When you don't have another sister...

you turn to your brother to play girly things with you...

"Michael, do you want to have make up on?"

Thankfully he's a really good sport and just lets her do her thing. 

Until next time,

Angie

Days like today....

I take a break from the happy Disney highlights to share a dose of reality.  Today was one of those days.  If I was a big wine drinker, I'd have a huge glass of wine next to me and the bottle within reaching distance.  However, I'm definitely more of a sweets person, so instead I sit with an entire bag of Valentine Candy hearts next to me.  If only you could see me, I think you'd be impressed with how quickly I can toss a few candy hearts into my mouth and not miss a beat with typing.  It comes with practice.

Some days being a parent is hard, some days its downright hard, challenging and no fun.  These are the days that really make me question if I'm even a tiny bit decent, acceptable, even mediocre at this parenting thing. Today I feel like the Barbie lying on the floor in Isabelle's room...

Yep, that one.  

Forgive me while I vent.

Today I was determined to get a million and one things on my to do list accomplished.  I had to, I have so much to do this week, I'm still trying to play catch up from last I feel.  Plus, I feel this crazy need, (I know I put it on myself) to attempt to de-clutter the clutter that has taken over.  Seriously every nook and cranny of this house is filled with stuff and its starting, okay it has, made me crazy. I started bright and early.  

Its the same routine every morning. It goes something like this.  Mom wake up extra early to go running (my therapy).  Return home, wake up boys... "Good morning boys, get up, but be quiet so you don't wake up your sister."  Mom returns to bedroom to jump in the shower.  Five minutes later, go out of bathroom with soaking wet hair and only a towel on to yell  firmly remind the boys NOT to mess around, to be quiet, and NOT to wake their sister up.  I also add in a reminder to "HURRY UP!", not that it makes any difference.   Return to bedroom, throw on some clothes, leave bedroom to go get Isabelle since the boys have been loud and woke her up early.  Get her ready for school, while giving orders from her room or our bedroom, for the boys to stop messing around, get dressed, and eat breakfast!  Repeat orders several more times.  With 20 minutes before departure time, make announcement they should be eating, go see that Michael still hasn't put one piece of clothing on and is standing in his bedroom, who knows what he's doing.  Give firm order to GET DRESSED NOW or I will pick out his clothes.  He finally grabs underwear.  Race back to Isabelle, give her a baggie of Cheerios, search the house for the blue blanket she MUST have to take to school (never mind she has 4 other blankets).  Make announcement we MUST leave now.  Hear from the boys they are not ready, tell them to hurry up again and I race to find my backpack and quickly throw some random left overs in the fridge in my backpack for a semi-lunch.  If I'm lucky, I make a smoothie for Dad and me  for breakfast before grabbing my bag, Isabelle, her blanket, her baggie of food and race out the door.  Load Isabelle into the car, load my bike on the back of the car, run back inside and tell the boys, WE HAVE TO LEAVE NOW (usually 10 minutes after we are suppose to be leaving).  Finally get the boys in the van.  Michael has no socks on, is carrying his shoes, rarely has a jacket and his backpack is completely unzipped with papers flying out the sides.  Back out of the garage, tell Michael to zip up his backpack, and to tie his shoes (which are 99% of the time NEVER tied).  Drive away from the house, giving a check list to the boys to verify they have everything.  Do you have your binder?  Your planner? Your folder?  Your library books? A jacket?  Usually its only 2 days out of the week we have to turn around so I guess that's an improvement from the past.  Race to Isabelle's school, drop her off, and hope it only takes 7 minutes at most to get out of the school.  Race to Gabriel and Michael's school, drop them off, remind them (Michael) to take their backpacks (we've only left them in the car, well I won't tell you how many times), kiss them goodbye and tell them (actually beg) them to be good at school.  I then drive off, in the hope I've made the window of traffic to get to a parking lot close to work, in time to finish biking in to my office.  Yes, I'm exhausted by the time I arrive.     

Today was similar, except different in that I didn't go to work, so I was home with Isabelle and determined to get through the house.  Isabelle thankfully is happy to play with her toys in her room as long as she has her Elsa dress on.  So I gave her her dress, got her tights and her Elsa shoes, braided her hair like she asked and had her play while I cleaned the boy's bathroom.  Let me just say, I grew up with one brother, and maybe that's the difference, but I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out how my boys get toothpaste on the ceiling of the bathroom.  After finding toothpaste in almost every place it shouldn't be, I decided I'd just clean everything.  I scrubbed the walls, the ceiling, the floors, the counters, under the counters, inside the medicine cabinet, I scrubbed everything.  I then decided that our rule of only one boy in the bathroom at a time, was NEVER going to expire.  I don't care if they are 25 and 26 and come home with their future wives, I'm NOT going to let them anywhere near the bathroom at the same time (not that they will want that anyway).  Two and a half hours later, I finished their bathroom and started going through piles of stuff left all over the place.  As lunch approached, I knew the boys would be getting off the bus and still had so much to do but had made great progress.  

