Day Two - Disneyland!

So early this year Matt and I participated in Disney's "Give a day, Get a day" program, which basically was that you volunteer for a day of service locally and Disney will give you a free ticket to any of their parks.  It was a screaming deal and the first million people to volunteer would get a free ticket.  When we originally participated we knew that we would be redeeming the vouchers in Oct when the family was doing the annual fall beach house.  However we were NOT expecting to be pregnant and we were originally thinking that just Matt and I would go, for a fun anniversary thing.  but clearly when you are 7 months pregnant, the options of a fun day at a theme park are limited.  So we weren't sure if we were going to go or not.  We decided that IF we were going to go, we would go ahead and take the kids, since I couldn't ride any of the fun rides with out them anyway. 

Then we found out that our good friends Steve and Jewel were going to be at Disneyland while we were there.  This kind of sealed the deal for us.  You see, they have a son (the adorable Jack), who is just a little younger than Izzie (like a month and a half or something), and she is also pregnant (about 6 weeks ahead of me).  This worked out well, because then she and I could hang out with the kids and go on all the kiddy rides with them and let our husbands have a couple hours of actually riding rides and enjoying the park.  If it was just Matt and the girls and I, I know that he never would have left us to go on any fun rides, and what a waste of a free ticket, ya know?  So my first thought when we found out they were going to be there (other than how great it would be to see them) was that Matt could have a ride buddy.

So we met up with them at Disneyland.  The girls loved the bus ride from the parking lot to the park.  We told them it was our first "ride" and they were thrilled.  It was Lily's first time on any kind of bus and she thought it was awesome.  Not to mention how THRILLED they were that it had pictures of the Toy Story characters on the outside (have I mentioned their toy story obsession??).

We took our big mammoth double stroller, which is usually used as our bike trailer for family bike rides, but doubles as a stroller and the girls were nice and comfy.  They loved the princess castle and got to see glimpses of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.  Although there were some tears shed that we couldn't meet Belle.  She is Lily's favorite.  But the line to meet the princesses was an hour long, and there was no guarentee which 3 princesses were going to be in there when we got there, so we skipped it.  Lily was sad, but it was the end of the day by then and we had grumpy girls.

The park is all decked out for Halloween and it looks great, I LOVE the holiday season!

We met up with Steve and Jewel by the Carosel and the guys to the kids on rides while Jewel and I visited.

Then we took the kids to Toon Town and to meet Mickey, which was a bit of a wait, but was worth it.  Lily talked for weeks about how Mickey kissed her.

The guys then split off from us to go ride some big kid rides and Jewel and I found a shady bench to sit on and have lunch with the kids.

Then we took the girls & Jack back into Toon Town to explore a bit.  Which didn't last nearly as long as it could have simply because it is pretty hard to watch 2 kids 3 and under by yourself, when they just want to run around and you are in HUGE crowds.  So while Jewel faired pretty well with Jack I had my hands full with Lily and Isabel (not to mention the fact that it is harder to pick up kids and haul 2 around in your last trimester of pregnancy), they had a great time, but after a while we decided it was time to go ride some rides.

The girls' favorite was definetly "Its a Small World". 

 Jewel & Jack

Pinnochio scared them a bit. 

Riding the rides was lots of fun and I wish that we had more time to do it.  I also wish that we would have had more time for Matt to take Lily on some rides that I couldn't do with Isabel and her and me.  She always wanted the little boats and cars to go faster and I think she would've really like the dumbo ride and a few others that we didn't make it on.

We met up with the boys after they went on Indiana Jones, Space Mountain (which is all done up for Halloween), Splash Mtn, and pirates.  I was glad that they both got to do a few fun things, it worked out great.

But by 3:30 the girls were tired from no nap (especially Isabel) and we just decided that rather than push them and try to sqeeze a few more rides in we would just take them home and let them spend a little time on the beach before dinner and bedtime.

We got back to the house and spent some time on the beach before dinner, which was so nice.

Matt's sister Heather invited us to just roll into dinner with their family while we were there, which was GREAT.  We did our own breakfast and lunch/snacks, but had dinner with them every night.  Here she is cooking away!

All in all, day 2 was a GREAT day.  It was perty exhausting for this tired old pregnant lady, but it was SO much fun!  And it set us up nicely for Days 3 & 4, which we spent in the water!

Day One--The joy isn't always in the journey...

On long drives at least, it tends to be in the destination!

Matt worked the night before we left, so I got everything ready to go, got up early got myself and the girls ready and packed the last minute stuff & hauled it all down stairs so that when he got home from work at 8:30am he just needed to shower and help load the car.

It was an interesting drive over as Matt had to sleep during the drive and I tried to keep the peace between the kiddos and drive while CONSTANTLY boxed in by wreckless semitrucks (which stresses me out).

