Lagoon 2014

Bryan's work Lagoon Day was in June this year, which was so great.  It's usually in August and it's much hotter then.  I was actually really worried yesterday morning when the rain started pouring down, but luckily it cleared up by the time we headed over to Lagoon.  Miles and Tess were thrilled that they were both finally tall enough to ride The Rocket.  That is my favorite ride there (it's pretty similar to Tower of Terror at Disneyland, which is my favorite ride there.  I must love the quick-drop-and-feel-your-stomach-up-in-your-throat-feeling!)

 The dang Sky Ride was my scariest ride this year, and let me tell ya why...it's because dang Bree will not sit back and it scares the pants off me!  I was worried the whole time that she'd slip right below the bar and out onto the ground.  And she wouldn't let us hold her either.  So we had to sneakily grab onto the back of her shirt and shorts while we rode.

 We rode the Rattlesnake Rapids right before we were going to head over to dinner with Bryan's workmates, so we really didn't want to get soaked.  We decided to pull out the rain ponchos.  They worked pretty well, although some water somehow still sneaked under my poncho and onto my backside.  So I had the pee-pants look all during dinner.  :/

 Bree is no stranger to the camera, but she is really starting to ham it up!  Instead of just smiling sweetly...

 ...she's decided it's more fun to do crazy faces!

 Bryan's favorite ride is the giant Ferris Wheel.  He loves it up there.  He took Bree on that as I took Miles & Tess on the Rocket.  Coincidentally he happened to be right at the top of the Ferris Wheel as we were at the top of the Rocket, ready to drop.  So he took our picture from straight across.  Kinda cool!

Happy Birthday Tess!

Tess turned 9 years old yesterday!  I cannot believe I have a baby that old already.  She was so cute at cake-making time and wanted to help me make her birthday cake (she wants to every year now) and I love it.  I try to stay pretty hands-off and let her do most of it herself.  She even had a drawing for her design, labeled with the colors she wanted.

 I just drew the outline of the owl shape and she did all of the piping to fill it in.

Here she is, trying to open her presents and Miles keeps wanting to "help."

 For her birthday activity Tess chose to go to Hollywood Connection and bring her BFF Mari.  She was excited to try out her new roller blades...

 ...go mini-golfing...

 ...and ride a few rides...  (She ended up getting pretty sick on one though; it's one of the spinning ones, like the Teacups, where you spin your own car, and the cars themselves also spin on a track.  She felt pretty yucky for a little while after that.)

Then she chose the Spaghetti Factory for dinner (I LOVE that she loves it there, because I really love it there too.)

Here's Tess's interview:

What's your favorite color? Turquoise

What's your favorite thing to play with your friends? A game that we’re wizards and we try to save people.

(our tiny 5 pounder, born 3 weeks early and giving us all quite a scare--and giving me quite the migraine worrying about how little you'd be--but you were perfect!  Just tiny!)

What's your favorite thing to play alone? Solitaire [a peg game] or making friendship bracelets.

Who's your favorite friend? Mari and Lenora

What's your favorite TV show? Wizards of Waverly Place, A.N.T. Farm

What's your favorite movie? Harry Potter series (the ones that I’ve seen, 1 & 2)

What's your favorite book? Fablehaven

What's your favorite breakfast? Waffles

What's your favorite lunch? Bean Burritos

What's your favorite dinner? French Dip Sandwiches

What's your favorite dessert? Homemade brownies

What's your favorite toy? Tetherball

What do you want to be when you grow up? Astronomer or singer

Who's your favorite singer? Adele and Taylor Swift

What's your favorite song? I’m Only Human

What do you like to do with Dad? Help him fix cars

What do you like to do with Mom? Cook

What do you like to do with Miles? Play "Teenager-Two year old" [This game is hilarious...they've been playing it for years now.  Tess is always the teenager, and poor Miles is always the two-year-old.  And their parents are always dead.  The whole game is basically Tess bossing Miles around and he has to do it because she's in charge.  But he's always happy to play.  I wonder when he'll figure out he can play this with Bree, and get to be the teenager??]

