::boys and epcot::

Here's Kris and Max in front of the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse--one of Kris's favorite spots.  
They're cute.




We went the other night and ate sausages in the Germany section of Epcot. It was delicious, and the park was beautiful in the dark. Busy and crowded, but beautiful.



(one of the rare times Max was actually walking with one of us--he prefers to follow quite a ways behind which drives me bonkers)

There were some sidewalk tiles that had shiny little stars. Can you tell that's what the below photo is? The sidewalk with Max's little feet.

Tonight we walked through Epcot in the dark and Max said "Epcot is beautiful." I agree.


The big ball thing. Lighted in a very cool way.

Here it is from afar in the dark.


And not quite so afar in the daytime.

It's cool looking. I think I prefer night time though.  What do you think?

::just a bit::

I had to get some internet for work today, but really I wanted it so I could post a few pictures.
We've been having a fun time, and it's only rained once.

We started out the disney fun by having a dinner in the Magic Kingdom with Winnie the Pooh and friends. This is fun, but honestly I only chose it because there wasn't anyplace else there I could get a reservation for dinner at the time I wanted.
Luckily Max LOVES the characters. And I did a lot of work educating him as to who everybody was before we left. So unlike me and my siblings, who were all petrified of people in weird costumes, he gets super psyched when they come by.

Like this:

And this:

It's very cute, and it made it all worth it. And the buffet was good too.

Kris had a bad canker when we got here. It's doing better now, but it was bad for a while. Poor guy.


We were there late enough the first night to see them turn on the christmas lights on the castle. They're pretty amazing. We haven't been out late enough to see many other lights or fireworks, but that's ok. It's just not worth it with Max.

Pretty huh?

I haven't been taking thousands of pictures--I've been trying to just enjoy myself without a big camera in hand every second. I do have some fun ones though, so I'll have a few more posts to put up, probably when we get back. Maybe one tomorrow if I'm lucky.
Good night!

::we're here::

We made it to Disney world somehow! It was a long day getting here, but we already had dinner with Pooh, Piglet and Tigger, rode magic carpets, helped Buzz fight Zurg and enjoyed the Carousel of Progress as well as the Monsters Inc. Comedy club.
Max is conked out now thank goodness! Internet costs $10 per day here (lame) so I don't know if I'll be posting many pictures this week, but maybe. Everythings very christmassy and fun. We'll report more later.

::i like::

Max.
I like Max because he makes me laugh.

The other night I went in to put him to bed and this is what I saw:

Can you tell what it is?
Look in the upper left hand corner. Ok here, let me zoom in for you.

Yes, it's the big yucky wig from the Halloween movie we made that I posted earlier. It's hanging out in his bed with all his stuffed animal friends.
That really made me laugh.  How weird.

And while I was taking a picture of that I thought I'd show you something else fun.

We got these pelicans at Ikea (there's a matching one you can't see to the right.) I think they're hilarious. I think it's the cleverest way to store stuffed animals ever. So in conclusion I guess I like Max AND Ikea. They're two very excellent institutions.

::sounds so tasty::

Poor Max is deprived. Before yesterday he had never ever eaten at Burger King. And that really bothered him. He said to me one day as we drove by the place "Mom, how come we've eaten at Wendy's and at McDonald's, but never at Burger King?"
And oh I felt bad for him. But in reality I was laughing. Hard. Because do you know how he says burger king? It sounds like this: "Booger King."

So poor Max was just dying to eat at Booger King. He'd talk about any time that he saw one. Any time we drove by one or he saw a commercial on TV. "Why can't we try Booger King? I know it would be good!"

So yesterday when we were running errands and we needed to get a quick (and unhealthy) lunch we gave in to Max's suggestion for Boogers.
We went to the King.

He was in heaven. "See?" he kept saying "See? I knew it would be good!"

And he was excited because in his mind it was healthy. For an extra .69 they replaced his fries with these strange things called apple fries. Parts of apples cut in the shape of fries. With caramel sauce might I add. So healthy. But Max would be quick to point out that there was also milk in his meal! So it was ultra healthy. Not to mention the greasy cheesy burger. But whatever.  I didn't even tell him there was caramel sauce, so at least that was healthier.