With the front door open, Jack started barking as I was scrubbing stains the carpet on my hands and knees, and knew they were home.  Twenty seconds later they were in the house, had kicked off their shoes which sent sand all over the floor I had just cleaned, and left a trail through the entire house of everything they brought home from school... sweatshirt, backpack, lunch pack, sock here, shoe there... meanwhile I had spent the last 6 hours picking up all the stuff left strewn about.  The routine at our house after school is we get right to homework, as our evenings are usually busy so getting homework done is a must.  I told Michael to pick up all the stuff he left all along the house, and asked Gabriel to bring me his daily planner, we had to sign off on.  I also asked him if he brought his homework notebook home as he seems to have "forgotten" at school the past two days (makes it kind of hard to do homework no?). Yesterday we had a good talking about the importance of bringing home his homework notebook as he had a huge research project due in less than a week and a half and has a lot left to do.  As he handed me his planner today, he said, "I forgot the notebook again. "NOT GOOD" I told him and sent him to do is reading. Meanwhile Michael had barely picked up his shoes so I went to sweep up the sand.  After doing that I glanced over at Gabriel reading a book, and even though I remind him every single day, he had his glasses in the case siting next to him and NOT on his face.  "Gabriel, put your glasses on, they won't do you any good on the table."  Every single day.  

Then back to Michael, who I asked to make his bed after I washed sheets today.  As I changed the load of wash and went to put in another load (#6 for the day), I found the three pairs of pajamas I had washed earlier in the day back in the dirty clothes basket.  I asked Michael why the pajamas I had washed with his bedding were now dirty.  To which he finally said, "Well I didn't know if they were clean?"  I inquired a bit more, "Michael, these were the pj's that I washed with your sheets and were just in the load you took out of the dryer right?"  "Yes" he responded and knew he had been caught.  "Well I didn't want to fold them so I just put them back in the dirty clothes basket" he admitted.  You can imagine how much I enjoyed that response.

Twenty minutes later we had to leave to go run some errands.  I had to stop at Lowe's to get a new toilet seat for the boy's bathroom, turns out if you mess around standing on the lid to try and throw things over the shower at your brother while he's showering, you can bust the lid off the seat.  So all three kids and I loaded up, headed to Lowe's to get a new toilet seat.  After making a few more stops, we were on our way to the grocery store, all three kids and me.  I like to make sure the kids know what I expect at far as behavior when we go into a store, so I told them, "No messing around, don't touch stuff and remember, if you want to go to football tonight, you better listen and stay with me."  I've resigned myself to the fact that they will listen to my request for about 2 minutes, the time it takes to get into the store, and then all bets are off.  This time was no different. We finally made it out of the store, after buying more stuff than I usually do, just to keep them baited.  We returned home and continued how the day had started.

I started to prepare dinner, asked them to help set the table and walked back to the laundry room to change another load to see "stuff'" had magically appeared in all the places I had cleaned today.  Feeling completely defeated in my attempts, I went straight back to the kitchen racing to get dinner ready as they had to be out the door in 10 minutes for football practice.  I opened the door, pulled out the pan of BBQ ribs I had been baking all afternoon and spilled the boiling liquid from the ribs all down my leg and onto my foot.  Knowing Isabelle was two steps behind me, I screamed and told her to get back.  I yelled for Gabriel to grab Jack as he smelled meat juice and raced to the boiling liquid all over the floor.  I tried to set down the pan as quickly as I could as my leg was burning the liquid filled inside my shoe made my toes felt like they were on fire.  I ripped my shoe and sock off as quickly as I could to see my big toe as red as a ripe tomato.   Thankfully the boys knew it wasn't a good situation so they jumped in to help.  Michael kept Isabelle distracted and Gabriel held Jack til I could get the mess cleaned up. 

9 minutes later, the boys had finished dinner and were standing outside the garage door as Jarrett pulled up to take them to practice.  Tonight, I look around my house and honestly can't even tell that I did any cleaning today.  Seriously.  You. Can't. Even. Tell.

So that's why I sit here tonight, with now a half empty bag of valentines day candy at my side.  Some days are just like that.  I feel like I can win for trying.  

