Hey Mickey, Long Time No See

Oh was it a happy moment when we got out of the car at the Disneyland hotel! And boy do we love the bell hop service! The last time we were at Disneyland was three years ago. Angela was 1 year old. We stayed at the Disneyland hotel, but for some reason we couldn't find a bell hop (it was later at night) or didn't know where to get cart, so poor Melvin* walked the very long distance from our van to the hotel room 3-4 times to bring everything to our room! This time, we were smarter and made sure to use the bell hop service! While we waited for daddy to park the car, the girls pretended to jump into Disneyland (like on Mary Poppins). They were very, very excited! So was I!
Hey there Mickey - we've missed you!

We love staying at the Disneyland hotel. Besides being very convenient, it's just fun to keep the Disney magic the whole vacation! We love the princess bedtime stories, the fun Disney decor, the awesome Peter Pan themed pool - which we made a point to visit this time even though it wasn't exactly a warm day. It is a beautiful place to stay and they have rooms that perfectly accommodate a family of 5.

The girls getting into a story by Belle.

Natalie getting "comfortable".

These pictures are a little mixed up. This was our dinner the first night at the Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney. It is a fun restaurant with a lot of ambiance. It looks like a rainforest inside and every few minutes the animals come alive and a big "rainstorm" happens. Before we were even in the restaurant and the first rainstorm hit in the gift shop, Angela freaked out. She was terrified. Natalie took the cue and started getting scared too. This was not a good start on a vacation full of pretend things. I didn't know if we were even going to get through dinner, but Neville* has a way of talking the girls into calming down and trying new things. So it was a little tense for a while, but we ended up having a fun dinner. I hoped this would not be a theme for the trip...

Unfortunately, the next day it seemed like it would be a theme...

We did our Magic Morning entrance the next day. (Early entry into the park.) It was a rough start, for some reason Natalie's tummy was hurting and Sarah felt queasy too. I think it was all the excitement and anticipation. (Sarah had also been dealing with ongoing nausea for a few days before the trip as explained in the "Finally Getting Into the Swing of Things" post. This problem continued to haunt us at least once a day on our trip. That first morning, as we waited in line, I just prayed everyone would feel good and we could just have fun! Luckily, it wasn't long before Sarah and Natalie perked up. We headed right toward the Nemo submarine ride just as RideMax suggested to avoid horrendous lines. (I'm so glad we did, every other time we walked by during our trip the line was ridiculous.)

As we waited to get on our first ride, Angela began to panic. "Is it going to be scary?" "Will it be dark?" "Do we have to go down in there?". Here little heart was racing and no amount of consoling was helping. As we descending down into the submarine she panicked and screamed. It was a little claustrophobic to her. This probably wasn't to best ride to start with for her. I thought we were going to have to get out and panicked a little myself when they closed the door above us. Natalie started getting scared too as the lights dimmed and it felt like we were losing all control. Angela finally listened to my reasoning and when we started seeing the cute fish from Nemo, she started peeking out the round windows and realizing this was fun. The volcano part was a bit scary for her, but in the end the verdict was that Nemo was a fun ride. Phew! That was a very stressful start to our day at Disneyland.

After that, if a ride showed any signs of being dark or questionable, Angela would ask a million times, "Is this ride scawy?" She learned to trust us and realize that most of the rides were fun. There were a few exceptions. She did not like Pirates of the Caribbean, but she tolerated it. She hated Splash Mountain and the big hills, but did much better than Natalie - who I was afraid was going to throw up on the lady in front of us. And every time we did a rider switch on Space Mountain, Angela reminded us several times that she was NOT going on that ride. (o: Other than those times, she did great. The thing that actually scared Angela the MOST in Disneyland were the automatic flushing toilets! More on that later...

The Astrorbiters were lots of fun, especially at night.

Some of our best memories on the trip were our experiences with the characters. We LOVED our visit with some of the Disney villains! The queen from Snow White was a total crack up and ended up being one of my favorites. She was so talented at scowling and her reaction to Sarah's comment that she was prettier to Snow White was priceless. She broke into a huge grin and gave Sarah a big hug. (This comment was daddy's idea.) And Captain Hook was hilarious. He liked to use the girls' heads to sign their books and in one of the girls' books he wrote, "Tinker Smells - Captain Hook" (o: We love the Disney characters!!

Disneyland or BUST!

