Disneyland Day 1

Today we arrived home from our vacation to Disneyland! I am determined to not let documenting our trip overwhelm me, so I am just going to document one day at a time, and eventually I will finish! So here goes....


We have been wanting to take a trip to Disneyland for quite some time. We were just not ever able to make it happen until this year, and we couldn't have been more thrilled to plan our trip! Brandon's mom, and his sister Summer and her family went too. We had been anticipating our trip for months, and as it drew closer to the time for us to go, I began getting worried that our kids would get sick and we wouldn't be able to go. The flu is running rampant here and I was determined for us not to catch it. I armed my kids with antibacterial hand soap, and became a complete germaphobe. It all payed off and we managed to stay well. I didn't even think that there would be anything else that would hold us back. The day before we were set to leave we woke up to snow everywhere. We ended up having a huge snowstorm. In fact, we haven't had a snowstorm this big in October in 12 years and it happened to pick the day before and the day of our trip! While everyone else was praying for more snow and more school closures, we were just praying that our flight wouldn't get cancelled! We woke up early on Thursday to find it still coming down strong with no end in sight. We checked our flight every few minutes and were happy to see that it had not been cancelled. So we headed out to the airport. Daniel was kind enough to get up at 5:30 am to take us. He was anxiously watching the weather reports and flight statuses as well, because we was scheduled to fly to Mexico to see Charbel later that same day. We got to the airport and proceeded to check in at the do it yourself kiosk. As I was checking it the screen read, "you have automatically been rebooked on the 6:40 pm flight" What??? Well it turns out they had decided to cancel our flight after all as well as the next 3 flights that day. Needless to say we were not too happy thinking that we weren't going to be able to fly out until that night, and we were going to miss half a day at Disneyland! After standing in a long customer service line, we were able to get switched to a Frontier flight for 1 pm. Yay!!! Only 6 hours of waiting in the airport instead of 11! We were happy with that and went on to check in our bags... and wait. Here are some pictures of what those hours consisted of: The kids waited anxiously for hours by this window for our plane to pull up to the gate. There was a lot of celebrating when it finally arrived.

When we got to the airport, we took a cab to our hotel. We stayed at the Paradise Pier Hotel in Downtown Disney. We dropped off our things in our room and then headed over to The Disneyland Hotel of our Goofy's Kitchen Dinner that we had scheduled beforehand. We were so excited that we made it. When we first walked in they had a place set up to take pictures with Pluto. Here's how ours turned out:After we got our pictures taken, they seated us and they we got to fill our plates at the all you can eat buffet. The food wasn't wonderful, but we were just so excited to be there, we didn't care. As we were eating our dinner some of the characters came around to say hello. First was Princess Jasmine

Here is Levi anxiously waiting for Goofy to get to our table. He was so cute and excited to see all the characters. He's at the age where he really thinks they are the real characters that he sees on T.V. Unfortunately the picture that I got with all the kids with Goofy was too blurry to use. During the dinner they got to go up and do a dance with goofy and help him make a "cake". They thought that was great!

Here they are with Minnie

After the characters left we went back to get desert. As I was helping the kids, Brandon called me over. He decided to go hunt down Minnie just so he could get a picture with me and her! LOL They had a pretend sports car that the kids cold climb on right outside the restaurant. They got such a kick out of playing in it. They had no idea of the fun still ahead!When we were done with our dinner, we headed over to Disneyland to try and get a few rides in. It turns out that the fireworks show was just about to start, and everyone was sitting waiting to watch it. We took advantage of the shorter lines and went on Buzz Light Year and Star Tours. Then we went and saw the 3-D show, "Honey we Shrunk the Audience". That was pretty cute. Here is Brandon and the kids sporting their 3-D glasses before the show.

After that we called it a night and headed back to the hotel. That's the end of day one! It was a long day, but we were so grateful that things worked out for us to get to Disneyland in time to still be able to do a few things and enjoy the day.

