Disneyland Day 1

Finally it is time to go to Disneyland! I had grand intentions of getting there early. I found a great service called Ridemax that helps you plan your day at Disney. You tell it when you are going to arrive, leave, take breaks and what you want to do and it prints an itinerary for you to minimize walking and waiting in line. It sounded great but it did not work for our group as we moved a little slow. Katherine had a few meltdowns in the morning and we arrived about 90 minutes later than our schedule. Luckily it was a slow week at Disney and we were still able to do a lot without a lot of waiting.

After getting our tickets and going in the park we headed to Fantasyland. Katherine loved Sleeping Beauty's castle and somehow immediately found a store with princess things in it.

First we rode the Peter Pan ride. You get in little cars that fly through the air over the scenes from Peter Pan. Katherine enjoyed it but thought it was a little bit scary. You realize when watching Disney movies and going to Disneyland with a 2 and 3 year old that every fairy tale has a scary character or scene. Next we rode the carousel. They are always a big hit.

After the carousel we went on Dumbo. It was another fun ride for Katherine. She had fun controlling if we went up or down. Dad and Pops were in the elephant in front of us and Will and Sophia were in the elephant behind us.

I think we then rode Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and Pinocchio. Katherine chickened out on Mr. Toad which was a good thing because Sophia hated it.

After Pinocchio, Sophia was done with dark rides. We rode Casey Jr. Train and then we took a break and went to see the princesses and eat lunch.

Neither Katherine nor Sophia wanted to nap in their strollers though they were exhausted. Finally we decided that we needed to go back to the hotel for nap time. We had not really planned on that. I had hoped that they would sleep in their strollers so we could just keep going, stay for parades, eat dinner in the park and ride more rides. Luckily we were close and had a very convenient shuttle. The pain was loading up the strollers, going through security, etc.

On the way out we stopped by Snow White's wishing well. She would sing and it would echo. Katherine and Sophia got a kick out of that.

After naps we returned to the park for dinner at Cafe Orleans in the New Orleans section of the park. We walked through Adventureland to get there and Frontier land to get back. That was all of those sections of the park that we ever saw. Dinner was very yummy and it was a lot of fun to watch the people.

Critter Country was close so we went on the Winnie the Pooh Ride. It was a dark ride so Sophia covered her eyes the entire time which was unfortunate because it was not scary and very cute.

Day 1 was very fun and very tiring so we all crashed back at the hotel.

Characters

One of the fun things at Disneyland is meeting the characters. I had planned on making a personalized autograph book for Katherine and downloaded some pictures that someone else had created. The day before our trip I was trying to order them. They were sized funny and so I had problems getting them properly formatted. Then the photo lab called to say I could not print them anyway because they were Disney copyright. I ended up being glad since most characters had lines and Katherine would not have cared too much about autographs at her age.

The fun thing about taking a 3 year old to Disneyland is that she actually believes that she met Cinderella. She does not realize it was some woman dressed up as Cinderella. Katherine talks about how she wants to be a princess when she grows up and we may have found a way for that to happen - Disneyland.

They have a section called Princess Fantasy Faire where there are 2-3 princesses at all times. We waited in line for about 45 minutes with all of the other little girls to meet the princesses. When we were at the front of the line we saw that Belle was first but she went on break and was relieved by Cinderella right before us. We were bummed that we did not get to meet Belle but since Cinderella is Katherine's favorite, it was a good thing. You can see that Caroline did not like meeting Cinderella. Sophia was pretty oblivious to each of the princesses. She is not really into them yet.
Katherine was pretty shy but she enjoyed it.
Next we met Ariel. Personally I thought she was a little annoying with a face princess voice but it was all a part of her role I guess. Again Caroline was not happy, Sophia was indifferent and Katherine was shy.
The girls in front of us struck up quite a conversation with Jasmine so we waited awhile. Caroline was much happier waiting for the princesses while mommy was holding her.
We all are anxiously awaiting our turn with Jasmine.
Finally, we get to meet Jasmine. She was my favorite because she was so personable and by now Katherine was a little more outgoing. She actually faked a smile.

When we were about to leave Jasmine went on break and was replace by Mulan so we got to meet her too. None of us have seen that movie so it was not a big deal but you can never meet too many princesses.
As we were leaving Ariel was replaced by Snow White but we could not go back to meet her. Here we are getting a wave.
Later in the day we happened upon Mary Poppins and Bert singing and Dancing with their "Big Brass Band." Katherine really enjoyed listening to them.