Sometime in August we could start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for Earl's* 'start up' at work to finally be finished. During this 6+ month period no one was allowed to take vacation, unless it was for an emergency. And prior to that, we hadn't been on vacation outside of trips to the beach in over a year. We hadn't been on a family trip that wasn't to Utah or the beach in years. So a family vacation was LOOONG overdue. I think it was back during Earl's sabbatical. Sometime around the last week of August, Earl and I booked a trip to Disneyland. We arranged for Mickey and his friends to call and tell the girls the good news. They were thrilled, of course. And from that day on we talked about Disneyland every day. We made a chain to count down the days. Each chain had something silly on it like a question. "Who is your favorite princess?" Or an activity: "Decorate your autograph books."

Because we only booked the trip a little over a month before leaving,

we didn't have to wait very long.

To milk it for all it was worth, I decided to make some "Disney Bucks" for the girls to earn their souvenir money. They got them for doing chores, homework, making good choices, etc. The Bucks had different Disney characters on them. For a while, Angela thought these were tickets to go on rides. One day she was looking at her cash and told me how many times she could go on Peter Pan and Buzz Lightyear, etc. by counting the bucks with those characters. (o:

We decided to drive rather than fly down. For several reasons. We love road trips, we love the time together and the extra anticipation. The girls are at a great age for a big road trip, we have a DVD player and our van is perfect for a comfortable, long drive. We also liked the idea of saving some money and splurging in other areas on the trip - like the hotel.
During this pit stop, daddy had the girls do some jumping jacks to get the old blood pumping. (o:

We found a wonderful Hampton Inn just outside of Sacramento in a great part of town. It was the perfect "halfway" point. We stayed here on the way back as well. A nice, relaxing dinner at Chevy's was a treat after 9 hours of driving.
The next day we had 6+ hours left to get to Disneyland. Did you know that driving through central California is extremely boring? Not far out of Los Angeles on I-5 there is NOTHING for a loooong time. And we've been through some pretty long stretches in Idaho and Utah.

Well, on with the fun part!

The Golden Girls

Both girls ended up on gold teams this year - the only two gold teams in the league. Weird. It made it easy to find them on the field. (o: Sarah looks extra happy in the picture above.

Sarah had a little issue with one girl on her team this year that really rubbed her the wrong way. That was interesting. Usually, she gets along with just about everyone. But she also had a couple good friends that helped balance out the stress of playing with someone she didn't like much. She loved playing soccer this year despite the personality clashes.

Natalie liked the idea of soccer more than actually playing, but she got into it way more than last year. She had some great moments where she really got into it - usually when daddy or I were cheering her on to encourage her. Otherwise, she just liked wearing all the soccer stuff and talking and playing with her teammates on or off the field.

I caught this with my telephoto lens - she had no idea anyone was watching her - I had to stifle a laugh as I took it. Not sure what she was doing, but it doesn't look like soccer! (o: Funny kid...

This is more of what Natalie did at soccer when she wasn't on the field. She liked goofing off the best.

Sarah's wish comes true...

This adorable paper was hanging up at Back to School night. I am including the text because it's hard to read...

The paper on the left says...

"My name is Sarah Elizabeth ______. If I was not named Sarah, I would have been named Madeline, Emma, Claire or Matthew if I was a boy. My parents named me Sarah because Sarah meant princess in Hebrew. They also named me Sarah was a cute name for a little girl but also an intelligent name for an older woman. Elaine was a strong competitor with Elizabeth until the birth certificate was given out. So she quickly chose Elizabeth. Elizabeth was also the middle name of my great grandma J. My last name was the last name of my dad so that is how I got my last name." (you can tell Sarah did some research in her baby book!)

On the right page it asks a few questions some of them are...

"Favorites. Food: edamoma (edamame), Color: Light blue, TV show: iCarly, Book: The Grim Grotto (Series of Unfortunate Events), Hobby: reading, Subject: math, One of the best things about me is: I can usually be friends with anybody, One word to describe me is: myschivas (o: , If I could have three wishes I would wish: 1. I had magic power. 2. I could come to school really late. 3. I could have a giant white board in my room."

Aren't those the cutest responses? (o: What a cute girl.

One really cool thing about that #3 wish.

