It's Christmas Eve!

It's here and it's official - it's Christmas Eve! I'm at work tonight and it's a (knock-on-wood) slow night here in the ICU. I feel like I somewhat earned this more relaxing night since I ran my tail off last night here. I'm amazed at how excited I am for Christmas this year. I can't wait to wake up tomorrow morning with the girls and watch them open their presents. I can't believe how amazing it is to be their mother. Does it ever just hit you like that? Like, you're sitting there watching your little ones argue over a toy and you realize, hey, I'm a MOM and these are my CHILDREN. When did I get so grown up? Or so lucky? I have always loved children. Having my own children has been the very best thing that has ever happened to me. They are my favorite Christmas gifts.

Holiday Fun

Emily. We stayed at the Festival of Trees until we hit nap time and we hit it hard.

Gwen and Noah got manicures. Gwen got blue fingernails and Noah got "monster green".

Here they are copying the kids on stage. Gwen would watch the dancers and try to do exactly what they were doing then Emily would copy Gwen.

Gwen could watch the dancers forever. Just don't ask her to sit, she has to participate.

Emily loved watching the dancers this year. Last year she was barely walking, this year she was dancing along with the music.

Emily loved this seal on the floor at the Festival of Trees. She wouldn't leave it. She danced on it and jumped on it.

Gwen spent three days watching the Barbie movie about the Nutcracker. She loved it and was so excited that there were nutcrackers at the Festival. She really liked these big ones and told us that she was going to cast a spell on him and make him smaller so she could dance with him.

Emily all bundled up for our celebration of lights in downtown. It was cold but beautiful.

Emily wanted to climb in the reflecting pool. I think she misses her swimming pool.

Gwen with the floating "Jesus Family" in tha background.

I can't believe that it's only December 8th and we've already had so much fun this holiday season. Thanks in no part to my new job where I've been able to work an extra shift each week. Those extra hours mean that I'm making about a third more than what I was at my old job. Today I paid off our credit card and for the first time I'm not worried about the cost of Christmas. This job is MUCH harder than my old job so I feel like I more than earn those extra bucks. I've also learned that anything can change in an instant so I'm not getting too comfortable just trying to be smart with the money still, like paying off debt and saving for a down payment on our next house.

It does feel really nice to be able to do these super fun things together without the worry. We took the train downtown on December 1st for the first night of Hannukkah and had dinner together and saw all the lights at Temple Square. We also went with Laura, Noah, and Max to the Festival of Trees. That's one of our very favorite Christmas activities. I love seeing all the pretty trees and watching the dancers and singers. Gwen sat on Santa's lap and asked for cardboard boxes. That came out of the blue. We had been talking about using all the boxes from the Christmas presents and painting them and turning them into houses for her princesses. That must have stuck in her brain because that's what she wants for Christmas. Cute kid. Emily refused to sit on Santa's lap but did like the candy cane that she got from him. She also likes pointing out Santa and saying "ho, ho, ho." Jonathan and I got a sitter and went with some of my family to see the latest Harry Potter at the IMax for my dad's birthday. We only see like one or two movies a year, so that was fun. Tomorrow Jonathan and the girls are going to the Dicken's Festival in the early afternoon while I sleep because I have to work all night tonight. On Friday, Gwen and I are going with Heidi, Sam, Jami, and Grandma to a Christmas ballet, just us girls. Later this month we're taking Gwen to see a Voice Male concert at Abravanel Hall. I'm loving this December.

Halloween

Halloween is the only good thing about summer being over. Gwen has been getting geared up for the "big day" for months. Last fall she found Grandma Buckholts' witch hat and since then has wanted to be a scary witch for Halloween. We found her a black witchy dress to wear and some striped tights to go with Grandma's witch hat. Grandma even found her a witch broom and a cauldron. It's been the perfect costume. It seems that witches are very popular this year, or at least I'm noticing them more because Gwen is one. We went to a trunk-or-treat last night at Grandma's church and it seemed like nearly every other little girl was a witch. That doesn't seem to bother Gwen at all. In fact she loves all her fellow witches and likes to point out which ones are nice and which ones are mean based on their costumes. Emily is being a cat for Halloween and despite months of coaching has yet to give us a good meow. She also hates that I painted her nose black and immediately rubbed it off.

