Merry Christmas! (Just Five Days Late...)

Better late than never might as well be my new blogging motto!  I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday with their family.  Ours has been amazing.  This year's video is a little shorter than normal, but still pretty great.  I guess short isn't that bad when you are asking people to watch a Christmas video on December 30th :)

The photos were actually pulled together the day after Christmas, but we had a hard time picking a song this year.  We did go back and watch the last seven videos in order to hear the songs we have used before, and it was AMAZING.  And inspired me to take more video/pictures in future years.  Nothing like a good binge watching of Christmas past to rejuvenate my picture taking obsession, right when it was finally dropping down to a more reasonable level.

Anyway, MERRY CHRISTMAS!  Enjoy the video and come back tomorrow for the annual Best of Bio Girl post.  I may not be posting much, I DO take traditions seriously...


If you would like to walk down memory lane of Bio Girl Christmas past, you can find all the previous videos on YouTube HERE. At the very least, you should watch the videos at the beginning of 2010 and 2011. Be still my heart.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Good Lord, it's four days until Christmas.  Three days, really, because we have Christmas with my family on Christmas Eve, so everything must be ready by Friday.  And actually, I am feeling pretty on top of things!  The last few presents are on their way from my beloved Amazon Prime.  All that are here are wrapped and ready to go.  The Christmas baking is done (Thanks Mom and Boo!) We have had our Christmas celebration with my Dad's side of the family and are getting together with my Mamaw today for lunch.  Henry is out of school and all of my students have headed home for the holiday...

Dare I say it... we are READY!

And, I guess as always, I am really looking forward to Christmas with our sweet boy.  He is SO into Christmas this year, and I just can't wait for the excitement of xmas morning.  And of course, I can't wait to be off work until January 3rd. That always makes this time of year a little more magical.

Anyway, I have of course been taking some pictures over the last month, which have not been shared here, because I am a crap blogger these days.  I figured now was as good of a time as any to drop them off and wish everyone a Merry Christmas!  I will be back after the holidays with plenty of pictures from the big day :)

The tradition continues!

 And then, back a few weeks ago, we went to Shaker Village for dinner and their Christmas festivities. Nice pictures wee taken :)

Last weekend we had the annual candle lighting, which I didn't do here on the blog, simply because I am not blogging as much as I used to, but it was lovely.  It was also very hard on Henry, which made it very hard on us all.  We miss her so much.

 And then, on Friday, Henry had is 2nd grade class party. It was great!

Love these two

 And as the last update, we had Christmas with my dad's side of the family last weekend, and it was great! Here are Henry and Cici with Great Nana

 The great-grandchildren who were able to attend (Minus little Emma, who had headed home for the night)

 The grandchildren who were still there when pictures were taken (Sorry Mark!)

And here is my Nana with her four children. I know a lot of you kept my Aunt Jan in your thoughts and prayers at this time last year, so I wanted to point out how amazing she is doing :)  It was a true blessing to be able to be together this holiday.

And with that, I will just add that I hope you all enjoy the holidays!  I will see you soon(ish).

 

Pumpkin Patch and Halloween Party Mash Up Post! (October is nearly over... gotta get it all in!)

So I realize I am skipping pictures from our anniversary again, but since Halloween is sorta on a count down, I want to share some of those pictures first... seem reasonable? Great!

First, I wanted to share a few pictures from our trip to the pumpkin patch a couple of weeks ago. We actually went as a celebration of Nieem's birthday, since we had to miss his actual party due to baseball related activities (Another thing I never wrapped up on the blog...maybe some day.) But we had a GREAT day today at the pumpkin patch, so all was right with the world. Here are a few pictures of the fun.

And usually this would be it's own post, but you know... running out of October, SO, let me also tell you about my cousin's adorable Halloween party she had for the kids today!  She had them make Halloween themed food, Boo helped them made a craft, I helped them learn science! (nerd!) and the grandma's came with presents.  It was WONDERFUL.  Really, I was looking forward to it, but it was even more enjoyable than I expected. The kids had a blast, and so did we :)  Pictures? Pictures!

 The kids with their skull glasses full of vampire blood drink... it was... delicious

Our fearless Hostess

 Mom and Jan! How adorable are they?

 The kids opening their Halloween baskets, which are totally a thing when you have grandparents like these kids :)

 Wes really loved the items in his basket :)

Teeth!

And on to the science experiment.  Making your own lava lamp and learn about density! 

Honestly, we all rather enjoyed it...

Can you tell??

Actually, I thought they would love watching the "lava" slowly come up and drop back down, but they mainly wanted volcanic eruptions.  So... less about density, more about chemical reactions. Lessons to keep in mind for next year.

Mama's with their babies

On to making their craft! 

A mummy family :)

And this one should be back up there with the science experiment, but I will just leave it here because it makes me laugh

Good times, family!  Let's do it again next year :)

Disney!

So now that we have posted wedding pictures, how about we move on (or back) to Disney?! I know I am not doing any "real" blogging here, but it is sorta a now or never situation because, ( I am almost embarrassed to admit this) we are heading on vacation again on Saturday and once we get home from THAT it will really seem like the opportunity has passed. So DISNEY!

Our first day of the trip was spent in Magic Kingdom!