The day after Sarah turned this paper into her teacher, I got an e-mail from her. She told me about Sarah's wish and said that she had a huge whiteboard that she no longer needed. She asked permission to give it to Sarah! Isn't that so sweet? The best part is that I picked it up during school when Sarah didn't know and I put it in her room. When she came home that afternoon, she found the whiteboard that magically appeared in her room! On the board I wrote, "Wishes do come true. Love, Mrs. E." She was thrilled! That put Mrs. E. way way way up in my book. What a sweet thing to do!

Preschool Rules!

Oh how Angela LOVES preschool. I love getting to teach her and see how much fun she has learning and being with her friends. This year, friends are even more important to her and she talks about them ALL the time. Tyler is one of her very good buddies who is also in her primary class. They are such cute little friends.
The kids were hilarious when we did body tracings for our All About Me lesson. They giggled as I outlined their whole body and loved decorating themselves with faces and clothes.

Angela is making strides in eating at preschool. She is trying new things. I think having friends around that eat things she won't normally eat helps. She wouldn't eat these English muffin pizzas when I made them a few months ago, but for preschool she ate it and loved it!

A colorful parachute, a ball and preschoolers are a great combination. Sort of. (o: The coordination is a bit tricky.

Just an Ordinary Night

I took these one night just for fun. We love to hang out in our living room after dinner, when there isn't anything pressing to do and when we aren't bad and watch TV. This was just a nice, cozy night that I felt like documenting. Natalie looked cute wearing daddy's hat while playing Legos with Angela. . . Both wearing their raggedy, worn out Barbie pajamas that have been passed down from Sarah and Natalie (on Angela).
Sarah studying Hindi with daddy, who got a book to learn the language so he could have fun with his Indian co-workers. Sarah loved learning a new language and even started learning how to write some of the characters/letters in the language. She continued with this fascination for about a week until homework and other things started taking over her new hobby.

Utes Football

Well, a big part of fall for Neville* and I is college football. We love to watch our teams every Saturday and the build up to the game of the year in our household. BYU vs. U of U every November.

The Utes have had some great games this season, and as usual, it drives the girls nuts when I go crazy and cheer and yell. I am starting to teach Sarah a little about how the game works - as much as she'll let me, so she can see how fun it is to watch. Mostly, though, she still thinks I'm crazy and often teases or jabs to get me back for all the raucous I cause. One night she made this funny paper doll with a goofy face and a gravestone (see below) and a tiny football. She showed me a little skit where the football player kicks the ball and it comes back and hits his head - or something along those lines - and dies. A big dramatic, but she thought it was hilarious. I guess it was her way of saying that she thought football was annoying.

Another night, when I stressed out about a game and cheered and yelled and cheered and yelled, she couldn't take it any more. She decided to hit me where it hurts. She took my U of U pillow that I got from my brother and sister in law last Christmas and put a paper "B" and "Y" in front of every single "U" on the fabric. At least 15-20! She laughed and laughed and actually, so did I, it was pretty funny. But I hope this doesn't mean she's actually leaning to the Blue... ?!?

Biking to School

One brisk morning in September, I thought it would be fun to ride with the girls to school for some morning exercise. It was a lot of fun, but man did I underestimate how long it would take and how hard it would be for Natalie. It would have been fine if I gave us more time. It doesn't seem like that far when you drive. (o: And I've ridden it on my bike with Sarah, but usually Nat has been in the trailer, not riding on her own. We'll try it some more and get Natalie used to it and leave a lot earlier next time! The ride home was much better - nice and warm and no hurrying!

Does Nat look like she's having fun?

Fall Fun

Here are a few random pictures from September...

During the month of September, I had a number of photography sessions. (See my picture blog for updates!) One of my sessions, not only did I get paid in regular currency, I also got to bring home some wonderful items from Angie's huge garden! Natalie and I thoroughly enjoyed this huge carrot and other fun cucumbers, tomatoes, mint, dahlias, etc. What a fun treat. Luckily, I just so happened to have some Asian pears in my van to reciprocate! I love all the things you can grow in Oregon. (o:

Angela got this adorable apron from her friend Tyler for her birthday. One day she came down in a Snow White dress up and put her apron and chef hat on over the top. I guess Snow White did do a lot of chores, so it seems appropriate. (o:

My girls crack me up. They thought it would be fun to have a tug of war with our tree. Guess who won?

Angela and Tori lucked out and got a trip to Out of This World one day while the big kids were in school. There are some perks to being the youngest. However, these trips are few and far between compared to all the outings I used to do with Sarah and Natalie before our schedule got totally crazy. So I like to splurge for Angela every now and then.