What do you like to do with Bree? play "Elsa & Anna"

What do you like to do as a whole family? Go to Lagoon

What do you like about school? Writing and division

What do you do at recess? When it's rainy, we swing on the monkey bars and try not to drop into the puddles;  when it's not rainy, I play the wizard game with Mari

What's a happy memory you have? When I was baptized

What makes you laugh? A lot of things

What are some of your talents? Piano, soccer, tumbling, volleyball

Why are you excited about being 9?  I’m a year older and I get to do things

 Oh, Miss Tess, how we love you!  As you are getting older, we can tell you're getting to be more responsible and you are so helpful to us.  You look out for your bro and sis, and you are always ready to give a giant squeezy hug to any of us.  Quite often we feel bad for you because you're the "guinea pig" for us as parents...we don't really know what we're doing at this whole parenting gig and you're the unlucky one that gets all the trial and error (lots of errors on our parts too...)  But you still love us!  And we couldn't be more grateful for you!  Happy birthday, our darling girl!

The Rock

Four years ago, after Tess had just turned five years old, we took a family ride up the mountain in Mantua.  Bryan had Miles on the motorcycle and I had Tess behind me on the four-wheeler.  We had taken lots of rides like this and it was a lot of fun.  We all enjoyed it a lot.  We were at the end of our ride--it was getting to be dusk--and were heading back to the truck.  Bryan always rode in front of me, and he turned off onto a new trail.  I was kind of tired and ready to be done but I followed him, thinking "urgh, I don't want to take this trail...I just want to head to the truck."  Well, we traveled along for a little ways and then I noticed a deep-looking rut on the right hand side of the road so I hugged the left to avoid it.  There was a rock on the left (that I didn't see) and I hit it with my front left tire.  It was a big rock, and it pulled the tire right up it.  (This is something that I wasn't really familiar with...I had never spent the hours and hours that Bryan did in the mountains in his Bronco going on "roads" that no vehicle should never go on...and so I didn't have the experience or knowledge that he did.)  I guess I'm just a dumb blonde, but I didn't realize that the rock could kind of grip my tire and pull it right up, throwing me way off balance.  Long story short, we ended up flipping the four-wheeler over.  Tess and I were trapped underneath it.  It was completely upside down on us, and thankfully it was not crushing us, but we were unable to get out from underneath it and I was definitely not strong enough to lift it off us using just my back.

I really don't want to get into all the details here, but suffice it to say that I was panicked, Tess was screaming with fear, and this whole experience was very traumatic for Bryan and me.  Bryan soon realized that we weren't behind him and he came back and pulled the four-wheeler off us.  Thankfully we were unhurt except for lots of scrapes and big bruises.  Bryan said then and there that we were done.  We were selling the four-wheeler and we were never riding again.  (It really shook him up, understandably.)  It took lots of convincing, but eventually I talked him into keeping the four-wheeler, that we still needed to ride as a family, and that I could be more careful.

Over the years the roles have reversed a little and I am the one who's become much more nervous.  Every time we ride I get really anxious and worried that I will hit a stupid rock again, and Bryan has to convince me to come along for a ride.  He keeps telling me that it was a fluke thing, a freak accident and it probably won't happen again.  But I have had all these conflicting feelings... on the one hand Bryan tells me that it only happened because it was a HUGE rock!  I should be able to avoid huge rocks easily.  On the other hand I feel like if the rock was so huge, why the heck did I not SEE it!?  I must just be an idiot.

Well, anyway, a few weeks ago Bryan went for a ride up the same mountain and he went down that trail.  He took a bunch of pictures for me.  These pictures almost make me sick to my stomach because I remember the trail vividly.  The worst part about the entire thing is that I had Tess with me.  I don't really care if I hurt myself (although I'm thankful I didn't), but if I had broken Tess's leg or something worse (heaven forbid) I could never forgive myself.  I didn't want to see the pics at first because I have just felt like such a dummy for not seeing this HUGE rock...

Do you see it?  On the left?  No?  Well, that's because it's so dang hidden under all the brush.

  Here's the view from the other side.

And here it is next to the four-wheeler to give you a sense of scale.  It's taller than the wheel by quite a bit.

(You can also see where there is paint on it, probably from other vehicles hitting it, or maybe from someone painting it to try to make it more visible??)

