Marvelous May

Tyler gets 1 month per school year assigned to him for vacation time. His first year's break was in Sept of 2007 when I was in my last month of pregnancy with Annie and we didn't really get to travel anywhere. Then he was assigned May '09 for his 2nd year break. So we patiently waited for this vacation time, and I would say we sufficiently partied!

We started it off with my darling nephew's baptism on May 2nd. Here's the one picture I got before my camera battery died. Doh!

Yep, that's my mom & Bob. We were planning on leaving for Disneyland after the baptism, and we knew we wouldn't be in Texas this break, so we invited them to take the trip with us down to So Cal. It turned out wonderfully! We were so glad to have them with us for 2 of our 3 days at the park.

Here's the "before" Disneyland picture of the kids: Just happily admiring Disneyland from the parking lot of our hotel. They were angels the first day. Their eyes were huge with wonder and awe at this new place, they had incredible manners, and they were overflowing with gratitude to be there. By day 3 during nap time, I had 3 tired, overstimulated, and whiny kids... one of which was demanding, "I wanna go on SPACE mountain!" Ah, the joys of parenting. Despite the whining, we still had a blast and would do it again in a heartbeat. Tyler and I even said we'd probably spread out our visit to Disneyland over a week next time... but we'll see.

Okay, how cute was my mom to do their hair like this? I loved it!
But really, where do I even begin? Here are the characters we saw:The princesses did not disappoint. They were completely in character and so sweet with Whitney. Whitney was our adventurous kid--she rode every ride she was tall enough for, and her favorites included Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Tower of Terror (yikes!), and the Haunted Mansion. One thing's for sure--she didn't get her adventuresome nature from me. Cole was Whitney's opposite. Even though he rode the big rides, he much rather preferred riding Small World, Winnie the Pooh, and the Buzz Lightyear Blaster ride.

Whitney got chosen to be a Jedi in training, and she was loving it till Darth Vader & Darth Maul came out on stage. Poor little thing was frightened to tears, so she came back and sat in the audience with us. The only thing Whitney knows about Star Wars is that Lego people play Lego Star Wars on the Wii sometimes. For her to see a real live Darth Vader & Darth Maul was just mind-boggling. It was our first time seeing the show, and we didn't know that the bad guys were really going to come out on stage! Whoops! Sorry Whit.

Here are the kids in Toon Town. Aren't these fake mountains the best?

Here is our obligatory castle picture. Definitely not framing this one... but I guess it's the thought that counts, right?
We planned our trip for a Tues, Wed, and Thurs so the lines wouldn't be too bad. There were more people there than I thought there would be (with swine flu, CA state testing, and a recession going on), but it was still pretty uncrowded. The longest we had to wait in line for a ride was about 45 minutes and that was for the new Toy Story Mania ride (which we loved!). Most of the rides were about 15 minute waits. Not bad.

The Bug's Life section was fun, but I didn't know that there were splash playgrounds over there, so we didn't come prepared with swimsuits and such. Doh!The 3D Bugs Life show freaked out all of our kids... so beware if you have young kids like ours!

And here we are showing what a happy family we are... ...Did you hear that kids? I said HAPPILY ever after...now smile for the camera!! ha ha. It is such a joke getting a picture with our family of 5. Why do we even try?! Especially when the flash isn't on and Annie's hair looks this awesome. One of her braids had fallen out, and the remaining hair is pulled back into a pony tail. YES!

On day 3, Tyler's mom, dad, and brother (who just got home from his mission) met up with us at the park. Here are the 3 guys being manly in their pink tea cup.

And here are the brave Tower of Terror riders...

The day after Disneyland, we went to the beach. Tyler was in heaven because we were at a "real" beach. Apparently our nor cal beaches don't count as real beaches. Whatever...

