Epcot Flower and Garden Festival

We are still loving our Disney passes, and were THRILLED when the kids wanted to renew them for their Christmas present this past Christmas!  Certainly made "shopping" easy, and we love the time we spend together, just wandering the parks.  Right now, Epcot is having their annual Flower and Garden Festival, which somehow we missed last spring...

They have these insane topiaries all over the park of the characters.  Apparently there are 75 of them... we didn't try to find them all, I think we would have needed more than one day.  

We did find Mickey, Minnie and Pluto flying a kit, however.

And Bambi's Butterfly Garden was very cool.  Yes, Carly stood still for a very long time waiting for a butterfly to land on her finger... it didn't happen, but the people around her found her to be quite entertaining.

There were several houses like these where you could see the changes from caterpillar to butterfly.

Amazing landscape... that is all made by flowers.  Lots of flowers.

This picture is for our little Car Fan Nephews.  Apparently Julean isn't the only one anymore!  A little part of me thought if we sent him this picture he might want to come live with us, but I think I might need to produce the real thing for him to do that!  We were impressed with this life-sized version.

The kids were posing for Roy and Mavis!  Our sweet friends we added to our family over Christmas.  They are from England (you know, hence the picture) but work in the Garden with my parents for much of the year.  We got them for a few weeks over the holidays and loved every minute we spent with them!  

An English Tea Garden, sponsored by none other than the Twinings Tea Company.

Ok, we are kind of fans of this group.... the British Invasion.  They dress up kind of like the Beatles and sing their songs.  I'm sure they LOVED our kids chasing each other all around the English Maze in front of their stage, singing along at the top of their lungs.  Can you see Ben and Carly hiding in the maze?  They are getting quite good at Beatles Rockband... Ryan seems to think he could take over for one of the British Invasion people, you know, if they ever got sick...

In case you wanted to see what Earl Grey tea looks like when it is growing...

Oh yes, Princesses and their Princes got to be topiaries, too.

The kids BEGGED to visit the Plushies of Pokemon characters at the store in Japan.  They had fun playing with them, as did about a million other kids in there!

Rapunzels tower from Tangled... cute movie and this was kind of cool looking.

Pretty sure everyone knows who that is...

Adorable pandas in China.

Pixie Hollow Garden.  There were fairies everywhere and apparently there was a game for little kids to find all of them... Carly was a little too old when all the Pixie business came out, but we enjoyed the rainbow flowers...

And all was well until Ryan started saying, "I don't believe in Fairies" really loud.  Oh yes, he got a few Angry Eyes from Fathers waiting around with their little girls.  I had to get him out of Pixie Hollow quickly.  

This is more Carly's speed... Test Track.  Sadly, it had just closed for a repair and they couldn't ride... Next time!  They got to ride Mission Space instead, so they were just as happy about that.  I stayed outside and itched my eyes.  Sadly, I should have remembered I have allergies BEFORE I walked around about a million species of beautiful flowers.  I'm still paying for it today... *sigh*

It was worth it:)