Magical Nights of Lights? Maybe

I really wanted to experience more Christmas in Georgia this year than we were able to experience last year. Unfortunately we didn't have time to get to it all, I guess that means we have more to do next year! We did however make it to the Magical Nights of Lights at the Lake Lanier Islands Resort. We would not have gone because tickets are a ridiculous $40 per car! But I got a free ticket from my work. I'm glad we went, because it's worth going once and witnessing the bizarre spectacle that they call magical. I'll post a few pictures here (warning! the pictures are horrible and my camera died right at the beginning, so most will be with my phone camera), but we'll put the rest on flickr.
First of all, it's sponsored by the McDonald's, Publix (local grocery store), and I think Georgia power.
You might think having sponsors for lights would make it totally awesome, but it doesn't mean that at all. Basically all it consisted of was driving around the resort looking at bizarrely shaped wire figures covered in lights.

12 Days of Christmas "land"

5 gold rings

8 maids milking?

I tried to get excited about it, and did kind of when I saw Wizard of Oz stuff, but seriously, who goes to look at Christmas lights and hopes they have figures from the Wizard of Oz? Not me.

"There's no place like home"

But, once I settled into the fact that this was in no way going to compare to lights at Temple Square, I was ready for the experience, and what an experience it was. I was amazed that the place was packed! We were in a huge, slow moving line of cars, winding our way through the resort.

Waiting to drive through the tunnel of lights

This is driving through the tunnel of lights

At one point you get dumped into the Holiday Village which might look appealing, but it's actually kind of scary. We got out and saw our friends (the MacPherson's) who were also "enjoying" the drive; they were on a potty break, so Joe and I left and took in the sights. There was a huge Christmas store, where I was finally able to find some candied nuts (I'd been looking all over for them, and these were actually fresh) I got cashews, pecans, and almonds, I was super excited. Then we went out to what has to be the strangest part of the whole night, the carnival area. Amazing! Pony rides, a fun house, and a plethora of diesel fueled rides!

Pony Ride, $6!

A scary looking slide

Fun house?

It was crazy to witness, but I'm glad we did. After taking it all in, we got back to the car and finished the drive. I'm not sure I could say what the best part of the whole night was, it was all so amazing, but perhaps it's just that we got to see it all for free.

Primary Christmas Presents

Since I'm in the primary presidency in our ward, I was a participant in coming up with and creating our gift to the primary kids and teachers.
A few months ago our ward ended up with several boxes of chair covers (the soft padded chair covers that everyone wants to sit on during stake conference if you miss your chance at a bench. . .) Anyway, you'll see what I'm talking about in the pictures. So the other counselor thought that she would take a box and hide it in our closet until we could figure out what to do with them, but she knew they could be used for the kids Christmas present. Well, after some thought and some internet searching we settled on making lap desks. Diana came up with our final design, and although it was ambitious, we decided to do it. And here's our final product after hours of building and help from lots of people, I think they turned out really cute. We had a little Christmas party for the kids on the 21st and gave the kids the gift.








































We used melamine for the white board part. You can buy huge sheets of it at a Home Depot type place and have them cut it for you. Then we had vinyl lettering made with the 2009 Primary theme "My Eternal Family" along with each child's name. We also gave the children a zipper pull with the theme on it, you can find it here, they are really small, but totally cute. Each year there are a new round of songs that the children learn from the annual Primary Program in Sacrament meeting, so we put those songs along with others, like the Article of Faith songs, on a CD so that they can learn them at home too.

Here's a picture of most of the primary kids with the primary president. It's not a little blurry, but still fun.













The teachers unfortunately didn't get as awesome a gift as the kids, but we still thought they deserved something good for all the work they do. When I was visiting Utah in November I saw that my father-in-law got a teacher appreciation gift (he's the music leader in their ward, awesome!), it was this cute bowl of Hugs and Kisses, with a little poem. I decided to steal the idea. I found these really cute ceramic baking pans at Michael's and Joe helped me put the gifts together. I think they turned out nice.

A Braselton Christmas

Well, I guess since I've been a total slacker, I'll have to get back to posting our Disney pictures once I blog about Christmas. So here we go.

For Christmas Eve, Emily was nice enough to invite us over, so we went over to the Nicolich's for dinner. We settled on having ham and potatoes, just like what we would have if we were back in Utah. It was fun to spend the evening with Bill and Emily and their girls. And of course the food was awesome. Emily did a spiral ham with orange-horseradish glaze, and Joe decided he wanted to make "funeral" potatoes and a yam & apple casserole. It all turned out awesome.