This was a funny picture I took at one of Sarah's Activity Day girls activities. For her Faith in God award (kind of like earning a boy scout badge, but it has religious aspects.), Sarah has to do accomplish a number of goals each year in different categories. For one of them, she planned an afternoon teaching her friends about the Word of Wisdom (no drinking, smoking, coffee, tea, etc. in our religion) using fun games and crafts. She did a great job!

Getting Kicked Out of the Library . . .

Well, it has been insane around here for the last month. So fun hobbies like blogging have taken a back seat. I hope to get caught up soon. In the mean time, I thought I'd share a lovely outing to the library with the girls last week.

I "heart" the library.

I really do - maybe a little too much.

I am addicted to books. Seriously. One of my guilty pleasures in life is buying books. I love having books, reading books, looking at books. I LOVE looking at shelves and shelves of books. My favorite part of our house is our big living room bookshelf filled with books.

To control this book buying frenzy, I use the most wonderful place ever invented - the library. Oh how I love the library.

I especially love that you can put books on hold online and if our library doesn't have the book, they ship it from one of the other nearby libraries. When I have a subject that I want to learn about or a preschool lesson to teach, I do a search. All these wonderful books come up and I just can't decide, so I get at least 10. Really.

In one night I did a search for "running", "starting a business" and "healthy eating". I think I put about 20-30 books on hold that night. Then when I go in to pick up the books with the girls, I let them look around and we always get books for them. We check the audio books, DVDs, the magazines, the chapter books. Then we leave with arms full - all four of us.

We love it.

The only problem lately is that we go so much that I can't keep straight which books are due when. And when this last month hit and I didn't check e-mail regularly (they send friendly reminders when due dates are coming) - I got really messed up.

So I avoided the library for a few days because I was embarrassed about my huge fine - it was over $15! I didn't have cash, but really wanted to pick up a movie waiting in the hold section. Then the girls found a few things and when we went to the self check-out. (because I didn't want to face a human person who might see my embarrassing fines) I learned that you can't check out more books if you have a fine of over $10. I had to come clean.

On this particular library trip, I had more than my big fine to be embarrassed about. I was trying to lay low - I felt like I had a huge scarlet "F" for 'fines' on my shirt. I couldn't make eye contact with the librarians.

Just about the time I found my movie that was on hold, Natalie got scolded by a librarian for climbing in the window nearby. Whoops. So much for laying low.

Then, while attempting the self-checkout - Angela announced she had to go potty. I sent Sarah to the nearby kid's bathroom with Angela. A few second later she emerged saying Angela refused to go. I forgot. The library has self-flushing toilets. Angela hates self-flushing toilets. But her little dance told me that we didn't have much time for irrational fears. I took her in the bathroom and we had a little fight about whether or not she was going to get on. She was in pain. So I "helped" (forced) her on the potty and reassured her that it would not flush while she was on it. But I might as well have been saying absolutely nothing because she was screaming bloody murder. This bathroom is right next to the children's librarian's desk. She screamed for so long and so loud I was so afraid someone would come knock on the door to make sure there wasn't some kind of child abuse going on in there. Then finally Angela gave in and we walked out of the bathroom trying to 'act natural'. The librarian gave me a look. I looked apologetic at her and she either looked at me like, "I understand" or "holy cow, what the crap just happened in there". I couldn't quite tell which.

Now I had the matter of my fine to take care of.

I walked up to a very nice librarian and came clean. I confessed my sins of overdue-ness and got the amount of cash needed from their ATM. I didn't care there was an extra $1 fee (usually I do) it was worth the cost for a clean conscience. Ahhhh. I was so happy to get that taken care of, but ironically, as I paid off this huge fine, the librarian noticed I had two books still overdue. They were two other books that I thought were due the next week. I'm telling you, I have problems. Hopefully, I can eventually become completely clean from my embarrassing addiction and disorganization with books.

But our adventure wasn't quite over.

I felt a little spring in my step as we walked out with our books. On the way to the exit, Natalie asked to have a drink of water. "Sure! Anything you want." I was happy to have the scarlet "F" off my back. We walked back to the fountains. I waited nearby and suddenly heard Natalie screaming like a body part had been ripped off. It was one of those screams that gets a mom's adrenaline pumping. I was ready to put pressure on a bleeding wound or do CPR or something.