The New Job

I started working this past month at the ICU in Jordan Valley hospital. It has been nice to get back to the old grind of working in an ICU. I had forgotten how physically and mentally hard it can be at the ICU. It's been a challenge as I try to remember the things that I haven't had to think about in the last 3 years. I've had to get used to working 12 hour shifts and this week I started working the night shift. The shift lasts from 7pm to 7am. After giving report each shift is about 12 1/2 hours long. We try to take 1/2 hour to eat lunch and sit down but usually that doesn't happen. That's a long day of being on your feet, especially since I've worked the last 3 years usually doing 6 hour shifts. The nice part of the long shifts is that I only work 3 shifts a week instead of 6 days.

I miss all my old friends at the InstaCare and KidsCare, especially the doctors that I worked with there. They are really great people. They would do anything to help someone who needed it. I'm getting to know all the new people around here. It's fun because here in the ICU most of the nurses have similar personalities. We're all a little bit type A and bossy and very particular. So far, I'm enjoying all the learning and the challenge of this new job. I really love getting to know my patients and their families.

Preschool for Gwen

I have been so on the fence about sending Gwen to preschool for the last year. Well, last week in spin class I'm sitting there and I start thinking about Gwen and preschool. I think it finally really hit me that she's going to be in kindergarten NEXT YEAR. She's going to be 4 when she starts school because her birthday is 2 days before the cut-off of September 1st. That means that unless there's another little kid with a birthday on the 29th or 30th of August she'll be the youngest kid in her class. There will be kids in there an entire year older than her with birthdays in September. So, I realized that she's already going to be at an age disadvantage and that most of the kids that start school have been in preschool for at least a year if not more.



I started to look into preschools and they're expensive - very expensive in some cases. Then my working mommy guilt kicked in full blown and I started to feel really bad that I'm not around to home school her like I would like and I don't make enough money to send her to a good preschool. Well, I gave myself a little kick in the pants and talked with some folks about preschool and decided that it was very important to me to have Gwen not at a disadvantage in school and we'd just have to make the money part of it work out. Plus, it would greatly ease my guilt if I knew that someone was teaching Gwen something everyday since I can't be there myself to do it. We applied to Granite school district and I got a call yesterday saying that she's going to start school next Monday at Frost Elementary in the afternoons 4 days a week. Also, we were approved for discounted tuition so yay for being poor, I guess.

Deja vu

So, it would seem that Jonathan and I are just not very creative people. This year for our 5th wedding anniversary we did the EXACT same thing that we did last year. Well, I had something bigger planned but then life happened and although it turns out that we both had the night off, we didn't really have the funds to do anything near what I had been thinking. Our first plan for the evening was to sit at home with the girls and then watch a movie together after they went to bed. This is not entirely different from any other evening this last month. Then we got in the mail some anonymous money (from the people at my ex-work I'm sure) and suddenly we had a little bit of money to be able to have a fun evening out.

Like I said, we're just not that creative, so we went to the State Fair like last year. It was so much fun though. Since I knew it was the only fun thing that we were going to do for our big 5 year anniversary I felt more willing to spend a little bit of money - thank you whoever at InstaCare sent it. We ate deep fried snickers and oreos - it's not as bad as it sounds think doughnut with candy inside. We saw all the animals and Emily would not stop petting them and kissing them, I'm surprised she didn't get sick from all the germs she must have picked up from them. We even stayed for the rodeo which the girls loved. The girls had a blast doing the little helping hands part where they pretend to be farmers. It was the first time Emily was big enough to do something like that and she loved it. She watched big sister Gwen do all the steps and then put her own little Emily flare on it.

I love that Gwen has to dress up everywhere we go. She has to be a princess even when we're going to the fair. She now picks out her outfit to match whoever she's going to be that day. This outfit was supposed to be Princess Tiana from Princess and the Frog and she wanted me to put her hair in a bun. Well, I tried to twist it into a bun and it fell out making it a ponytail and she had a fit. I need someone to give me princess hair classes.

Emily loves being a big kid. She's starting to "talk" more and more. Usually she just copies the tones and inflections of the words we use. She mostly babbles still but it sounds like sentences or phrases. She learned to say sticker and baa and neigh at the fair. Sure, she can say sticker but not please. I think she's just fooling us.

