great. Coincidently, we flew there on my birthday, so as soon as we got settled in, we walked over to Disney Springs to have a birthday dinner at the Polite Pig. Man, that place lives up to it's hype. Every single thing was amazing. I guess nobody thought to get any pictures because we were too busy stuffing our faces. Our first park for the next day was Magic Kingdom.

Did I fail to mention that we had other adults with us? We like them, so we let them tag along. Cora wasn't able to snag a reservation for MK that day, so we only spent a few hours in the morning there. We weren't staying at a Disney hotel, but we were staying at a "good neighbor" hotel, so we got access to the early morning entry. I forgot that only Tomorrow Land and Fantasy Land are open for early entry, so we ended up "rope-dropping" It's a Small World, which I thought was hilarious. We were pretty much the first people to ride it that day. Then we went to Jingle Cruise (the Christmas overlay for Jungle Cruise), where I snapped my favorite photo ever.

That's perfection, that's what that is. She hates me for it. Me and Marie rode Splash Mountain for the last time, and I was determined to get a very serious picture and not scream on the drop - I held my pose (picking my nose), only to have it blocked by the guy in front of me, but I was still proud of myself. Marie, on the other hand, couldn't help screaming.

We headed out of the park later that morning, and over to the Grand Floridian hotel to meet Cora and go resort hopping with her. It was SO good to see her! I wanted to see the big Gingerbread house they do at the Grand Floridian every year, and get a taste of it.

It was pretty good, and the giant Christmas tree was impressive.Then we headed over to the Contemporary hotel to get a look at the Mary Blair mural and their Mary Blair inspired Gingerbread display.

See the 5-legged goat? "In her artwork, Mary Blair was paying homage to Southwest Native Americans, so she wanted to include one of their beliefs in her design. They believe that nothing made by man could ever be perfect since man is imperfect. She wanted to include some human "error" in her design. To reflect this belief in her mural, Blair included a 5-legged goat." (- from the Disney Food Blog) Next we headed to the Fort Wilderness Lodge, just to take a look around. Their lobby is absolutely amazing.

It is a tribute to Native Americans with both real artifacts and reproductions. They have a gigantic fireplace in there that is inspired by the different colors and layers of rock in the Grand Canyon. Finally, we headed to the Polynesian resort. Our goal was to eat at the popular restaurant Ohana's. It's nearly impossible to get a reservation there, but I found out that they sometimes do walk-ups. So we got there a half and hour early, and got into a line that was already forming. We lucked out and got in, and had one of the best meals ever! We were all SO stuffed at the end, but we all said we'd do it again.

After we finished eating, we headed back to the Magic Kingdom - us to play, and Cora to work (she had a night shift at the Haunted Mansion).

One of our goals that evening was to try EVERY single Dole Whip flavor that they had in the park, and that's just what we did.

We tried raspberry, orange, strawberry, lemon, and of course pineapple. Personally, I don't think you can beat the pineapple, but the lemon came in a close second. Others had different opinions, which they are entitled to, even if they're wrong. Also, the coconut soft serve is great, and combined with the pineapple Dole Whip it's superb. We also got But the real bucket list item was seeing Cora in her element. She was able to take us through the Servant's Quarters (which is a shortcut, but also has some cool things inside).