Our Birthday Boy

This past Friday was Levi's 4th birthday. We had a fun few days celebrating with him. He was so excited for his birthday. He woke up bright and early to go check out his loot. Brandon has been wanting to get Levi a tool bench for a while now, and and few weeks ago came across this great one for a great deal. Levi was thrilled when he saw it, and has had so much fun playing with it.

We usually only let the kids open one present in the morning, but since he didn't really have to open the tool bench, we let him open up another one.

On Friday, the kids had no school, so I told Levi he could pick whatever he wanted us to do that day. He chose to go to The House of Bounce. I unfortunately didn't get out my camera while we were there, but the kids (and Brandon) had a great time bouncing around on all sorts of bouncy castles for a couple of hours. Later that night we invited our families over for a family celebration. I love how happy Levi looks =)

Saturday morning Levi had a "spiderman" party with a few of his little buddies. I was stressing out that no one was going to come, because I hadn't heard from anyone, so I made a few phone calls the day before, and we ended up with 5 little boys which was plenty! They started out in our back yard jumping in our bouncy castle while we waited for everyone to arrive. Then they came inside and decorated a bag with spider stickers, put on their spiderman masks, and got ready to go on a spider hunt! Here they are right as they are about to start the hunt.

We let them loose in our front room to go on the spider hunt. I hid hundreds of different kinds of plastic spiders all over, and they had a blast finding them I actually just ended up throwing them all over the ground, because I underestimated how many I had bought.

After the hunt, they had some pizza for lunch, and then it was back to the backyard for more playing and a pinata.

Here is my attempt at some spiderman cupcakes.

We played one more game, (Pin the spider on the web) and then we finished up with presents. His friends were very generous, and he ended up with a lot of fun new things to play with.

We were happy with how the party turned out, and so was Levi! After a weekend full of celebrations we were all exhausted! We love Levi so much. Our family would not be complete without him =) I can't believe my baby is 4 years old!!

Levi has really been taking pride in cleaning his room, and keeping it clean lately. He loves when everything is picked up, and always runs to tell me when he's all done cleaning. The other day, he ran in to let me know he had cleaned his room. It had been a pretty big mess so I was curious to see if he had really cleaned it. He proudly led me to his room, and I was quite impressed as I walked in and saw this: Then as I turned the corner, I saw this:

He had taken everything that had been scattered throughout his room, and piled it on his train table in the corner. He saw absolutely nothing wrong with this and was still just as proud as ever that he had cleaned his room so perfectly. I didn't want to hurt his little spirit, so I just said, "Great job Levi!" I think we will be working on putting things where they go from now on, but for that day, this was just fine with me =)

Meeting Lyla

This past weekend I was able to travel to Salt Lake to meet my brand new adorable niece, Lyla Delcie Maudsley, who was born to my sister and brother in law, Cindy and AJ on September 26th. What a wonderful and special weekend I had holding and snuggling with this little bundle of joy: When my sister, Kristalyn had both of her cute boys, I was so lucky to be able to go straight to the hospital and see them, and then continue to see them regularly. That is until they too moved to Utah this past year =(. I can't even tell you how hard it was not being there to run to the hospital when I received the text that Cindy was in labor. I waited anxiously by the phone all day to hear the play by plays. It worked out perfectly for me to travel to Utah this weekend. As soon as Cindy answered the door, and I saw Lyla's cute tiny little baby head peeking around the corner, I was in heaven! Lyla is so precious, and I couldn't not get enough of her all weekend. Here is a picture of me right after I got there, holding her for the first time.

It was nice to be able to just relax all weekend, and visit with Cindy, AJ and sweet Lyla, and help out with things. I was able to help Cindy give her a bath one day.Here is a picture I snapped of her right as I was carrying her to her bedroom after the bath.Here is Cindy getting her dressed. It was so fun to see both Cindy and AJ and how well they have taken to being parents already. Lyla is one lucky little girl to have such wonderful parents who love her so much.

