Taylorsville Dayzz

We went to Taylorsville city's annual festival with the annoying name of Taylorsville Dayzz this last weekend. It was too hot to go earlier in the day. The temperature has been over 100 degrees the last few days. We ventured out after dinner, but so did everyone else. We did the pony rides and petting zoo. Jonathan went on the Gravitron. I waited in line for over 20 minutes for soft serve ice cream, then did it again when Jonathan wanted one as well. By then, the crowds were getting insane, it was almost ten o'clock, and we dreaded fighting the traffic home after the fireworks. Instead, we left prior to the fireworks and camped out nearby in front of my parents' home to watch them minus the crowds. A teenage couple in a truck, maybe kids of the neighbors, pulled up and parked near us. Emily climbed up in the back of their truck and sat right by them during the whole 20 minutes of fireworks. She sang them songs and probably spoiled their "romantic" evening. Way to go, Emily.

Summer is for swimming

We have always loved swimming in our family. It's something my girls have done since before they could walk. They love being in the water and this summer is no exception. The best thing about living in our townhouse is the swimming pool. It's big, heated, well maintained and usually fairly empty of people. This summer, we've already had a friend party for Gwen there and a family party. Plus, we've been by ourselves at least three or four times a week. Gwen has been swimming independently since last year. She's as good, if not better, than me. Emily has started not using any floatation devices this year.  She is good where she can touch and can swim to the side of the pool if she jumps in where she can't reach. Gwen has been watching a lot of synchronized swimming on the computer and has been practicing back flips, handstands, and having me throw her. She's so fun to swim with.  A week ago, she punctured her eardrum with a q-tip though, and has to wear silicone ear plugs to keep the water out. They work well, so she's excited to get more swimming in this year. I'm glad they work because I cannot imagine a summer without swimming.

So, Let's try this again.

I got an iPad. Yup, I don't own a smart phone, but when my beloved Kindle Fire stopped charging, I decided to splurge and get the iPad. It's been nice to have. It should be great to get back and do some blogging which will be easier now that I can upload directly from the iPad without having to wait to use the laptop and find the cords for the camera.

 So, it's 2013. Things that are new: we adopted a kitten last September. Her name is Zelda and the kids love her.

We love having her in our family. She's fairly tolerant of the kids and the dog. She loves to play and sneaks outside every chance she gets. Sometimes we put a leash on her and drag her around outside to let her explore.

Pictures!

I got a new laptop for Jonathan a few weeks ago and got to use it today for the first time to upload pictures. We've been using a little notebook computer for a couple years and it's nice to have a full screen again to blog with. We got the laptop for when I travel to China in a couple months with my sister and her family to bring home my niece. With the laptop, I'll be able to skype with my family from half-way across the planet. I love that we will be able to do that. Well, as promised: PICTURES:

Emily and Gwen love to make silly faces.  They also love to get their sticky little fingers on my camera lens.  I don't always notice until after taking the pictures.  That's why some look hazy. 

Daddy taught Gwen how to play more advanced games on the Wii like Epic Mickey.  Much to my dismay, she's actually fairly good at it.

Gwen taking her own picture.  Getting ready for Facebook?

I made mummy dogs for Halloween this year. They were fun to eat.

We went to the Discovery Gateway Museum for their Halloween party.  Emily and Gwen were excited to meet Glenda the Good Witch since they went as Dorothy and The Wicked Witch.  They had been watching the Wizard of Oz and loved to get dressed in their costumes and act out the movie as they watched it.  When we went to the Gateway mall, there was an international conference for NuSkin. We kept getting stopped by hordes of Japanese people who wanted to take the girls pictures.  Gwen and Emily loved the attention and really hammed it up for everyone.  There were seriously hundreds of people there taking their photos.  I'm sure my girls are famous in Japan now.

Gwen took this picture of Emily being the grumpy Wicked Witch.

It was such nice weather for Halloween this year.  Last year it poured buckets and the candy was all soggy.  This year I had to work the evening shift but we were all done trunk-or-treating by 6:00 so I had time to run off to work.

