Halloweentime in Disneyland!

Mommy and I kind of don't know how to handle our Disneyland posts. We go a lot especially compared to most families. You would think we have enough photos in that place! Turns out we don't. And there is always something different. So maybe we will try and keep it to what was different about this trip. But that's actually another problem. We had a lot different! It was Halloweentime at Disneyland and it felt like we had never been there before even though we have been probably three other times during Halloweentime. Oh dear.

Iva WALKING around Disneyland was different for sure!

Cara and I got to be transformed into PIRATES as a birthday surprise for me! It was amazing. We got sashes and bandanas and eye patches and make up that we got to keep and necklaces. Oh and pirate names! I was Rose Warloather and Cara was Betty Coalflint! We even got a signed oath from Jack Sparrow.

Disneyland had a special tent where you could conjure a villain! I got to help conjure up Cruella!

We added a lot of people to our "Characters We've Met List"! Too many to show you all the pictures without making this post far too long!

The biggest one was Anna and Elsa! Mommy totally surprised me with this one! She got in special lines and we only had to wait about 20 min. So cool!

AND we got to go to Mickey's Halloween Party!! 14 lbs of candy and lots of characters later it was a huge success for us! Mom and Dad dressed up too!

Mom said give me your best villain face...check out Cara!

Meeting our twins!

Can you believe I got to meet Pocohantas? That's a big first for us!

Of course Cara and my favorite part of Halloweentime is the transformation at Haunted Mansion! It gets taken over by Sandy Claws from Nightmare Before Christmas!  WE LOVE IT! Otherwise, we would rather skip that ride.

It was a great birthday! We can't WAIT to go again!

Siena turns SEVEN

Guest post by Mommy:

I should really sit down and do this in a different mentality, but Siena will be seven before I ever get that chance. Iva is starting to run me a bit ragged. She is EVERYWHERE and into all that is not for her.

Siena at seven is really a wonderful thing. She is responsible and happy and pleasant and helpful and independent and amazing. She is also goofy and prone to being unable to stop her crying. She is straddling that line between little girl who wants to play pretend and a girl who wants to play dress up, but look pretty.

First grade has kind of thrown us into growing up. She seemed to be adjusting with no trouble to going to school all day, but has since shown signs of stress. For a little while, she would get very teary eyed in the morning. She never wanted to stay home, but she always had "butterflies in her stomach" and was nervous. Luckily, she has amazing friends who seemed to swoop in on her as soon as we touched foot on to the school property. As I mentioned earlier, she also can't seem to stop her crying. She says things like "my body can't stop" or "my body is telling me to cry". It's been hard for us both. I'm trying to be understanding, but I find myself really wanting to say "BUCK UP, SON!" Both of these things have lessened in the last week or so. Fingers crossed that we've transitioned!

Siena is very good in school. Her teacher informed me that she probably reads on a fourth grade reading level and is constantly her helper because she's one of the few who can read enough to be helpful! Right now, Siena is the "nurse" in her classroom and she loves helping take sick kids to the office just like Aunt Angie. Hahaha. Her math skills are more on grade level, but she's pretty quick none the less. She does love school. She misses hanging out with us though and I can't blame her! We are pretty fun! 

She recently learned to tie her shoes. We've been a little slow on this one because we live in flip flops and I have no patience apparently. She has started helping clean the bathroom and likes to pick up Iva and try to take care of her. If I was better at getting her to practice, I'm confident she would also be an excellent piano player. As it is, I tend to want to go play at a park rather than sit with her and do it!

She loves to dance and sing to popular songs such as "Shake it Off" and then she likes to make up her own versions of the songs. 

 I love her. I'm so happy to be spending the day with her in Disneyland. (Where else!)

Squeezing in Summer goodness

The calendar says that it's only two days away from fall which is okay because fall in St. George feels a lot like other people's summer time!

Lake time with Grandpa. He's only wearing the wetsuit to get it ready for the race he did.

Fun braids!

We tried to let Iva cry it out...she eventually went to sleep.

Carb loading.

Splash pad fun with cousins.

Kokopelli Tri

Once again our Daddy and Grandpa did the Kokopelli tri. We are professional spectators at this point!

Grandpa finished faster than last year, but he didn't make it on the podium this year! How strange!

Daddy had the worst swim he has ever had and he almost got his personal record anyway! So proud of him!

Busy Bodied 10 month old

Guest post by Mommy:

Wow. What a difference this last month has made. Iva feels so much less a baby and way more a toddler. I am chasing her everywhere. Nothing in my house is off limits and between her teeth and WALKING, she's just grown up!

That's right, I said walking. She loves to tootle around with her walker and goes FAST, but she also took her first steps on Sep 6th. I'm actually guessing she took steps before then but I had never seen her or caught her in the act. Iva has grasped the concept since she was like six months old that being a big girl was a good thing. If you told her she was big big big, she would break into a huge smile and try whatever it was again. She's been able to go from standing to sitting with a nice slow controlled squat for quite some time, but in the last five days she's mastered standing alone indefinitely and she even went from sitting to standing with no help. She's still very unstable on her feet, but she LOVES to practice walking.

That's the best video I could get. She has that gift all babies are born with to instantly be unable to walk when a camera is present. 

What else about her...no distinct words yet. She vocalizes with screeches and distinct cries when she wants something and she clearly understands us so maybe I should focus on helping her talk and she would blossom. We have actually started watching our beloved Signing Time videos with more regularity and she has really perked up at those. I'm hoping she gets the hang of signing soon! This is what happens every time I turn it on lately. 