Gwen wanted to plant a tomato this year because she felt they were they best out of all the veggies to choose from. Emily would not plant anything other than a tomato because she wanted to be just like Gwen.

This is Emily saying "cheese" for the camera. She'd never done that before. I love this picture because it does look "cheesy".

My favorite part of the Fair was the rodeo that night. I used to work the rodeos in Draper and Riverton when I was an EMT and I loved them. I guess a part of me likes the violence and the danger of it. Gwen loved the rodeo queen and all the cowboys were wearing pink to support breast cancer awareness. The first event we watched was bareback broncos. I told Gwen that it was a contest between the cowboys and the horses. We loved cheering for whoever won, the horses or the cowboys, and she loved that the cowboys had to hold on so tight with only one hand. We then watched the rest and she was glued to each event. They even had mutton bustin' which is where parents put their little kids on a sheep and see how long they can hold on before falling off. Gwen was so sad when I explained to her that she couldn't have a chance to ride the sheep. She thought it looked like so much fun. You have to enter a lottery and be there each night for your chance to ride because I guess there's a lot of parents wanting to torture their children. Next year she'll probably weigh too much, so I guess we're out of luck. I promised her that she could ride a sheep if we ever get one as a pet. That's not going to happen but it made her feel better.

A New Look and A New Start

Since I feel like I'm starting over again, I felt like my blog needed a new look. I also noticed while looking at my camera today that I have a few pictures from the last couple months that needed to be posted. In the whole mess of everything I never got around to posting about all the fun things that we got to do the last half of this summer.

In July we always go to the Pioneer Days Parade Preview with my sisters and their kiddos. This is definitely the way to do the biggest Utah parade. By late July my kids were parade experts. We loved watching parades and scrambling for candy. Gwen even got to be in a parade this year - the Children's parade. She thought that was pretty neat. Daddy walked with her and they got to wear matching shirts.

At the parade preview our favorite part is always the face painting and the balloon creations. This year Gwen and Kim had princess crowns and Emily had a butterfly on her arm that she could see. Noah had a Batman mask and Mason had a scary spider. Andrew got a bug on his arm and Max got a tiger on his hand.

At the beginning of August, as our last "hurrah" of such a wonderful summer, my parents planned a trip for everyone to the Grand Tetons. It was so much fun. It was a good way for me to try to forget about all the drama in my life at the moment - I was just barely put on suspension right before the trip and was in agony about it. It was my little family's first ever camping trip. Gwen was so good at hiking. We ended up on a surprise 3 mile hike and she was the best little trooper. I swear it's a struggle getting her to walk through the grocery store, but out in the woods she had a blast riding her pretend horsey "Hallo". She'd gallop ahead of everyone and the pause and wait for us to catch up. Some of her little cousins even got into her pretending spirit and would gallop along with her. Imagine her surprise when we ran into a group of real horseback riders at the end of the hike.

Gwen's little imagination is amazing to me. She has a favorite little cousin, Noah, who is just like her in this regard. They see an item and immediately it becomes something else to them. In Noah's case it's usually a sword or a gun or a super hero gadget. In Gwen's case it's usually a wand or a magical princess item. One day she put her underwear on her head and became "Super Girl". She still pretends to be Super Girl but I have talked her into only wearing her "mask" at home. Her super powers are the ability to make a swooshing sound while holding her hand out and it makes people stop and go. It doesn't always work for very long though.

Gwen turned 4 years old on August 28th. We had a swimming party - entirely her own idea but not really a big surprise since except for her 2nd birthday we've always had a swimming party. It was really, really windy that day and it wasn't as fun as we had hoped. The kids froze once the stepped out of the water and the wind tried to blow away all the gifts and guests. That evening, I asked Gwen what she wanted to do and she chose to go to Lagoon with just me while Daddy and Emily stayed home. We rode a couple rides that we hadn't yet like the Dinosaur Drop which she'd been terrified of because it makes this loud stomping noise. I had to hold her and pretty much stick her on the ride while she was screaming but as soon as it started she liked it. I told her she was braver and bigger now that she was four and could handle scary rides. She liked that idea and then made me measure her while waiting in line before each ride that night to see if she had gotten bigger. Her cake was also her own idea. She wanted her favorite little princesses to have a swimming party too. See how relaxed they are in their pool?