Before bed tonight, Isabelle helped me pick up the mess of toys covering the entire floor in her room.  She loves playing with her Barbies, dressing them, undressing them, making them eat food and go potty in her Barbie RV. She pretends and imagines they are as alive as she is.  As we picked up her Barbies, she gave me the little Barbie with her arms no longer attached.  She said, "Momma, please fix her, she feel better with her arms on."  I put her arms back on for the 100th time and gave it back to her.  She said, "Thank you Momma, she feel better tomorrow."  

And that got me thinking... while today was kind of a crappy day, the hope is that tomorrow is a better one.  I hope that I don't feel like every word that comes out of my mouth isn't evaporated into the air for no one to hear. I hope that I don't clean up a mess only to find another mess waiting for me, and I hope, okay maybe I pray that we can have a smooth morning getting up ready for school and work.  

While today was a "waive the white flag" kind of day, this is the life I dreamed about.  The one I longed for, and the one I give thanks for, even on nights like this.  So here's to a better tomorrow.  I better go find my "arms" now.... who knows where they've been left.

Until next time,

Angie

Disneyland Day 2- Even more Frozen!

A week ago tonight, we had almost finished our first full day at Disney.  Today we reflect back, at home, how much fun our vacation was.  This afternoon, Michael, Isabelle and I went back through the pictures.  Michael said, "I miss Disneyland so much!"  to which we all agreed and Isabelle for probably the 15th time since we got home demanded, "I want to go to Disneyland again! TODAY!"  I guess that's a pretty good indication she had fun too. 

Here are some of the recaps from our second day (still at California Adventure) that I didn't get to put in yesterday's post.

Staying on the Disney property has many perks, including the fact that you get to go into the park an hour early.  The other perk the kids liked, was getting to watch the Disney Channel (all 5 of them) any moment of the day.  Without even one cable channel, the kids soaked up as much Disney Junior as they could.

Nana's favorite ride at Disney happens to be The Hollywood Tower of Terror.  The boys were so excited to go on it.  When we went to Disney World a few years ago, Michael barely made the height cut off and was brave enough to go on the ride and big old age of 3! I still can't believe he went on that right.  Personally, this is a ride I can't set foot on.  Anyway, back then Gabriel decided that ride was too scary and didn't want to go on it.

This time though Gabriel was tired of having Michael tease him that he wasn't as brave as Michael and he was determined to be brave and conquer the ride.  After going on the ride, Gabriel loved it.

While Nana, Papa, Gabriel, Michael, and Dad enjoyed the Tower of Terror, Isabelle and I enjoyed the view from outside...

While everyone else was seeing ghosts in the Tower of Terror, I found a big monster outside...

Here we are getting ready to go on the Monster's Inc. ride....

And after that it was time for more Frozen Fun.  Here we are waiting to go into the Frozen Sing-a-long show.

It was really cool show with the official historian of Arendelle shared the highlights of how the Frozen story came to be.  Anna made an appearance, as did Kristoff and even Ela

After having a major meltdown because she couldn't make it snow, sing with Elsa all by herself, or sit in the front row, Isabelle finally calmed down enough to watch the show.

At the end of the show Elsa made her grand appearance and made it snow.  It was pretty cool!

After the show we got to go to Olaf's frozen fun zone where the kids got to play in actual snow.

The boys thought it was awesome and went immediately to get in line to slide down the hill of snow.  Nana and Papa helped Isabelle because as you could probably guess, she wanted to build a snowman.  

It didn't take long before Isabelle found a little Elsa friend and before long the two of them were having a blast playing in the snow.  I thought it was so cute how they went side by side to look at all the snow piles around them.  Just goes to show you can find a new friend anywhere!

We spent the entire day at the park, from waking up at 5:30 a.m. (but actually getting out of bed at 6:15) until well past 9 p.m. when we were eating dinner.

The kids actually all of us, were wiped out.  Here Gabriel is at dinner at the ESPN Zone in Downtown Disney.  Tuesday was also Nana and Papa's 42nd wedding anniversary so we had dinner out.  Gabriel didn't make it too far before he decided to, well I think the picture speaks for itself...

Meanwhile, Michael never has a shortage of energy.  He was ready to keep going!

I hope Nana and Papa had a wonderful anniversary!  We sure enjoyed sharing it with you!

Until next time,
Angie

Queen Elsa, I mean Isabelle's Magical Day... at Disney

 On day two of our Disney adventure, we spent the day at the California Adventure park. Oh so much fun!

When we woke up that morning the clouds had moved in, it was significantly cooler and the fog lingered around.  It was almost as if Elsa came in with her frozen magic.

