Wishing you a joyous, blessed, and magical Christmas!
The gift of love, the gift of peace, the gift of happiness...may all these be yours at Christmas and in the year to come. I pray that this Christmas has been filled with all the wonder and magic the season has to offer!
Throughout my life, I've enjoyed being a part of various musicals and holiday productions, even drama club when I was in high school. Although I can't sing (like at all) or dance (I do dance better than I sing), crowds never bothered me and I do memorize things fairly well. My enjoyment of the stage goes way back, to when I was 11 years old. Our former church was doing a children's Christmas production called "Twinkle and the All-Star Band". As a random chance happening, I was given the lead role of Twinkle, and that's where my love for it all began.
Fast forward to three years ago. Our church was hosting a Christmas production entitled "How Christmas Saved The Grinch", a spin on the typical Grinch stealing Christmas story. It was their third year to perform and I was having major FOMO. After the production was over, I approached our children's pastor's wife and told her if she ever needed any adult extras in the production, I would be more than happy to help. Well, enter 4th year of the Grinch (2018) and yes, I was given a role as an extra. I. Loved. It!
Although the story of Jesus is sprinkled throughout our production, it's not over the top and several years back, the local public schools began coming out as an optional field trip on the Friday of production week. They even have a chance to take a picture with Mr. Grinch and the cast after the production is over, which they love! Last year, we had almost 3,000 kids at our Friday performance and this year (our 5th year), we had almost 2,000!
I'm getting ahead of myself, though.
Rewind to August of this year. I received a phone call from our children's pastor's wife that the lady who had played Betty Lou Who for the past 4 years was stepping down and she wanted to know if I was interested in having her part. I was incredibly honored and knew I had a big role to fill, especially when someone had been in that role for so many years. I said yes and reminded her about my singing and dancing abilities again. Thankfully, no singing had to be involved (with just my voice alone) and only minimal dancing.
So, last weekend was the 5th year to perform "How Christmas Saved The Grinch" and it was a smashing hit! In total, around 3,000 (ish) people were in attendance!
I also knew I wanted to take that role and make it my own. Throughout
the five years, many different cast have played many different parts
and each had their own unique spin on their characters. I set out to do
just that.
Backstage was a flurry of activity once it became time to start getting dressed. About 75% of these costumes are hand sewn which blows my mind!
This table was once organized by characters and buckets but this is the aftermath! Hah!
My friend Mackenzie has played the part of the Narrator for the past 5 years and she always does an amazing job!
Time for noses! If you want to see the entire process of costuming and makeup, check out the Vlogidays video at the bottom of this post. :)
Almost ready!
The Grinch might have driven to McDonald's like this! The manager remembered him from last year and asked for a picture! Hah!
A little more behind the scenes of the cast...
You might remember the orange dress pictured here? That was my costume from last year!
Brayden was quite intrigued by my nose!
Playing the part of Betty Lou Who meant I was also the mom of Cindy Lou. :)
This was the closest Brayden would get to Mr Grinch!
We were trying to take a picture and we were photobombed by both the Grinch and one of our husbands! Haha whoops!
After Friday's performances were over, we decided to get shakes from Chick Fil A, makeup and all. It was rather hysterical if I do say so myself!
...and that's a wrap on How Christmas Saved The Grinch for 2019. Although we were sleep deprived, it was an amazing weekend filled with lots of wonderful memories! Until next year....
If you're interested in seeing the process of creating a "Who", check out the video above.
On our most recent trip to Walt Disney World, we had quite the adventure with our group of friends! It all began with the Wine & Dine Half Marathon weekend where we ran, park hopped, and ate plenty of delicious food. After the weekend was over, we boarded the Disney Dream for a 4 night cruise to the Bahamas. The magic didn't stop there, though. Once our cruise was complete, we returned to Walt Disney World to attend the very first Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party of the season! Needless to say, the trip was amazing, magical, fun-filled, and the best part - none of us wanted it to end (aka, we didn't all get on each other's nerves)!
I said all of that to say, I'm doing these recaps out of order because...well, Christmas is upon us and with the parties in full swing, I felt like it was appropriate to share this one first!
We were SO excited for the Christmas party and couldn't wait for the evening to begin! It had been years since many of us had been to a party (and a first time for some), so we were ready!
Our game plan was to arrive early, hit up as many rides as possible before the party started, grab a quick bite before the party started, then spend the hours during the party enjoying party things!
Someone was exhausted on the ride over to the party and fell smack asleep on the bus!
After arriving at the party, we were ushered behind the gates on the side of the tree (runDisney fans will remember this as the previous route for the WDW and Princess Half). Instead of being lead outside of the park, we were directed down an alleyway where we were given our first cookie of the party!
