thanksgiving in florida

Every other year, my entire family spend "Christmas" in Florida together over thanksgiving. It was such a fun trip this year with the ages of our girls. They loved vacation. Ava's love language is "quality time" so she was in heaven having so much family around with nothing to do and nothing to get done! The 3 girls all shared a room and Ryan and I would laugh so hard each night listening to the 3 of them together.

Our first night there, it was only our family, my mom and my niece Auburn there. We were eating dinner down by the pool and they had karaoke going on that no one was participating in. Ryan asked Ava is she wanted to sing with him and as I watched in total shock, my shy little girl did! She didn't sing loud but her lips actually moved. It ended up being a "duel" between Ryan and Ava and another 4 yr old little girl and her mom. After 2 rounds of singing, "If you're happy and you know it," and "Halleluh, Halleluh", a "tie" was declared and they both went home winners. It was pretty cute to watch.

Getting to wear a crown was the icing on the cake

Ava and Daddy in action!

Their "band"

We actually had a lot of time as a family on our own. With our girls schedules different than my sister's older kids, during the day, we often went our separate ways. But it ended up being a really special time of our little crew. I cut down MANY pictures, but here's quite a few still. : )

Getting in the sand right away - LOVE finally having 3 girls who like it!

What's better than vacation and a frozen drink Kate asks (non-alcoholic of course ; ) )?

Sharing it with your sister

And snuggles too!

The hotel had this awesome indoor play are that beats any other I've ever seen. My girls spent hours playing here.

Kate trying on Grandma's hat

Olivia's in the picture somewhere : )

Round the rosie with Brynne

On a boat ride in the lake

This is what you call "super daddy."

Ava did awesome swimming. Made those private swimming lessons seem worthwhile!

Ava and Kate getting their toes buried in the sand

Kate thought she'd let Ava take this one all herself

And Olivia just thought she'd cheer them both on

Doesn't get better than this : )

We got to spend a day at Epcot with everyone. But since the 4 youngest girls can't ride that much there, we split up for most of the day.

The Nemo ride was a HUGE hit

On a ride - sometimes it's the memory, not the picture : )

Grandma and Brynne

Some of the girls got to go eat lunch with the Princesses - Ava was thrilled (although we had a slight panic for a bit when she realized Tinkerbell wasn't there. Explain that one - the girl has never seen the movie or read the story with me?!)

This is probably one of my favorite moments of the day. They brought our dessert platters and Brynne took one look at them and exclaimed, "IT'S A MIRACLE!"

Around 3, Kate and Olivia finally sacked out for about 40 minutes.

So we walked around with Ava and she got spoiled a little bit.

She picked a "kitty princess" for her face painting (only Disney would charge $15 for something you wash off that night . . .and only at Disney would you pay it : ) ) We spent the rest of the twins naps finding characters for Ava to take her picture with.

This is why you don't see any pictures of the twins and characters. . .they just cried and Ava was mad because she wanted to take the picture herself.

Because at least half our pictures from Disney are of Ava and a character, I've spared you. : ) But here's one of her favorite's, Minnie Mouse!

Before we left for the night, we had to take one more ride on Nemo. This pretty much sums up Kate and Olivia's opinion of Disney: the food was pretty great (notice the ice cream cones being scarfed down). : )

Riding our tram to the van.

Kate's loving life: chocolate in her belly, cell phone in her hand, and snuggling Papa.

How cute are they?!

We had to get one last swim in before we headed home.

The twins would climb up the side, climb down the ladder and jump to Daddy over and over and over.

Kate's turn!