California Day 4

*By the way, I've decided to add these collages to the beginnings of all of my vacation posts so that everyone can see some pics from the day I'm talking about. I added them to all the days I've blogged already.
Our third day in Disneyland (4th of vacation) was full of exciting things, we were busy, busy, busy! We decided to use it as our "Magic Morning" which means you can get in an hour before the park opens to hit certain rides. Dumbo was our first stop that morning since it is notorious for having the worst line in the park. The kids absolutely loved it and we got the cutest picture of them with my dad. After a few more rides in Fantasy Land and a couple in Tomorrow Land we finally headed over to the Jungle Cruise. We had been waiting for Joey to feel well enough to be with us for that one. Duffy really loved all the animals and, as usual Maisy slept through the whole thing. On our way over there Duffy even got to ride the fire engine, and since he's obsessed with firemen he thought he was pretty awesome.
Then we headed to Toon Town, which was another of Duffy's favorites. They have all of these interactive things that make noises when you touch them and he had a great time. We went to Goofy's house, met Pluto, and got on Donald's boat.
After that I insisted that we go to Mickey's house, I did NOT want to leave Disneyland without the kids meeting Mickey. He was the one we were talking about for four months after all. The line really wasn't too bad, and the kids' faces were priceless when we walked into the room where Mickey was standing. Duffy seemed kind of in disbelief and Maisy just ran right up to him and didn't want to let go. She just kept hugging and hugging, and when Joey tried to get her to leave Mickey waved him away. It was really a great moment in our vacation because it was just us and Mickey, away from the crowds.
After lunch we were sitting in the sun waiting for my mom and dad when Woody and Jessie walked right up to where we were standing. Another lucky character siting. We got in line and the kids got pictures. Duffy loves Toy Story so he was really happy.
In the hurry to get in line for Woody and Jessie I had left the face sunscreen within Maisy's reach and when I turned around for a minute she decided to eat it. Sounds disgusting right? Her face was hilarious, she didn't know what to think. She just knew she wasn't supposed to be doing it!
Day 3 of Disneyland is also when I got the kids' mouse ear hats. It was the one souvenir I knew I had to have. There are a million choices now for those hats, but I really wanted classics. Duffy got the black and Maisy got the pink. Their names look so cute on the back and the kids look darling with them on. Both of them really love their mouse ear hats, especially Maisy.
After such a long time we decided to leave and relax then have dinner at the hotel. I wasn't feeling quite right but hoped that I just needed to eat. After I ate I decided that was a terrible idea because I ended up having the same thing as Joey. I don't think I've ever felt that sick in my entire life, including morning sickness. I literally couldn't get out of bed at certain points. I still think it's a miracle that no one else ended up with it. I don't know what I would have done if one of the kids had been that sick, I think we would have ended up at the hospital. I'm so grateful they stayed healthy!!!

California Day 3

We decided to break our Disneyland days in half and take a beach day on our third day in California. Probably not a great decision since it was the worst weather day of our vacation! It rained pretty hard in the morning but stopped by the time we hit Newport Beach. By then it was just cold and REALLY windy. We walked on the beach a little and Duffy waded in the water, then we walked out onto the pier. After that we hit some really cute shops on the beach and then drove along the Pacific Coast Highway past Huntington Beach and over to Long Beach to check out the Queen Mary. They were filming a pilot episode at the Queen Mary and we couldn't believe the amount of wiring, trailers, staff, etc. it took to film one episode! I can't remember the show they were filming :( I'll have to ask my mom who is the queen of remembering useless knowledge!
After our beach adventures we had reservations for dinner at Medieval Times. While we were waiting for the show to start Joey bought both kids battle axes, without my knowledge of course. Maisy's is foam but Duffy's is wood, great decision right? Well no matter what I thought the kids loved them while we were there (I have now hidden them in the top of their closet for safe keeping!). The Master of Ceremonies of the show came by and talked to our kids which Duffy couldn't quite believe since he was dressed in his medieval garb. The MC whipped out his sword to hand to Duffy and Duff jumped back with this look on his face like "Whoa, what the heck?" Joey swears Duff was looking for his "shoot gun". Once he had the sword in his hands he thought he was pretty cool though! We also went into the torture museum, luckily the kids are young enough they didn't know what anything was for, but it was disturbing to me! Some of the things they used to do were indescribable.
Once the show started Duffy was totally serious, I think he was a little worried that it was all real, so we kept explaining that they were pretending and finally he got a little more into it. Our knight was the yellow one but Duffy's favorite color is dark blue so when the blue knight "killed" our yellow knight, our entire section was booing but Duffy said "YES!!!" I can't even remember who won but we had a blast!