Yep, it definitely IS a huge rock.  But it IS really, really hard to see!  I feel a lot better now.  "Vindicated" is not really the right word, but I guess I just feel like, yeah, OK, it probably WAS just a fluke thing.  A freak accident.  It means I'm not a total idiot who was just driving recklessly with her baby girl on the back.  It helps me feel a bit more confident in our future rides with the kids.

To end on a happier note, here are a few more pics of Inspiration Point--not from that exact ride 4 years ago, but from another ride that summer before the accident.  Oh how thankful I am that we were protected that day.

Happy Birthday Bree Bree!

Bree turned three yesterday!  It was a fun day.  We had been telling her for a while that her birthday was coming up and she was pretty excited.  So when she walked out of her bedroom I said "Bree!  You're three!"  She kind of threw her head back and whined "noooooo!  I wanna still be twwwwooooo!"  (She takes a little while to wake up in the morning, like her mom.)  But she soon got used to the idea and she's now excited to be three.

We went swimming at the aquatic center and she wanted to go down the big waterslide.  When we got to the top, she literally stopped, started walking backwards away from the water, shaking her head, and said, "uh, no, no, no, no, no...  I'm not going down that!"  She was funny.  But I coaxed her down with me and she loved it.

Then we had grandparents up for dinner and cake & ice cream.  She's been asking for a castle cake since February, so I gave it a try.  I'll tell you what, my cake didn't even look close to the ones on the box, but luckily my critic was a happy 3 year old who loved it nonetheless.  

Bree is really into pretend play.  She loves all dolls and Barbies and Polly Pockets and princesses and on and on.  She loves to play house, and store, and doctor, and dress-up, etc.  She got a new dollhouse with furniture, a new beautiful princess dress-up dress, and lots of little dolls too.  She also got a new big-girl bed and new big-girl undies (which is another story for another day...I'll just say that potty training is the pits.  Whoever invented pull-ups is my hero.)

I tried to interview Bree for her birthday and some of the answers were pretty silly, but cute.  What do you expect from a three-year-old?  Here goes:

What's your favorite thing to play?  Cupcakes (she has a cute pan of cupcakes that is like a puzzle with different colored/different shaped frosting)

What's your favorite friend?  Elmo

What's your favorite show?  Team UmiZoomi
What's your favorite breakfast?  Cereal

What's your favorite lunch?  Paper  (???)
What's your favorite dinner?  Cupcakes

What's your favorite toy?  Scissors  (Then I asked again and she said Kitties.)
What do you want to be when you grow up?  A witch

 What do you want to be for Halloween?  A monkey
What's your favorite song?  Happy Birthday to You

 What do you like to do with Dad?  Play with Dad
 What do you like to do with Mom?  Read books

 What do you like to do with Tess?  Play Barbies
 What do you like to do with Miles?   Play Legos  

What do you like to do in Nursery?  Read books all by myself

Oh Bree, we love you so much!  You light up our lives.  You are a charmer and you win the heart of everyone you meet.  You are kind and funny and you are a wonderful caboose to our bamatamb fam.  Happy Birthday Bree Bree!

Little League

Miles has started Little League.  It's so much fun to watch him play!  It's a great game for him because we have discovered that he's not very aggressive in sports.  He's not a bad little athlete--he's just not aggressive like you kinda need to be in some sports.  For example in soccer and basketball he is very content to let the other players have the ball.  He's happy to play along with them but he never really tries to get the ball.  But in baseball, when it's your turn to bat, it's just YOU; nobody can come in and take the ball away.  It's perfect for Miles.  He's a good little hitter and has a good arm too.  Catching will come later...nobody on his team (or any team that we've played for that matter) can really catch very well yet. 

This is a coach pitch/T-ball league.  The coach pitches 5 times and then if they still can't hit it they have to hit off a tee.  So far Miles has never had to use the tee, so that's pretty good!

I love this pic of him...he was playing "pitcher" which is just standing near the other team's coach--he doesn't actually pitch but he's in the middle of the infield so he's usually the one that the balls go to.  Anyway, the little girl who hit the ball did a small enough hit that he was able to just grab the ball and tag her out (throwing it to first base is what they usually do, but let's face it, the first baseman can't ever catch it anyway at this age so we told him to just tag her out.)  After he tagged her out he was so proud!  Way to go buddy!

(I'll try to add a few videos.  Hopefully they'll work.)  :)