Mickey's Very Merry Christmas party

Happy New Year's Eve!!!

As I scroll through the photos I have taken in the month of December, I can't believe it.  I went from hardly picking up my camera in November to shooting "overdrive".  I still have so many photos I want to share.  So I will be on a posting frenzy.  As is usually the case, I will be late with my "Year in Review" post.  I will probably get that up in the next week. For now, though, I want to back up to the weekend before Christmas.

Since it had been a few years since we attended Mickey's Very Merry Christmas party, we thought we would make time for it this year.  We arrived around 4:30 because we prefer to keep our visits short (it helps us keep our sanity as the evening progresses.)  We usually go to Tomorrow Land first. So we made our way to the People Mover.

Havi is in this phase where she is afraid of the pitch dark.  So she needed some cuddling during parts of the ride.  Next up was the Raceway.  Caleb was so thrilled to be tall enough to "ride alone".  He had been looking forward to that solo drive for....ever.

The sun was setting as we were in line and on the track. So I couldn't really capture any decent photos.  But since there was a bit of a back up, I thought I would try to snap a photo of me with my precious shotgun rider.

Then we decided to grab dinner before the dinner crowd had the same idea.  After filling up, we headed over to Carousel of Progress...only to find out we were 5 minutes too late, as the ride had just closed for the evening.  Boo! The dumplings were singing the theme song all week long. So they were a bit disappointed we just missed it.  We decided to head over to Fantasy Land to ride the Barnstormer.

We were so thrilled that the wait time said 5 minutes.  Madeline and I ran all the way to the top and walked right on the roller coaster.  No waiting!!!  We had so much fun, we ran all the way down as we exited the ride so we could do it again!  This time, we had to wait once just so we could ride in the front row.  It was worth it!  The front row was a blast!  Good call Madeline!

Then we scooted on over to Ariel's Grotto.  Poor little Havi was upset with the dark.  But she managed to settle down a bit and enjoy the ride some.  Then I rode the carousel with both Caleb and Madeline.  

After the carousel, we grabbed some hot chocolate and sugar cookies.  Then we thought we'd head over to Pirates of the Carribean before the parade....only it, too, was also closed for the evening.  Poor Caleb was looking forward to it.  What a bummer.  Well, we decided to wait for the parade, and we're glad we did.  Havi insisted we go "home now".  Being at Disney in the dark was just too much for her.  At the start of the parade, she didn't even watch.  She just played with my phone.  Then Patrick held her, and she actually began to enjoy it.  We were so thankful for the turn around.

We headed home once the parade was over, and all three dumplings promptly fell asleep once we began driving.  It was a fun night and cold enough toward the end of the evening to enjoy hot chocolate, which hasn't been the case much of December.

So now that I'm caught up with sharing all that happened before Christmas, I will have to share our post-Christmas Christmas celebrations...yes, you read that right...plural.  We partied for three more days, in fact! lol  Stay tuned...