I found Natalie stuck to the drinking fountain. Stuck!

Her finger got caught somewhere under the fountain in the most random way. She continued screaming even when I freed her finger. It gave her a pretty good scare - along with those of us around her. There were no injuries - I think she just panicked that she was stuck.

After that, we beelined outside to the car.

You know on movies where there's a security room with lots of TVs showing all the surveillance video in a building? I pictured, if the library had such a thing (which I doubt with all the budget cuts these days (o: ) - the old guy watching the videos with his coffee to keep him awake at his boring job would have come running out right about 5 seconds after Natalie started screaming and escort us out of there. There's only so many offenses a family can make in one visit.

Lucky for us, the library can't afford to have surveillance and pay an old guy to watch out for people like us. Anyway, I hope they will forgive us or forget us. I'm headed back on Tuesday.

Angela's First Day of Preschool

Our "welcome" question of the day sometimes gets some funny responses!

Notice Angela doesn't even have her shoes on in this picture. (o: That is because she didn't need to wear them because preschool, this year, started at our house.

We start our preschool group a week after the big kids go so Angela was dying for her school to FINALLY begin! She was so excited to have preschool at our house first.

Kayelynn, very sweetly, agreed to teach the first week of school so I could focus on getting the house all ready. It was a very busy month teaching or helping with preschool two days a week for all of September. We had a lot of fun and have two new friends at preschool putting our total to eight kiddos. They are pretty cute, but I was excited for a break when we were finished with our turn!

Puddy Tat

We've had Twilight for almost a year now and she has really grown on me. I wasn't so sure for the first little bit. She was so darn cute, but kittens are a handful. Now she's mellowed out (for the most part) and she is part of the family. She is constantly making us laugh - have you ever played with a cat and a laser light! Hours of entertainment! (We don't do it that long though - I think she'd go batty.) She is a pretty sweet and very friendly cat and a pretty low maintenance pet to have. I can even honestly say I love having her now. I liked her before, but she drove me nuts sometimes. Now I am really glad we have her. She brings a lot of joy to our family.
This is so cute - we often find her like this in her little cat bed - all sprawled out. But if Angela or Natalie see her, she's too cute to resist. She is a very patient cat . . .

I don't think Twilight is enjoying this interaction as much as Angela, but who cares? She is so patient and how could you not smile at the joy Angela gets from her?

Angela is always close to Twilight. It drives Sarah crazy. If Sarah is having a "moment" with Twilight, Angela often comes and gets in the middle of it. So life is not always peachy - it's one more thing for the girls to fight about.

Like I said, a very patient cat. The girls (and Hal*) think up all kinds of games to "play" with the cat as you can see.

She puts up with a lot and I know she loves the girls too. In the morning or at night she is often trying to get into Sarah's room - she loves being on her bed with her. She is always where we are in the house, and if the girls are sad or crying about something she almost always comes and "checks" on them and snuggles with them. It takes away some of the punishment I want the girls to feel when they are in time out, but it is so darn sweet I never stop her from comforting the girls. She'll still have her moments every so often where she gets in her feisty, playful, hunting modes and she'll playfully "attack" one of the girls, leaving a scratch. She especially loves to hunt Angela - but can we blame her? (o: Angela hunts her all the time!

All in all, I have finally come around and embrace being a cat owner. I'm really glad we have our Twilight kitty.

Sneaky Girls

Here are my cute Laurels (the young women 16-18 years old). Twice a month we do class activities. This was a fairly spontaneous one to surprise one of the girls in our class who has had to work on Tuesday nights a lot. We really miss her, so we decided to go surprise her at her work. This was one of my favorite activities, I think because I just LOVE to be sneaky! It's so much fun. These are the sorts of things I've always loved to do with friends and it made me feel like I was a teenager again sneaking around the grocery store being silly with my girls.
He he.
Our plan was to find something embarrassing or weird in the store without being spotted by Whitney. Then we were going to non-chalant-ly get in her line and "surprise" her. The thing that took the longest was which item in the store would be funniest to pretend to buy. Tampax? Depends? Butt Paste? The girls settled on the Butt Paste (a baby bottom ointment of some sort).

Our sneaky plan worked - Whitney was completely surprised when she looked up to see who was buying Butt Paste. (o: What awesome girls. It's not easy to be sneaky when there's a group of 8 people! (o: