Alana's birthday

We had Alana's birthday lunch at Whispering Canyon over at the wilderness lodge. That is a lot of fun there. It is a loud and fun place to eat. The waiter threw a ton of straws on the table and Alana asked if she could have a spoon and he brought out like 7 for her. She thought that was pretty funny! They even brought out a birthday cake for her and our waiter yelled out to everyone that it was her birthday and everyone in the whole place sang to her. She was actually a little embarrassed. She had no trouble eating her cake though :)
The pony express....every half hour or so they pull out a barrel of stick ponies and all of the kids run up and grab one and they ride them all around the restaurant while all the adults swing their napkins around and they have loud music playing for them! That was her favorite part of the day, so Alana says!

When we got back to our room that night there was a birthday cake that was sent up to our room for Alana along with a signed birthday card from none other then Mickey Mouse! How cool is that! She also got a phone call from Goofy and he sang her Happy Birthday! Very fun

Tyler's Birthday

Tyler had a great third birthday at Disney World. We started off the day at Cape May for breakfast with Goofy, Minnie, and Donald. We weren't sure how he would be with the characters but he did great. He seemed to like goofy the best. They even sang him happy birthday and Donald was even there to join in! Very cute! After breakfast we went back and changed clothes and off to the parks we went. Tyler's birthday ended with a call from goofy and a knock at the door where they had balloons and a special Donald Duck stuffed animal for him! He was very surprised, and so were we!

Too much birthday fun for him. I guess going to breakfast and then walking around Animal kingdom was just too much for the little guy :)

Slumber Party

I think Alana was still in the 'party mood' after spending several hours at Brooke's birthday party. She wanted to have a slumber party in our room. She carefully laid out her firetruck blanket, got her pillow and sleeping bag and went to bed on the floor in our room.

She also had to get her pony a pillow and blanket too. So her pony slept over as well. She keeps changing the name of her pony. This morning she told me her pony's name was Ellen DeGeneres! That's my girl!!

Painting time!

Alana wanted to paint the other morning. Tyler decided that he wanted to as well. It is funny to see the different ways they paint. Alana made a rainbow and added some 'sprinkles' to hers. She like to keep the colors from mixing together. Tyler on the other hand mixed all of the colors on his plate and then painted, in the same spot, on his paper.

Christmas 'hats'

We were putting away all of the Christmas decorations and the kids were helping. They decided that the plastic spiral trees made good hats. They sort of look like they belong in the wonderful world of Dr Seuss :)

Merry Christmas!

The night before Christmas was pretty interesting. Dave and I had to help Santa assemble the work bench, the little car, and a storage case. We opened the boxes hoping to find things partially assembled. Nope! It was all in pieces. We even had to cut them from the molds in order to even start putting them together! I took on the tool bench and Dave tackled the car (which had way too many parts for me to figure out, the tires weren't even full tires, they had to be put together too!) he also did the storage shelves. Their reaction in the morning made it all worth it!!

Santa brought Tyler a lawn mower since Daddy was tired of watching Tyler push around the stroller :)

Tyler putting all of his toys in the toy box. To hide from his sister perhaps?!

Tyler got this train from his Grandma and Grandpa Olson. Pretty cute!

Cookies for Santa

Today we decided to make some cookies for Santa. Alana was in charge of adding the mix to the bowl and Tyler added the water. Didn't do them from scratch this year... much easier with the kids to do the quick and easy mix. The kids enjoy licking the beaters. They even squished them down with a cup (dipped in sugar) Though Tyler seemed to like the plan sugar rather then actually doing the whole cookie thing.