The Finale Part 1

Well it happened.  Our last trip to Disneyland on our annual passes.  Mommy was sad.  She cried when we left the parking garage on our final day.  She said that she really really loved getting to visit over and over. We've had a GREAT a year and our final trip was amazing.  

Mommy and Daddy splurged and got us two nights at the Paradise Pier (where they stayed on their honeymoon!) which is another Disney Resort.  We arrived very late at night and found a delightful room waiting for us with a gorgeous view of California Adventure.

Plus check out that beach ball pillow.  We even had Mickey Mouse rice crispy treats waiting for us! Needless to say, we were not very cooperative getting back to sleep.  I think Mommy and Daddy were a little tired when they only got five hours of sleep.  

Cara shot up out of bed at first light and asked "Are the rides going?" followed quickly by standing straight up, putting her hand above her eyes and exclaiming, "I can see the sun!"

Luckily we got moving with enough time for an impromptu breakfast with Mickey and some of his friends! We got to meet Mickey, Minnie, Daisy Duck, Goofy, Pluto and Stitch!  We danced and then Stitch taught us how to surf!

I think at this point I need to warn you.  Not only did Mommy and Daddy have almost 100 pictures between their phones, they also paid for us to have a special PhotoPass that contained 200 pictures of high quality photos taken by other people!  Mommy has no idea how to help me not post them all!  

Anyway, we started our days in the parks by heading into California Adventure and we never looked back!

That first day I got to ride Radiator Springs Racers FOUR times, maybe even FIVE times.  It was great! That's where the PhotoPass pictures are going to pay off.  We got to keep the photos of us taken on the rides!  But those pictures might have to be in "The Finale Part 2" since we are getting a CD shipped to us.  

Highlights from the first day included riding the bumper cars together.

Our traditional thumb photo on the Lady Bug ride.

We also got to meet Alice and the Mad Hatter

And Tinker Bell's sister, Periwinkle! (Okay so I don't currently have the picture of Periwinkle yet but that's the cool ice machine that keeps it cold enough for her!)

We got to meet Cinderella and one of her mice, Susie!

Plus we went and swam in the hotel pool!  I LOVED their slide and Cara was even brave enough to go down once all on her own!

Wednesday brought more fun but we were sad to leave our awesome hotel!

But I got to try new stuff in the Redwood Creek Challenge!

And we were really silly together!

Too be continued!

What to say...

Guest post by Mommy:

How many posts can you honestly title "Disneyland" before people just quit looking at your blog? If I'm not there, I'm close.  Have no fear the Disneyland posts will cease or at least maybe decrease enormously.  I promise.  I have to mean it.  Our annual passes expire on Saturday at midnight.  Let's not talk about it or I'll cry.

However you are going to have to put up with at least two more posts about Disneyland this one being one of them.  I'm going out with a huge bang dang it!  On Friday, more of my ward friends who had not had the privilege on going on our Leap Day extravaganza or sneaking away for Sarah's birthday went on a Disney blitz with Sarah and I at the helm.  We even borrowed a big E350 van that could seat 11 without the back seat.  Sadly, I don't have a single picture of the van.  Apparently none of us were huge on taking pictures or maybe it was just me and I need to find out who took what pictures and with what camera.  I don't have a picture of the whole group I am suddenly realizing.  Regardless, we drove down and stayed in a hotel on Friday and then spent more than 12 hours at Disneyland bouncing between big people rides including three trip on Radiator Springs Racers which only three of us had ever been on.

I should note that our eleventh person was actually a very cute and very adorable 5 month old baby girl who was honestly the best baby one could hope to trap in a car for 8 hours (she had driven up from vegas only to drive back) and then tote around endlessly at Disneyland.

Oh we did have fun.  Favorite moments included Sarah and I being silly on Space Mountain and documenting our constant need to be on time and organize our fast passes.

Another favorite moment occurred when I had placed a "Rider Swap" pass in the little bag on Space Mountain and then forgotten about it.  We quickly ran back and they just gave us another one because the car had already left.  Two hours later (okay maybe only one) some of us went on Space Mountain again and I had the gal in the front just put her hand in the bag to see if my pass was in there.  It was.  Same pass.

Third favorite moment was how we ended our day.  We went on Tower of Terror and had preplanned to hide our faces and just let two of our gals show theirs. (Somehow in most pictures, these ladies ended up with hands all over the place in front of them.) We got on the ride, it started, I heard them say keep your feet on the ground (which I had never heard) and laughed at it.  Sarah decided to put her feet up by our friend's face for just a moment.  The ride came to a stop.  The lights came on and a voice said they had stopped our ride purposefully.  I thought it had to be mechanical but Sarah was convinced it was her fault and was apologizing to the other 12 people on board.  Turned out, she was right and she kind of yelled at by a gentleman who clearly needed to go home after a long day of work.  Needless to say, we stuck to our picture idea.  We were hiding our faces out of shame.

Ah such a fun.  And then we drove through the night and I crawled in bed next to my family at 6 am.  Good times.

Oh one last photo of me being sad...can you see me? Up in the back corner?

They made me ride alone.  I always ride California Screamin' alone!

Anyway!  Be prepared for more Disney on Sunday!  We really are going out with a bang.  Pete and the girls are headed with me tonight for a four day crazy stay at Disney!

Random January Pictures

We have had a pretty great January.  And because of our new preschool schedule both Cara and I find ourselves killing twenty minutes with Mom at the gym in between our preschool pick up times.  Cara likes to go up and run the track and do push ups.  She's pretty funny!