Still In Shock

Back in January I filled out an application for a scholarship called the T.H. Bell. You had to write an essay explaining why you should receive it, what your teaching plans were, etc. I've been working really hard to improve my GPA since it tanked when Joe was sick but it's still not quite to the 3.5 you normally have to have in order to receive a scholarship, but I thought "What the heck, I might as well turn in the paperwork!" It had been almost four months and I wasn't really giving it much thought, just assuming the candidates had been chosen already. Last Saturday I went out for the mail and had an envelope from the teaching department. I just got accepted into the program for fall semester so I wondered what else they could possibly need from me, other than I haven't done my criminal background check yet, oops! When I opened it, I read "Congratulations! You have been selected to be a recipient for the Terrel H. Bell . . . " and I just started crying! I guess my 3.44 is good enough for them :) It will cover my tuition and student fees for up to 3 years, which means I will save about $13,000 that I don't have to get student loans for. This is such an incredible relief and blessing for our family. As the title says, I'm still in shock, but I'm extremely happy and pretty proud of myself!

Vacation Post #2

Ok, I knew this is what was going to happen. I knew I was going to get busy and forget to blog about our vacation and then I would start to forget some of the details :( Thank goodness for pictures so I can remember most of it.
Our second day in California was Easter. I had brought bubbles and the kids' Easter baskets from home and figured I would run over to Target for the rest, which of course didn't happen after being up before dawn, on a plane, riding a bus, checking into the hotel, and spending the rest of the day at Disneyland Saturday. Duffy spent the night in my mom and dad's room with Auntie A so luckily I could go down to the hotel store and grab a few things. Duffy had spotted some swimming goggles in the shop on Saturday and said that he wished he had some so of course I got those! Sunday morning I brought the baskets down to my mom and dad's room and told Duffy I had found them. He was pretty excited over the goggles and they both liked the bubbles.
We got them dressed in their darling Easter outfits-Duffy had a cute pair of plaid shorts from Grandma and Maisy had her gorgeous tutu that Aunt Aimee made for her. We had breakfast and went outside where we were surprised with a little egg hunt from the Easter bunny. Grandma and Papa had hidden eggs with $50 for each of my kids and $100 for each of us adult kids so that we could buy whatever souvenirs we wanted. I was shocked and thankful!
Joey was still sick so we planned on starting at California Adventure until he could catch up, but we found out that they didn't open until 10 and we were there at 8 am. We headed over to Disneyland instead where Duffy got to ride his favorite ride-The Matterhorn which he calls the "Bominable Snowman" Maisy and I waited to the side while the rest rode and then I got to go with Duffy by myself, he promised to protect me from the snowman, it was so cute!
After the Teacups we headed to Maisy's favorite ride-It's a Small World. She couldn't get enough of the colors and singing and just kept pointing everything out to us. Another trip to Tarzan's Treehouse while we waited for part of the group to go on Indiana Jones and we were off to California Adventures.
Duffy really loved California Adventures because it has an entire section of Bug's Life rides for kids and of course the 4-D show where you get to wear the bug eyes. After a couple hours there Joey finally got to come meet us since he felt a little better. Duff and Maisy love their daddy very much and were so excited to see him there and tell him about the rides and adventures we had. Grandpa even bought the kids cotton candy before lunch, can you say "spoiled"?
During lunch Maisy got a special performance from the Mariachi band, she looked on in admiration with her face COVERED in macaroni and cheese. It was really sweet. They met Mulan right after lunch too, which both of the kids thought was great, they couldn't stop looking at her. Duffy also met Lightning McQueen on our way over to the other side of the park.
We played at the Redwood Adventure Trail for a long time that day, the kids thought it was great that they could run around without being in a stroller or holding someone's hand. Aimee did not think it was so great going over all the nets 30 feet in the air. This is where we were when the earthquake hit. Aimee thought she felt something but didn't know if it was just because she was so nervous. We had no idea for probably 30 minutes that something had happened. While we were in the Adventure Trail we got to meet Brother Bear and then headed out to hit some rides-that's when we found out about the earthquake.
Disney shut down all of their rides for checks and we were already exhausted at that point so we decided just to head out and get in the pool at the hotel. There was a flood of people leaving and Disney didn't let anyone know when they would reopen the rides, we found out the big rides can take hours and hours to check.
Luckily Duffy's favorite thing on Earth is swimming so he was very excited to go back to the hotel. The kids swam with Daddy for a long time, until Maisy fell asleep on the lounge chairs with me and we finally dragged Duffy out.
More soon!

