Wrapping up Florida

We reserved the last day of our vacation for some good old-fashioned R&R. After a lazy morning, we headed to the pool for an afternoon swim.

That night, my brothers picked the T-Rex restaurant for dinner. It came complete with a digging site and life-sized dinosaurs that moved and roared.

We ate in the blue ice cave, which featured a meteor shower every fifteen minutes. When the meteor shower started, the cave turned red, the dinosaurs roared, and thunder sounded throughout the room. This was all well and good unless you happened to be a sleeping 2-month-old. Poor Jakey woke up from his nap terrified. But really, who can blame him? If I fell asleep in my mom's arms and then woke up in a meteor shower, I'd be scared, too. Luckily, his Uncle Joshie got him laughing fairly quickly by making funny faces while balancing chicken on his nose. Leave it to Josh, I tell you.

That night, Matt and I had our first outing sans baby -- across the street to Target to grab a dessert. And would you believe, we were in Florida! Which meant we were in the South! Which meant there were cartons of Blue Bell Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream in the Target freezer! This may have inspired celebratory fist pumps and happy dances, which may have led to interesting looks from fellow shoppers. But nothing was more interesting than that deliciousness in our mouths that night.

And then the next morning we packed up, hopped on an airplane, and made it home to California. The end!

The last bit of Disney magic

We decided to spend our final Disney World night taking in the magic at the Magic Kingdom. Matt, Christian, Matthew and I sneaked over during my family's afternoon nap to get some pictures, Jake's silhouette, and fastpasses before catching the dancing lights at Hollywood Studios.

After watching lights at Hollywood Studios, we returned to the Magic Kingdom to see the sky light up behind the castle.

We then ate Disney churros (um, also better at Disneyland. Weird, right?) while we watched the castle change outfits countless times during The Magic, the Memories and You show.

Shortly thereafter, the electrical parade came rolling down the street.

Please love the above picture of Cinderella heading to her castle in a pumpkin. Anyway. Once all the shows were over, we caught a few last-minute rides and posed with the castle before heading down Main Street one last time.

Christian climbed the stairs in the train station for a final look at his domain. Seriously, he owns Disney World.  Thanksgiving is definitely a brave time to head to Orlando, and I know there are others who went at the exact same time we did that spent their visit in two+ hour lines and overwhelmed by crowds. But thanks to Christian's expertise, planning, and running across parks to secure fast passes for everyone, we were able to ride everything multiple times and never waited for more than twenty minutes. Crowds? What crowds? Thanks, Kiken. You made the vacation.

We boarded the ferry and were enjoying our ride to the parking lot when we noticed that 9-year-old Kaleb and 5-year-old Gabe were both silently crying. We asked Kaleb why and he responded, "It was just so wonderful!" They weren't whiny tears, but happy-because-we-loved-it-so-much-and-sort-of-sad-that-it's-over-now tears. How cute is that? We asked 6-year-old Josh if he was going to cry, too, and he laughed a hearty "No." Then, as we watched Disney World fade into the distance, our little jokester Joshie turned toward Kaleb and said:

"Don't worry, Kaleb. You're never going to see it again."

Classic.

So sweet, right?

One final look at the second-happiest place on earth. Thanks for the memories, Mom and Dad!

Best early Christmas present ever.

The best dancing Christmas lights ever

... are found on the Streets of America at Disney World's Hollywood Studios. Now you know.

What started as a single family's Christmas light display in Arkansas has been turned into Disney's Christmas lights show to end all Christmas lights shows -- the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights. Everything along the Streets of America is literally blanketed in bright, glittering Christmas lights, which twinkle along to a new holiday song every ten minutes and are complimented by fake snow flurries on occasion. We stayed and watched the lights dance for no less than an hour. Christmas light perfection, I tell you.

A video of the lights dancing can be seen here,  but it really does it no justice. It's incredible in person.

Pictures this cute bear repeating.

I loved that they had a nativity, too.

If only we'd gone when Nicole and the Darowskis were with us, we would have had a rather impressive Christmas card picture.