They look just like fries, don't they?  Weird.

And I felt for the rest of the day like I had eaten Boogers. Totally sick to my stomach. But my silly little son was happy.
And it was all worth it for the following:

Untitled from Ginna Hendricks on Vimeo.

:: preparing for festivities::

Wow, I feel like I haven't posted in weeks, and it's only really been three days. Well I'm sure everybody missed me, so I'm back. Phew.
Max and I spent this week trying to get ready for Christmas.
Kris and I had brought the tree up from the basement a few days before thanksgiving because we had to rearrange our living room. Our nice big flatscreen TV that we bought back in Kansas City died. Just suddenly conked out when Max was in the middle of an important PBS show. There was still sound but no picture. We took it to a repair place and they wanted $750 to fix it. Hah.
So luckily we had a small TV we were using in our room. We moved that out to the living room and rearranged the rest of the room around the tree.

And the tree sat there as just a naked tree until a couple of days after thanksgiving. That's when I found the star and put it on top. Then it sat there as just a tree with a star for like three more days until I finally got the lights up. And of course the lights were sitting in a box at the foot of the tree all that time. At least I finally did it.

Then lighted and starred the tree was ready for some ornaments. Kris didn't mind that Max and I worked on it while he was at work, so we got started the other day.

It's so fun to open up the ornament boxes.

Sometimes I forget what fun stuff I have until I hang the stuff on top and get down to the next layer of tissue paper and ornaments. It's magical.
And yes, that's a spoon in there. It's not misplaced. It's an antique spoon from Silver City, UT. If you have questions about it just ask Kris's dad. He's the guy that gave it to us!


I have a separate box for some of the more delicate stuff. Some of it didn't come out this year. We're once again on a hard wood floor, and with a 4 yr old and a dog I just don't want anything shattered on the floor.

Last year I did a lot of after christmas shopping. I usually don't like to do that because it's kind of anti-climactic. But I loved it this time. Going through my boxes it was like I had a whole bunch of new stuff I didn't remember. And getting things at 50 or 75% didn't hurt. I'm going to do it again this year.

Max was the most concerned about finding his sock monkey ornament. Remember that guy? Kris's mom bought it for us several years ago (with amazing foresight), before the sock monkey craze at our house started. Then last year when he came out of the box Max almost lost his mind. The sock monkey had a little friend!
So he was really excited to see the baby monkey again.
Sock monkey even got to come out for the occasion, and he hasn't been out much lately.

He doesn't look that excited in this picture, but that's just because I kept telling him to hold still.

This one is much better.

I have so many fun and sentimental and awesome ornaments. I think later this month I may do a post and highlight some of them. Many of them come from my mom and are handmade. They're such treasures.
Here's one of my favorites. It's not from my mom, it's from Kris. It's Kris's valiant effort at an ornament for my parent's annual christmas party/ornament exchange.

I think it's so adorable. And he was so brave. Can you tell what it is? It's Santa orbiting a planet on a sled of course. And poor Santa is looking a little the worse for wear. It's been 8 years he's been orbiting.
Anyway, I love this little guy. It reminds me of good times and how much my husband loves me!

It was fun to decorate with Max. He's actually getting big enough to help with something like this and stick to it for a while, and big enough that I'm not worried he's going to eat or break anything I give him. I did have to do a lot of adjusting though. It seemed like he wanted to hang every single thing I gave him in the same spot. There was a huge clump of stuff down at the bottom when he got done. But we fixed it.


I'll post the a picture of the whole tree later. And maybe some individual ornaments. But how can I choose which ones?

::more dog park--not gross::

I hope nobody is bored with the dog park yet.
We go there a lot. It's close to our house, and poor Sultan needs a place to have fun.
When funny things happen there, sometimes they get to show up here.

The other day (a while ago, when it wasn't so cold outside that your ears would fall off--and when there were some leaves on the trees) we headed off for some dog park.

