End of March

I haven't blogged lately because I have been working on a different project.  I have been trying to make digital scrapbooks of each year of my kids' lives, so I am already very behind! It's a ton of work. 

Anyway, I have just loaded pictures from the past month on my computer. 

Before the dentist

 At the end of March Jared chipped both of his two front teeth on our steel playground in our backyard.  I was pretty worried about it, but we went to the dentist, and after a couple of fillings and 45 minutes of time, he's good to go again!  I am sure grateful for dentists!

After the dentist

 Also, I gave Maggie a haircut for the 2nd time in her life.  I cut it a little bit shorter than I intended to (and a little bit shorter than she wanted), but she looks pretty cute!

Ha ha, it doesn't look very even in this picture, does it?

 Also, I just have to include these cute pictures of Evelyn in the bath.  She is such a delight!

en

Pig tails!  Evelyn loves to request her hair is done this way!

Disneyland!!!

Mediocre picture of us on the airplane.  The kids LOVED the airplane ride!

 Alan and I took Jared and Maggie to Disneyland this week!  It was an AMhAZING trip.  Wow.  Practically perfect.  We left Evelyn with my mom, and it broke my heart to leave her, but it was totally the right choice and she doesn't seem to have been permanently scarred or anything.  :)

 We spent two days in Disneyland and one day in California Adventure.  We took our Sit 'n' Stand double stroller, which was wonderful.  Neither Jared nor Maggie complained even once about their feet hurting, and we were able to move quickly from one area of the park to another.  Alan and I, on the other hand, had very tired feet at the end of each day--my pedometer logged between 22,000 and 26,000 steps each day!

 These were the pictures of my kids I took at the beginning of the day in case they got lost in the park...which they didn't.  :)

We saw lots of characters walking around the park, but Minnie is the only one we got a family picture with. Her line was short right at the beginning of the day.  

In line for Small World 

The new Elsa's ice castle on Storybook Canal boats

Jungle cruise

Of course, one of the most exciting parts of Tomorrowland was everything Star Wars related.  We went on Star Tours about 10 times, and Maggie was the "rebel spy" one time!  

 

Jared had heard about the Jedi Training Academy from his friends at school, and he really wanted to go.  I explained to him that they only picked a few of the kids from the audience to actually do the training, so he probably wouldn't get picked and would just watch.  He still wanted to go, so Alan took him to the Jedi Training Academy while I took Maggie to a little Frozen play.  

Jared with Darth Vader in the background.

Well, Jared actually got chosen as one of the "younglings" to train!  He was so excited!  Too bad Alan didn't have the camera to take pictures, but I later took these pictures of pictures that Disneyland wanted me to pay lots of money for.  Ha ha.  They did a really fun job with Darth Vader, Darth Maul, and storm troopers present, as well as several Jedi to help teach the younglings the moves with their light sabers.  Jared even got a certificate when it was over saying he is now a Padawan.  I think it was the best day of Jared's life.  

Darth Vader emerges and encourages the younglings to join him and he will "complete their training"

Jared is given a pep talk by a Jedi

Jared got to have a duel with Darth Maul!

We saw these storm troopers walking around Tomorrowland

Astro blasters aka "the Buzz ride"

Jared pointed to this statue and said "It looks like Walt Disney is force choking someone."  Ha ha!  He is such a funny kid!

Jared and Maggie went on all the big rides and loved them!  Maggie loved Space Mountain and Pirates and Thunder Mountain, and Jared loved Star Tours and Indiana Jones the most (Maggie wasn't tall enough for Indi.)


These next photos are from our day in California Adventure.  I didn't take as many pictures here, but we had a blast.  We were able to go on the new Radiator Springs Racers three times, and Jared went on California Screamin' eight times, switching off with Alan and me (thanks to Switch Passes!)  Maggie went on Tower of Terror twice with Alan and keeps talking about how fun it was (although I think she was actually pretty scared.)  Jared and I went on Tower of Terror just once, and I lost one of my expensive (non-disposable) contacts on that ride, so that pretty much turned me off to it.  I had to walk around with only one contact in the rest of the day and got a bit of a headache from it.

The Mater ride--not really worth the line

King Triton's carousel

Jellyfish ride--not worth the line, but Maggie loved it.  

This was seriously the best trip ever!  Jared and Maggie were troopers (with only a little bit of grumpiness here and there), and Jared was big enough to go on everything, and Maggie was big enough to go on everything but two rides.  Jared's favorite ride in California Adventure was California Screamin', and Maggie's was the Ariel ride and the "elevator ride" (Tower of Terror--yeah, right.)

I'm already feeling the post-trip blues and longing for our next trip to Disneyland (probably two or three years out when Evelyn is big enough to enjoy it, too).  I was also bummed that some of my favorite rides were closed this trip (Splash Mountain, Peter Pan, and Soarin' over California), so I can't wait to go again!

February

This is me trying to get Evy to sing "Once There was a Snowman," which she has gotten so good at.  I guess the camera is a big distraction for her.  :)

We had a very busy February!  Alan and I had something going almost every night this month.  Not too much of it was picture-worthy.  However, there were some things that were picture-worthy, but I forgot to take pictures!  Sheesh.  

We had our fun fondue night with the Stouts.  I really love fondue (and I also love the Stouts!), so this is a favorite tradition of ours to host everyone at our house and eat yummy food.  This year I made peanut butter fondue, chocolate fondue, and cheese fondue.  

Another exciting thing was that Alan's sister Amanda married her sweetheart Todd this month.  We are so excited to have them married and have more cousins for our kids!  We love them and their little family.  

