Christmas Eve

Paw-paw and Nana with the girls.

Christmas Eve at Aunt Patti's-wow, it's warm out here!

Uncle Phil with the girls.

Carter and Sophie

Tanner has a visit with a cheery Santa-Uncle Mike!

Paula and Uncle Bobby

Morgan and Sophie

Sibling reunion-Mike, Bobby, Patti and Pat (Paula's dad)

Abbie with silly Skyler in the background.  They are birthday buddies.  =)

Our family in front of Aunt Patti and Uncle John's tree

Keri and Tanner


We had Christmas with the Waggoner clan on Christmas Eve at Aunt Patti and Uncle John's home this year.  It was really warm!  Everyone had a great time.  There was lots of good food, fellowship and we opened some gifts!  Our family did not have to travel far for the Christmas Eve celebration which was nice but when our family was ready to leave, one of our tires got stuck in the ditch.  Paula had to run back into the house to recruit some muscle men in the family to get us out.  =)  Sierra's favorite gift was the gnome that she received as a gag gift (just kidding).  Our family had no idea when we gave a gnome as a gag gift that Sierra is terrified of gnomes.  Whoops!  I'm so glad that the Waggoner clan has kept up the tradition of getting together every year on Christmas Eve.  It's great being able to spend with family.

Jamestown

Abbie loves to help make Smoothies

Abbie loved exploring the houses at Jamestown Settlement's Powhatan Indian Village

A bald eagle

Abbie at the helm of the Discovery

We attended a concert of 17th century music at the chapel at Jamestown.

On our visit to Virginia, we visited Jamestown Settlement one day.  The girls loved learning about how the Indians and settlers at Jamestown.  Abbie loved learning about 17th century food preparation. The girls also liked climbing on the reproductions of the ships the Susan Constant and the Discovery.  We also saw two bald eagles high up in a tree.  We had a great time.

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.