We've got a crawler!

Bree started "Army crawling" the past few weeks.  But she has still been pretty content to sit still, with toys all around her, just playing.  Until today--now she is really starting to be mobile. Yikes! I was very happy to just let her be still for a few more months. Guess the serious babyproofing better begin!

Here she is doing feats of strength with the laundry basket:

And, since she started crawling, Tess coaxed her into our tunnel with a toy.  She went right through it!

Easter 2012

We were pretty tired after driving home from California, so we didn't get any eggs dyed this year, but luckily the Easter Bunny still found us and left some goodies for the kids.

Bree thought that the colorful eggs were just perfect to hold and shake!

I LOVE this picture--what a sweetie!

Unfortunately Bryan woke up feeling awful and spent the morning at InstaCare, to see if he had strep throat. (Miles and Tess have both had it this year, so when his throat felt terrible, he thought surely that's what he had.  But, alas, it was just a bad virus that he has to get over.)  So he stayed home from church, but the rest of us got dressed up in our Easter best and enjoyed going to church.  

Can you believe that she's 2 1/2 years older than him??  He's going to pass her up in height any day now!

I know I'm biased, but I sure think we have beautiful kiddos!

Happy Easter!

Disneyland! (Part 3)

We enjoyed Disneyland for 3 days, and then went to California Adventure for the last 2 days.  I had heard mixed reviews about California Adventure, but overall, I thought it was great (a few rides were not as good as I expected, like "California Screamin'" and "Soarin' Over California"--that one made me sick--but others were absolutely fabulous, like "Toy Story Midway Mania"--that's the one that we waited an hour for--and "Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.")

I love this picture of the bumper cars.  I happened to snap it just as Bryan was exaggerating the impact from Tess's car.

My absolute favorite ride of both parks was "Tower of Terror."  It was SOOO much fun!  In that ride they show you a Twilight Zone video, showing how one night at the hotel, the elevator was hit by lightning and the 5 people inside it disappeared.  Then, you get into the same elevator for the ride.  They make it pretty spooky, showing your reflection in a mirror and then the reflection gets hit by "lightning" and your reflection gets all whacked out like you disappeared.  Then, the elevator goes up, up, up, the doors open....then you plummet several floors before zooming back up, plummeting again and again.  It is so fun!  At the top, when the doors open you can see outside, over to Disneyland; it's really cool.  During the ride, they take your picture and I just LOVE this picture of me and the kids.  Tess is having a great time but holding onto my hand for dear life, I'm having a blast and trying to reassure Miles that it's not scary....and then check out the look on sweet Miles's face:

This picture is priceless!

California Adventure has a really cool night show called "World of Color."  They have fountains that were designed by the same people who did the fountains at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.  During the show the fountains do their thing, and they use the water as a screen for video clips of all sorts of Disney movies, set to music.  It's pretty impressive.  (Really, everything that Disney does is pretty impressive, isn't it??)

We had such a great time.  I can't wait to go back again when the kids are bigger!

Disneyland! (Part 2)

We were told about a great guide book (thanks Rebecca!) that gives you "touring plans" with detailed instructions about what to ride, and in what order.  The book said that if you follow the plans you will save about 4 hours of standing-in-line time per day.  And I completely believe it!  Disneyland was packed with Spring Break crowds, but the longest line we waited in (for the entire 5 day visit) was one hour.  Other than that the lines were about 15-20 minutes, or much less.  It was awesome!

Mickey's Toon Town

I am SO happy to say that the kids were not the least bit interested in seeing/getting pictures with/getting autographs from the Disney characters!  Woohoo!  I feel like that is such a giant waste of time, when there are about a million other more interesting things to do at Disneyland.  But, being the nice mom that I am, I totally planned on waiting in all the lines to see Mickey, Minnie, and the gang.  So I was ecstatic when the kids both just said "meh" to the characters.  When we saw a character we would point them out and tell the kids to wave and yell "Hello!" and they were happy with that!

Here are the kids at the "Dog Pound" in Mickey's Toon Town 

"It's a Small World"

"Mad Tea Party" aka "make-your-mom-want-to-barf ride"

We would get to Disneyland before it opened and stay until 1:00 or 2:00ish, then head back to the hotel for a nap or a swim.  Bree was pretty sleep deprived, just catching little cat naps in the stroller, so it was good for her to get a solid 1-2 hour afternoon nap.  Then we'd eat dinner at the hotel at 5:00 and head back over to Disneyland for the evening.

bathing beauty!

