Thursday, November 12, 2009

Our Disney Adventure

On Halloween, Steve, Jill, Megan, Nate, and Evan traveled to Florida (by plane for the first time) to go to Disney World. We were there for a week and had a wonderful time at the parks, swimming, and watching Phillies games. The weather was beautiful and it was such a nice break from the routine. We stayed in a timeshare which had plenty of room and gave us the ability to cook for ourselves and relax at the end of the day. Great, great, fun!!!!!

We went to Epcot the first day and believe it or not, Mickey Mouse was the first character we saw. What luck!!


The next day was our only day at Hollywood Studios. We found out that some of the rides were a little scary for Evan. But he started the day off with Tower of Terror and insisted that he wasn't that scared on it.....check out the photo and see what you think..



We also checked out the Nemo exhibit........



and the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids playgroud. Nathan and Evan loved the playground, while Megan and Steve saw an opportunity to get a little rest.






























Later that day, Evan tried his hand at the Jedi training academy. He did fine until Darth Vador appeared. After some coaching by the assistant, Ev finallay got her to help him off with his robe and he made an early exit. I guess being a super tough guy only goes so far.

Our favorite ride, by far, was the Toy story interactive ride/game. It was a new one since we were there last. Afterwards, we got to meet the famous Woody and Buzz. Funny story, apparenty Woody is a big Phillies fan and Buzz is a BYU fan...Who knew?


The third day we did a fun character breakfast at the Crystal Palace in the Magic Kingdom. The Winnie the Pooh characters were there....here are just a couple of the pics from breakfast. The food was phenominal!!!







Our fourth day was Animal Kingdom. We got to go to the Lion King show and the safari and met some great characters, again. Everest was a big hit with Meg and Nate while Evan really enjoyed digging for bones in DinoLand. We even got to be a special helper family during the Lion King show with scored us front row seats. COOL!! A great day.




















Since we had been to each of the parks once, we had to decide which ones to go to for a second day. We had onoly spent about 1/2 a day in Epcot the first day, so we went back there for another day. This time we spent some more time back in the area with the different countries. Also, we were very excited to see Daisy Duck at the entrance that day. For some reason, she was the character that Evan most wanted to meet before we left. We had caught a glimpse of her on our way into the magic kingdom, but were hurrying to our breakfast appointment so we couldnt stop. We were so happy when we saw her as we headed into Epcot. Whew!!! We sampled a little bit of food from a lot of the countries as we went around instead of buying a lunch at one place. It was delicious.




























Our last day was spent in Magic Kingdom. There just wasn't enough time to see all we wanted to in one day. When we arrived, we noticed that between Tuesday and Friday, they had totally decorated for Christmas. What a transformation. I am sure they will continue to add to the decoration, but the amount of decorations that had taken place in that short time was amazing. We got to see the fireworks that night and just had a wonderful day. All in all a wonderful trip that we will remember for a long time.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Happy Fall and Halloween?


Fall has always been my favorite time of year. Living in the woods makes for a lot of leaf raking, but it sure is a pretty setting in all the colorful trees. Walking in from the bus the other day, I was struck with how beautiful our home looked so I snapped a quick photo.
Halloween at the Foulk house was a little scaled down this year. When we scheduled our trip to Disney and planned to leave the morning of Halloween, we thought our children would be understanding since we had a ward Trunk-or-Treat scheduled for the Wednesday night beforehand. But then the ward changed their event to actually be on Halloween and our kids ended up with no trick-or-treating this year :( They do have special trick-or-treating down in Disney, but at 70 bucks a kid.....we decided to take a pass. We just bought a huge bag of candy and everyone shared. A little lame, but it had to do for this year. Evan did get to participate in the annual elementary school Halloween parade. Meg dressed up for school, too, but I neglected to get a photo. So here are a few pictures of Evan in his mighty knight costume.







Happy Halloween 2009!!!