After Christmas Fun in Virginia

Abbie and Sophie in the French part of Busch Gardens.

Our family at Busch Gardens.  

Sophie and Paula at the North Pole-Busch Gardens

Abbie and Sophie

Abbie and Sophie in England at Busch Gardens

The girls coordinated well with these trees.

On the day after Christmas, our family drove to Richmond, VA to celebrate Christmas with Matt's family.  Thankfully, the weather was somewhat warm so there was no snow but we did have to contend with some rain.  In fact, it was the warmest Christmas that I can remember.  We spent Christmas in Nashville with Paula's family and the high was 75 degrees or so on Christmas Eve.  Christmas Day was pretty warm too.  We had a good trip to Virginia.  We were able to be with Matt's mom, sister and brother in law and Matt's aunt and uncle, JoAnne and Gary.   We had a fun time driving over to Williamsburg on New Years Eve and visiting Christmas Town at Busch Gardens.   They decorate everything so pretty for Christmas at Busch Gardens and there are several fun Christmas shows.  It was kind of rainy when we first got there but the rain slacked off.  When the sun went down it was pretty chilly but it wasn't unbearable.   They had a new ice skating show this year with a former Olympian named Elvis Stoyko from Canada.

November Happenings

Sophie C. and Abbie

Paula and Abbie

Well, it's hard to believe that it's almost Christmas!  I wanted to include some pictures on here from November.  Abbie finished up her soccer season.  At the last game, one of the moms brought some yummy gluten-free cupcakes from Trader Joe's.  They were so delicious!  One of the girls on our soccer team has Celiac's Disease.

There was another week where Abbie was the "Princess of the week" for her class.  She enjoyed all of the special things that she got to do that week.  One day, I ate lunch with her and I wrote a special letter to Abbie that I read to the class telling them more about her.  Matt surprised her too on the day that we read the letter to the class.  She did not know that he was coming in too.  She got to bring in a special poster to share with the class with all of her favorite things.

This year, we stayed in town for Thanksgiving.  It had been about 3 years since we had been able to stay in Nashville for Christmas.  It was really nice just to have a relaxing week and be able to have fun and spend time with family and friends.  We went to Paula's parents house to be with the extended Waggoner family for Thanksgiving.  

More pictures from our Disney trip...

The Toy Story rides are decorated so fun.  It's entertaining to check it all out as you wait.

The girls with Paw-paw waiting for Fantasmic to begin.

We were so happy to run into Mary Poppins!

Abbie with a suit of armor at the restaurant, Be Our Guest.

It's tradition.  We love to get our picture made with Dumbo.

One night we ate at O'Hana and it was very good.  It's a Polynesian steakhouse.  You do not leave hungry and the food was amazing!  Some of us even learned to hula!1

a band playing at Magic Kingdom

Our family at Hollywood Studios.

Here's several more picture from our trip!  We packed a lot of fun into a few days.  The rumor is that they will be changed a lot of stuff at Hollywood Studios so that it has a Star Wars theme.  They aren't supposed to be keeping the Muppets Theater.

Our Magical Trip to Disney World

One of my favorite pictures of the four of us.  This is at Hollywood Studios.

We met Rapunzel and Cinderella one day.  

Here we all are except for Phil. We're ready to explore Magic Kingdom!

Phil and Matt were part of the Princess Protection Unit for Belle.

Matt, Sophie, Paula and Leia met Daisy.  Abbie did not want any part of that!

Leia, Sophie, Abbie and Matt with Buzz.  So proud of Abbie for going up to meet Buzz.

Whoa Sophie!  What have you got in your hand?

Look who came out to see us when we sang, "In Summer".  =)

The Seven Dwarfs mine train was a lot of fun!

Here's Sophie with Mickey and Minnie.  Mickey can talk to you now when you visit him!

Look, it's Tinker Belle with Abbie and Sophie.

Sophie and Abbie with Abbie's favorite princess, Belle before we had dinner.

I know that I've gotten behind on blogging again.  We have so many wonderful pictures from our trip to Disney World in October so I felt a little overwhelmed about trying to choose the best to blog about.  For the girls fall break, we flew down to Disney World and met Matt's mom, Teresa and his sister, Leia.  Her husband, Rahul, was unable to come.  We also met Paula's brother, Phil, down there but he drove.  The next day, Paw-paw and Nana were able to fly down and meet us.  The girls were only off for 2 days for their fall break but we pulled them out of school for a couple of extra days.  We stayed at Disney's Pop Century Resort where we've stayed a time or two before.  It was quite warm for the first few days that we were there and it seemed busier this year but we still had a great time!

