Crisis averted! A little rest and Ricky was fine for basketball practice last night. Maybe my not-so-little baby just missed me while Steve and I were away and wanted some extra time with me
We headed back to France so I could check out some big red things I'd spotted while waiting for my cup o' love before. Turns out they were lovely red ornaments with replicas of famous French landmarks inside, set up for the holidays. FYI, today was Nov. 21st, and while the Candlelight Processional and Holiday Storytellers don't start until the day after Thanksgiving, there are a number of decorations up prior to that in addition to the main Christmas tree like the one in AK. Most of the stages/sets for the storyteller in each country were set up already, although there are a couple countries that don't really have a stage or props.
Cool, huh? I just noticed angry girl in the corner lol. Here's another one, nicely centered for you:
There was a 3rd one and I think rather than a landmark it had a patisserie scene in it and was all done up with Christmas decorations. I also don't remember these from our 2012 November trip, but I was really digging them! They were very festive looking.
We still had some time to kill before our first FP in Future World and the boys wanted to do an Agent P mission, so they decided to try the one in Germany as they've never done that one. We've done Japan, Norway, and Mexico. I know lots of people think these are great, and I do think it's a good way to keep kids entertained while giving parents a chance to look around the various countries. I also however, think the missions are a bit.......time-consuming. And annoying. But alas Disney is NOT all about me regardless of what I think, so I do them occasionally for the sake of my boys who have put up with princess meals and meet and greets for their poor old mom
The Germany one ended up having some neat effects, which I tried to get pictures of but they all came out way too dark. One that was especially cute was in an upper window of a "cottage" in the middle of all the shop buildings-I won't give away any more than that. You can see how hard my boys were concentrating on their mission
About 2 hours later our mission was accomplished - ok, maybe it was more like 20-30 minutes but it
felt like 2 hours- it was finally time for our first FP which was Spaceship Earth. When we got off the boys noticed the interactive games in the unloading area and realized they'd never done them before; these test your reaction time, memory, and hand-eye coordination
I'm pretty sure in this picture Ricky is doing the memory one; it was like the game "Simon" where you have to remember different color patterns and hit the right colors in the right order after the game shows you the pattern.
They played around here until it was our FP time for one of Chris's favorites, Test Track. Steve and I always end up designing a car together because the boys like to work together on theirs, and we are fine with this since its basically the only time our boys ask to work on something together!
Our 3rd FP was for the Character Spot, and I was REALLY excited about this. As I mentioned earlier in the report, Ricky is no longer interested in doing character meets and Chris often says he's not so his brother doesn't tease him, so over our last few trips we've done fewer and fewer meets. Even the meets we have done for some reason haven't been Mickey, Goofy, etc., so the last pictures I have of the boys with any of the Fab 5 are from like 2012. I was determined to meet Mickey in a couple different outfits this trip and a few of his closest friends, too!
Well, if you have boys you know they like to eat. For mine, if they aren't playing basketball or video games, they're eating. Especially Ricky. So when we got off Test Track they both started asking for food. It was 5:12 and we had an ADR for 6:00, so I told them we'd eat right after Character Spot. Well, NOPE! No good. They needed to eat now, food not a snack, and were NOT in the mood to meet characters. I'll cut to the chase, no character meets that night for me. Kids 1, mom 0. I did tell them they had to do every other meet I asked them to for the rest of the trip, and they held up their end of the bargain
So, we backtracked for like the 4th time over to WS to see if Restaurant Marrakesh would take us a little early. At some point I snapped this picture of the tree in front of the American Pavilion
The ornaments on it included fruits and lanterns with candles inside, a definite Victorian theme. On to our dinner!
We arrived at Marrakesh 15 minutes early for our ADR and they sat us right away. Steve and I had eaten dinner here when we came without the boys in March and enjoyed it quite a bit, which is why we decided to bring the boys this time. They also had mussels on the menu and Ricky LOVES him some mussels! Small spoiler alert: Ricky ordered mussels at 5 restaurants during this trip and declared the ones here the winner by a landslide.
The inside of the restaurant is all tile and gorgeous. Do I have any pictures? Of course not.......there is also a belly dancer and 2 men who play instruments during dinner. The men begin playing and after a few minutes the belly dancer comes out. She dances for awhile and then has children come up and teaches them to dance, very cute! Both times we were there we saw a mom or 2 get up, also. We tried to get Chris to go up but he preferred to watch the lovely lady from afar
I ordered a glass of their white Sangria. I'd had it in March and thought it was delicious. Steve had some plain old beer, the kids had soda. Ricky ordered the mussels appetizer and Steve and I got the Goat Cheese and Crisp Bread for Two, which we'd also had in March. I was afraid Ricky wouldn't like the broth the mussels came in because it had saffron in it and he's really not an adventurous eater at all, but as I said he (and Steve) loved them. Just an FYI, I don't do fish
The Goat Cheese has balsamic drizzled over it. Could use some more bread because there's always cheese left after the bread is gone, but still excellent.