My parents along with Michael and Daniel drove up to Utah that weekend as well so that my brothers and dad could attend the priesthood session on Saturday night. They were so excited to meet Lyla for the first time as too. I love this picture of my mom seeing her for the first time. Cindy looks like such a proud mommy, and my mom looks like such a proud grandma =)

Here are some more pictures I took that weekend. I am so glad that I was able to go and spend a few days with them. I will treasure that! On Sunday morning I was able to hold and rock Lyla for a few hours so Cindy and AJ could sleep in for a little while. What a treat that was to be able to spend that one on one time with her!

As I was sitting on the couch shortly before I left to go back home, I realized the next time I see her she will be two months old and so much bigger! I am so glad that I got to see Lyla in her brand new newborn stage. It is so hard not living close to all of my family! Kristalyn is expecting a baby girl in January. I think I just might have to plan another trip out here!

Congratulations Cindy and AJ! You are such amazing parents already. Thank you so much for opening your home to me this weekend so I could meet sweet Lyla. What a sweetheart she is!

The Ride Home

On the ride home, after picking up my kids from school, I have been trying every day to ask them what was the greatest part of their day, and what was not so great. The other day after picking up Tori from Kindergarten she jumped to the "not so great" part of her day. She was really sad as she told me about it. She said, "The saddest part of my day was when my friend got hurt on the playground. She fell down and hurt her leg and it started to bleed. It was bleeding so bad that she had to go to the kleenex." I tried not to crack up, as she was sincerely feeling bad for this little girl. I simply said, "Oh, do you mean the clinic?" She said, "Oops oh yeah, the clinic, not the kleenex." What a cutie =)

Tori's Birthday Fun

Tori's birthday was this past Saturday and she turned 6 years old! She woke me up at 5:30 that morning. I am usually pretty good about getting up early with the kids on fun holidays, but I was so exhausted so I was mean and made her go back to bed for a bit. That didn't last long though, so we finally all got up to go take pictures and let her open up a few presents. Her she is opening up a present from Alexis. Alexis picked out 6 of her favorite sea shells from her seashell collection that Tori had been eyeing. I thought that was so sweet of her, considering she is pretty protective of that collection! Tori of course loves them and treasures them. She also opened up a new Birthday outfit from us to wear for the party.

Later on that morning she had a little birthday party with some of her friends. Tori's favorite thing to do is crafts, so we had to have a craft party! The girls started out by decorating a bag to put their crafts in.

Then they moved to the kitchen to decorate a wooden picture from with sequins, foam stickers, flowers, buttons, etc.

They did two more crafts after that. They painted a pottery bobble head, of either a bear, or a cat, and then they made necklaces. (I somehow didn't get pictures of those two). I was very proud of the things I was able to find for them to do at Michaels. They have a great selection of really fun (really cheap) crafts. We are always stocking up there. After the crafts we ate pizza for lunch and then had cupcakes!
Here is Tori just after blowing out her candle.

Her friends were all so sweet and gave her some fun presents which she has been enjoying very much ever since!

I couldn't have asked for a better behaved group of little girls. Tori loved her party, and I loved how smoothly everything went!

That night I told her she could pick what she wanted for dinner. She of course picked McDonalds, and I unfortunately couldn't talk her out of it so McDonalds it was! After that, My mom and dad came over to watch her open up her last few presents from us. By that time of the day I was so tired, I didn't even think about grabbing the camera. Oh well!

We are grateful that Tori is a part of our family. She has such a fun, unique personality and she makes us laugh every day. She is loving Kindergarten so far, and learning a lot. She is so caring and is always thinking of others. One thing I love about Tori is that she is always so grateful for everything. On the morning of her party I was setting everything up and she walked in and saw all the crafts all set up. I was in the laundry room, and I overheard her say to herself, "Oh my gosh! I just don't know how to say thank you for all of this!" It was so sweet, and made all the hard preparations worth it. We love our sweet Tori so much!