I realized on this trip that Magic Kingdom is BY FAR my favorite park.  I had never been to any others, and while I really enjoyed them, MK feels like Disney to me.  For that reason, we will probably always have this park be our final day from now on. I love it so much!

 You may remember (don't you remember everything I post on here?) that we spent two days in MK last year.  Because of that, we planned this day as just a fast run through of all of our favorite rides.

 We actually got to the park around noon because we drove in from Nick's parents house that morning. 

 This is also the day we met up with this crazy girl :) 

 I am sorta amazed with how much we managed to do from 12pm-10pm.  WE DID SO MUCH! Which, when I stop to think about it, IS TEN HOURS.  Maybe it wasn't as impressive as I thought...

 But in the middle of summer, with crazy big crowds, we managed to ride  14 different rides!  FOURTEEN! Plus we ate two meals and watched a parade. I feel like that's worth being impressed with.

 I know I already posted this picture, but I love it!

 Last year Pirates of the Caribbean was shut down for repairs, so this was his first experience with it.  It was a hit :) He picked the sword as a souvenir ... just add it to the epic weapons collection.

 The castle at night.  Good lord, I love this place!

 Look closely and you will notice an added family member that joined us for our trip :) :)

 Love this one!

On Day Two we headed to Animal Kingdom.

 None of us had ever been to Animal Kingdom, and it was pretty amazing!

 We started the day on the safari, which was perfect.  We got to see all of the animals!

 Hello there, Mr. Giraffe

 I made the boys take multiple family pictures until I found one I liked..

 Checking out the fish

 Hello there, Mr. Sun

 Now we got it!

 We ended up really loving the show on birds, which was random and not something I would have even thought to go to if it wasn't for our amazing Disney planning book!

 When planning this years trip we made the decision to get some decent food while in the park. They have a new restaurant in AK, Tiffins, where you can sign up for a dinner package which includes tickets to the night time show.

 The entire experience, from atmosphere to food, was AMAZING, but at the same time, we will never go back while Henry is young. It took around two hours from start to finish, and Henry was NOT into his food.  Nick and I on the other hand, LOVED it!

 Also, this happened.  Table for four, please :) :)

 AK used to close at dark, but a few weeks before we went the extended their hours to 11pm. It was great!  It gave us time to ride a ton more rides. I don't really have pictures of rides, but we rode/saw nearly everything in the park! Some of it with more success than others. The dinosaur ride was a little intense.  Expedition Everest was a favorite of Henry's in the day, but when we rode it at night it was too much for him (and almost too much for me. It was scary!) The water rapids ride was a family favorite, and the Bugs Life and Finding Nemo were also hits.

We also got to see the limited time night time show on The Jungle Book, and Henry and I both thought it was GREAT!  Nick wasn't that into it, but you know, you can't please everyone!

 We also caught the Tree of Life coming to life, which was AMAZING.  We were just watching it change colors when an actual show started which was projected on the tree. I had heard the show runs a few times a night, but it isn't on any schedule.  If you go, I hope you catch it.  It was great!

Our final day we spent at Hollywood Studios!

Nick had been to HS when he was younger, but it was mine and Henry's first time.

 The park is apparently going through some changes as they are prepping to open a new Toy Story land and a Star Wars land.  It did feel smaller, but we never ran out of things to do (and actually had a few things we missed because we ran out of time) so it was all good.

 Tatooine Traders!

 We all really enjoyed the Star Wars ride.  It was made better by the fact that we rode with an adult man who was like, SO INTO IT.  Like, I can't even describe it.  He was SO FULL OF JOY.  And while that could have been distracting, it made the entire thing SO MUCH BETTER.  Everyone was like "Man, that dude's right, this IS AWESOME!"  I am smiling just thinking about it :)

 Next up we road the Tower of Terror. Not the best picture, but it needed to be documented. Especially since Henry, who is pretty fearless when it comes to rides, says he will "NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER RIDE THAT AGAIN".

 Random picture with a snowman

 Oh look, it's Kylo Ren.

 On this day and our AK day we went back to the hotel in the heat of the day to relax.  This was taken waiting to head back to the park for the evening

 And this is what it looked like when we got to the park.  It was epic, but luckily only lasted around 30 minutes

 Second time on the Toy Story ride. That thing is awesome!

 We did a lunch package at HS which gave us tickets for Fantasmic, which was awesome!  I highly recommend signing up for that if you can (we did lunch at the Italian place for the tickets)

 The boys waiting for the show to begin

 Henry LOVED the dragon

We also happen to be there for the summer special Star Wars Fireworks and Nighttime spectacular!  It was awesome!  And a perfect way to end our Disney vacation!

As a final note, I think I said this last year, but in case you are planning a Disney trip and don't want to go back and see my old Disney posts, I will say it again. Everyone visiting Disney should get the Unofficial Guide to Disney.  I swear, it is so helpful!  Their app is also insanely useful and I honestly think the combination of the book and app is what helps to make our trips to the the most magical place on earth so magical.  I do a ton of prep work before we go and we have a complete itinerary for each day loaded on the app when we get there.  It takes away all of the "I don't know, what do YOU want to do??" conversations and it also prevents you from walking to a ride only to realize that OPPS! The wait is two hours! Do we wait? Do we come back?  WHO KNOWS!  The app has real time wait times worked in, and it takes your list of rides and tells you what to ride next to get it all in. IT IS AMAZING!