We got a big new full-size tree for Christmas this year.  This is the day we decorated it and the only day all season that it was fully decorated.  The kids constantly took off and rearranged all the decorations on the tree.  Emily discovered that she could rub the snowflakes and the glitter would come off and she'd run around the house yelling "faith, trust, and PIXIE DUST" and throwing the glitter.

We met Santa a couple times this year.  Gwen would always panic because she couldn't remember what we told her she wanted for Christmas.  She wanted a Leapster Explorer and a Rapunzel game.  At least that's what Santa was going to bring her whether or not she wanted it.  Turns out that she loved it.  Emily asked for toys.

See her looking at us because she can't remember what to say to Santa.

Our Primary did a Nativity program for our ward party this year.  Gwen got to be an angel - along with all the other girls in the ward that didn't get to be Mary.  She did a great job singing.

Christmas was on a Sunday this year.  We all dressed up in our Sunday/Christmas best for church.

Gwen and Daddy made fig treats that Jonathan remembers making with his mother at Christmas time.

Back to Blogging?

So, I spent a while tonight looking over my past blog enteries and really enjoyed it. I get discouraged when I read other people's blogs and they have really funny and interesting things to say, and I just ramble on about my girls. I decided that I don't care though because this blog is really for me, not other people to read and be impressed with.

So, updates since October:
We had Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. I worked a lot. I did get a sort-of different job at my work. I'm in the float pool. That means that I write down the days I want to work and the hospital calls me and tells me which department in either Pioneer Valley or Jordan Valley Hospital to go to. It also included a fairy nice raise and more steady hours. That means that I don't have to work as many days. I don't HAVE to, but I still work four 12-hour nights a week because the extra money is extra nice.

Jonathan is getting better at being a house-husband-macho. He does all the shopping and cooking. He loves to try new recipes and I doubt we've had the same dinner twice in 3 or 4 months. He gets Gwen to and from school and keeps Emily from destroying the house or herself too much.

Gwen is loving kindergarten. She especially loves her best friend there: a cute boy with glasses named Braxton. She has a hard time telling me what they learned about but she never fails to mention if Braxton got a new haircut or didn't play with her a recess. She's also been participating in an acting class called "Up With Kids". They're going to be putting on a play of Disney's Tangled movie. Gwen gets to be a chameleon named Rainbow. It's really been fun to watch her dance, act, and sing. She looks forward to it all week.

Emily broke her right wrist in December. She was playing at the gym and fell out of there climbing area and landed on her out-stretched hand. That's 3 broken bones in less than 12 months. That's it. No more broken bones, Emily. She is so accident prone I'm sure there will be more doctor's visits in the future. Emily still refuses to potty train. She is adamant about being my baby and wearing diapers forever. She turns 3 next week and we've been telling her for weeks that 3-year-olds go potty in the toilet. I need to find the right bribe for her. She doesn't give in for anything we've tried yet.

I have a bunch of pictures from Halloween and Christmas on my camera I need to upload.

Done with shopping

Bring on Christmas 'cause I'm officially done with all my shopping. We're even ready for Emily's birthday in February. Boo-yah!

The Disney Wonder and Mexican Riviera

After our amazing three days at Disneyland, we went to a new hotel in Los Angeles and met up with my sister Linda, and her family. Grandma and Grandpa flew in from Salt Lake the next morning. We all met in the hotel for breakfast then went off to the Science Museum at USC. It was fantastic. It was free, except for parking, and it was huge. We spent all day there and could have easily spent at least another day or two in just that museum. Plus, there's a natural history museum and a space museum all in the same park.

That night we drove 15 miles which took us an hour and a half (I hate LA traffic) to a Korean BBQ place that Linda and Dave had found the day before. Emily had a major meltdown there which put me in a foul mood. Plus, I popped a whole clove of garlic in my mouth thinking it was a nut or cheese or something. Hey, the table was full of things that I had no idea what they were. Everything that night tasted way too garlicky for some reason. Things got even worse after dinner when Jonathan spent almost two hours looking for a laundromat that was open. He never found one, so it was a good thing there was self-service laundry available on the cruise. The next morning, we dropped off our rental car and took a shuttle to the port where we got on the cruise without a problem. The first thing they did was feed us a yummy buffet lunch.

