Disneyland, Evening #1

We arrived in Anaheim on Tuesday afternoon (about a 2 hour drive) and checked into our hotel, Anaheim Desert Inn & Suites. I picked this hotel mainly because it had rooms that could sleep 6 people (and wasn't outrageously expensive for the area) and also because it was supposed to be within walking distance of Disneyland.

It was a decent hotel -- clean, but not super fancy -- and the best part was that it really was right across the street from Disneyland. If you can see the stoplight in the corner of the picture above, that's where we would go to cross the street over to Disneyland (and then it was a fairly short walk down to the entrance). This was a good thing because we were able to come back to the hotel in the early afternoon when the kids were getting hot and cranky, rest up and cool off, and then head back over to the park for the late afternoon/evening.

After we got settled in at the hotel, we decided to walk over and pick up our tickets for the morning and check out the Downtown Disney shopping area. We gave the kids each a little money to spend and they were definitely anxious to go spend it!

There is a huge Disney store (of course), which was our first stop. So many choices!

We tried on some hats...

...and Hannah ended up choosing the pink princess mouse ears to buy (and get her name embroidered on the back).

Hayley chose a stuffed Pluto to buy with her money.

Courtney wanted to stuffed dog too (no surprise there), but couldn't find one she really liked at the Disney store. We walked a bit further and spotted a Build-a-Bear store. She wanted to check it out and was so excited to find a cute dog that fit her budget (as long as didn't buy any "extras" for it). So she helped stuff it...

and give it a "bath" and a brush (her favorite part).

And name it "Snuggles":

Here are the girls with their new purchases. McKay decided to wait until we actually got into Disneyland before spending his money.

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped for a picture by the big "CALIFORNIA" letters in front of California Adventure. The kids picked the "L" for a picture, even though it was getting fairly dark by then:

We walked back to the hotel and then drove to an In-N-Out Burgers for dinner. It was plenty busy for the hour -- must be a pretty popular spot!

We got back to the hotel in time to head up to the Sun Deck on the hotel roof to watch the fireworks over at Disneyland. We had a pretty good view from there -- it's amazing that they put on those fireworks every night!

Then it was time to try to get some sleep for an early start in the morning!

California Trip, Part 1

We're back from our Spring Break trip to California and trying to recover from a week-long vacation. I'm still unpacking and cleaning and grocery shopping, but wanted to try to get my pictures up before I forget the stories to tell with them! And as usual, I have a ton of pictures, so I will try to be somewhat selective and also break them up over several posts.

The first part of our trip was spent visiting Grandpa and Grandma Gold (and Uncle Tyler) in Ramona, as well as my brother Tim and his family, who happen to live right next door. I think the girls were just as excited to visit Grandpa and Grandma's dogs as they were all the relatives. But Grandpa and Grandma's two dogs, Samson and Sienna, are getting older and aren't particularly fond of excited children, so they spent a lot of time hiding outside. We did manage a couple of pictures.

Here's Samson (who runs as soon as he gets a hint of a camera):

And Sienna (who would only stand next to the girls if Grandma was standing there too):

Grandpa set up some really fun cot bunk-beds that the girls had a great time sleeping on (and playing on with their cousins):

There was also a mattress on the floor, so the 3 girls had to rotate through the beds and sleep in a different spot each night to make things fair. (McKay slept on the sofa pull-out in the other room.) It worked out well that we were there 3 nights!

We managed to find lots of fun things to do at Grandpa and Grandma's house. Courtney and Hayley loved Grandma's box full of old doll clothes (that she made for me and my sisters when we were little girls).

We played some games with Uncle Tyler:

And of course, the Wii was a big hit:

Tim brought over his Rock Band "stuff" for the Wii and we all had a great time jammin' out. Lego Rock Band was the favorite! This was my first time to try out Rock Band and it was a lot of fun, although I think I'll leave the drums to someone else, like Hannah, who was a natural at the drums!

We went to church and the girls each had a cousin to go to Primary with. We had to take a picture of the cousins together!

McKay and Brian got a trip in to Fry's, their favorite computer superstore and came home with some new gizmos and gadgets.

We left for Anaheim on Tuesday afternoon -- Disneyland's up next!

Greetings from California!

Just a quick note to say we're here in southern California and enjoying some warmer weather and visits with family!