We also finally had wonderful spring like weather come up!  We went to the park without jackets and everything!

Momentous moment for Mommy! Lexi sat and actually PLAYED with her instead of crying!

Then this afternoon we got to go with everybody and help with Aunt Becca's bridals.  This is what I thought Uncle Phil's face would look like when he saw Aunt Becca for the first time!

Isn't she beautiful?!

A silly picture of us!

Dance Clinic

Almost ten days ago now, Mommy signed me up for a little drill team clinic that Uncle Eric's high school was doing that would end with a performance at one of the basketball games.  I was so excited and for four days got to go learn a dance routine with some big girls.  I loved it.  I loved performing.  I asked if I could perform at ALL the basketball games.  Mommy might have to give up on my gymnastics and just put me in dance...

Seriously.  I was so proud and happy.

Overheard at our house...

Guest post by Mommy:

I was hoping to remember more of the silly things said by our girls, but sadly as I am starting to type, I feel like I have no memory of ANY.  Well I do have one.

Saturday, we were all cozied up and sitting on the floor playing games just the four of us.  We were playing Candyland and Siena suddenly exclaimed, "I'm ahead of like nobody!" but what made it funny was that she said it all excited and laughed about it.  (She did eventually win with a lucky draw of the ice cream lady, Princess Frost.)

Siena has also taken to laughing this high pitched hysterical laugh whenever she thinks something is extra funny or silly.  It resembles neither my laughs or Pete's and sometimes just makes us all snort because it's so ridiculous.

Now if only I could remember how funny Cara has been lately.  I think with her it's more about how much she can talk.  She's already 3 and a half so I shouldn't be surprised by her complete sentence use but because she LOOKS so small, it takes you by surprise! The other day when helping with a project in our living room, she kept asking her daddy to call her "The Tapeman."  "Daddy, saaayy...I need tape, please, Tapeman." which morphed into "Tapegirl" and maybe even "Tapeprincess."

Now speaking of living room project.  Siena has become obsessed with pbskids.org.  She begs to play it and so we stole away one of dad's laptops and set it up for her one day.  But the laptop has some quirks to it and it wasn't a very good solution.

This finally gave me the motivational push I needed to finish up our living room which involved bringing our Mac out into the front room.  Ta Da!!

I even finished painting the wood trim so that it matches the fireplace and acquired some extension cords to put our electrical stuff on a different side!  Yea me!  On a side note, as I sit here and type I can see all my not so careful brush strokes that stand out since the whites don't quite match between the trim and the wainscoting or bead board or whatever and I also made a huge error in the dining room and don't have the paint to fix it.  Good thing we're not looking to sell for awhile!  I was in such a hurry.  Why couldn't I just slow down a little?  Oh yeah.  Because I suck at being patient.  I get so excited for the end result!

And now on a completely different note and for a picture to make you smile.  My dad...circa 1979, freshly graduated from high school....(sorry it's a picture of a picture! I think I'll head to their house and upload the actual picture!)

A First!

Guess what?  Cara got to start preschool!!! Her first day came with not quite as much fan fare as mine considering it's January.  That meant she only will get to go for a few months before a big break and also it's cold outside.  Not as much fun for pictures!

She gets to go on Tues and Thurs for a few hours.  Miss Traci is wonderful and the preschool is at our gym which makes it really easy for Mommy to bring her!

This sudden jump into preschool was brought on because they asked Mommy to help out with some of the PE activities in the preschool.  They are going to let me go to the older class also so now I go to school FIVE days a week.  Good practice for kindergarten!

What's Mommy going to do with her four hours of free time?!

Probably laundry!

Family...

This post includes some stuff from the end of December but it already felt like the New Year so we will count it!

We really did spend a lot of time with family during the holidays.  We were lucky enough to get our Preslar cousins to come stay with US for New Year's.  It was so wonderful to have all five of them packed into our home and you know what?  I think we fit perfectly! We didn't take hardly any pictures of our time together because it was mostly spent just "being."  Romney, Emma, Cara and I played in every room of the house, played with almost every toy, and enjoyed making up pretend worlds.  Chase was rescued from all of the girlyness by my daddy and the Wii.  They played lots of Mario Brothers together!  We did feel bad for Uncle Troy and Aunt Rachel who spent their 15th wedding anniversary in drug induced comas for their flu.  Basically we sent them to bed while we played.

They did get to take part in our New Year's Eve ritual of hot tubbing until midnight (okay midnight EST!) and enjoying a little bit of Martinelli's.  We really wish we had taken pictures but mostly we just really enjoyed the warm steamy water and the cold air instead.  We missed them terribly just hours after they had left.  They got the worse end of the deal though.  They had to drive north into sub freezing temperatures and a terrible inversion!

Oh and we did let Uncle Troy have the house to himself to recover on New Year's Eve while we played at Jumpin' Jacks.  Here is the only picture Mommy took.  We loved having Daddy to help us with the bungee run.  He was getting ready to let go and send me flying backwards!

And here is us hanging with our other cousin, Lexi.  She's getting to be such a chunk and she loves to sit and watches movies with us!

And just so you know what it looks like to see my Mom and Grandma teaching at the gym here is one of my Grandma's Group Power classes.  (She's so popular!!)

And last but not least, we got to hang out with Josie again!  She's our second cousin or first cousin twice removed on my mother's side...I don't know...anyway we love her and playing with her.  See how we ham it up!