This morning I had to go start my paperwork at my new job (yay!) and when I got home the girls were dancing around to the soundtracks for High School Musical 1, 2, and 3. They were using our ice cream scoop and mixer as microphones. Even little Emily loves to put on a show. Last night Gwen was watching a Dora the Explorer about different jobs and at the end Dora asks "What kind of job do you want when you're grown up?" Gwen answered that she wanted to be a show dancer. When I'm exercising to videos at home in the morning Gwen loves to come and do it too saying that she's doing dancer stretches.

Where to Start?

So, many of you have probably been wondering why I haven't updated my blog in nearly 2 months. Well, it's not from a lack of things happening in my life right now. I just didn't think that I could mentally sit and write it all down until I knew more about the ending of the story. You see, I need to be in control of things and this last month things have been so far out of my control that it has really been a trial. Well, here's the story:

During one seemingly innocent shift at the KidsCare in July, the day before my 30th birthday to be exact, I accidentally mis-entered a child's vital signs in the computer. It basically comes down to the fact that I forgot to multiply a respiratory rate by 2. The doctor noticed my error and I redid the vital signs and entered the correct info in the electronic chart. I didn't think anything about it after that. That is until a week later when my manager calls me at 9:30 during my shift and tells me I've been placed on suspension and I can't come into work. Somehow this very minor mistake, which was corrected, and resulted in no harm to anyone, came to the attention of my manager who alerted the KidsCare's lead nurse, Terry.

Well, the KidsCare and InstaCare have been heavy on nurses lately and everyone's hours have been cut and things have been very tense. So they make me wait nearly a week and won't give me any reason for the suspension and I'm physically ill from all the stress. It turns out that Terry, who for some reason doesn't like me anyway, and my manager cook up this whole story of me falsifying the child's records and accuse me of wanting him to die and not being a very good nurse or person for that matter and fire me. Just like that I am out of a job. Jonathan has had no luck finding a job for the last 3 months as well, so we're both unemployed and oh yeah, without any health insurance now. Awesome. Not only that, but I loved my job. I loved the people that I worked with and the patients. I was lost without that job. I have never felt so destroyed before.

I appeal the decision of course, I was fired for something that I didn't do but the HR department drags their feet and it's 2 weeks before I even get to meet with them. My brother-in-law and sister help me write out a great appeal and I feel really good about it. I finally get to meet with the COO - chief operating officer of the division and tell him what really happened. I think the meeting went well and they promise to let me know their decision in 4-5 days (it's been 10 now and still no word). Now, I'm feeling like it doesn't matter if I ever hear from them again. Who would want to work for a company that makes things up and fires you for them then doesn't keep their word?

Well, not me. Especially since I got a phone call today with a job offer. I have been applying to a bunch of places and had 2 interviews this week. I accepted a position with Jordan Valley Medical Center working the night shift in the ICU - for 4 bucks more an hour than what I was making at the KidsCare. Working the night shift will be hard but I feel like I'll still be able to see my girls each day, where as if I was working the day shift I'd be gone 3 entire days a week out of their lives. It will be great to get back into the ICU. I feel like that's where a good nurse can really make a difference in a person's outcome. It's an answer to so many prayers, mine and others.

One thing that I have learned from all this mess is that I am not alone. Driving home from the meeting where they fired me I felt so lost and so alone that I cried and cried. Then I prayed that Heavenly Father would be with me and that I could know that things would be okay. It took a couple days but soon I really felt that Heavenly Father was watching out for me. I knew that I needed to let go of the control and give it to Him. When I did that I could feel peace and then focus as I looked for jobs - always with a prayer that He would lead me to where I was most needed and where I could do the most good. I have felt through this whole thing that I would land on my feet. I have also learned that I can lose my job and a part of what I think is my identity and that I still have everything that's most important in this life. I have my family and no stupid lead nurse or manager can take that away from me.

I have the world's best mother who came over right away when I called her sobbing on the freeway as I drove home and helped me make plans and reassured me that life would be okay while things sorted themselves out. I have an awesome father who, despite this whole thing dragging up past dramas from his own professional life, gave me blessings and advice and really helped me with my perspective. I have 4 wonderful sisters who were so good and helping to distract me and build me back up from the broken heap that I was. I have a husband who kept telling me that things would be okay and got a job working in a factory. I have two beautiful daughters who loved having Mommy around all the time and never let me forget who I go to work for in the first place. My family is what's MOST important.