Abbie has always had a fear of characters so we only had one character meal which was at Epcot in the Norway section at Akerhaus (sp?) with the princesses.  We really enjoyed it but since we went on a weekend night, it was very busy because they also had the Food and Wine Festival going on.  It's too bad that they can't do it later at night or offer the princess meals on different nights from the Food and Wine Festival.

Our family enjoyed most of the rides and shows.  We were able to go to each of the four Disney Parks.  We went to the Fantasmic show at Hollywood Studios one night.  We were able to catch one of the nighttime parades at Magic Kingdom one night too.  Some of the girls favorite rides were Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, The seven dwarfs mine train and they also enjoyed riding Expedition Everest at Animal Kingdom.  Everest was Sophie's first big roller coaster that she has enjoyed.  It's one of my favorite rides (Paula) so I was happy that she liked it too.

Abbie was brave and she met a few of the characters.  She does not mind meeting characters where she can see their faces like the princesses but she also met Buzz and Cinderella's mice this time which we were impressed about.    Abbie wanted to keep a healthy distance between her and Buzz.

This was the first trip where we had gone to Disney without a stroller and that was really nice.  We had a lot of good food, enjoyed spending time with family and were very worn out at the end of each day from all of the walking.  

Halloween

Ladybug girl and Jessie from Toy Story for Trunk or treat

Ladybug girl and a hippie

 

 Our family had a nice Halloween this year.  We did Trunk or Treat at our church almost a week before.   Since Sophie's part of the youth group at church, they had their own trunk this year (for her grade).  Each of the kids was supposed to dress up as a character from a kids T.V. show or movie so Sophie chose to dress up as Jessie from Toy Story.  Rain was predicted for the night that our church was having trunk or treat so they decided to move it inside the church building.  Some of the different grades had come up with really creative themes like in one group all of the girls dressed up as "Flo" from Progressive and all of the boys dressed as "Jake" from State Farm Insurance.  

Abbie wanted to dress up as a ladybug for Halloween this year.  Sometimes, she would say that she was ladybug girl like the books.  Sophie kept thing easy for us because she wanted to be a hippie for Halloween.

Halloween fell on a Saturday night this year but we kept it really low key.  It really looked like it might be a rainy night but the rain had stopped just before 6 PM so we were able to go trick or treating.  Nana and Paw-paw came over and had chicken chili with us for dinner.  Sophie had gone to a slumber party the night before for her friend, Carley's birthday so she was pretty tired.  

September trip to Chattanooga

Sophie and Abbie are enjoying the trail at Rock City.

Paw-paw with his granddaughters.

view from the top at Rock City

our family

look who's in the birdhouse.

Martha, Uncle Matt, Monroe, and Morgan

Abbie loved geocaching (I think that's what you call it).

Our family enjoyed going to Chattanooga, TN with Paula's parents and sister, Martha's family over Labor Day weekend.  We had a great time!  Our family got there on Friday night but Nana and Paw-paw and Martha's family got there mid-afternoon on Friday.  We stayed at the same hotel.  On Saturday morning, we got up and had breakfast and went to Rock City.  It was a nice day for a hike.  Even after seeing all of the signs along the interstate growing up, some of us had never been.  Everyone enjoyed being together.  When we finished there, we went and had pizza for lunch.  Aunt Martha and Uncle Matt's family decided to head on home so that their boys could nap on the way home.  Nana and Paw-paw went with Paula, Matt, Sophie and Abbie over to Raccoon Mountain Caverns which had gotten better reviews than Ruby Falls.  We took a cave tour which was nice because it's always cool inside a cave.  After that, Sophie and Abbie enjoyed doing some geocaching for the first time where you try to look for pretty rocks among the sand.  They also rode go-carts with Matt.  Nana and Paw-paw headed on home after the cave tour.  That afternoon, our family tried Clumpy's for some delicious ice cream.  We explored a little bit around downtown Chattanooga.  On Sunday morning, we went to another state park (I can't remember the name of it) where there were some beautiful views of Chattanooga.  The girls did the Junior Park Ranger Program there (well, mostly Sophie).  Then, we headed on home.  

Abbie's Fall Program

our cute little acorn

peace man

Abbie and her friend, Molly

Abbie shows off her art work.

our family

Paw-paw and Nana with the girls.

Last week, Abbie's grade had a fall performance at school called "Nuts".  Her class was supposed to dress up like different acorns.  We borrowed a costume from our friends, the Clarks, who had used the same costume a couple of years ago.  All of the children did a wonderful job singing and acting out their parts.  Although Abbie did not get a solo this time, she sang out.  Their music teachers do a great job preparing the kids for these programs.  They sang about the circle of life.  They had kids dress as trees, acorns, rainbows, squirrels and various types of woodland creatures such as rabbits, foxes, owls, etc.  They did a wonderful job!  It was a very rainy night but we were happy that Nana and Paw-paw could come and watch Abbie's performance with us.