As we were leaving the park there were a few characters near the front gate. Donald and Pluto, Mickey and Minnie were dancing around.

Sophia likes Tinkerbell and the fairies so she waited to see them.

Little Mommy

I am in the office right now watching Caroline on the baby monitor. She is so tired but resisting sleep. She now can pull up to standing in her crib which does not help.

Katherine is doing the sweetest thing. I apparently left Caroline's door open which usually is not the case. I hear a sweet little voice over the monitor. Katherine is in there saying, "Sit down sweetheart. Sweetie Pie, it's OK. It's time for you to sleep. I am right here. Let me go get mommy." She can be such a sweet big sister.

I planned to let her cry it out but our maid, Fabiola went in to pick up the cute crying baby. It is always tough to get them to sleep while she is here.

Dying Easter Eggs

This is the first year I have dyed Easter eggs with Katherine. It was a fun little craft to do after Caroline went to bed tonight. The Paas kit that I bought at the grocery store had 6 colors but since I boiled 12 eggs and 2 cracked I thought we would just stick with 3 colors. We used red, yellow and green. Being our first go at dying Easter eggs I bought the basic kit that just had dye and stickers. I did not want to mess with doing a wax resist, glitter or tie-dye. I also avoided any characters. She enjoyed it and tomorrow we will put the stickers on.Now I have 3 cups of very potent dye. It is probably enough to dye at least 3 dozen more eggs if I wanted to. I thought there must be something cool to do with Easter egg dye so I went to google. "Leftover Easter egg dye" produced few usable results. I found out what to do with the leftover dyed Easter eggs and how to save them. I found lists of egg salad and other egg recipes. I found a few crafts with the cracked, dyed shells. There were a number of links on how to dye Easter eggs using natural dye. (I am granola in some things but would not go to the effort). The only thing I really found to do with the dye was to dye wool yarn. If I had wool yarn or knew how to knit or crochet that might be tempting. Apparently egg dye only will dye animal fiber so it would not work to tie dye t-shirts made of cotton. Too bad, that would have been fun. I may still try it and see what happens.So, I am curious if any of my friends have found other uses for leftover Easter egg dye. There must be something to do with the vibrant paint but since it is dye and not washable we may not be willing to take a chance.

The Happiest Place on Earth

Finally our countdown has ended and it is time to go on our trip. Every day Katherine was excited to remove a piece of the chain as we counted down the days to see Sophia.

This past weekend we met my family in Southern California for a little trip to Disneyland. It was a great time to go. The weather was perfect and it was not too crowded. I don't know that we waited longer than 10-15 minutes for anything except to meet the princesses. Of course we were not riding the big roller coasters but some of the kiddie ride lines can get pretty long.

Our flight was at noon but somehow we were still in a rush to get to the airport. We pulled into remote parking and they gave us a coupon for valet parking at the terminal for only $10/day. What a deal! So, we went to the valet parking but still checked in right at 30 minutes before our flight was scheduled to take off. So, our luggage was tagged to go on the flight after ours. You would think that after paying $15 per bag the least they could do was try to rush it onto our plane.

This was Caroline's first flight. Katherine has been on at least 15 round trips but the last one was a year ago so she did not remember it so it was effectively her first flight as well. They did pretty well at the beginning. Too bad our plane did not even pull away from the gate for over an hour due to a warning light being out and having to wait for maintenance. Add the windy weather that closed one runway and we left 90 minutes late. Caroline took a long nap, Katherine played and watched movies. Then on the descent her ears started to hurt, she started to scream and she would not stay buckled in her seat belt. The flight attendant actually came and told us that she could just sit in my lap. While I was appreciative at the time, it caused problems later on the return flight.

When we arrived, Nana and Pops were waiting for us. They flew on another airline but into the same airport. After about an hour Will and Sophia arrived. Then we had to wait on our luggage and take the Disneyland Express shuttle to our hotel.
We stayed at the Residence Inn Marriott. I found a great deal using trip advisor. I really like that travel website. It has a ton of reviews and then in one click brings up the prices for what you want on all of the travel sites. We had one penthouse suite and one standard suite next door to one another. Nana and Pops stayed in our suite which was helpful with the kids. The hotel had already delivered our groceries to our kitchen and it was right on the shuttle route. Thursday night we decided to just eat in our room as Katherine had not napped and was exhausted.

After the kids were in bed Sam and I walked across the street to the Garden Walk (outdoor mall) and we were able to see the fireworks from Disneyland.