I unfortunately ruined the pumpkin pie! It looked really good, but I totally forgot to put in the sugar!
After dinner, Joe had a quick violin lesson from Emily, which was totally fun. He wants to add violin skills to the guitar and banjo ones he already has.





















Sally and Alice got cute matching jammies, which Sally wasn't exactly excited about, but really, what 2 year old is excited to open a present of jammies? Still, they both looked cute in them














We watched Mr. Kruger's Christmas, and I helped Emily build some awesome blocks for Sally. Joe and Bill got some video game time, which is always necessary. It was a great Christmas Eve party, Bob wants us to call it, The Griglich, which is fine.


Joe and I went home and slept on one of our presents to ourselves. . . a new memory foam mattress topper! Super exciting! But really, it's totally awesome. In the morning we woke up to open our 3 brown boxes that we received in the mail from family and Rock Band 2!
Joe really wanted Rock Band, and when we saw the last one in Costco we decided to just do it, another gift to ourselves. We got jammies, a San Francisco puzzle & an awesome "card" from Joe's parents. My parents sent us a great book of art from James C. Christensen, Joe is really excited, he's one of his favorite artists.
My brother bought me the Gospel Art Picture kit which I had asked for, I'm excited to have it.






After opening all of our stuff we started on making our Christmas day meal. We sort of missed a traditional Thanksgiving, with turkey and what not, so we made up for it. The meal turned out nice, and Joe is so good to touch the nasty gross turkey!















Later in the evening we went over to the MacPherson's, Emily and Bill came too. We played some awesome Fusion Frenzy and had a nice Christmas chat.















Our Christmas was really nice, even though we weren't around family, which would have been the best. But it was low key, and virtually stress free. Joe and I made a pact that we wouldn't buy each other any gifts. Not having to stress about buying gifts for each other was great, we were able to focus on just being together. We also decided to do the 12 days of Christmas for a family this year. I had done this growing up and decided we should do something special for someone else this year. It was a lot of fun, it's about the only time you can doorbell ditch someone and feel OK about it. I hope the family enjoyed it as much as we did.
Here are a few Christmas day photos:


































Joe actually bought me this Willow Tree Nativity last year, but this was the first time putting it up. I totally love it.


Find the hidden Mickey!

Islands of Adventure & Universal Studios

For Tuesday (11/21), we decided to mix it up and head over the the Universal Parks. I don't have a picture of it, but the Hulk roller coaster is totally awesomeOn our way over to the Spiderman ride, we saw the awesome X-Men :)























And who doesn't want their picture taken with Woody Woodpecker?! :)
I'm super excited about this! It's going to be totally awesome and Universal definitely needs it; this time around the Universal parks weren't as fun, they definitely lack the flare that Disney has, maybe it's that their employees aren't as excited to come to work.

On Wednesday(11/21) we went to Universal Studios. It was a lot of fun, but we didn't take many pictures. I think the Mummy was the most exciting ride we went on there.

We rode the new Simpson's ride, which was pretty good. You enter Krusty Land, and while waiting to get to the roller coaster they show clips from various Simpson's episodes, which is the only way to watch the Simpson's.
The ride took over the old Back the the Future ride, and instead of throwing out the DeLorean they just refurbished it into this ride. You get in what is supposed to be a cart that goes on a roller coaster and then you are thrown off the tracks and end up bouncing all over the park while Sideshow Bob is trying to kill you and the Simpson's family. It's thrilling.....but was overall a pretty good ride.
I do always enjoy Seuss Landing, it's just so fun and cute.

Disney World - Animal & Magic Kingdom

Monday (11/20) we had reservations for a character breakfast at the Animal Kingdom. We ate the Tusker House where they do Donald's Safari breakfast with Donald and Daisy Duck, Mickey and Goofy. I wanted to do a character breakfast for two reasons 1) Our friend Aaron brought his 12-year-old daughter, whom I thought should experience one and 2) I thought I should experience one too. I thought it was awesome! You just have to let yourself get excited for these things. Unfortunately, I think Alyssa was trying to hold in her excitement a little too much. It was fun to actually have interaction with the characters without having to wait in line, they came directly to your table.
Also, the food was really good. They had these really cute Mickey Mouse head waffles, along with all sorts of pastries, eggs, bacon, ham, cheese blintz, and other awesome things. I think it was totally worth the money, it was tons of fun and enough food to last most of the day!
After breakfast we went on Expedition Everest which is totally wicked, I highly recommend it.