We left for our big Spring Break vacation on Friday early evening. I had picked the kids up from school a little early hoping we could get away sooner, but as it turned out, everyone was waiting for me to finish up before we could get out the door. We drove as far as Gallup, NM that night (not arriving until about midnight Texas time) and spent the night at a hotel there. The kids must have been really tired, because I think it was the fastest they have ever settled down at a hotel.

We spent most of Saturday driving and arrived here at my parent's house about 6:30pm local time. It turned out to be a good weekend for the switch to Daylight Savings because our schedules were already all mixed up.

Since we've been here, the kids have enjoyed playing with their cousins (my brother and his family live right next door to my parents) and the dogs (as much as the dogs let the kids near them). The girls each had a cousin to go to Primary class with on Sunday. I have taken a few pictures, but don't have an easy way to transfer them right now, so those will have to come later.

This afternoon we will be headed up to Anaheim to check in to our hotel across the street from Disneyland. We have 3-day passes to see all the sights at Disneyland and California Adventures. Everyone is very excited! More reports and pictures will come soon!

Training, Week 1

So this morning I completed my first session of Week 1 in the "Couch to 5K" training program.

At times I think I am totally nuts.

Not only am I training to run a 5K, but that 5K is part of a triathlon that involves swimming for 1/2 mile and biking for 18 miles.

Really I must be nuts.

Somehow my little sister Amy convinced me to participate in the Iron-Girl Triathlon with her that will be held in Las Vegas in May (since she is expecting a baby and we needs lots of time to get ready, we are waiting until 2011). My older sister Sandra is nuts like me and she and her daughter are also going to participate with us.

But, maybe I am not nuts (at least that is what I keep telling myself). Maybe I CAN do this, even though I never in my life thought I would. Amy is my biggest inspiration, since she has been more like me in the past (never thinking we would ever actually enjoy running), yet she set some amazing goals for herself this past year, like running a 10K and a half-marathon, and has accomplished them all with flying colors. So I keep telling myself, if she can do it, then so can I!

I'm thinking I should be starting out with just a simple 5K instead of this triathlon stuff, but I guess we'll go for the big bang. I am an okay swimmer and probably a passable bike-rider (I don't know about 18 miles...), but I have never considered myself to be a runner. I have always strongly disliked running -- was always the last kid in PE to finish the mile, etc. etc. So that's why I kind of surprised myself when I agreed to do this.

BUT, having said all that, I am posting this to my blog to say that I AM COMMITTED to doing this (it always helps to put it in writing!) and that at times I am actually kind of excited too (when I'm not feeling completely overwhelmed).

So I am slowly starting my training. My friend told me about this "Couch to 5K" program she followed from the Internet when she wanted to run a 5K. I looked it up and it sounded pretty slow and gradual, which is what I figure I need, so I downloaded the podcasts to help me along and did my first little session this morning on our new treadmill. It is a 9 week training program -- starts out with more walking than running but gradually builds up to solid running. I still have to figure out how and where I'm going to train for the swimming and biking part, but there's time for that.

Iron-Girl, here we come!

Catching Up

I have not done a very good job at keeping up with the blog lately, so I just went through my pictures for the last month or so and now you get a quick re-cap (with lots of pictures!).

On the School Front:

Besides the science projects, the kids have been keeping busy at school, doing well and having some fun too. I thought this was a neat thing that showed up on the chain-link fence (made from some little plastic squares):


At the end of every grading period, the elementary school has an "Academic Pep Rally" where they give out awards, recognize the honor roll, etc. I went to the last one, which had a "rodeo" theme. Here's the principal reading some names:


Hannah got a T-shirt for being on the All-A Honor Roll:

Courtney insisted on getting all dressed up for her class picture.

Unfortunately, she was the only one actually in her class picture this year. Hayley got sick with a little stomach flu bug the night before (all over the bedroom carpet...ugh) so I had to keep her home. Hannah had a dentist appointment that day to finally get her "quad-helix" appliance installed (to expand the roof of her mouth) and I hoped that they'd do her class picture in the morning, but of course, they took it during the couple of hours we were gone to the dentist.

The next day, the kids did all make it back to school for their class Valentine parties. I got to stop in by Hayley's class party for a few minutes.

And I also got to be in charge of Hannah's class party (lucky me!). She had been really worried that her mouth would be sore from her new quad-helix so she wouldn't be able to eat any candy, but as you can see, she was feeling just fine (other than some initial speech/pronunciation adjustments).

Her class party actually went really well -- I got a lot of help from other parents so that makes my room mom job much easier. One of the favorite activities was frosting and decorating heart cookies.