Emily and Gwen loved to sit in the big windows. All throughout the cruise, Emily would suddenly see a window and say, "We on a boat.". It was as if she had forgotten and then when she looked outside and saw the water she would remember. You really couldn't feel much movement on the boat, so I can see how she could forget we were on a boat.
After lunch we all went to the Cast Away party on the pool deck. There was dancing and the kids all got streamers to wave. Mickey and his friends all came and danced with us and when it was over we were off on our trip and moving away from port.
At dinner, they served the kids fruit in these metal cups. It reminded Emily of the mean Queen in Snow White when she mixes the potion and turns herself into an old lady. She kept drinking her soda out of it and saying she was old and mean.

At meals, we all got to sit at two big tables. We could never sit in the same spots each night, so our servers soon learned just to put the kids cups in the center and we'd arrange them ourselves. I think my kids were like most kids on the cruise and ate the same things the entire trip. For breakfast Emily and Gwen had pancakes and eggs or cereal. For Lunch, Gwen usually ate watermelon and either pizza or a hot dog and Emily had ice cream and french fries. For dinner besides eating tons of rolls with butter, they stuck with watermelon and pizza or macaroni and cheese followed by ice cream. Jonathan and I had a MUCH more varied diet. We got to try escargot and lobster and had delicious steak nearly every night. I loved the food on the cruise.Another part of the cruise that my kids loved was meeting the characters. We loved that about Disneyland, but on the cruise you never had to wait in line long, and sometimes you just ran into the characters in the halls. They also had lots of different clothes for the characters. We saw Minnie Mouse in her cruise outfit (above), her fancy white dress, and in a Mexican dress.

Goofy. He's really tall. Jonathan's standing right next to him and he's 6'1".

Right before getting this picture, Smee accidentally walked into Emily and knocked her down. I guess it's hard to see around that big belly of his. She was really upset and didn't want to stand near him for the picture. She did want to meet Captain Hook though.

Emily is trying to smile in this picture. She looks like she's in pain.

On many nights, after or before dinner, the princesses would be walking around the main lobby. We could go up and have a conversation with them. It was fun to watch the girls just light up when they saw the characters.

The Mickey pool. It's shaped like Mickey's face. My girls were personally responsible for shutting it down twice. I'll let you use your imagination as to why. There was no more swimming in the pools after that, just the ocean.

Fancy night. We didn't pack anything too fancy but it was fun to pretend that we were going to a fancy party. They even had free drinks and the characters were dresses in their nice clothes.

Ran into Pluto in the hall while taking Emily to the bathroom during dinner.

Each night, when you got back to your room, it not only was clean and had the beds all made and ready for you to get in them, but there was a towel animal and chocolate. The kids loved getting to the rooms to see what animal was waiting for them.

It wasn't only the girls who loved meeting the characters. Jonathan was so excited that his all-time favorite character, Stitch, was on the ship.

Lilo and Stitch were actually pretty funny when we met them. Lilo waved her hands in front of the book that Stitch was trying to sign and then Stitch tried to eat the book. The girls thought that was great.

Right after this picture, Gwen ran up to me and told me I just had to feel Donald's bum because it was so soft.

Gwen wanted to know how Jimminy Cricket got so big. I told her it was so we wouldn't accidentally step on him.

Emily and I ran into Peter Pan after dinner one evening. The only good part of being too little to go to the Oceanear's Club without a grown-up meant that we got to run into more characters. All the other kids in our group were over three years old. That meant that their parent's could drop them off in one of two clubs and then go off and enjoy some alone time. I had Emily, who is 2 1/2 and wants to be with the other kids all the time. This meant that I spent much of my cruise in the the clubs with all the kids. My niece, Kim, even remarked to me that it was like I was one of the workers there. I really think that some of the other kids in the clubs thought that was true. At least Jonathan got to do some grown-up things. He even adopted a replacement family for all the trivia games.

