Friday, December 20, 2013

California Adventure


Disneyland is a magical place, but let's be real here: a 3-year-old and an 18-month-old are hard to handle. Even at Disneyland.

I made the mistake on our first day at Disneyland of rushing Esmé onto the Snow White ride first thing. It severely traumatized her (understandably). So much of that day was spent convincing, begging, and occasionally even forcing her onto the rides. It was surprisingly crowded and quite warm, too. And Penny had to wait out a lot of rides, so in the meantime she'd dart out into the crowd and blend in like Jason Bourne. It was exhausting, but I'm still glad we went. And I'm especially grateful we had my parents there to help out, and that Roo sat out the fun water rides with the girls so the parents and I could enjoy those. Overall, it was a good trip. But I think taking my children to Disneyland was the most exhausting thing I've ever done, second only to giving birth to them!











Sunday, December 1, 2013

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

A Fall Walk Up the Canyon






California Trip (#2 of 3)

A month after our trip to Disneyland, Roo and I went back to California to check out some schools for Roo's MBA. It was a bit of a whirlwind, but we made it to my favorite building, the Griffith Park Observatory, visited UCLA and UC Irvine, and ate some dang good chicken dinner.




Meanwhile, Esme and Penny tried on Mr./Mrs. Potato Head's accessories.



Monday, October 28, 2013

Pumpkin Patching

Esmé in the kids' hay maze

Here we are in the corn maze. It was...extensive. And once my claustrophobia kicked in, we figured out a way to sneak out the side be done. We went back to the kids' hay maze.


We were the only people there that afternoon, so the lady had to call her father-in-law to come drive us in the hay wagon out to the pumpkin patch. It was worth the wait for him to show up.

The girls loved the ride.





She got her face painted by a ten-year-old. Considering she was ten, I think she did a pretty good job.



Saturday, October 19, 2013

Missing Dad

Roo spent a week in Germany at a trade show. We tried to stay busy without him.
We played on the rocks

We played with the dogs.

We missed him!

We met princesses

And stormtroopers

We played at the park

And braced ourselves for cold weather.