Texan Reunion

8 is great!

This year Doug and I convinced the Gordon's to head out to the happiest aka(craziest) place on earth for Christmas vacation. It sounded like a grand idea (and it was) other than the thousands of people that joined in our fun. But, sometimes you have to sacrifice in order to meet up with your closest friends.

The guys and all the kiddos (minus Luke)
Waiting for a table of "12" at Claim Jumpers

The night before we met up at our hotel. The kids were anxious with excitement. My boys hadn't seen the girls since the day we drove away from their house in San Antonio (1.5 years ago to be exact). I'll have to admit I was a tad worried they wouldn't hit it off like they did when they were younger, but once they saw each other and got the jitters out, it was just like old times. It's even crazier to think Taylor and Mackenzi were 4 and Maci and Jared were 1.5 when they met!

Warning this is just one of MANY self portraits to come of Ang and I.
However, this time we had to silly girls trying to jump in all of them.

Taylor and Mackenzi

Over dinner, we planned out our three day adventure so we could get the most out of the parks. Doug and I worried that our daughter would not be brave enough to ride anything (this was the case a few years back). Our first day we were full of energy and excitement (as you can imagine)

Double jogger, three kids. We're ready to go!
The first ride of choice, the bobsleds. But, before that a family shot.

They moaned, and guess what this is the happiest one I have! Go figure.

The lines weren't terrible for the first few hours, after that they got crazy! Thank goodness for fast passes, baby swap passes, and Greg & Doug who ran around getting them for us. The longest line we ever waited in was about 40 minutes long, I must say we had quite a good little system.

While the boys took the kids on Star Tours we ran for a quick Diet Coke.
The photo was a rarity since there wasn't ever a time people weren't walking by.

This was probably one of our worst decisions to wait in line for. We all got soaked and were freezing. Note to self don't ride unless it's hot outside!

The best surprise of the morning was while waiting in line for Pirates we were able to watch the Princess and Frog parade. It was darling! Definitely a must see.

The views are always better up on dad's shoulders.




Due to some time spent in line we had to get creative with entertainment.
The hand slapping game was one of the boys favorites.

Can you believe the line on Indiana Jones? Oh, my. Angie stayed out with the kids that couldn't ride due to their height and worked some of her motherly magic.

Weston and Luke slept like this for about 2 hours. Nice.

We had about an hour to kill before hopping the Monorail over to Goofy's Kitchen for dinner, so we pit stopped in Toon Town. Not my favorite land, but the kids enjoyed the roller coaster.

I thought this photo was so cool! This was the view waiting for the Monerail to pick us up for Downtown Disney. We planned on eating only one meal in the park (due to the expense) and managed to hold off the kids until dinner. I didn't say it was easy, but they did clean their plates!

Goofy's Kitchen

I was super bummed that the one and only photo of us was blurring. Grrrr..... This always seems to happen when I try and let someone take a group photo. Such is life! I was recommended by a few friends to dine here. It was pricey, but totally worth it. This was by far Weston's favorite place, he couldn't get enough of Goofy. It was an all you can eat buffet from macaroni to steak!

Goofy also liked Greg.

With full tummies we trekked back over to the park for a few more hours of fun. We ended the day (11pm) to be exact riding the Autotopia cars and Thunder Mountain.

And guess what? We did it all again the next day!