Disneyland

We spent four days between Disneyland and California Adventure. I should have written about it right away because I won't be able to remember anything. So here are the highlights:
First ride: Snow White. Ellie and Hattie were a little scared. They loosed up after that thank goodness!
Fairly short lines--longest wait was Toy Story in CA, but nothing else was very long.
Ellie and Hattie going on Big Thunder with Eliza and Brian. Didn't want to go again!
Eliza being brave and trying all the big rides: Tower of Terror, CA Screamin', Space Mountain, etc.
Ferris Wheel--this was scary! We went on the Ferris wheel in CA and we sat in one of the buckets that is enclosed and it swings big time. All the girls screamed! I think Brian was embarrassed and said we were the only people screaming. It was frightening though sliding back and forth so fast! Libby now says that was her favorite ride!
Silly Symphony Swings--I swore I would never go on a ride like this. But I did. It made me dizzy, but I survived. My girls really liked this ride.
Parades--of course, the parades were awesome.
Fireworks--nothing beats a Disney fireworks show. After the fireworks, it "snowed" in Disneyland.
Small World was all decked out for Christmas. It was way cute--I love that a couple of the rooms smell of gingerbread and sweets.
We spent more time than we have in the past in Toon Town. There are some fun things there--Libby LOVED the Goofy roller coaster and rode it over 10 times I think. Micky and Minnie's house is there, so that is fun to walk through. At the end of Micky's you actually meet Micky. Ruby wasn't so sure of all the characters.
The funniest was Indiana Jones. Ellie and Libby decided they wanted to go on it, so I took them and Eliza on it. I was laughing pretty much through the entire ride as I looked at them hold on for dear life. I was thinking, this probably wasn't the ride for them because it is pretty rough and a little frightening. I covered Ellie's eyes for some of it. They didn't want to go on it again (except Eliza).
We let our girls pick out one souvenir, so Eliza and Libby chose to have their picture done. We found a really talented lady in California Adventure. Eliza got herself drawn like the Queen of Hearts and Libby was Jessie from Toy Story. They are darling! When we got home from our trip, they set up a "studio" in their room and drew caricatures.
One tragedy of the trip was Brian throwing his phone away. It was our last day and we had eaten lunch. It was on the tray and got thrown away! He asked all around and was willing to dig in the trashes, but apparently after they take the trash, it goes straight to the compacter. So sad! He felt so lost without it! He ended up ordering another one just like it from eBay, so I think he's back to full function now!
We had a fun time--it was a LOT of work for Brian and I juggling everyone and making sure no one got lost.
Some pictures from our time...

They talked about this ride (Jumpin' Jellyfish) weeks before we went.

California

(I wrote this on our trip)

On Friday we took Eliza and Libby out of school an hour early and we headed out to California. The girls did great on the drive and we arrived at our hotel in Newport around 9. After getting settled in, it was time for bed. On Saturday, we walked around the hotel for a bit, then went swimming. Yes, we went swimming.



The pool was heated some. Ruby and I got in the baby pool for a few, then she got in the big grotto pool with Brian while I warmed up in the spa. That sure felt good. After a while we got out and warmed up in the room. We decided to have our family pictures taken while we were here mostly because I got my braces off on Thursday and I wanted to wait until they were off but wanted to get them done soon to have pictures for Christmas cards. So we had those in the afternoon, so we hung out the room and slowly got ready for those. We went to Balboa Pier and had them done by Heidi Ryder--a photographer I found on Google. Can't wait to see them! Everything went well until Hattie biffed it in the water as we were running from the waves. She was a good sport about it and took it well. After pictures, we were greeted with a parking ticket on our car!! Nice. We parked where there were meters and we put some money in--enough for about an hour and a half--when we saw all the other meters were blinking "expired" so we thought they didn't need to be paid on weekends. I guess we were wrong. We are trying to appeal it, so we'll see what happens! We went back to our room, changed clothes and went back to the pier to eat dinner at Ruby's Diner. After ending dinner with their yummy shakes, we headed back.


But first, I took Ruby's bottle out of my purse to look for the keys only to leave it on the bumper. I realized it right away, but not before it fell off and was run over. So we had to buy a new bottle. And the ring on that one fell down in the bottom of the dishwasher today and melted. So Brian is out getting her yet another bottle. Hopefully our luck changes! Haha!

Today we got up and ready and headed down to San Diego. We visited the Mormon Battalion Historic Site. What a great time we had! We took a tour and it was so fun and so well done. My girls LOVED it. Eliza kept saying, "This is so fun!" It's an interactive type tour and you go from room to room and kind of go from location to location learning about the march of the Mormon Battalion. At the end, we had our picture taken and the girls panned for "gold", learned how a brick was made, used a hand pump to get water and so on. We are so glad we went there--it was a fun time.








From there, we went to the San Diego Temple and walked around the grounds.




On the way back, we stopped at Crystal Cove Beach and the girls (and Brian) got their feet wet in the ocean.

(best photo I could get in the dark!)
I volunteered to hold Ruby since there was no way I was getting in the cold water!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving started for me with an early morning hike. I was home in time to watch our traditional Macy's Thankgiving Day Parade. We love watching that parade as we get ready for the day. I had made a couple dishes the day before, so I just had one thing to make that morning. We had Thanksgiving at Brian's parents' this year. Last minute I made some fun place cards along with a little "ice breaker" type of game. Food was yummy as always. If I could remember to document right after the event I wouldn't forget everything! And I don't have pictures because all of them were lost due to an unnamed child who hit all the right buttons on the computer to delete them forever. The Saturday after Thanksgiving we met up with my brother Brian and his family and my parents at a park in Surprise. The kids played, we had lunch and dessert and visited.