I swear she has started nursing MORE frequently. She prefers to sleep with someone at night and if it's me, she would prefer to just be latched on all night. Kinda frustrating, but apparently not enough for me to kick her out. 

One adorable thing about her is that she loves to snuggle and rub her head into you. Sometimes quite forcefully. It's like she is trying to make us into one person or brain. Some of my favorite moments with her come in the morning when we are slowly waking up in bed and we snuggle and wrestle and just kind of coo at each other. She mostly wakes up with a smile so it's quite pleasant.

And she wouldn't be one of mine if she didn't love the water! She will float around for what feels like an hour in the pool in her float and she loves to splash. She's trying to swim on her own though and likes to stand up in the shallow end and fall onto her tush taking her face under water. 

I can't fully wrap my brain around having a one year old in just two months. WHAT?! No. I have a baby. Time is just picking up speed with this one. Better go snuggle her.

Disneyland Half Marathon

Guest post by Mommy:

About eight months ago, I got an email that said registration for the Disneyland Half Marathon had opened. I knew that we would be getting our annual passes and thought it might be a fun thing for Pete to do. Holy cow. First of all, I had no idea that you had to register within the first hour of that thing opening. Long story short, I managed to register Pete and fail to register my girls for the kids runs because of the chaos in that first hour. I registered for the Chear Squad. (Yes it's spelled wrong because it's Disney.) It also turned out that they would later open up two other half marathons for the first time but later in the year, had I known those things I wouldn't have done the Disneyland Half. I would have waited for the Avengers Half. Actually...my girls are doing that one. But just the kids races. Don't worry I won't make Siena run a half marathon until she's ten. Just kidding. They won't let me let her until she's 14.

Because it was so rushed in the registration process and it forced me to make a snap decision I didn't really look into the dates and so it was that the only two days we would need to be at Disneyland were blocked on our annual passes that we had for Pete and the girls. Hmmm. I opted to make it a mommy and daddy trip only because I could handle upgrading one pass. Darn it! Graciously, Aunt Becca said she would take the girls. Even IVA. That meant I had to get her taking a bottle which wasn't easy. In the end, we drove down to Vegas Friday and left early Saturday morning and were back by Sunday after dinner so that she would only have to do one night out of fear Iva would be horrendous. I even took my breast pump. Disneyland will store it for you and has wonderful little rooms that you can use. They won't store your milk, but that's okay. I couldn't keep it anyway.

So off we went bright and early Saturday morning. Siena startled us by sobbing when we tried to leave. I think first grade is taking its toll on her. It feels like it's all work and no play. She has to do homework and piano and chores and no time to go swim. Hopefully we will find a better balance. Back to the trip. I'm pretty sure that was the extent of her missing us. The five minutes it took us to get out the door and then the next two minutes and then she was off on her adventures with Becca. They got to go to Chuck E. Cheese. I take them to Disneyland but Becca takes them to Chuck E. Cheese. Pretty sure she wins. At least the way they talk.

We decided to not go straight to Disneyland which I think took the world by surprise. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to be on a beach and not have a baby trying to eat sand. It just sounded glorious. And of course it was. We boogie boarded and soaked up sun and swam and that took us all of two hours. Pete had a half marathon to run in the early hours of the next day so we figured we shouldn't push it!

Picking up our packets was kind of craziness. There were hardly any people there, but you could tell that two days ago it must have been MADNESS. Utter madness. For these run weekends, they have a 5k, a 10k, the half marathon and kids races. You can also do the double dare and run both the 10k and half marathon. They had it so well organized that you could just feel at one time they had thousands of people streaming into that space. In fact, 15,952 people finished the half marathon. THINK ABOUT ALL OF THEM PICKING UP THEIR PACKETS. It was so well organized they had cast members standing next to things that people liked to take pictures of and helping organize that. I snuck this one in. Apparently no one else had tried it.

Packets were picked up, we got showered and squeaky clean and then we of course went into the park! Our objective was to ride all the rides together that we don't get to do anymore. Basically anything with a height requirement. Here we are on Tower. I almost killed him on this ride 9 years ago on our honeymoon and now it's one of his favorites.

We both got up at the unholy hour of 4:20 am. In retrospect, I should have registered us both. But I never thought I would want to run. Well let me tell you, the whole time we were there I was thinking how silly it was that I was just cheering. I should have been out there with him. Oh well. I was a dang good cheerleader.

Pete was able to start in the second faster corral which is a BIG deal when you are talking about 16,000 runners. The last corral started 45 minutes after him. I was grateful. He ended up being in the top 10% of the finishers!

We celebrated his run by eating at The Blue Bayou for the first time ever. We didn't do it on our honeymoon and we have always had kids with us since then. This was perfect and the Monte Cristo sandwich did NOT disappoint. I had no idea what I was in for and I was blown away by the deliciousness.

We got some more rides in and kind of wandered around. It was so nice not dealing with a stroller. We missed the kiddos, but not the stroller.

We loved being back with our girls though. We smashed together and cuddled and talked all at the same time. Ah the happiness.

They are the best. I couldn't ask for more perfect girls.

The real fun from our trip though came from recreating our photos from our honeymoon. It was AWESOME. It was actually funny to see how some of Disneyland had changed! I even took the same purse.

I have more but this seems gratuitous. It was a great trip!!