Terk.

Emily snuggling one of the "bad guys" from Tangled. He sings the song, "I Have a Dream." Appropriate. Dinner at Animator's Palate. Mickey came out at the end of dinner and danced with all the servers. Chip and Dale in their Mexican outfits. Puerto Vallarta. They had armed guards patrolling the dock making sure all is in order.

The back of the Wonder had Donald hanging from it and one of his nephews trying to cut the rope holding him up.

Our Disney Boat. It's huge. That's it behind a big resort hotel on the beach. It's bigger than the hotel and probably nicer too. In Puerto Vallarta, I ditched my little family and went on an outdoor adventure with my sisters Linda and Megan and my brother-in-law, Joel. More on that in the next post.

Puerto Vallarta is beautiful. It's all lush jungle and sandy beaches. At least the parts of it that I saw were.

A cave in the ocean.

These are the fish that live near that cave. Jonathan and Gwen went on a pirate boat adventure that day and got to go snorkeling. He reports that they saw many of these same fish. They're beautiful.

The beach that we went to. I guess that the movie, "Predator" was filmed on this beach and in this jungle.

There were men out in the water fishing and little kids playing in the water. It looked like a wonderful place to just sit and relax.

One of the mornings on the cruise we got to have a breakfast with some of the characters. It was hard to keep all the kids entertained long enough for them to meet all the characters. We'd already met most of them earlier in the cruise, but my kids love seeing them.

Our wonderful servers also made us funny hats out of our napkins. Gwen got a bow and Emily got doggy ears. Jonathan got a Goofy hat and I didn't get anything.

In Cabo San Lucas, Jonathan, my dad, my brother-in-law Dave, and my nephew Mason, all got to go deep-sea fishing. It was really hot that day. The rest of us went shopping until it got too hot. Linda and I took our kids to a shady beach and had the best afternoon of the entire trip, relaxing in the cool water and playing in the sand. The rest of the group went back to the boat or went to play with dolphins.

Jonathan had fun fishing, but said that it was hot. It made him miss living near the ocean. That night on the cruise it was pirate night. We all got to dress up like pirates and then stayed up late for a pirate themed dance party complete with fireworks and Mickey zipping in to save the day.

The next day we were still in Cabo San Lucas for the morning so some of us took a water-taxi and checked out some of the beaches. My kids begged me to go back to the beach so we took Megan and Joel with us and had another afternoon of fun. Gwen asked if we could get a beach and the ocean near our house.

Emily loves being out on the water but does not like wearing life vests.

This room was on the way to our room. It had a cute soft Mickey hanging on it. Each time we passed by, Emily had to give it a hug and a kiss.

She also loved to hang like a monkey from the hand rails. She can be so cute sometimes. Whenever we'd head back to our room she'd ask "we gettin' out of here?".

In the club they had all kinds of fun visitors. Each of the princesses came and read them a story or took them on an adventure. It was so fun I almost didn't mind being trapped there for so many hours.All the grandkids. From back to front left to right: Sam (6), Mason (9), Kim (7), Noah (5 1/2), Gwen (5), Jami (4), Andrew (3 1/2), Max (3), Emily (2 1/2).

Silly faces.

The entire group.Grandma and Grandpa the grandkids and the Mouse. Thank you to my wonderful parents who made this trip happen.

Out head server, Chatchai from Thailand. We were only really late to dinner twice. I think that's a record for my family. He was amazing.

Our assistant server, Olivia, who kept mixing me up with my sisters, but who had sword fights and tickle fights with the kids to keep them entertained.

The last day of our trip we went to the Aquarium and had a lot of fun there. I should have taken more pictures there, but didn't of course. We met up with Marie and had lunch with her. That night we flew back to Salt Lake and Emily and Andrew slept the entire time. What a great way to end such an amazing trip.