Ellie's Circus Party

A while back Eliza helped Ellie decide to do a circus theme for her birthday party. So I went to work on an invitation and last Tuesday was the big day. We ended up doing her party in our garage. We were going to do it outside, but it was very cold and one of our sprinklers decided to malfunction and stayed for a LONG time creating practically a lake in our backyard. So to prevent any accidents falling in the water, we set everything up in the garage. It worked well and contained the mess and the kids!

When the kids arrived, we fed them some mini corn dogs and French fries and Kool-Aid.


Then we started the games. First they tried to be the first to eat a donut off a string.





Then they tossed bean bags into buckets and then tried to pin the nose on the clown. Eliza drew the clown for us and did a terrific job! I told her it would have taken me hours to get the poster done when she did it in just a few minutes.



The kids seemed to enjoy all the games, but they were done in way less time than we had allowed. So we got out Hullabaloo and let them play a couple rounds of that before going inside for Ellie to open her gifts.


That was a whirlwind, so I had my dad entertain them with a Simon Says.



We sang a couple of impromptu songs, then went back into the garage for cake and ice cream. When the parents came to pick up, each guest got a goodie bag that Ellie had so much fun putting together, and they also got a bag of cotton candy and bag of popcorn.

Later that night, Ellie said, "That sure was a fun party." I guess we did well!

Ellie's 5!

(We spent a lot of the day making cotton candy for her birthday party which is tomorrow!)

Today is Ellie's 5th birthday. I say this every year with all my kids, but I can't believe she is 5. She has kind of had a long celebration that started on Friday. Friday and Saturday was Ellie's sleepover with my parents. My mom picked her up on Friday afternoon and they stopped at Target and spent about an hour and a half trying to decide what Ellie wanted for her gift. She vacillated back and forth and back and forth between several things. She ended up with baby gear galore. Ellie LOVES, LOVES all things baby, so I wasn't too surprised. She got a baby doll, mini high chair, baby bath, ironing board, and more. She also got some silly bands to share with Hattie. That night they went to Oregano's for dinner and she discovered she likes spinach-artichoke dip. She also loved the pizzookie. Then Ellie surprised us all and actually slept the night at my parents'. In the past, she has had her fun Friday night, then wanted to come home. But this time she spent the night and had a blast. She was pleased with herself the next morning that she had spent the night. She had pop-tarts in the morning, then she got sad that all her sisters would be getting haircuts and she wouldn't get to. She was so sad and just wanted to go home. Bummer! So my parents ended up picking all but Ruby up and going to Rio Vista park to play for a while. They said they had a blast! I'll watch for my mom to update her blog so I can get some pictures.

The celebration continued on Sunday--just with cake and ice cream at home. I had a coupon for a free cake from Bashas, so we had gotten that. Well, Hattie thought she needed to look at it before church and splat, it landed face first onto the floor. I salvaged it as best I could, added some sprinkles on top to cover the mess and that is what we had. Ellie was a good sport about it considering what happened. I felt bad for her though.




Today was her actual birthday, so she started the day with toaster strudels for breakfast. She got to choose what she wanted for lunch and she chose those again. For her birthday, I obliged. She got to open one gift before everyone left for the day. She got "three-er" stroller. Like I said, she LOVES babies and she loves looking on Amazon for different strollers. When she saw a twin stroller, she would call it a "two-er" stroller, so she found this "three-er" (triplet) stroller and that is what we got for her. She's had fun with it so far.



She got to take the treat today for preschool, so she took fruit snacks and Go-gurts. We stopped by Brian's parents' to do the chickens and she got her birthday gift from her grandmother. She got a cute Moxie doll. She has enjoyed playing with that this afternoon. After Brian got home from work, she opened the rest of her gifts from us. She got her own Bubble Tape (I think she was most excited about that gift), a shirt and a crayon tower.


Tonight for family home evening we went out to the desert with a couple families from our ward. It was actually my visiting teachers and families and us. We roasted hot dogs and had some fixings, had a lesson and had s'mores. Ruby had had it about halfway through, but it was fun and the girls really enjoyed it. Mitch brought his machine that made animal noises and tried to scare the kids. They were getting scared, so I quickly told them what it was so it wouldn't ruin the night. It wasn't as bad as what Brian did--we were the first ones out there and in one of the fire pits, there was a mannequin head--like you'd use in beauty school, so he quietly hid it on the seat of their car for their girls to discover when they got in. I guess there was screaming involved when they saw it. I think it was a birthday that Ellie will remember for a long time.

We are so glad Ellie is in our family. She is such a joy and brightens any room she is in. She is very helpful and loves to do what is right. She has a very tender heart and if you give her a cross look, she just might cry. Her favorite shows are the baby ones on TLC or Discovery Health. She also loves watching 19 Kids and Counting. I think she may be a midwife one day or labor and delivery nurse and we think she'll have at least 10 kids! LOL She is facinated by what kind of cars people have and if they have a big car or a big house, they must have a lot of kids. She loves to play with her dolls, carry them around, push them in strollers and so one. She loves preschool and loves to learn. She also loves to serve others and share.

Happy birthday, Ellie!