Focht Family Blog

Our first stop at Animal Kingdom was at A Bug’s Life. I do not like this show because spiders come down over the audience. Here is Josh sitting on Barbara’s lap. They have their “bug eyes” on and are ready for the show…

Next was the Dinosaur ride. This is another one that I don’t like. I wish I had scanned the picture from this ride because Barbara looks like she is about to jump out of the ride and Josh is tucked into my lap and I am ducked down over him so that neither of us can see the ride. I have no desire to see HUGE carnivorous dinosaurs trying to eat me! Here is Josh while we were waiting in line on Uncle Jim’s shoulders pulling on the tongue of a dinosaur…

After Dinosaur Samantha and Alex wanted to go on the Primeval Whirl. Josh is still too little for this one so we sat out and ate some popcorn and took pictures. Here is Nathan, Samantha, and Alex in their car…

And here is Christina and Bridgette in their car…

I didn’t get the timing right to get Nathan’s car on the slide down the hill but I managed to get a picture of Christina and Bridgette…

After Animal Kingdom we headed back to Wilderness Lodge to have dinner at the Whispering Canyon. It was a great meal but I was ready to be home with my sick kid. We sent Josh over to my mom’s that night so that Timmy could stay home and feel more comfortable. Thursday was pack up and leave time. Timmy threw up again in the morning but I think it was because he drank some Coke a little too quickly. He was all better by lunch and ended up eating a few pieces of bacon! :)

I would like to say that the drive home was uneventful but it wasn’t. Everyone left before us and we were planning on getting home by 5:00 and then we were going to go to Christmas Eve Mass at 6:00 followed by dinner at Ron and Barb’s house. However…. Ron and Barb got a flat tire on their way home. We caught up with them and Nathan decided that I should drive Barbara and Christina back with me and he would stay with his dad and wait for the tire service to show up. When we were getting close to Statesboro Vicki had caught up with us (she had been visiting friends) and so we stopped at a gas station and Barbara and Christina rode back to Barbara’s house with Vicki. This ended up being a good thing. We had been planning on me dropping the camper off of the truck and giving Barbara the truck to drive back. The Blue Ox tow bar hasn’t been used in a few months because we have been driving separate (Nathan’s dad took our trailer so we didn’t have to drive both vehicles back from Disney). I had to use the hammer to get the truck off of the RV and it wasn’t a quick task at all. Nathan ended up getting home at 7:30 and we had dinner at Ron and Barbara’s at 8:00 so we missed church. There was another Mass at 10:00 but that was too late for all of us after the day we had so Christmas didn’t quite feel like Christmas to me because we didn’t attend church but it is more important that we all made it back safe and sound.

I lied… I did get some pictures at Magic Kingdom. I forgot that we went to the Barber shop on Main Street and had everyone’s hair done. Here is Timmy’s hair….

Joshua decided he wanted a big boy cut so I had the barbers clean up what I did. They also gave him some color…

Samantha had her hair in braids already but she got some color added…

Nathan decided to get a trim as well. Here is his new hairdo…

After the barber shop we had to catch up with the rest of the family. On our way we stopped for an autograph from some new characters we hadn’t seen out yet. This is the Prince (can’t remember his name) and Princess Tiana from the new Frog and Princess movie…

My mom and I also had our hair done up with paint and sparkles but the pictures didn’t come out good on either of them. I know Christina got a picture of them. I will have to have her email me her pictures and see if they came out better.

My mother-in-law paid for a Disney photographer to meet us at the Wilderness Lodge for pictures. It was a good deal. They gave her 1 8×10, 2 5x7s and a CD of all the pictures that were taken. These are all pictures that the photographer took. Here is a picture of Nathan’s parents, Ron & Barb…

Nathan’s younger sister Christina and her friend Bridgette…

Nathan’s older sister Vicki, her husband Jim, and their daughter Alex…

Our family including sick Timmy….

Here is a picture of just the kids by one of the smaller trees…

A picture of Nathan with his sisters and all of the kids…

The WHOLE family (my mom is even in there)…

And I had to add this picture because it is the ONLY picture where Timmy is actually smiling and his eyes look bright…

Now I am hoping I can talk my brother into driving down to Statesboro for a couple of days while we are here so we can get some Brandt Family pictures! :)

Sunday everyone ended up arriving later than planned. Nathan’s younger sister Christina and Bridgette arrived on Saturday night since they were staying with us so they went to Epcot for the day. Nathan’s older sister Vicki ended up in the snowstorm driving down from NY so she didn’t arrive until dinner time. Nathan’s parents arrived a few minutes before Vicki did. We decided it wasn’t worth them spending a day’s entrance for only a few hours of park time so we went to Downtown Disney for dinner and shopping. My niece Alex and Samantha decided to pose for a picture when we got there…

We decided to eat at the Rainforest Cafe because we get a discount there. While we waited for our table Timmy was attacked by a large snake…

The kids were all given spending money for Christmas presents so needless to say there was a lot of shopping done. Then we headed home to get some sleep for the next day at Hollywood Studios. I didn’t take any pictures at Hollywood Studios or at Magic Kingdom which was the next day. Tuesday night Timmy spent the night vomiting. He had been staying at my mom’s because we had Christina, Bridgette, and Alex at our house. Alex was staying in Timmy’s bed. By 4:30 in the morning he came home with a bowl by his side and crawled into bed with Nathan and me! :( Poor baby was really sick. His ear is still bothering him so it may have been related.

Wednesday we were supposed to do family pictures in the morning followed by Animal Kingdom. We bundled Timmy up in a blanket and took a bowl with us and I made him go to the pictures and then he spent the rest of the day at home with my mom (she didn’t want to deal with the crowds at the parks). Timmy wanted me to stay home but when I said that if I stayed home Josh would be home too and would probably bug him, Timmy told me to go! :) During the pictures I can tell which pictures were first and which ones were towards the end because Timmy started out okay and kept going down hill…

Saturday we arrived early so we could hope to get the sites we wanted. Amazingly… this time they gave us the exact sites I requested!! I was so happy!! So while we were waiting for our sites to be available we spent our time touring the displays at the hotels. We first took a bus to Hollywood Studios and then took the boat that goes to the hotels that are between Hollywood Studios and Epcot. Our first stop was the Yacht Club where there was a train set up going through what was supposed to be a sugar mountain with a candy coated village. It was a nice display but it didn’t look like sugar and candy to me….

The next stop was the Beach Club (?) where there was a beautiful gingerbread carousel. The horses were made of molded chocolate with chocolate ribbons for tails… it was amazing!!!

They also had Chip and Dale’s treehouse…

The last stop on the boat loop was the Boardwalk. They had a cute gingerbread house with Donald stuck in the chimney…

Then we walked through Epcot and took the Monorail to the Grand Floridian and the Contemporary. The Grand Floridian has a HUGE gingerbread house where they sell gingerbread and other goodies out of. I couldn’t get a good picture of it because there were too many people by it. The Contemporary had a gingerbread tree…

After buying some goodies here we took a boat from the Contemporary back to Fort Wilderness to move into our sites. On the way down to the boat the kids found something to get a picture in…