June's Over?

Jonathan and his favorite cousin Josh who lives here in Salt Lake and drove up to speak at the funeral. They have a beautiful 6 month old little girl.

Emily and Gwen eating their funeral lunch provided by the local Relief Society. It was yummy.

Daddy's birthday cake. Gwen helped me a lot with it this year.

Gwen and Emily blogging about their days.

Wow, that went by quickly. So, looking back at my month of June this year I realize that I REALLY love summer. It feels like this is the time of year that I finally come alive. All winter long I just mope around inside trying to get through the cold and the dark. Summer is so fun. I spend so much time outside with my family doing fun things like the zoo, lagoon, swimming, or going to the park. I love it. It's like I have to squish in all the fun things I can so that I can make it through the long days of winter ahead. Jonathan's kind of the opposite of me. He loves the snow and cold and can't stand it when it's too hot. He never really got the snow when he was growing up in California so it still seems magical to him although he doesn't like to drive in it.

Well, anyway, this last month Jonathan celebrated his 31st birthday. Most of my family was out of town, so we just did fun things with our little family. We like to have "Birthday weeks". We celebrate our birthdays for a week instead of just one day. All week we try to nice things for the birthday person and spend extra time with them. This year we spent a day at Lagoon doing their water park since Jonathan loves water parks and I don't. We hadn't been to one together so it was about time. The kids love splashing around in the kiddie area and Jonathan got to ride all the slides while I watched the kids. The only down side was when someone stole Emily's shoes. Who steals a baby's shoes? That's just plain mean. On his actual birthday we ate fancy expensive hamburgers for lunch and then my dad took Jonathan out to a movie while I baked his cake and watched the girls. Hmmm, maybe there's a theme here of me watching the girls while Jonathan gets to do the fun things? Why not, it was his birthday week.

Later that month, Jonathan's last living grandparent, his Grandma Olsen passed away. I was able to get a day off work and we all drove up to Worland Wyoming for the funeral. It was a 10 hour car ride that I'm not anxious to ever repeat. The girls did great it was just so long and boring. It was nice to get to see some more of Jonathan's side of the family though. The girls love their Cookie Grandma and getting to see her for a couple days was their favorite part.

We just celebrated Independence Day and this year it was on a Sunday which in Utah means that the celebrating gets pushed to Saturday and Monday because not many people do anything on Sunday. We didn't do anything too big because Gwen is terrified of fireworks. We went to Murray City parade on Saturday morning and that was fun. We also had dinner with all my sisters and their kids on Sunday.

Summer Fun!

We are going to have the funnest summer EVER! We have season passes to Lagoon - thanks to an awesome Christmas present from my parents and we have year passes to both the Hogle Zoo and the Living Planet Aquarium too. Now when you add in the fact that our condo's pool opens this week I doubt that there will be an afternoon without something fun to do all summer. We've already been getting good use out of our passes. We've been to Lagoon 4 times and the zoo 3 times in the last 6 weeks. I love the summer. Now, if only the rain would stop so that we could go swimming.


Here's Gwen showing you her "pet bird" that she found at the zoo. Her little imagination is so good these days. She is constantly being different people and playing with imaginary friends and pets. We've really tried to cut back on her TV watching when we are home and it's so fun to hear her pretend playing instead of just laying in front of the TV letting her brain go to mush.

I have a picture in here of Gwen kissing the animals through the glass at about this same age. Here's Emily kissing the monkey. She loves anything furry that's down on her level. The zoo is so fun for her because not only can she see the big animals but she can spot some of the more active little ones too. She wants to be right up next to them though, so she doesn't like it if the animal is out of her reach.

We went last week with Sam and Jami and Heidi. They have music at the elephant encounter and Gwen loves to pretend that she's a beautiful dancer on a stage. I'm so glad she has cute cousins that can pretend right along with her.

Of bugs and gardens.