We spent a few days at Tyler's Grandma's house and celebrated Mother's Day and Linda's birthday there. This picture of Cole below is one of my new favorites. I couldn't find him in all the usual spots around the house, and then finally I looked in great-grandma's bedroom. Here was Cole just lounging on great-grandma's bed with the TV on and snuggling the dog. I had to stop and take a picture because I about died with laughter. "Hi there Mom! I'm just making myself right at home!"

After Mother's Day, we headed over to Tyler's Uncle's house and spent the night. On Monday morning the 11th, Tyler's uncle took out my wisdom teeth in his oral surgery office. I only had 2 upper teeth, so it was a quick and easy procedure. Thankfully Tyler's mom & aunt watched the kids for us. After that, we hit the road and drove up to Utah. I felt great and even drove for a few hours.

Utah was wonderful. Tyler & I have so many great memories of Utah County from dating and our first two years of marriage, so it felt like we were back home. Tyler's sister Marlie drove out from Colorado to hang out with everyone, and we celebrated Dallin's homecoming during the 9 or so days we were there. I know it's cliche to say, but really, the time flew by way too fast.

We played a lot on the tramp:

We hiked the "Y". Even though we had 1 adult per kid, it was not the smartest idea for small kids like ours. I loved the view and the workout though.We hiked a local waterfall... much more do-able with kids and lots of adult helpers. We hiked Mt. Timpanogos Caves with just the big kids. That was the smartest thing we did all trip--not bringing the little ones along. I sounded like a broken record, but I couldn't say it enough that I was so glad we didn't bring the kids on that hike! Thanks to Tyler's mom and everyone who stayed and babysat.

The girl in the blue shirt is Tyler's sister, and the girl in the white shirt is Dallin's friend. We all had a great hike together.

After all the fun, it was time to drive back home. The kids did really great on that long drive and didn't complain at all! I think we made it home in record time...despite having to stop and adjust our malfunctioning luggage rack on top of the van. So yeah, my swimsuit is somewhere on I-80 and we might be missing a few other things too.

Once we got back to nor cal, we enjoyed one last week of being together. We enjoyed a Memorial Day BBQ with my sister and her family, celebrated my sister's birthday, and even went camping locally.

The camping experience wasn't as awesome as our last summer's trip to the Redwoods, but it was still nice being outside together. There were some friendly deer that came by our campground scavenging for food, and Annie was in heaven greeting them, as you can see in this short clip:

Then Tyler got this other video of the kids telling jokes in the tent. Totally hilarious---to a preschooler:

The day we got back from camping, my sister and I went out for a girls' night to San Fran. Tyler was a doll to watch all 6 kids for us till Heidi's husband got off work. On her birthday, I had given her a coupon basically treating her to a G.N.O. with me saying Plan A was to see Wicked and Plan B would be to eat dinner and go shopping downtown.

If you go to the theater on the day of the show, they sell the unsold seats (which are normally $80-$99) for $25 each. Some of the seats they raffle off are "limited view," but that didn't deter us. We put our names in the green raffle bucket with hopes that our names would get drawn, but they didn't!! I was so dejected and embarrassed... so much for that birthday present to Wicked that I wanted to give Heidi! But after the guy finished the raffle, he said to get in line and see what else they could sell us. Luckily for us, we got two front row seats!! We had a fun time and didn't even mind the few seconds when our view seemed "limited."

It was a great show, and I really enjoyed it even though I didn't know anything about it before going. We checked out the Wicked music from the library last week, and Whitney is in love with the songs. She even made herself a bank and is saving up her money so she can go see Wicked with Tyler sometime. She asks all the time what she can do to earn money, and one of the jobs we agreed on is that I'll pay her a penny for every book she reads Annie. So Whitney only has about 2,485 more pennies to earn before she's ready to see Wicked. ha ha...

Wow! There's the whole month of May for ya in one blog post. Congrats if you made it through this whole thing. So basically now we are back to reality with Tyler working like a dog again. May was fun while it lasted though. :)