Isabelle spent most of her time running, literally.  I'm not sure how many times we'd have to yell, "Isabelle, come back, stay here so you don't get lost!"  I remember as a child going to Disney with my family and my parents putting a leash on my brother so he wouldn't run.  We talked about having to do the same thing with Isabelle and I went as far as looking for them in a store.  Turns out, the child leash isn't so accepted this day in age.  Parenting error number... well, never mind.

There were a couple rides in California Adventure that Isabelle was too short for. Turns out she didn't care one bit.  She LOVED the carousel.  She rode it probably 15 times during our trip and she loved it just as much the 15th time as she did the first.

Much of our time at Disney's Calfornia Adventure was spent enjoying the "Frozen Fun!"

The first experience was getting to meet Anna and Elsa in person, and I can honestly say, watching Isabelle meet them was second only to us meeting Isabelle for the first time.  Here she is patiently waiting in line holding her paper she believed was required to meet them.  Michael was okay with being there, but as you can tell in the background, Gabriel wasn't too impressed with the idea of waiting in line to meet two princesses, I mean "Come on Mom, can't we just go on another ride while she does this""

After waiting for a while we were finally led into the room where Elsa and Anna were doing their meet and greet.  Isabelle was, I'm not even sure what word would accurately describe her excitement, ecstatic.  She first ran up and greeted Anna with a hug and then turned to Elsa.

As you'll see in this video, she was so excited she was speechless.  All she could do was jump up and down (continuously), turn in a circle and jump up and down again.  Thankfully the princesses were quite polite (we shouldn't expect anything less right?) about her behavior and asked her questions while she savored all the attention.

We finally got her attention enough to convince her to take some pictures.  She was willing as long as she could hold onto Elsa.

Turning every other second back to gaze at her beautiful friend Elsa.

Here Elsa is telling Isabelle how much she loved her shoes and how they had ice fractures too

Its wasn't long before our Elsa was back to dancing around and jumping in a circle.

Watching Isabelle filled with happiness overflowed my heart with happiness.  I got all teary-eyed seeing her so happy and knowing her dream (one she probably hadn't even realized was a possibility) came true.  I will always remember the special feeling of those few minutes and how all the world seem perfect, especially in the eyes of my little girl

Life is about the memories we make, and this picture above perfectly captures just that.

The happiness is beaming from her, I'm sure you can see.  She's so happy even her scrunchy nose smile came out.

Before leaving the castle we all asked if we could get a picture with the princesses.  Isabelle still couldn't believe her eyes, having not only to hold Elsa's hand but also had to reach out and touch her with her other hand.

I think all of us felt excited about our visit to Arendalle castle!

And even with the highlight of getting to meet the princesses, there was still more Frozen Fun to be had!

Until next time,
Angie

Disneyland!

Five years ago, as we drove our boys to their forever home for the first time, they asked us, "Will you please take us to Disneyland?" That question, that moment, I've replayed in my mind time and time again.  For five years, we've saved tiny bit by tiny bit to try and take the boys on the vacation they've dreamed about for as long as they've known us.

On Monday, we left for the happiest place on Earth.
To say this vacation was magical, would be a enormous understatement.  Now that we are back and relive the trip in our minds, this vacation was as special as vacations can come.

Bright and early  dark on Monday morning (we woke up at 4 a.m.) we left our house with the GPS destination pointed to Anaheim, CA.  I'm not sure honestly who was more excited, the kids or the big kids (Dad, Nana, Papa and me).

For 300 plus miles we talked about what we were going to do, we studied the map and we made a plan of what ride we were going to go on first.  As the miles ticked down and we entered the city of Anaheim, the excitement was tangible.  Isabelle would shout, "I'm going to Disneyland!"  While the boys would have their eyes glued out the window, trying to spot the first sign of Disney-anything.

Finally we arrived and as we pulled into the Disney Paradise Pier parking lot, we all couldn't wait for the fun to begin.  After checking in, getting into our room and grabbing a quick bite of lunch we strolled out of the hotel and headed straight to Disneyland.

What follows are some of the best times, the greatest laughs, and reliving of our childhoods through the lives of Gabriel, Michael and Isabelle.  Simply put, it was magic.

In the lobby of our hotel was Goofy, who Isabelle greeted each morning and every evening upon our return.  Here she and Nana are saying hi for the first time.

The view out of our hotel room looked out into the parks.  The kids LOVED having the view we did, each morning they'd open the curtains, look out into the park and pick out what ride they were going to go on.  In fact, the first night they slept with the curtains open, just so they could admire all the lights.

Nana and Papa brought along tons of tasty food, so we could save some money and eat in our room.  Here they are talking about how excited they were to go enter the park!

Here we are minutes after stepping inside the park.  While we are all squinting to see, actually we are super excited for what was just ahead!

Right away we saw Aladdin and Jasmine walking through the park. 

And then there was Goofy who just seemed to be waiting for us to come!  He welcomed us with open arms.  To which Isabelle just screamed in happiness!  "HI GOOFY!" She repeated, followed by, "SILLY GOOFY!"

Isabelle's reaction to seeing all of her favorite characters was to just race off after them.  It wasn't long before we realized she'd have to be confined to Dad's shoulders or her stroller, neither of which she was too excited about!

 Seconds after Goofy disappeared, Isabelle spotted the one and only Mickey.  She charged straight to him, thankfully I was able to swoop in and grab her before she reached him.  The other 20 families in line gave me the look of "please go to the back of the line" so we followed doing our best to keep her from having a fit.  She had yet to learn one key rule about Disney.... you wait in line for everything!

Thankfully the line moved pretty quickly and soon enough she was at the front.  We let her down and she charged straight to her favorite male mouse.  Wide open hugs and shrieks of "MICKEY!" were music to our ears.

After big hugs, Isabelle and Mickey danced together, I think she was trying to show him she knew the "Hot Dog Dance"  Those fellow parents of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse will know exactly what I'm talking about.

Soon we were off to Toon Town where we rode on Goofy's Go Coaster, a roller coaster ride for kids.  Isabelle was just tall enough so we all went.  It was so funny to watch Isabelle's face as she has NO idea what she was in for.  As soon as the ride took off and raced around the corner, he mouth was as wide as it would go.  It completely matched her eyes, I've never seen them so big.  At first I thought she was scared, but as we pulled back into the ride station, she smiled and said, "I want to go again!"  I cried it was so funny.  Meanwhile Gabriel rode with Nana and was just as scared, he said, "Nana, make sure to hold onto me!"  And then were was Michael, who we've determined isn't afraid of anything!  

Here the kids are on the first truck outside of the Roger Rabbit ride.

It was SO wonderful having Nana and Papa with us.  Not only were Jarrett and I SO thankful for the extra help with the kids, but it was fully enjoyable to experience the Disney magic with them.

Here they are on the eve of their 42nd wedding anniversary.  Disney was the place where they went on their honeymoon, so what better place to celebrate an anniversary!

At one point, everyone else went on the Indiana Jones ride while Isabelle and I discovered Tarzan's tree house.  She loved it, I tolerated the 87 stairs... my legs were just a tiny bit sore from running the half marathon the day before.

In all honesty, the views from the top of the tree house were pretty great.

Isabelle liked looking out into the park too!

Here she is testing out one of Tarzan's contraptions used to cook his food.

While there was SO much more to day one than are captured in these few photos, I can tell you that we stayed at the park until it closed, getting home and to bed well past 10:30.  Only to have the kids wake up at 5:30 the next morning, begging to get up and go back to the park...

Back at the hotel and getting ready to start day two, the kids paused for a minute so I could take yet another picture.

 On the second day of our adventure, we woke up to find it foggy and much cooler outside.  We were headed to California Adventure that day, determined to experience all the Frozen Fun Disney had in store.  Wait, perhaps Elsa knew we were coming and made it frozen...

The first thing we were told to do, upon entering the park was to race to an E-Ticket machine so we could get a ticket to stand in line to meet Elsa and Anna.  Yes, you read that correctly, you have to have a ticket simply to stand in line to meet them.  Crazy. I know, but Frozen is HUGE and Isabelle's favorite, so that is exactly what we did.

On the way to get our ticket to wait in line, we ran into Doc McStuffins.  I made the boys take a picture with her, they weren't too thrilled as Michael said, "She is for babies!"  

 Isabelle also happened to see the store front for the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, to which she again, jumped out of her stroller, ran up to them, started waiving and talking.

 After getting our ticket to stand in line for Elsa and Anna, we headed straight to Cars Land.  We stopped to ride on Maters Junkyard Jamboree.  It was a lot of fun!

 The next stop was the most popular ride in the park... Radiator Springs Racers.  Its back by those mountains you see in the picture below.

In this ride you race around a speed track with a car next to you.  It was awesome and the boys were so happy that we were 2/2 in our races, winning each time.  The great thing about that ride is that it is different each time, not to mention the scenery is Disney perfect!

There is so much more to Day 2 and the visit with Anna and Else will probably get its own post.  Stay tuned for more Disney updates.  I went through the pictures last night have more than 60 to share (that's narrowing it down from the more than 600 I took).

I can't wait to share the rest... oh it was so wonderful!  A vacation we will all remember forever!

Until next time,
Angie