Gwen has one thing in this world that terrifies her: BUGS. All bugs except for some reason butterflies. She has nightmares about them and wakes up screaming that they're crawling all over her. Even after watching Bugs Life a couple times, ants still make her freeze on the spot and scream for her life. She's confused that the nice ants on the show are blue and the ones outside are black. Crazy Pixar for not keeping the ants ant colored. To try to combat this fear and to try to get her to eat more veggies, I decided to start a garden this summer. We have no place for a garden so my mom agreed to let me plant one in her pet-free backyard. We have already started the seeds inside and they're slowly taking over my kitchen. We've even had our first encounter with a "Eeek, SNAKE!" "No, that's a worm friend Gwen. They eat dirt and make our garden grow bigger." "Oh, I will watch him eat his yummy dirt dinner . . . and he will not eat me . . . right?" Wish us luck. This adventure might just provide more nightmare fuel for her little imagination.

Disneyland! or Bisney-go-land!

We made it back from our first family trip. The Universe continued to try to get us and our bad luck kept showing up during the trip but we stuck it out and had some very fun times and I think it was very worth it.
The first day started off with us all in the new van ready to go and then me realizing that the folder I had put in the car with some of Gwen's favorite movies was missing. It had been in the van the night before but was missing that morning. Now after a whole week of looking for it everywhere I really think that it was probably stolen out of the van - which had been left unlocked - oops. That makes me sad because there were about 10 of her favorite movies in there and it's going to take us a couple years of searching for deals on the internet to replace them. Well, luckily we had some dvds with kid shows on them courtesy of Aunt Heidi and that kept them very busy. That first day we drove down to Las Vegas where we stayed in a 4 star hotel. We got there at 3:00 and checked in and then found our room. Vegas is not very fun with little kids. Our hotel was on the strip but about 8 miles south of the major part of it. It was really big and had a movie theater and bowling alley in it and a bunch of restaraunts and a big pool. We let Daddy rest his eyes - he had done all the driving - and the girls and I went swimming. It was warm but very windy. They had a little heated poll that was circular and had 2 levels one that was only a foot deep and one that was 3 feet deep for the little kids. Emily and Gwen had a great time there. After swimming we ate at the casino's buffet which I thought was about par for a buffet but Jonathan of all people didn't like it. He actually found that he doesn't like seafood gumbo and it was the first time I've seen him push something away after one bite. The girls liked their dinner, though. I love buffets because Gwen can have macaroni, mashed potatoes, and olives for dinner, and Emily can have noodles and spaghetti sauce--and ice cream for dessert for both. After dinner, we headed back to the room. It was 6:30 Vegas time, so 7:30 home time, and the girls were ready for bed. We had to be the only people in Las Vegas going to bed at 6:30. Since we had gone to bed so early, we woke up nice and early, got ready, and drove the rest of the way where we met Grandma and Grandpa Rail for lunch. We got there a little early, and since there was no play yard, Emily entertained herself by climbing on anything she could find. We had planned to get the key to Grandma and Grandpa's house so we could stay there on our last night while they were on vacation. But as we found out the next morning, our bad luck spread: Grandma had slipped on the stairs while vacuuming and broken her wrist. More on that later.






That evening, we finished our ride to Disneyland and checked in at our motel, which was about a 20-minute walk from the front entrance of Disneyland, which wasn't all that bad considering it was only five minutes further than the parking strucure. We had dinner--just barely beating the dinner rush--at the Rainforest Cafe where Jonathan and I first met. The fake rainstorms terrified the kids, but it was fun to be there and see where it all began.



That night, I gave Gwen her last dose of antibiotics for the Strep Throat I had given her the previous week, and about 20 minutes later, she had started to break out in hives. Luckily, I had packed some Benadryl, so I gave her a dose and she fell asleep, even sleeping through the incredibly loud fireworks. The next morning, the hives were back, so before heading to Disneyland, I snuck off to a local grocery store to stock up on Zyrtec and more Benadryl.

We got off to Disneyland just fine, with Gwen a little bit sleepy and grumpy from the medications and the hives. I got a bit teary-eyed as we walked through the front gates together. I have always loved Disneyland because it has always been a fun place that I have been able to share with my family throughout the years. Jonathan and I spent the three days before our wedding there with our family and friends. It's always been a special place for me and I have always dreamed of being there with my own kids. It was a dream come true for me and I really appreciated all the things that had made that moment possible.

Gwen really liked the Snow White wishing well. Each day we had to return so that she could sing along with Snow White and make a wish.


