Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve is one of the busiest days of the year for Magic Kingdom so they show the New Year firework show at midnight the night before also. Maddy and I went to see them in the park this year to check it off the bucket list and got a really nice view:). There was so much entertainment on offer the whole night and the grand finale was just incredible - the best fireworks I have ever seen:)

Mike went over to Fort Wilderness with Maddy for a repeat performance from across Bay Lake on the actual night - I closed out the New Year with a run to watch the fireworks in the neighborhood and managed to mess up my timing and miss the big countdown:). I hope that's not an indicator of how my year is going to be - I don't want to miss a thing in 2015!

On New Year's Day we all went back over to Fort Wilderness to hang out...

And Eileen and Dave came over to visit with Milo and Mabel! It was my first time meeting my baby niece and Milo was just a baby when I saw him last. It was love at first sight for me... 

 

Milo is so fun to play with - he just loves to run around and make everyone laugh :)

 

 

And Mabel is just absolutely precious...:)

 

We went for a walk to see the gorgeous Disney horses...

And Milo made a great model for me to practice my fancy new camera on!!

 

 

 

It was a lovely day and one of my many New Year's Resolutions is definitely more family time in 2015! Happy New Year to you all!!!

Boxing Day and more...

It was nice to have a few days off work after Christmas without too much to do for a change:). We went over to Celebration to see the houses that had won the best Holiday decorations town contest. They were incredible!

 

And we played at being tourists for a morning and went to Ripley's Believe It Or Not! which was fun too - I started to wish that I had a collection of curiosities...I love curiosities...

Like this picture made out of old computer keys...

Or this chunk of the Berlin Wall...

We had heard that the old abandoned theme park, Splendid China, was being demolished, so we went over one afternoon to see what was going on...You may remember from our trip a couple of years ago that Splendid China was once an active $100M theme park which opened in 1993 on 76 acres just West of the main entrance to Disney World. It was filled with accurate scale models of China's landmarks, and also offered acrobatic, culinary and dance entertainment. The miniatures included replicas of The Great Wall of China (this version was half of a mile long and built brick by brick), and The Leshan Grand Buddha Statue (in 1/8th scale), and more than 50 others representing the diversity of cultures within the region.

The park ran into trouble when protestors claimed that Florida's Splendid China was a tool for propaganda rather than entertainment and they ultmately closed due to low attendance as a result of the controversy in 2003. For several years vandals and trespassers ran rampant, many of whom posted videos of their exploits online. Last year it was purchased by a condo developer and now that it's just a construction site we were able to walk right in!

There are tons of piles of rubble and the miniatures have all been removed...

It was fascinating and we couldn't get enough. Maddy and I got online the next day and found where the miniatures are now. Evidently they were purchased at auction by a garden ornament supply company up in Apopka - so that kept us busy the next day too! He has them displayed in his parking lot...

With a random 50s style space ship for no apparent reason...:)

We found the owner and he sold us our very own terracotta warrior replica - my first genuine artifact from an abandoned theme park!!! I love him!!

So the collection has officially begun - I'll let you know when we have the official opening of Early's Believe It Or Not! :)

Happy Christmas!

I couldn't wait for Christmas to arrive this year - I even put the trees up the day after Halloween! This is our third Christmas in the new house and Orlando is definitely home now :)

 

The night before, we watched 'It's a Wonderful Life' again - my favorite Christmas movie!

We did our regular family gifts in the morning as usual. Maddy's was thrilled with her waterproof phone case, pillow cases and gift cards, Mike was very excited about his tickets for Linkin Park, his speaker for the shower and Monsters University hat. I got a ton of stuff including an amazing new camera and some vintage goodies too! Maddy had no idea what these things even were...!

 

We decided on a Shark Tank theme for our family Christmas party this year. That's Dragon's Den to you Brits :). For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, Shark Tank is a TV show where entrepreneurs pitch to a group of ''sharks' to gain investments in their businesses. The products featured are generally new ideas or inventions and whether they get a deal or not, these products generally sell in the millions after appearing on the show. It's one of our favorite TV shows as a family and we thought Christmas would be a great opportunity to gift products from the show for some fun! 

It was beautiful weather as usual for our 4Rivers Christmas meal out back...

And then everyone arrived :). The Jen, Rich and Mya looked particularly fancy...

  Right down to Mya's nails!

With all the fanciness we couldn't resist a 'cruise line' photo...

Before the meal, we Skyped with England this year which was particularly hilarious, partly because they were 5 hours drunker than we were:)

 

Jen's Christmas games were a big hit!

 The food was amazing!

 

The kids loved the English Christmas crackers too although Cormac wasn't sure exactly what to do with the hat!

 

It's one of the few days of the year that you can eat exacty what you want - guilt free:). We all got a kick out of Richard's plateful of Liz's famous cake with some brussels sprouts!

Mike and Rita did a fine job in the kitchen...

...although things sometimes got a bit stressful...

The gifts were hilarious (Mike was probably the most excited about his squatty potty) and in a flash it was all over :(. Thank you to my amazing family for sharing in another great Christmas together. Until next year....We love you!