I had to take a picture of Hannah later at home to show what her clothes look like after she frosts cookies (it might be hard to see here, but black was maybe not the best color choice that day!)

McKay continues to be good about practicing his trombone for band (most of the time) and he's made a lot of improvement since the beginning of the year!

On the Church Front:

We planned a Primary PJ activity last weekend that went pretty well. The kids got to wear their pajamas, play some "get to know you" games with the teachers, make a couple of "PJS" crafts (Prayer-Journal-Scriptures) and eat some doughnuts and fruit.

Hayley looked cute one Sunday with her cat in a matching dress (but Mom still wouldn't let the stuffed animals come to church, darn it)

On the Home Front:

Grandpa and Grandma H. have been visiting for a few weeks now, while Grandpa H. works on some new windmill towers for Grandpa G.

Grandma H. has spent some of her time staying with family in the Dallas area. Grandpa G. was also here for a few days to check on construction progress of his house.

(We are still dealing with mud issues too as we continue to get snow. I for one am ready for winter to be over!)

The kids always love when grandparents come to visit! Hayley had a fun time putting all of her little blankets on Grandpa H. one evening.

Courtney lost another tooth in the middle of the night. I didn't even know she had a loose one, and when she came in during the night and told me she thought she found a tooth in her mouth, I didn't believe her. The next morning, she showed me her mouth and all I could see was a new tooth growing in -- no empty spots at all. I told her she didn't lose a tooth, until she pulled it out from under her pillow and showed it to me (she wanted me to take a picture of the actual tooth this time).

I guess she did lose a tooth during the night! And she was a little upset that the Tooth Fairy didn't come after she stuck it under her pillow at 4:30 in the morning.

And finally, we had to say goodbye to our dear friends the Roberts family. They have lived just down the hill from us and we have spent a lot of time together the last year and a half. Emily has been a great friend and support for me since our move here and our kids are great friends too. They have only moved about an hour away so we will still get to see them once in a while, but we miss them terribly! Courtney especially has struggled with losing her best friend Audrey.

Hayley misses her good friend Eric too -- they played together all the time and were in Pre-K together (here they are after the class Valentine party):

We had their family over for dinner on Valentine's Day (their last Sunday here) and hugged and cried. My girls have already written a bunch of letters and drawn pictures and cried some more. They are counting down the days until next weekend when we hope to go down to visit them and see their new house.

I can't believe that tomorrow is the first of March! We are planning a Spring Break trip this year -- since last year's CA trip fell through due to home remodeling, we're going to try it again. We'll spend a few days visiting Grandpa and Grandma G. and then drive up to do a 3-day excursion at Disneyland. The kids have never been to Disneyland (Brian and I went once shortly after we were married). We can't wait!

Forgive and Forget

Last night I went to the adult session of Stake Conference, so the kids were left in charge of themselves with a movie to watch. (Brian, unfortunately, couldn't come with me as he ran into problems installing the new propane water heater and had an open gas line that he was missing some fittings or something for so he was off searching hardware stores.)

We have left them alone before for short periods of time and they are all old enough now that I don't worry too much -- usually they are just fine. When I got home last night, McKay made a comment that Courtney and Hannah had been in a little "fight" while I was gone. I never did get the details of what exactly happened between them, but as I was getting beds ready, I saw this little note folded up and left on Hannah's pillow:

Dear Hannah,

I am so sorry. I might even cry.

Your horrible dumb sister

When Hannah found the note, she went off to the other room and wrote a reply (her spelling):

Dear Courtney,

You are not horrible, selfish and definity not dumb. Courtney I'm sorry for hitting you and I wanted to make a club in the bedroom so I snuk into dad's office and I thought I took the keys to our bedroom. And then you came in, and, well you know what.

Your very sorry sister Hannah H.

I still have no idea what exactly happened and unfortuately, clashes between these two happen more often than I would like. But, I love that they can forgive and make amends all on their own. Sometimes I almost have anxiety attacks thinking about my girls as teenagers with all the hormones that will be in our house. But I hope and I pray that they will continue to learn to forgive each other and be great friends.

Science Projects

We've been busy around our house lately with some science projects. The schools here don't have traditional Science Fairs (that I know of), but McKay and Hannah have both had some "at home" projects recently.

McKay's project was to create a large paper mache arthropod, accompanied by a written report. He chose to do his project on the water strider. I helped him with the paper mache part (he still hates to get his hands dirty!) and then he painted it.