One thing that I WISH I had been able to get a picture of was Isabel and the donuts.  I had asked Matt to buy ice (for the cooler) and gas on his way home from work, and he decided to also buy a box of donuts, so he would be able to just eat breakfast once we were on the road and not take up time (or at least that was the excuse for getting them:) the donuts ended up on top of the ice chest next to Isabel, which seems really stupid BUT in my defence, they were up higher than her head and so she couldn't see in the box, so I didn't think she would even know they were there.  Well after being on the road for about an hour and a half I realize that Izzie hasn't complained about anything for about 10 minutes, which is surprising so I check the rear view mirror and sure enough she has reached up into the donut box, managed to find the chocolate covered one and scrape off most of the frosting with one hand, proceeding to wipe it all over her face as she has been licking it off her hand, all while not being able to see into the box and barely being able to reach into it, she couldn't even pull the donut out, just scrape the top.  She was a HUGE mess.  I just had to crack up.  I really wish I could have taken a picture, but I was driving.  She must have good senses to be able to sniff out the donuts.  Anyway, Matt who I had to wake up to clean her off and move the box, since I was driving, was NOT quite as amused.

I am sure that you can imagine it just by looking at this.

We stopped in Blythe at pizza hut for lunch.  It was not very good, but the girls were glad to be out of the car for a while.  We were SUPER blessed to come out of the restaurant just in time to stop someone from stealing the stuff that was packed on top of our car in our rack bag.  Yeah, it was a little scary.

The rest of the drive was pretty good...except for me having incredible stomach pain and having to stop twice to throw up, I am pretty sure that I ate something gnarly at the buffet.  Good times.



Anyway, we made good time and got to the beach house before traffic got too bad and we were able to unload and take the girls down to see the water and let them play in the sand off of the boardwalk for little while before dinner.  It was great, the girls loved the beach immediately and Heather and Tommy were already there with their kids, and my girls just adore them all (especially poor tom), so they were super excited to see them.

In general the drive was no where near as awful as I feared it might be and once we were there it was so beautiful that even though I was exhausted, I was HAPPY :)

OK, so I will confess that all these particular pics are from day 2.  This is essentially exactly what happened on day one, but we were too exhausted to get the camera out and take pictures!  So I am inserting this into "Day1", since on Day 2 we took a TON more pictures and this post didn't have many.  Day 2 also contains our pics from...DISNEYLAND.  So that is why the girls will be in the same clothes in the Day 2 post.

Before we left for California,

was kind of crazy and stressful.  Any mom with young kiddo's out there will tell you that being organized enough to get everything all packed up for a big trip is not very much fun.  Especially this kind of trip where we are staying in a rental house and need to bring all our own towels, linens, food containers, etc.  It is ALOT of stuff to pack for my whole family, I was almost tempted to post my spreadsheet/packing list just so you would be impressed/feel sorry for me, but I'll spare you.  :)

Anyway Matt was crazy busy with school right up until we left and working as usual, but we did manage to do a few fun things before we left.  By we, I mean the girls and I.  Again Matt with the busy-ness.

Here are the highlights, conference weekend was pretty great during the ever illusive "naptime" Lily built this.

We had been talking about King Benjamen and other prophets (very briefly) before conference when I was talking to Lily about excited I was for conference and explaining to her how lucky we were to get to watch from home.  Anyway, I came in and she showed me what she made and told me that the boy on the top was King Benjamen.  It cracked me up.

It also cracks me up to see how some things are just pre-programmed into my girls.  Like dress up and tea parties.  I didn't teach them how to do this, they just do it and it is SO classic and cliche, that it makes me laugh.  They also  love to bend our big gate into a square and make it a "castle" and play inside it.  Watching them play reminds me SO much of how I used to play at Lily's age and it is amazing that some things are exactly the same.

We also painted our toes.  Izzie and I got matchies and Lily INSISTED on white toe nails with stars, though I tried to discourage her since I am not a huge fan of white as a base color, but she loved it, so it all worked out.  :)  She is getting SO opinionated already and always wants to pick out her own clothes/hairstyle/food/etc.  She's 3.  Most of the time I am not amused because it always ends up taking longer to do anything, but I am trying to be patient and give her a few limited options to then narrow down.  Its finding that balance between letting them think for themselves, but also having them realize that you are the parent and you are not just going to cook up what ever/style their hair/plan your day around their every whim.  Some days are more successful then others.

Matt's been so exhausted and busy lately that (other than our vacay) most of the time the girls see him he is sleeping/and or falling asleep.  So they always tell me night-night and want to crawl in with him no matter where he is.  Here he is sleeping on the floor where they can best snuggle him.

Now so as not to overwhelm myself with the thought of blogging our AWESOME vacation, and not to over whelm YOU with 50 pictures in one post I am going to break my blogging up into 4 days, so that each post is roughly a day-ish.  It may come out to only 3 posts, but that way I can do it one at a time.  I am hoping to get it all up in the next couple of days, so be sure to check back!

Here is a preview of the goodness to come!

PS, the rental house we stayed in is literally one of the housees in the backgound of this picture.  It was spectacular!