Vacation Post #1

I'm going to try really hard to remember all the little things that happened during our vacation so that one day I can look back on this. I don't know how many vacation posts there will be but here's #1.
We have been counting down to this vacation since December and life was a little crazy before we left. Just trying to get ahead on homework, make sure the kids had summery clothes, finding a place for the dog, etc. was a lot of work. Duffy had been saving up change for a few months too and any money he found immediately went into his money jar. Eventually we had to move it into a second jar and even that ended up overflowing into a ziplock bag. We had decided it would be his souvenir money for our Disneyland vacation. The day before we left we went to the bank to cash it in. I truly thought it would be like $50, so when it added up to $204 I was shocked, it's amazing how change can add up! He thought he was awesome! Later that night Duffy got into his Mickey jammies and Maisy into her princess castle jammies, the kids went to bed as usual, they didn't really understand the big week ahead of us. I, on the other hand, slept like it was Christmas Eve-which means didn't really sleep much!
Our flight was at 7:05 am so we figured we needed to leave by 5, meaning I woke up for the last time at about 4 and we got the kids out of bed at about 4:45. We met at my parents' house and rode down together. The ride was an adventure already, they drive an Expedition which has 8 seats, exactly the amount of people going, leaving us little room for luggage (we really didn't want to pay for parking for 2 vehicles!). We went Beverly Hillbilly's style and strapped some up on the roof. The little ones got jammed in every empty crevice of the car! Aimee had to basically sit sideways with the stroller standing up at her feet. We finally left my parents' house about 5:15, running late already. Since Duffy was still half asleep when we left, he hadn't gone to the bathroom and decided around Centerville that he really needed to go, which meant we had to stop right then! Finally we made it to the airport pretty much right at 6, but thought it would be pretty calm in there since it was so early-it wasn't!!! Everyone in Utah was heading to Disneyland for spring break, and the airport was a mad house. We literally RAN through the airport to make it to the gate, it was not pleasant to say the least.
Finally on the plane things calmed down. Duffy was super excited and watched out the window as everything was loaded up and while we took off. He really thought the whole thing was cool. Luckily it was a short flight because Maisy is not a sitting still type of girl and got really restless and grumpy toward the end. This is also when Joey started to get sick, making the flight even more interesting. All of our ears really took a hit on this flight and Duffy was crying that his hurt, it made me feel so bad!
Once we landed we rode a shuttle to Anaheim, Joey was sick the whole time. The first shuttle stop was the Disneyland Hotel and we wanted to get out right then! All the lampposts on the Disney property have the head of Mickey Mouse on them (just in the same metal as the post so they look kind of like silhouettes) and Maisy kept looking at them saying something we just couldn't understand. Finally we figured out she was saying "Toodles" from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, it was so cute!
We got to the hotel and basically just got changed to go to Disneyland. We were so excited but I felt terrible because Joey was REALLY sick and had been throwing up pretty much non-stop since during our flight. There was no way he could leave the hotel and had to miss the first day at Disneyland. He felt bad too and I think both of us had a little cry about it. By the time we got there Disneyland was CRAZY packed, it was a Saturday after all. We forgot the sunscreen and had to stop for that, then we were so hungry since all we had were airline pretzels up until that point, so we stopped for lunch in Tomorrowland, it was actually pretty good. Finally we got to go on a ride! About a month ago I had asked what ride Duffy wanted to go on first and he thought carefully and finally asked "Is there a Buzz Lightyear?" I told him yes, but didn't give it another thought. Guess what we actually went on first? Buzz Lightyear! I found that pretty funny, it just happened to have a decent line. I think total we only hit 4 rides that day because the lines were so long but it was fun. We did hit Pirates of the Caribbean that day, not Duffy's favorite because of the drops in the dark, but toward the end he was ok and Maisy just rode along like nothing was even happening, she was so good on everything! We went into Tarzan's Treehouse (the first of a few times) and poor Duffy tripped and cut his knee pretty bad. It had gravel and sand all over in it and all I had was a water bottle and wet wipes, and a bandaid that was too small. So we took a trip to first aid. Let me tell you, if you are going to get hurt somewhere, Disneyland is the place to do it! They have regular old doctor's offices in there and the nicest nurses ever! They cleaned it out really well and hooked him up with a bigger bandaid. Bad for Duffy but definitely memorable for our first day!
Ok, that post is long enough, more tomorrow maybe :)

California Pictures!!!

Ok, I am anxious to post these pictures! I'll have to do the blogging on our trip over the next few days so stay tuned for that. I am warning you, this slideshow is LONG, but it's less than half the pictures we took! We had the best time, I can't believe it's over already!

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A Terrible Blogger

Ok, so I have been a terrible blogger recently and to tell you the truth I don't have time to blog today either. We leave for Disneyland and Sea World in two days and I need to get a million things done, including a 14 page paper that is due the Monday we get back. Wish me luck since all of us are also getting sick :( I PROMISE to blog like a mad woman when we get back!