"Cannon ball!"

Miles took this photo of Bryan on the bus...he had to actually go in to work for a few days, but he was also able to do a lot of work from his phone (smart phones are amazing, aren't they??)

Disneyland! (Part 1)

Bryan told me about a month ago that he had a business trip to LA during the first week of April.  When we realized that that was also Spring Break, the kids and I decided to tag along and make a family vacation of it! We decided to visit Disneyland and California Adventure.  

We got some great advice from family and friends about how to tackle Disney with little kids, especially during the crazy crowds of Spring Break.  And I'm so happy to report that we had an absolutely fabulous trip!  We had so much fun and everyone did really well in the car too.  Bree is about the happiest baby I've ever seen; she's so content to just sit and play with a toy or two, so she did really well in the car.  Miles and Tess played their Leapsters or watched movies to pass the time.  And the other time-killer we did in the car was listening to audiobooks together.  We got a whole bunch of "Junie B. Jones" books from the library.  If you're not familiar with these books, they are about the adventures of a mischievous kindergarten girl.  It's like Ramona Quimby of my kids' generation.  The books are super entertaining and Bryan and I enjoyed them just as much as Tess and Miles did!

Here's the rundown of our trip: 

On Saturday we started out early and stopped for lunch in St. George.  I was able to meet up with an old high school buddy of mine who lives there.  We haven't seen each other in years so it was really nice to visit and meet her cute kids.  Then we drove to Las Vegas and stopped there for the night.  Bryan's co-workers had recommended a really good Mexican restaurant there and I was thrilled to try it.  We enjoyed it and then went back to the hotel for a swim.

Sunday morning we planned to make our first stop in Barstow, CA.  When we were a few miles outside of Baker, CA (about 70 miles away from Barstow), Bryan noticed that the van's thermometer said that it was only 39 degrees outside.  That didn't seem quite right, especially since we knew we were getting close to Death Valley... then the information gauges on the van just turned off completely...then the indicator lights on the dashboard all turned on, then back off again...then the speedometer went down to zero...then Junie B. Jones's voice started getting slower, deeper, and quieter....   We knew something was wrong!  We just replaced our van battery a few months ago, so we knew it wasn't that, but Bryan guessed that it was the alternator.  Crap.  We were about to lose all power--in the middle of Death Valley (thank goodness that it was April, not August!).  We were very blessed to be just outside the exit to Baker, so we coasted into town, just as the gas pedal stopped working (thankfully we still had brakes.)  Luckily there are no stop signs or stoplights in town, so we kept coasting until we saw a mechanic and slowly pulled into their parking lot.  Again, we were blessed that they were open on Sunday and could fix our alternator.  The bummer was that they had to send their parts runner into Barstow and back with the part before they could fix it...so we had about 4 1/2 hours to kill in Baker.  It was pretty boring and the kids were kind of whiny, but we were really counting our blessings that we were all OK, and that we were not stranded 30 miles further down the road, on the side of the freeway somewhere.  Bryan was really frustrated because he hates to pay a mechanic for something that he could have easily done at home, but what can ya do?  

"The World's Tallest Thermometer"

Our poor minivan...all pooped out.

 After that little setback, we headed back on down the road and got into LA that evening.  We drove straight to the beach and let the kids play in the ocean.  It was windy and cold, but we still had fun getting our feet wet and chasing the waves (or letting the waves chase US!)  We watched a beautiful sunset on the pier and then went to Ruby's Diner for some hot chocolate.

Monday morning we got up bright and early for our first day at Disneyland!  We just bought this "Sit N Stand" stroller for this trip....and it was worth its weight in gold!  That stroller could hold all three kids, somewhat comfortably, and that saved us hours of listening to kiddos who are "soooo tiiiiiiiired" from walking about 10 miles a day at Disneyland.  We did make them walk most of the time, but sometimes it was just much easier to push them to prevent whining.  (And who can blame them?  I was tired too, and they had to do 2-3 steps for every 1 of mine.)

Welcome to the Happiest Place on Earth!