His teacher had suggested mounting it on a mirror to represent water, but we decided that would be too expensive so we just went with aluminum foil.

We learned a lot about water striders and he got an "A" on the project!

Hannah's project was to create a model suspension bridge. Each year, the 3rd Grade focuses on a theme and they set up displays for the whole school. Last year it was a "Medical School" about the human body and this year they are doing "Bridges." Each class focuses on a different type of bridge. The model bridges did not have to support weight -- they were just to show the overall design.

We enlisted Brian's engineering skills to help with this project (and parents were able to help). Hannah was excited to paint the lines on the road.

She thought it was so cool to use the masking tape to make the lines nice and straight!

(And in case you're wondering what happened to her face... she was racing outside at school and fell down on the asphalt -- scraped up her knee as well as her face!)

We even got Grandpa Humpherys to help with finishing up the bridge. Right now it is on display in the hallway at school!

Messy Mud

It's been just over a week now since our big snow storm and we are still dealing with all the repercussions of it. The biggest side effect of the snow for us is mud -- LOTS of mud!

To get to our house, you have to travel about a mile on a dirt road, partially uphill. We've had mud before when there have been big rain storms (for example, see here for the story about when the school bus got stuck in the mud), but we've never seen it like this. We had so much snow that is melting and has nowhere to go and no hot warm sun to dry everything out. Then, on top of that, we got another snow storm this past week of several more inches (causing a 2-hour late start at school the next morning) which is just adding to the mess. And it's supposed to maybe snow again Sunday night.

After the first storm, I didn't dare take the van out because of the slippery roads. Monday morning I drove the kids to school in the 4WD truck, but by Tuesday I'd decided the van would probably be okay. We did fine that morning, but by Tuesday afternoon it had warmed up enough to melt more snow and make the road really muddy. I had to pick the kids up Tuesday and we came up the hill to the last corner (which is the worst in terms of mud). We went around the corner and didn't go any further -- the wheels just spun and spun in that mud. I was able to back down the hill, so we tried it again -- and got stuck. Back down we went a couple more times and finally I just gunned it as much as I dared and we made it through the worst spot and back to the house. The van got a good coating of mud on it from all that tire-spinning and now it just sits in the garage (still covered wtih mud). We don't dare take it out again until the road dries up a bit.

Here is the truck after driving through some mud -- it's actually looking pretty clean to me here!

But the road is not drying out -- if anything it just gets worse and the snow continues to fall and then melt. So we are limited to sharing the truck between Brian and I and having to work around the fact that nobody else is coming up to the house -- not the school bus, the UPS truck, the trash truck, etc. It's going to be an interesting next few weeks!

I tried to take a few pictures yesterday and this morning of the road -- there are several "bad" spots and now even with the truck in 4WD you do a lot of slipping and sliding around! It's hard to capture what it's like, but here are a few attempts:

Brian's Birthday

Last Friday we celebrated Brian's birthday (I won't say how old he's getting these days, but he's still older than me!). We all got to spend the whole day with him too, thanks to the big snow storm that came through the day before and the kids having school canceled again.

Brian spent a chunk of his day working outside to clear out snow (see my last post). We had been planning to go out that evening with our good friends Brad & Emily, as it happened to be Brad's birthday too, but we weren't sure if we could get out with the road conditions. Brian had to go run some errands in the afternoon and he said he thought we'd be okay in the 4WD truck. We checked to make sure the restaurant and theater were still open (they were) and since babysitters were taken care of, we decided to brave the weather and roads after all.

Before we left for the evening, we had to sing "Happy Birthday"!

We picked up Brad & Emily (and cute baby Lucy who tagged along) and went to dinner at a Thai/Chinese restaurant. It was yummy!

After dinner, we went to see "Avatar" in 3D at the movie theater. I thought the 3D part was pretty cool -- it took a little bit to get used to at the beginning, but it was a neat effect. And we all enjoyed the movie. It was a fun double date -- something we haven't done in a long time. (Thanks, Brad, for having the same birthday as Brian!)

I am very grateful to have Brian in my life. He is my hero who can do anything, fix anything, and save the day if needed. He is a wonderful dad to our kids -- I love to watch him play and interact with them. And they love him to pieces, just like I do.

I think I was going to post this video last year on his birthday but never did get it up, so I thought I'd share it now. I put this together for Father's Day a few years ago. Happy Birthday Brian!