Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Orlando 2012

This Christmas marks the first Christmas in a long while, that I spent the actual Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my family.  Joe and Joy and Ruby were originally going to come down, but were unable to make it as the day drew near.  I was excited to be invited to spend the holiday with my family.  Lucretia was kind to include me in their holiday plans.  I picked up some pastries at Mazzaro's and brought them by when I first arrived in Orlando in the early afternoon on Christmas Eve.  Lu and the girls had made pasta dough and were rolling it out on metal skewers.  It was initially a slow process so we went off to the hardware store to get some more skewers to roll the pasta around.  We ended up with wooden ones, so soaked them in olive oil so that once the pasta was rolled, we could slide it off!  Five of us sat around the table and had a pasta rolling party!  On Christmas Eve we went over to my cousin Robert's inlaws for a family and friends get together.  I enjoyed seeing Robert and Tiffany and meeting Tiffany's parents!

Midmorning on Christmas Day I headed over to Lu's.  We had a nice spread of pre-dinner snacks!  The pasta was delicious!  And the meatballs and sausage and braciole were mouth watering!  The best!!!

Adele had to take off mid afternoon to head over to Disney.  She had a few shows to do!  We got to Skype with Ruby and Joe and Joy before we had to head out to position ourselves in front of the castle to catch the castle lighting show and the Celebrate the Season show.  It was fun watching Ruby open some gifts and play with her toys!  She is growing so fast!  

Donald was our favorite part of the show!  After the show, we got our own private meet and greet with Donald!  We were lead to the door of the castle where Donald came out to greet us!  It was the best!

What a fun Christmas it was!  The Magic Kingdom was packed.  After the show we walked around the new expanded areas of Fantasyland.

We stayed for the Celebrate the Magic show where lights were projected onto the castle set to music.  It was amazing and very festive!

And then  we decided to catch the 10:00 fireworks show before heading out.  We took our time heading down Main Street and stopped in The Confectioners to pick up a few treats and to let the park empty out some more.   There was such a long line to get on the monorail back to the Transportation Center that we decided to walk over to the Contemporary Resort to catch the monorail there.  There were so many people that when the trains did stop there, only a handful of people could get onto the packed cars.

I used to think, "who would go to Disney on Christmas?", but must admit I had a blast!  It was fun when during one of the shows how the announcer was saying there was no place like home for the holidays.  And the first thought was, why were we all here then?  Gotta love it!

I left to return to St. Pete this morning around 10:30 AM.  There was a lot of traffic but it flowed very well.  That is, until I hit Tampa.  Naturally, right where I-4 ends and I-275 begins, as congested as it is usually, it was even worse because the sky decided to open up with a heavy downpour.  And traffic came to a standstill.  As we moved further through the city, we passed a four or five car accident.  After I passed it, the driving picked up and I was sailing across Tampa Bay.  Now I'm awaiting the girls arrival on Thursday.  We will be spending several days here in St. Pete celebrating!