We all got shish kabobs - Ricky and I chicken and Chris & Steve beef. The chicken comes with a fruity couscous and olive salad; not a fan of the sweet couscous but I do love the olive salad since it has a lot of kalamata olives in it. Ricky would not have liked either and requested fries. I told him not to expect them to say yes because Marrakesh has been known as one of the WS restaurants to not always make accommodations, but they were absolutely fine with it.
The beef shish kebobs came with yellow rice rather thank the couscous and both guys liked it. Sorry I didn't take pictures! I did better on our more recent trip, although a lot of the pictures feature half-eaten food lol.
We decided to skip dessert. Nothing really screamed out to the kids and I was craving my favorite - SCHOOL BREAD!!!! OH, how I wish I had a picture for all you poor, unfortunate souls who've never been lucky enough to try this! It's not really a donut, kind of a pastry. It's harder than a donut so you can, as I do, use a knife to cut it. It's covered on top with toasted coconut and filled with a cardamom cream....heaven! Until I found out the cream had cardamom in it I would describe it as a Bavarian cream-like taste but not quite as sweet. So after settling up at dinner we headed toward Norway and Kringla Bakeri. Along the way the kids asked if we could take it back to our room because they were getting tired. WHAT?? It's our first night here and it's all of 6:45!! I had plans to watch Illuminations! Ugh, I'd even scheduled most of our mornings as NON RD mornings, even though Thanksgiving week is NOT the time to do this, because both boys have a huge aversion to waking up early now
(I planned on teaching them a lesson with this plan btw. Problem is it ends up sucking for all of us!) And now they want to leave THIS early? Ok guys, but not before a walk through the Stave Church!
Apparently the church used to be filled with Viking memorabilia and lore, but unfortunately I never went in it then. Now it has a lot of "Frozen" stuff, but also some things native to Norway like traditional dress, some instruments, etc. Worth a walk through if you have a chance. Plus I've always liked the look of the Stave Church so was happy to spend a few minutes inside. Here's a distance shot of it from across the lagoon:
You can see the walls up where they're working on the Frozen M&G area.
Ricky wanted to get ice cream on the boardwalk so we got 3 school breads and headed toward the International Gateway. It was a nice night; a bit of a breeze and a few clouds but perfect for sitting on the BW eating our treats. We had gotten back about 7:45 and sat there people and Friendship boat watching until 8:30 when it unexpectedly started to drizzle.
Back in our room all was dry......for now. Once we started brushing teeth and otherwise using the sink I noticed some wet spots on the floor but kept my mouth shut because - Illuminations from our balcony, woo-hoo!!! We all went out to watch. And then at 10:00 I heard another boom and - Wishes from the corner of our balcony! Just as I thought! Wow, this room is gonna be totally awesome this week
right?!
Finally we were pooped and ready for some sleep. Despite the possibility of not looking "cool" in front of his big brother, Chris had asked to have breakfast at Garden Grill so that's where we were headed in the morning. Not bright and early though, no sirrreeee!
**I really need to apologize again for these huge pictures, they're killing me! I still can't figure out how to shrink them. I'm lucky I can maneuver the Dis! Seriously, give me a typewriter, a vcr and Atari and I'm good
UP NEXT: GARDEN GRILL BREAKFAST AND WILL WE JUST HAVE TO NOT SHOWER?
???
There were a number of these birdhouses around in red and gold and I thought they were really coo
l:
Technically Chris does, but tries to be cool in front of his big brother.....however later in the trip they both stepped up and did a M&G for me that I've been dying to do for awhile 
Ricky says he won't miss us, but he said that when we went last March without them and when we got home, he RAN down the driveway and gave me the longest, hardest hug he's ever given me lol. Chris on the other hand keeps telling me how hard he's going to cry when we leave. He did cry last year but stopped as soon as we dropped them at their friends house, which is where they're going today until my mom gets out of work. Did I feel guilty? Um......NO!! Disney trips without the kids are awesome, and then it makes the kids look forward to the next one even more! Plus they behave really well for a good week after we get back
But I'm still excited because I love me some Villains and they aren't represented in the parks! 
scanned our bands and headed over the bridge by France to wait for Chris and Steve. They were only about 4 minutes behind us, so it wasn't long before Steve and I were downing our delicious drink of choice from WS:
At least he waited until we got back from our trip!
.
Glad you're here! Those sarcastic little guys are fun, aren't they? Chris is usually sweet too, but when he comes out with those zingers I have a hard time reprimanding him because I can't control my laughter!