I even found the "hidden Mickey" in the assortment of "artifacts" from Everest expeditions. It was a totally awesome find.















Aaron was really excited to get to the Magic Kingdom, he hadn't been there for something like 30 years, so it was about time we get there. We took a bus to the Transportation Center, and then got on an awesome ferry over to the Magic Kingdom.






















Last time Joe and I were at the Magic Kingdom it didn't go very well; it was cold and Joe made me go on Splash Mountain...after that all the magic was gone. This time it was tons better.














I'm not sure if it was all of the Halloween decorations or the weather, but it was so much fun. Aaron's enthusiasm definitely elevated ours and we were all practically bouncing around the park.


















We didn't plan on staying for the parade, but we ended up waiting around for it. They do the Spectro Magic parade now, which is of course crazy and bizarre but totally awesome at the same time, you just can't help but get excited about it.
Seeing people and floats covered in millions of lights spin around and dash about, it just makes you smile. After the parade there is the nightly fireworks display which is fantastic. They do it over Cinderella's Castle and have a little story that goes along with it about all your dreams coming true; which you'd have to say they almost always do while you are in Disney World.

Disney World - Epcot & Segways

On Sunday (11/19) we woke up early and drove over to Epcot. We had made reservations to do the Segway tour of Epcot, and we had to be to the park by 7:45!

Obviously the park isn't open that early, so when we got to the entrance to the parking lot the attendant wasn't even set up to take money yet, she just let us drive in and not worry about paying. It was awesome. We parked probably the closest to the front gate that we will ever park in our lives.


Getting into the park before it is open is totally awesome. They have the crazy Disney music on and with no one around it sounds super loud. The deserted nature of the park is fantastic.
Once inside we gathered with our group and were escorted by our Segway trainer to the training facility inside one of the Innoventions buildings. They have a whole training course that you have to go through before they take you on the tour. The training lasted about an hour, and was of course thrilling. Once we were all trained it was time to hit the open road on the World Showcase. Our tour guides took us along the showcase and taught us little facts about each country and gave us challenges on the Segways, like driving down a ramp and up the other side; you might think that would be easy, but we did have one lady actually freak out on the upside and fall off the Segway :) Touring around on the Segways was totally fun and totally worth the money. I definitely recommend doing it before the park is open, that way you can see it all totally empty, plus you don't have to worry about dodging crazy kids. When we were diving back to end our tour, people were just showing up, and the looks on their faces as we drove by were awesome. They were looks of jealously and mock all at the same time. You know you look like a dork on a Segway, but at the same time, everyone wants to try it. Once we turned in our Segways they gave us Segway pins (Disney is way big into pin trading) which you can only get if you go on the tour!
All I have to say is that if you are going to ride a Segway just once in your life, you should definitely do it in Epcot.




After the tour we adventured in Future World and went to their new ride The Seas with Nemo & Friends. At the entrance of the ride they have this awesome fountain that splashes water on the rocks as if waves were crashing and there are the "mine" bird from the movie. They periodically will start saying "mine...mine...mine, mine, mine" It was totally awesome. Joe caught some good video that I'll make him post. The ride was fine, they take you in one of those carts like in the Haunted Mansion and you go around trying to find Nemo. What makes it fun is that they have a whole aquarium behind the ride that they project the Nemo characters on so it appears as if the Nemo characters are actually in the water with real fish, it looked really good. Then After the ride you can walk around in the building and look at the aquarium and learn about fish and sea life. We even found the "hidden Mickey."

In the afternoon we went over to Hollywood Studios (formerly MGM Studios). We wanted to ride the new Toy Story ride, Toy Story Midway Mania, and see the new Pixar Place area. All of it was totally awesome. The ride is great because they scaled everything so that you feel toy-sized. The line takes you through a bunch of toys set up like a fort, with Lincoln logs holding up board game boards as the roof. It was really fun. Mr. Potato Head does stand-up at one end of the room to keep you entertained too.
Once you are loaded onto the ride you can see you are in Andy's room. The ride itself was really neat, very interactive.
You ride on cars that spin around and put you in front of various screens presented by characters in the movie. You shoot relevant items out of your "cannon" and try to hit targets.

We of course rode on The Tower of Terror, which is always awesome. I especially enjoy the Hollywood Studios version compared to the California Adventure version. They are different in that the elevator car actually moves horizontally in Hollywood Studios instead of just vertically in CA. It gives an added feeling of not knowing what is going to happen.
The day was fantastic.