Disneyland

Look where we were this weekend. Yep, we were crazy enough to take a 3 year old and an 8 month old to Disneyland California. We met my brother's family as well as Nana and Pops for a fun weekend. It was a fun but very exhausting trip. I will share many more photos and stories later this week. Katherine was overall not a fan of the camera so I was very excited to have such a great family picture in front of Sleeping Beauty's castle - the perfect Disneyland backdrop.

What a chore

So I am thinking that Katherine needs to learn a little more responsibility around the house. She has such a sweet life. So often I am so tired that I just don't want to deal with nagging her or training her but I know that is the WRONG approach and just makes more work for me in the end. Of course I want her to be a responsible contributor to society and baby steps start now.

So, I am curious to all of you out there with kids. What kind of "chores" and responsibilities do you expect of your kids? Do you do any kind of chart or incentive to "motivate" them to do things?

I am thinking that we should currently expect her to put her dirty laundry in the hamper, clean up her toys, take her dishes to the sink when her meal is done and feed the dog (with our supervision). What else are 3 year olds doing out there?

A few of our favorite things

I thought I would share a few of our favorite things around our house. I would love it if you would share yours in the comments section.

Spiritual Stuff for Kids
There are a few books we have been reading lately that we really like.

First is My First Hymnal. There are 75 "hymns" (really more kids church songs of my youth). Each song has the words, notes for if you read music and a short explanation/devotional. We are doing 3 songs each night. Most of them I know and a few I make up as I go. I bought this on a whim from Half Price Books.
Every night we also read one story from The Big Picture Story Bible. This Bible has great illustrations and well written stories. I love this Bible. It presents the unified story running through the Old and New Testaments rather than a bunch of disjointed stories.

I bought the four books of the "Big Thoughts for Little Thinkers" series 2 years ago and held on to them until this birthday. They are great books that teach Biblical truths in a very understandable way. They are written for ages 4-8 but I have started reading them with Katherine. They have cute illustrations and simple sentences that somehow convey difficult concepts such as the Gospel, the Trinity, Missions and Scripture. Each page also has scripture references. The author was actually a classmate of mine at seminary as was his wife.
Kids Story Books
Katherine is a girly girl and so we checked out Gigi God's Little Princess from our church library. They are really cute stories about Gigi who is about kindergarten-2nd grade age. She things she is a princess and she learns all kinds of valuable lessons. They are sweet books and we rented one of the videos as well.

I think Katherine's current favorite is Fancy Nancy. I think these books are adorable. They are also about a little girl who is about 5. She loves all things "fancy" and "posh". They are super cute. Katherine has about 5 of the books and an entire outfit for dress up.

Katherine's spiritual training

I am trying to be more intentional with Katherine as far as teaching spiritual things. She is such a sponge so I want to cram every Bible story, verse and song into her head but I want to balance that with making it fun and not something that she grows up to resent. I know of people who were required to learn Scripture to the point that they grew up resenting the Bible.

This month I have started a more consistent night time routine as far as what I read when I am the one who puts Katherine to bed. Before we were just reading any three books that Katherine chose. Now she gets to choose 2 books. Then we sing a few songs and I read a longer story from the Bible. It has been good and we both really enjoy it.

As before we also pray. 99% of the time I am the one that prays. Sometimes she will repeat after me but usually she does not want to pray. The funny thing is that she will tell me what to pray for and if I say "Amen" and have forgotten something, she will say, "mommy, you forgot to pray that my tummy feel better" and she will request that I do it and not her.

We are also working on Scripture memory and she has memorized her first verse. This is something that I have intended to do, have thought about, planned and then dropped the ball. Finally I copied some verses and put it in the car so that I remember to do it often. It took about 2 days for her to memorize her first verse.

Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Ephesians 6:1

I thought it would be best to memorize a verse that she could understand and we could use in many teachable moments.

Birthday at school

I just found these on my "diaper bag camera" which I sent to school on her Birthday.

These are the kids in her class: Kate, Landon, Kyle, Katherine, Cole, Camden and Noah. Jacob must have been absent that day. Kate has since had to change to a full time school so Katherine is now the only girl. This means she comes home talking about monsters, spiderman and she shoots monsters with her gun. I am not ready for that! She has been told to never point her "gun" at people. She insists that it is only for monsters. I digress...For her birthday I took decorated cookies for the kids to have at lunch. Aren't they cute sitting at their table like big kids.
Kyle looks so serious.
This is one of Katherine's teachers, Ms. Tracy. She is great.

Sweet Snuggles

We are so lucky that both of our girls love to snuggle. One of Sam's favorite things is when Caroline falls asleep on his chest. So sweet.