I LOVE the toy soldiers! They are my favorite part of the parade!
Of course, there were several merchandise carts there as well.
We got suckered in and each bought a party shirt and a commemorative pin.
New changes for the party this year included:
Fun ride overlays (Tomorrowland Speedway, Space Mountain, Mad Tea Party, and Monsters Inc to name a few)
A brand new Fireworks show
Also, I didn't remember such a wide variety of cookie/drink options from the last time I attended the party! (That was at least 4 years ago, so my memory on that might be fuzzy.) It was a nice surprise, though!
As soon as we walked into the castle hub, our first order of business was to take a group picture.
We knew the forecast called for rain most of the evening and we wanted to get a picture before we were all drenched and had to wear ponchos.
We loved seeing the Christmas overlays throughout the park - these two were located near Splash Mountain.
The lines for rides were super short, even though the app said they were between 20-30 minutes. We hardly waited for Small World, Pirates, and Haunted Mansion. In between rides, we also grabbed pizza at Pinocchio's.
After dinner, and per Brayden's request, we rode the carousel. We were just loading up when the announcement was made that the party officially began! It was fun hearing the Christmas music on the carousel, too!
Our mission from here on out was to see the parade, ride the rides with Christmas overlays, snag as many cookies and hot chocolate as possible, and see the fireworks. The line for the cookie stop with egg nog was CRAZY, so we skipped that one. They were seriously lined up 30 minutes before the party officially began! I know the lines go fast but we definitely did not have time for that.
We may have missed the egg not stop, but we didn't miss the other stops! Another change from previous Christmas parties I attended was the wrapped cookies. I loved this as they were easier to handle and carry around or save to eat later.
The Mad Tea Party was our first stop once the party began. The Christmas overlay of flashing lights were red and green and the music was all Christmas themed.
We decided to be the chicken cup! (aka the teacup that didn't spin a whole lot...) And yes, we squeezed three adults and a child into one!
These fools wanted to spin as fast as possible....so, they all took their own tea cup!
Outside of each cookie/drink stop was a large blow up peppermint to signal guests where to go. This stop even had peppermint cookies (and I was all about that life)!
About 45 minutes before the parade began, we found a spot along the route. We knew the chance of rain for the 10 p.m. parade was super high, and because we didn't want to miss the parade, we decided on the first one. I'm so thankful we did because I heard they had to cancel the 10 p.m. parade and use the rainy day cavalcade instead!
I love how Mickey and Minnie lead this parade and Santa ends it!
Who can forget my favorite toy soldiers? :)
As soon as the parade was over, we made a bee line for the Jingle
Cruise. The line had finally died down by this point - it was seriously
120 minutes for a while! We waited maybe 15 minutes in line which wasn't bad compared to the length of the line all evening!
This naughty/nice list always makes me laugh because this is totally something Jason would do! This Jason scratched his name off of the naughty list and added it to the nice list!
Our next order of business was to see the new Minnie's Wonderful Christmas Time Fireworks presentation. We found a great spot on Main Street, too!
Because of the weather, the smoke from the fireworks hung around the castle. Even though it made it hard to see some of the projections, we LOVED the new show, the music, and the fireworks themselves!
Another ride to check off of our list was Space Mountain! We decided ahead of time to be "reindeer" for the on-ride photo.
Since my husband is ALWAYS a goofball, this was his version of a reindeer, and I'm still kinda laughing about it....
I'm not joking when I say that was seriously, hands down the version of Space Mountain I've ever seen! We all LOVED it!
One of the friends in our group said we all had to have red magic bands for the party, so we did!
A ride we never made it to was the Tomorrowland Speedway. I did like the Christmas overlay, though and thought it would be fun to see at night!
Brayden's final request of the evening was to ride Dumbo. While the rest of our party rode Space Mountain again, we headed over to Storybook Circus.
We had the chance to ride Dumbo twice without even getting off of the ride! (That's never happened to us before and it was amazing!)
While in the Storybook Circus area, we saw another peppermint decal and decided to see what it was all about. To our surprise, it was a snowman pretzel! The best part...it was WARM!
By this point, it was nearing midnight and we decided it was time to head back to our resort...but not before a few pictures first, of course!
Main Street was so beautiful with the snow and the lights! It's one of my favorite places to be!
Y'all know me and those toy soldiers - I couldn't leave without taking a picture!
Despite the rain, we all had a blast at the party and wouldn't change a thing! I think we would all unanimously agree that the party was a blast, we seriously had a magical time, and the Christmas overlay to Space Mountain was by far our favorite part....or maybe the all new Minnie's Wonderful Christmas Time Fireworks...that's a tossup!
Until next time...see ya real soon! Have a magical holiday season!
For a video recap of our time at the party, check out the clip above! :)
