Christmas Fun in Florida

To help keep this post as short as possible (which will not be very short!) I will try to condense my pictures and keep my writing to the point. So yes, for this Christmas we visited my parents in Florida for 2 weeks. It was so much fun and so busy since we had lot's to celebrate:

(1) We visited every theme park in the Orlando area. Of course we spent the most time taking our kids to Disney. Samuel's favorite ride happened to be the mini-rollercoaster they have for kids...thanks to his thick puffy hair, he made the height requirement and went on it 3 times.
Mason's favorite thing to do: WALKING! Yay, finally! My parents were so determined to see him walk before we left that they walked him all over Disney's Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom to get him confident. Finally, while waiting for us while we took Samuel on a ride, Mason started walking. It'll be fun to tell him one day that he started walking at Magic Kingdom of all places.
Here's a video of Mason walking for Joe's family. This is his 2nd attempt at walking after Magic Kingdom the previous night.


OK, back to our Disney experience. On one of the nights, we went to Disney's MGM studios to view the 80 million lights they had on display.
Here is a video of one of the many light shows they had that night. Pause the music on the side bar for better effect.
Here's Samuel participating in a persussion show at Animal Kingdom. He really got into the music and starting dancing with his bells. Before long, he was in front and center.

Now here is a video of Samuel dancing at a Disney World shopping center. It's pretty long, but just watch the first little bit and you can get a taste of how Samuel really gets into dancing!

(2) The boys got to spend a lot of time with Grandma Pauline and Granpa Kaleti this trip. They loved going to my parent's health food store and "helping" my parents out. Mason especially loved being wheeled around on a utility cart as my dad went about stocking shelves. One of my most memorable moments of this trip is when my dad volunteered to watch the boys while Joe and I went to Universal Studios by ourselves. He single handedly watched them all day, fed them, and then put them to bed at night. What a grandpa! (3) We had a wonderful Christmas day...presents, lots of eating, kids had long naps, etc. Other than Samuel having a major meltdown because Mason kept taking his new toys, it was really fun! For our family Christmas devotion that night, my dad played a beautiful medly of Christmas songs he arranged just for the occasion. We recorded one of the songs. Pause the music for this one, it's worth listening to I promise!

(4) We got together with my longtime friend Sarah, her husband, and little girl Kaley who is a month younger than Mason. Since my parents didn't have too many toys at her house, my boys went crazy when they saw all of Kaley's new toys. Needless to say, they had a ball. Thanks Sarah for the great dinner and great company! It was fun!

(5) December 31, 2008: Happy 2nd Birthday Samuel!!

This picture is completely Samuel showing his love for music. He got a music set for his birthday and it was a huge hit. Lately, we've been finding him drumming his hands to the beat of music and while we were in FL, he was attached to these drums at my parents store. This is Samuel beating the drums and blowing his recorder at the same time. If you think this is funny, you should see him try to play the piano and beat his cymbols at the same time!

My mom threw a little party at their store and it was complete with presents and a giant cookie for his cake. We knew better than to serve him cake, so we thought we'd serve him a big chocalote chip cookie instead. It didn't work. Afterwards, we took him to Sea World to celebrate and we had a ball! Even though Samuel couldn't have been any naughtier than he was on his birthday (I couldn't even count the tantrums!) it was still fun to see the delight on his face as he saw Shamu, dolphins, and other water life for the first time.

(6) Later that night, we took the boys home to bed and my sister offered to stay home with them while we celebrated New Year's Eve. We went back to Sea World and joined my parents for their special New Year's bash. Holy cow...so, so much fun!! We ate dinner in this gorgeous shark aquarium restaurant and then listened to an amazing philharmonic orechestra that played big band music. They played live while the fireworks coordinated with their music.

What a blast!! That night and our whole vacation! Joe and I are still talking about how much fun we had and are already planning our next big vacation to FL. Thank you mom and dad for everthing and we miss you already!