Gwen was not the bravest little soldier - probably had something to do with being doped up on all her meds - she was even a little scared of the carousel at first. We rode it another 10 times so I think she got over it. Every ride we wanted to go on got deemed "too scary" while we were waiting in line resulting in her being extra clingy and whiney, then the moment the ride was over she would loudly declare how fun it was.


Emily was much braver than her big sister, maybe because she's too little to get all worked up about it. The faster and crazier the ride the more she would squeal and love it. She's such a little dare devil.



Gwen had been talking about going on the teacups for months before our trip. We had done a lot of research to get her ready for the trip. We had watched videos of other people going on rides and she thought the teacups would be especially fun I guess because she would talk about it every day. When we finally got in line to ride them she declared them too scary. We forced her on them and after the ride started she decided it was her favorite ride and it was the ride we went on the most. Luckily, the line for it moves really fast because as the day went on the girls became less tolerant of waiting.

We tried to wait in the line to meet the princesses. We lasted about 45 minutes and moved only about 20 feet. We decided that since we had plans to eat lunch with the princesses we would just wait for that instead.


Gwen loved meeting the characters and was never scared of them. She knew who most of them were and loved that they wrote their names in her autograph book. Emily liked them too which was surprising because I remember Gwen being scared of mascots at Emily's age. We really liked playing in toon town, but it was getting really crowded and Emily was tired so we didn't spend too much time there.

We did get to meet The Mouse which they have worked really hard to make the wait for it easier on the kids. They have things to look at and do while you wait and it didn't feel like we had to wait long at all. If only they could do something similar for the lines you have to wait in to meet the Fairies or the Princesses. Those lines are ridiculous.

Daddy wanted a picture of Goofy's car being crashed into the mailbox because it was a good reminder that he's not the only one who has bad luck with driving.


Cheesy Gwen smiles on the Jungle Cruise which was by far the cheesiest ride in the park. I'm glad some of the jokes never change because it's what makes it really fun and familiar.

Okay, Emily did really well on the pirate ride, she loved the jungle cruise, she had a blast on the carousel but she hated the Whinnie the Pooh ride. It was terrifying. Gwen felt the same way. It's a really tame ride but it's dark and the car sways from side to side and it's really loud.


Although his ride is terrifying, it was really fun to meet Pooh and get some hugs while Mommy took Emily somewhere quiet for lunch.


I can't believe that Eeyore could even get down on his knees but he did just to give her a good hug.

Gwen loved that Tigger held her book on his nose to sign it and he signed it really messy. That was fun to look at all the autographs and see how they try to make it just like the character would really sign it. I love that Disneyland tries to get it all right even those little details.


This was at the end of that first day in Disneyland. Look closely at Gwen's feet. They had swollen so badly that she couldn't wear her shoes and it was hurting her to walk. All day we had been giving her Benadryl every 3-4 hours but it would wear off in about 2 hours and her joints started to swell and she complained of her whole body hurting. I called my doctor friends from the clinic to see if there was anything else we should be doing but they said we were doing it all.


Jonathan in the A-hole. No further comment.


The Pixar Play parade with all the Pixar characters in California Adventure was fun. The girls loved the parades. The one in Disneyland was really fun and Gwen got to dance and interact with the dancers and she loved that. That night Gwen woke up for 3 hours during the night with bad itchies and body aches. She started to run a fever so I called our insurance and got names of clinics down there where I should be able to take her. Then I called those clinics and no one took our insurance. We could have taken her to an ER but would have to pay $400 as a co-pay and up to 80% of the visit. We could only afford that as a last effort so I called one last doctor friend and begged him to call in a steroid to try. That afternoon we gave it to her and by the evening she was 50% better and the next morning nearly back to normal. Yay for that. I hate to think of what we would have done if it hadn't worked. It would have been cheaper to fly me and the girls home to go to our local hospital than to pay for a visit there.

Waiting in line for the fairies. Waiting in line is hard for adults. It's really hard for a one-year-old. That morning it was overcast and a little cold but by lunch time it was sunny and warm again. We had awesome weather while we were there.



Gwen sort-of knew the other fairies, but she was very excited to meet Tinker Bell. She even wore her Tinker Bell shirt to show her. Luckily we talked her out of showing off her Tinker Bell panties. I'd hate to be thrown out of Disneyland for indecent exposure.


