Christmas Break 2025: Florida and Christmas and Busch Gardens, Oh My!

We arrived in beautiful Davenport, FL (right outside of Orlando) on Tuesday, Dec. 23 "Christmas Adam" and drove straight to Publix, which is such a treat of a grocery store but the prices - oh my!  Next time we will just go to Walmart.  The Grinch happened to be passing out candy, and we split into three teams and divided the list into threes and off we went...

The weather for the week could NOT have been any better, it was sunny and 78 degrees every single day that we were there.  It was cool enough to run in the mornings too and this is why we dream of being snowbirds one day.

We settled into the rental house, which was really perfect except for a dirty rug and walls (why get a white rug in a rental?) and the handprints on the wall reminded me of home.  But a 5 bedroom, 4 bathroom house feels LUXURIOUS to this family of nine, since we're used to living in a 4 bedroom, 2 bath home.  Oh my! I don't have a photo of the house, but I do have a photo from the front door looking out:

The house was part of a resort, so we could use the resort amenities which were really nice.  A huge pool, waterslide and lazy river gave us the perfect Christmas Eve day plans:

We also had a little pool back at the house that was used every night by all, and every morning by some.  When I asked for the pool to be heated, I was told it was broken and they couldn't heat it, but after lots of emails back and forth, they fixed it right before we arrived and it was steaming and sooooo relaxing.  The chemicals were super strong though, and Declan ended up with what appeared to be a chlorine allergy by the end of the trip (rashes and swollen lips).  Oh my!

We watched Man vs. Baby as a family - one episode per night - which was really fun to do around Christmastime.  I think the kids liked Man vs. Bee even better, but we are huge Rowan Atkinson fans.

We went to Mary, Queen of the Universe for Christmas Eve Mass at 4pm, where the singing was out of this world.  At the end of the Mass, people started clapping as O Holy Night finished and I found myself joining in, before current Frannies, Andrew and Eamon shot me a look: "We don't clap at Mass".  Whoops!  I just got caught up in the whole thing!  Oh my!

We raced out to the van after Mass (the parking lot and church were packed) to drive to the dinner reservation we had at 5:30.  We ended up being 15 minutes late, oh my! because traffic in Orlando is horrid.  But we did get to see another 6-7:

 We surprised the kids with dinner at a hibachi restaurant, and it was super fun and yummy!

Our chef and server were very fun, and asked us to leave reviews, which Andrew and Eamon immediately did:

The next day was Christmas!!  I don't think I will ever get used to celebrating Christmas in warm weather.  All the songs on the radio about snow and winter wonderlands, how do you warm-weather people get in that cozy Christmassy mood while wearing flipflops?  Don't get me wrong, it was such a fun day, but it didn't feel like Christmas.  The stockings helped!  As did the little tree we found in a closet and set up:

We decided to go to Busch Gardens on Christmas Day which ended up being a great move for the crowds (not bad) but the food service was sooooo slow because a lot of people had called out from work that day.  I can't blame them, I mean who wants to work on Christmas, especially in a minimum wage, thankless job?  But it meant that we had to stand in lines over an hour long each time we wanted to get food and I regretted getting the meal passes because so much of our day was spent trying to make them worth it.  The park and the rides and the ice skating show were all awesome, and it was a super great day overall.

The show was my favorite part:

The way she was thrown around and picked up high, Oh my!

There were animals to see!

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Tigers are my favorite

I love taking the train around theme parks - informative, and a break from all the topsy-turvy rides.  My kids are wild and crazy and have no fear when it comes to doing the biggest and scariest rides as soon as they are tall enough.  This time though, a few of the older kids had to take breaks after some of the rides, and now they know how I feel!

I only went on one ride, the River Rapids which could fit our whole family at one time.  But then a lone rider jumped onto our "raft" before we took off, and sat in the seat right beside Maggie.  He didn't say anything to us, nor us to him, but we couldn't stop laughing for the rest of the day about Maggie's new boyfriend.  Oh my! It's tough being the only girl with 6 brothers :)

We all got super soaked, and Maggie paid for the dryer after so we all jumped in:

We got home around 8pm and jumped in the pool and had a memorable and hot Christmas 2025!  Oh my!