 This was Jared's first year to make his own Valentine box. In past years he has just decorated a paper sack or something at school.  Thank goodness for Google Images!  I'm kind of a dummy when it comes to arts and crafts, but this was simple enough for even me to help him with.  :)  Jared was the winner this month for his class in reading the most minutes for their reading contest.  That meant that he and all the other class winners got to go on a special field trip with the principal to Chick-Fil-A! (This is the third year in a row that Jared has done this and been the winner for his class.  He reads sooooooo much!  Lately he has been flying through Star Wars chapter books and also the Calvin and Hobbes books. He requests to go to the library at least once a week.)

This is Maggie in one of her Hawaiian dress-ups.  Maggie has grown up so much lately!  In February she got her kindergarten shots and check-up, and I have registered her for kindergarten next year!  I am amazed at how much she has learned lately.  She writes her name very legibly (MAggiE--we need to work on lowercase letters--ha ha), is working on writing her other letters, and she is just beginning to read.  I think in the next couple of months that reading will "click" for her and she'll be off!  :)  I'm so proud of her.

A few new things for January

Cute Evelyn

Whenever I am folding laundry, Evelyn likes to put Maggie's and/or Jared's underwear on her head and call it a "hat." Maggie decided to join in the fun this time.  Crazy girls.

So, a few new things have happened for us this January.  One is that Jared got glasses!  After some frustrating lack of communication with Jared's elementary school, I finally had his eyes screened at his primary care doctor to see if I needed to take him to an optometrist.   (The school tested his eyes twice but wouldn't let me talk to the school nurse about it!  "Oh, no. Don't worry. She'll call you if there's a problem.") He was a bit reluctant at first to admit he needed glasses, but I think now that he has them he is excited.

He doesn't need to wear them all the time--mostly just during school and if he wants to see better during a movie or something.  Doesn't he look handsome?

Alan also went to see the optometrist with Jared and ordered contact lenses for the first time!   Today is only his second day wearing them, but he has loved having peripheral vision that's not blurry.  :)  Hopefully contacts will continue to work well for Alan.  I sure think he looks handsome with or without his glasses on. (Wow, we have lousy vision genes in our family, don't we?)

 Another change in our house is that Jared and Maggie both got moved to their very own bedrooms in the basement!  (They had previously been sharing a very small bedroom on our main floor.)  I moved them to the basement about 6 months earlier than I had originally planned, but I think I was just so fed up with their shared room always being messy (there was not enough space to put all their stuff!) and the kids complaining about not having their own space.  I told Alan that I thought about 80% of the problems Jared and Maggie had with getting along were because they shared their bedroom, so we decided to move them down to the basement even sooner!  They have been down in the basement for two weeks now, and things are going well.  We have adjusted our furnace fan to make our basement a bit warmer now, and I think the kids like having their own space.

 Jared's new bedroom (not the cleanest in these pictures.)  I had fun buying some new things to decorate his walls.

Jared's bedroom does not have a built in closet, so we had to improvise with this wardrobe (our old coat closet we used before we built one into our kitchen.)

 Maggie's new bedroom.  This bedroom set was the set I used when I was growing up.  Maggie was thrilled to get some princess/Frozen decor.

Maggie always has her clothes for the next day laid out on her bed (complete with panties).  She is such a cutie.  

The third thing that is exciting (well, for me!) is that starting next week I am going to take an adult ballet class!  Alan has been saying that I need to have a "night off" every week where I do something for myself, so I found this adult drop-in class where I pay per class (so it's ok to miss if something comes up).  It's a bit expensive, so I feel bad about that, and I'm also worried that I'm so out of shape that I won't have what it takes anymore!  Yeah, it's been about 15 years since I have done serious dancing--sheesh!  Ha ha.  But the class description said it was for people who have danced a lot previously and have missed it in their lives, so I will try to be patient and gentle with myself.  I'm so excited, and I'm grateful that it was Alan's idea to have me do something for myself.  He is such a wonderful, sensitive husband, and I do admit that, as much as I ADORE my children, I have been kind of burned out lately with all the stresses that go along with mothering.  I'm sure I'm the only one out there who feels that way, right?  

Here's to ME having some "me time!"

Christmas Break Fun

After a pretty mild December, we finally got some snow right in time for Christmas!  

Evelyn loved playing in the snow for the first time (well, until her mittens soaked through and her hands got all wet.)  

Jared pulling Maggie

We made a mini-snowman.  Either I was too impatient, or the snow wasn't sticky enough to make a really big snowman.  

Evelyn crying because she's cold

On New Year's Eve we went with Alan's sister Angela to the zoo because it was a free day.  Seriously, I must be a glutton for punishment.  While we were eating breakfast that morning, our outdoor thermometer read -1 degrees!  Then while we were driving up in the car, it was 7 degrees. When we got to the zoo and got out of the car, it was so windy from a canyon wind that I said, "Ok, maybe I was wrong and maybe this was a mistake." However, when we were done with our zoo visit, it was finally warm--17 degrees!  Ha ha.  We were prepared, though.  We bundled up, and the kids wore snow pants and all their snow gear.

First stop--the gorilla house.  It was warm (and smelly) inside.  

 We spent most of our time in the reptile house/small animal house, where Maggie stripped off all her snow gear one by one because it was so warm inside.

This particular snake was active and saying hello to all of us.

The tiger was my favorite animal this time.  I love this picture with Maggie in it.  

Evy and the leopard

I was sad that the African animals weren't out (zebras, giraffes, and lions) but really, I think we got to see everything else, including the elephants!  Alan even admitted that he had fun and was glad we went.

We had a fun Christmas break.  Besides going to the zoo and playing in the snow, we went to the aquarium twice, played with cousins, and had a fun New Year's party with the Curtis family.  I never heard the kids complain that they were bored.  :)

...However, this mommy is a little ashamed to admit that she was glad when school started up again.  :)