Back on the horsies. By this time we figured out how to do the line ride. We would have Jonathan wait in line while we went on the teacups or the carousel, then when he got near the front we'd go tell the Cast Members that we had a "potty emergency", they'd let us go in through the exit and presto--No waiting in line for the little ones!

Lunch with Ariel in Ariel's Grotto was fun, even though it was just before we found out that Gwen's prescription was approved. It was expensive - the lunch, but very worth it and probably the fanciest meal I'v had in a year or more. The restaurant was much fancier than you would expect from a kid-friendly restaurant, and grown-ups so inclined could even order alcoholic drinks with dinner for an extra charge. Even the kids' menu was pretty fancy, with fancy pasta (rather than mac'n'cheese) and a "meatball lollipop", so the presentation was a bit intimidating.

Aside from the picture with Ariel at the entrance, they also had other princesses wandering through the restaurant, stopping at each table for more signatures and pictures. Emily LOVED the Princesses, and kept touching the soft costumes. Unfortunately, our still camera and been acting up lately, so it just shut off before we could get pictures with Belle, Cinderella, and Gwen's personal favorite: Mary Poppins, justified as "the princess of the chimney sweeps". Fortunately, we were able to record Belle spending more time on ornate curlicues than her actual name, Emily dumping her plate for Cinderella (Where are Gus and Jaq when you need them?), and Mary Poppins making sure that Gwen doesn't slouch and smiles for her mummy.

That night, after a long nap back in the motel and getting Gwen her miracle medicine, we watched the fireworks show. Gwen loved seeing Tinker Bell fly above the castle, but she got frightened when they started playing clips from the Haunted Mansion. Emily started falling apart soon after, but we were packed in pretty tight with the rest of the crowd on Main Street, so we couldn't go anywhere. Thankfully, we were able to pacify Emily with suckers, and Gwen just snuggled in during the rest of the fireworks. It's a good thing I've been working out so much recently because for most of the 25 minute firework show I had a daughter on each hip. 45 pounds of Gwen and 22 pounds of Emily gets REALLY heavy after a few minutes.

Jonathan's niece Kat came up and hung out with us on Friday. It was nice to have another set of hands to help wrangle the girls. It's kind of interesting to think that Gwen has a cousin who's about the same age as her Aunt Megan.



We had been trying to get Gwen interested in Dumbo's Flying Circus from day one, but each time we mentioned it she would get very adamant about not going. With Kat to help, we were finally able to get her to go on it, and as with all the other Fantasyland rides, she declared it to be fun a few seconds into the ride.


Back in California Adventure, we went to A Bug's Land, which had kiddie rides geared to even younger kids than Fantasyland. Emily fell asleep on the way over, which was nice. Situations like these were the only naps she got while we were at Disneyland, so she'd only nap for 15-20 minutes at a time twice a day, compared to her usual hour-and-a-half naps twice a day.

Jonathan and Gwen rode in the ladybugs. It was a lot like the teacups, except you couldn't turn the wheel in the middle to make your ladybug spin faster. Gwen was okay with that.


Heimlich's Chew-Chew Train. As the caterpillar-shaped train passed by the oversized-food scenery, they'd spray out scents of the represented food. The ride is very tame only going in a circle very slowly so it wasn't scary at all claimed Gwen.


Flik's Flyers involved food boxes on the arms of a centrifuge. It was fun for the girls to look out at the scenery and see how high up they were. This is a very MySpace-ish picture.

Like I mentioned above, Grandma Rail had broken her wrist earlier in the week, so that put a damper on their vacation plans and they were home when we went to their house Friday night. We got to talk with them a little bit Friday night, and Jonathan found some storybooks that he grew up with that Grandpa was nice enough to let us take home. We had pancakes for breakfast, and they spent the morning watching Disney VHS tapes while Jonathan and I loaded up the car.

We left Grandma and Grandpa Rail's house around 11:00, and after filling up and grabbing some gas-station sandwiches for lunch, we were on our way. We were down to half a tank in Mesquite, so we filled up again there, then stopped at a Village Inn in St. George for dinner. Pushing onward, we made it to Springville before we had to fill up again, where we changed the girls into their PJs so we could take them straight from the van to their beds when we finally got home close to midnight. After all that vacation and the all-day drive, Sunday truly was a day of rest, but not enough before we had to go back to school and work on Monday.

We really could have used a vacation after our vacation.