Sultan found some cousins to hang out with.

He was pretty excited about it.

And some lady in the background wore some weird socks. But that's not actually part of the story.

Max and Kris went off to play catch, as usual. And as usual some dogs tried to catch the ball when it was thrown to Max.

That gets on Max's nerves a little bit, so he quit the catch game when he saw a fun and exciting stick lying on the ground.

Wow. Sticks are fun. If you're four.

This dog was hanging around him, salivating over that stick.  Kris and I told him to throw it. So he did.

(this is actually a photo of him just before he threw the stick at ME, but that's another story altogether.)
Well guess what happened after he threw the stick for the dog?

This cute dog ended up with the stick. Max was very upset. He kept telling the dog that he hadn't meant to do it, and that's not what he wanted to happen!!
Eventually the dog gave up on the stick.

Ewww.
And boy with stick headed back out into the wild.

He's just not experienced enough to realize how dogs feel about sticks I guess. Sultan doesn't care about sticks at all, so I guess he has no reason to know.

that dogs love sticks!

I love how the tiny dog is chasing him so confidently, like he could actually do something, while the big guy who could just grab it straight out of his hands is just watching.
It was pretty hilarious.

But then evidently Max smelled something "stinky" (big shock at the dog park, right?) and so he went to do something else.
(check out the crazy dog in the background of that last picture. All four feet are way above the ground!)

He went to play in the shot put cage. Or whatever that is.

"Sultan, come! Sultan come! Sultan come!" Sultan does a bad job listening to Max and I. We're working on that currently.

Other dogs show up of course, but no Sul. He's kind of a butt that way.

He finally showed up. Then Max pretended to be a sad puppy in a cage.

Cute! Sad!

Then we went home.
And since there were still leaves on the trees I took a picture of one.

And here we are again at the end of one of my loooooooooooooong photo essays. If you made it to the end I hope you enjoyed it. Can't go wrong with the dog park (unless of course a dog mistakes you for a fire hydrant.)

::explanation and santa::

So good guesses everybody! I think my favorite was Matt's, with the American Growth Hormone Association. But actually, everybody that guessed gets a big high five from me! Alright!!

So the real explanation is this. We went to the zoo on saturday with Melissa and Grant. Santa was flying in on a helicopter to make an appearance, and we thought we needed to see that.

So there were these funny little old ladies wearing felt christmas tree headbands and jingle bells, carrying around a huge set of reindeer antlers. (they were supposed to be reindeer antlers anyway, but who knows what kind of deer they belong to!)
They would let kids pose under them for a photo op. I couldn't get back far enough to get all of the antlers and all of Max in the picture. Pretty exciting, right?

So there we were, waiting for Santa. Max wore his very christmassy skeleton hand gloves.

Festive.

As I think I mentioned, Santa flew in on a helicopter. Pretty new fangled if you ask me. It was pretty fun to see the helicopter fly in and land though. Max enjoyed it.



He kept motioning for applause. "Ho ho ho!"


And then up came the little train that was going to take good old Santa around the zoo for a parade. I specially include a picture of this train for Grandpa Ken. I know he'll love it! Check out the lawn mower or whatever is pulling it. It totally looks like an old train engine!


And off went the parade. Here are Max and Grant waiting for Santa to come by.

Just two dudes sitting on a wall, hanging out.


And Santa rode by in style, at the very end of the train. He doesn't actually look that comfortable if you ask me.
I think he was heading to his "breakfast with Santa"--only $35 per adult. Totally affordable, right?


And since we were at the zoo, we figured we might could see some animals.

A kind of creepy camel.
We actually saw real camels. Max really enjoyed seeing the camel relieve itself. Yuck. He also was lucky enough to happen upon a giraffe reliving itself and was very interested. Is he a boy or what?


Can you see the snow leopard? He was pretty.

Here's a fuzzy cute little red panda sleeping among the bamboo. So appropriate. And cute.


It's so nice that Melissa has a zoo membership and brings us along with her. We love it. And of course we like Santa too, breakfast or no breakfast.