The Lame blogger

Sorry for being a lame blogger lately. Since Disneyland, everything has seemed so non-eventful! Today is Dean's Birthday. Happy Birthday Dean! We'll get some good photos for thanksgiving & we are having new family pictures taken in the next couple of weeks! Hope you all have a good thanksgiving! Wende

Disneyland Vacation Photos

Our Disneyland Vacation

So we have been home for over a week now & I am just barely blogging about our trip. Everyone keeps asking how it was. Well, it was awesome! We had sooooo much fun! We left on Thursday the 9th, dropped off Chloe at Grandma Amy's, & drove to Salt Lake. We flew from there right into the John Wayne Airport in Orange County. It was a great experience because it is a relatively small airport and the closest to Anaheim. We picked up our rental car & drove straight to Huntington Beach. We were just going to wade since it was cool, but after the boys were soaked to their necks I ran back to the car & retrieved the swimsuits. We had a great time at the ocean!

Friday morning we hit Disneyland full force! We tried all the classic rides together and then split up for a few hours while Dean took Gavin and Cameron to the kiddie rides & I got to do Indiana Jones & some others with Cole & Chase. We met up to watch the parade & fireworks later & we stayed until the park closed at midnight. Our favorite rides in Disneyland were Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Indiana Jones, Star Tours and the Big thunder Mountain Railroad.

Saturday we spent the day in California Adventure. Some of our favorites there were Soarin' over California, Tower of Terror, California Screamin', the water ride, and the Brother Bear play area. It was really fun there too. Cameron & Gavin rode the ferris wheel and the carousel while Chase & Cole rode the big rides as many times as they could. We planned on going back to Disneyland when C.A. closed at 10pm, but we decided to head back early and get some sleep.

Sunday we decided to revisit our favorites in both parks and catch the rides we ahdn't seen. As the crowds subsided in the evening, we were able to ride several of our favorites without waiting. It was so fun!

The weather was great when we were there...slightly overcast & cool...perfect fall weather for us Idahoans. The wimpy Californians were wearing jackets most of the time.

Well, this is the first real vacation our family has ever taken. It was a great experience for the kids to practice saving their money & looking forward to something so special. We'll definitely plan another family vacation soon. When Chloe is 42" we'll try to go again so she can go on most of the rides.

SYTYCD

So you think you can Dance

For our anniversary, Dean bought us tickets to the tour Performance of So You Think You Can Dance on Tuesday, Sept 23rd. We drove down to SLC that afternoon & ate dinner with Jeromy & Sam Pharis then went to the show. It was awesome. I was able to get some pretty cool pictures & recorded some of my favorite performances. Did I mention tht SYTYCD is one of my favorite shows? After watching the whole season, you almost feel like you know the performers. The crowd was really into it & they danced for almost 3 full hours. It was so fun. What a great anniversary gift!

It's been so Long!

Holy cow! It's been so long since I sat down to blog! Life is crazy, of course. The kids are getting into the groove of school & fall activities. We are all counting down to our Disneyland vacation in 19 days. I have been shopping for the best possible bargains to make our meager vacation savings stretch as far as possible. I am even in the process of buying park hoppers from some dude in California. I'll let you know if it's not a scam because they are 5 day hoppers for $125 each! We'll use 3 days & then we're selling the other 2 days to a family in Utah to save us and them $$$$. We were able to get tickets from SLC to Orange County for $159 round trip on Delta! It seems like everything is falling into place. Hopefully we will enjoy ourselves as much as we're anticipating it.

I have been busy working with the PTA organizing classroom volunteers and Back to School night. I get to work on t-shirts next. Last week I had to teach preschool 2 days, do back to school night, work one day, and plan & give my relief society lesson. Apparently that's as much stress as I can take because I was a basket case! Somehow I got through it though & this week was pretty much business as usual, except for Dean being gone Sunday-Thursday. Did I mention how much I love my husband? OOOOOOOOOh our house is sooooooomuch better when he's here! Yeah, daddy's Home!

On that awful day last month that our friends' son was diagnosed with Diabetes, his mom had taken some great pix of our kids. Here are some of the best shots!

It was hard to get good pictures of Chloe since she's such as sassy-pants!

Life as usual

This last week has been busy...trying to get everyone used to having a schedule again. I regret that I am one of those terrible moms who does a dance when school finally starts again. I like being back to a normal routine. My favorite time of day is that hour or two in the afternoon before the boys come home & Chloe is taking her nap when Cameron & I can play or read or just veg out. It's awesome! I am doing a preschool group with some other moms, so Cameron will start having somewhere to go twice a week. I only have to teach one week out of six, so it shouldn't be too bad.

We had a pirate birthday party for Cameron on wednesday. He had a few of his friends come over. They decorated swords with stickers (and jewels for the girls), decorated cupcakes, played a pirate game...all the regular stuff. Cam got alot of fun presents. We got him the tiger snake webkin he has been wanting and a Hot Wheels set that does a bunch of stunts. Chase and Cole had fun playing with that too. With his money from Grandma Judy he decided to buy another webkin (a Grey arabian horse), which we hope she'll find more tolerable than the snake! We went to a Chukars game in IF later that night too. We all had a good time.

Chase is knee deep into football season (he's #7 ...2nd smallest guy) & Cole starts Flag football next week. We are all looking forward to our Disneyland vacation October 9-13. We're taking Gavin Crapo with us now because his parents are going to Haiti during that time . Cameron is excited to have a ride buddy & we're glad to be able to help ease their minds that he'll be staying with someone who understands his Diabetes.

Did I mention Chloe went to nursery today?! She went right in & played for a while, but then had a gran mal meltdown. Grandma went in to sing with the nurseryites & she calmed down, but apparently she climbed up & stood on the table while the other kids were trying to enjoy their animal crackers. Who is her mother?! So I guess we've got some social issues to go over with her. She is kinda spoiled rotten, but I'll try. She actually let me do her hair today. It was pretty cute at 11:00....by 1:30 not quite as cute, but we'll give an A for effort. Labor day is tomorrow & we're going to try to go to the fair if the rain holds off. Then we'll be back to life as usual!