Wild & Crazy Day ;)

Today we had someone scheduled to come look at our dryer {again}. All of these repairs are such a nuisance to me, but man oh man do they excite these two!

We had just finished lunch & I was cleaning up the kitchen when I heard Hadley calling to me from the living room that Brady climbed up on the couch with her. So I ran in to snap a quick pic. The doorbell rang right as I was taking this next pic:)  They couldn't get off the couch to race to the front door to greet the repair guy fast enough.

 

 

Then they proceeded to stand right outside the laundry room door & watch the poor guy do his work like hawks.

 

 

 

They literally did not leave their perch until we walked him to the front door after he delivered us the bad news that we'd be without our dryer for at least another week..waaaaahhhhh!! Oh, and we got the exact same prognosis on our oven earlier in the week--we are just striking out lately!!

And as if dryer repairs weren't exciting enough, Derek insisted that I take this picture of him tonight and post it to the blog. It's kind of hard to see in the picture, but that is two grapes that grew together. Derek kept saying: "They're twin grapes! I've never seen this in 33 years of life! Don't you think this is cool?!"

I'll have to see if I can find a picture of it, but we also had to save a Diet Coke can we bought in a 24 pack years ago that was sealed shut but never filled. Apparently Derek really enjoys weird little phenomena like these. ;)

Happy almost Friday to you!! I hope you have the best weekend!

Life Lately

Life lately has been filled with lots of waiting for repairs {waiting for repairs to be approved by our property management company, waiting for the repair company to call us to schedule said repair, waiting for the repair person to show up, then waiting for the right part to come in, then starting the whole process back over again when the appliance breaks again--waaaah!}. We're just thankful we live in a super dry climate, so all of our clothes can be air dried in a jiffy & that we have a trusty little toaster oven that can get the job done!!!

Other than that, it's just been business as usual around here as we've been trying to get back into the swing of things after our Disneyland trip! It was a rude awakening to come back to some suuuper cold temps in Las Vegas! We also celebrated the 100th day of first grade & Shelby's first school awards ceremony.

 

I was thoroughly impressed with the girls' imaginations for the 100th day! Because we were out of town right before, we didn't really have much time to prepare. The first graders had to do a 100th day project as well as dress like a one year old person. We have a ton of dress-up stuff, but nothing that could really work to be an old lady. Hadley suggested Shelby wear our apron & go as the little old lady from The Gingerbread Story..I thought that was genius! So she just wore an apron, put her hair in a bun, & we stuck a little gingerbread man in her pocket that we printed out, and boom! Done!

For her 100th day project, Shelby decided to make a rainbow out of 100 fingerprints. She had her heart set on a catchy phrase to go with her project {we'd seen googly eye projects with the saying "Eye Survived the first 100 days" or popcorn projects that said "Popping through the first 100 days}, but unfortunately Google & Pinterest had nothing I could find with rainbow sayings! And my creative juices were NOT flowing, so I was no help. But Shelby all on her own and came up with: "I'm 100 days more colorful!" How perfect is that?!

And of course we have our obligatory library pictures...

The girls got Zoobs for Christmas from us, and they have really been enjoying playing with them since we got back from our trip.

 

And take a look at this guy! The other day he took a cup from our little play kitchen in the playroom and brought it into the kitchen to fill up with water. I guess he's seen us do this a time or two ;)

Over the weekend while Brady was napping, Shelby played a game of Checkers with Derek. Then the girls decided to play each other in Checkers for the first time, and this was also Hadley's first time ever playing. We did NOT think this would end well since Shelby is pretty good at Checkers now & Hadley is not the best sport yet {ahem, most games end in tears}, but we were BLOWN AWAY by how well they played together. Shelby kept teaching her what to do and what to avoid and was the most patient and encouraging big sister. It was one of those moments where we had hope that we've done something right along the way!!! And Hadley won the game! :)

I got to see Shelby receive an award for All A Honor Roll & the Principal's Award for academic achievement yesterday. It was fun to see her recognized, but awards or no awards we're always proud of this girl! Our school's motto is "Be Kind and Work Hard," and "Be Kind" bracelets are awarded when kids are "caught" being kind. Shelby has been disappointed she hasn't received any bracelets yet this year, but we're trying to make sure she and Hadley both know it doesn't matter if other people "catch" your kindness or if your accomplishments are recognized. I love that our school recognizes their achievements and promotes kindness in such a big way, but we want them to know that you do the right thing just because it's the right thing and not so you'll get an award. This girl definitely lives up to her school's motto--she's always kind & working hard, and we're so, so proud of her!

This guy loves to "sweep" the floors and carry around our little handheld vacuum keeping our floors clean. And yep, we're still wearing Christmas jammies over here!!

Here's to hoping your week is off to a great start & that the next time I pop in on the blog we'll have a functioning dryer & oven again!

Disneyland 2018 {Days 3 & 4}

We spent our second full day at Disneyland at California Adventure. {There are only two parks at Disneyland & everything is so close together in comparison to Disney World, which makes it super doable and a lot less overwhelming with small kids.}

{bumper cars with Hadley! Shelby is in her own car behind us}

{Shelby proud to be riding on her own again!}

{Brady's "cheese" face looks pretty painful, but he thoroughly enjoyed the Jungle Cruise ride!}

And this next picture was the last one of the day, but probably one of my favorites :)  We stopped off at Cold Stone for dessert before heading back to our hotel for the night, and the girls were sitting at their own table just chit chatting about our day. Derek & I just kept looking at them thinking how sweet they were and how they've got a pretty good little life. ;)

We spent our last day back at the original Disneyland park again before hitting the road around 2ish to head back to Las Vegas. Since we weren't going to be at the park all day long and we'd already ridden/seen pretty much everything we wanted to, our main goal for this day was just to hit up the girls' favorite rides again. With that said, I'm pretty sure we did Astro Blasters at least five times on this day! ;)  The other highlight of our last day was getting to meet a few more characters!

 

{We got to meet Flynn Rider for the first time ever! He was SO much fun! He told the girls to make a smolder for the first picture ;)  After we took pictures with him, he told us he was going to try to track Blondie down!}

 

{true love is sharing your ice cream with your little brother}

{He found Blondie!! These two were probably the most fun characters we met on the entire trip, and they talked with the girls for the longest time!}

And this last picture from our drive home sums how we all felt after our trip to Disneyland! There is no tired like Disney tired!!!

 

 

 

We are so thankful we made this trip happen! We had the BEST time! Also, this was our first trip that we've taken since Brady was completely weaned from breastfeeding, and it felt so monumental! When we went to the Grand Canyon back over Thanksgiving, Brady was already down to nursing only 2-3 times a day..but that meant we still had to stop to nurse him in the car on our travel days & we had to stop mid-exploring the Grand Canyon to feed him. Of course that wasn't a huge deal or big inconvenience by any means, but this Disneyland trip was a lot more freeing without having to stop to nurse. And it also didn't hurt that Brady slept like a CHAMP in the hotel on this trip! I'm talking one morning we almost had to go in & wake him up b/c we were all up and eager to get to the parks!! Our kids are becoming such good little travelers, and we so enjoy making these memories with them! Our next big trip will be in the Spring to check out two more national parks--we can't wait!

Disneyland 2018 {Days 1 & 2}

For the past two years when I have gone to print out my annual blog book, my blog has been kicked back b/c it has exceeded the maximum number of photos allowed for one book. Womp, womp. So my plan was try to scale back on the number of photos this year so I would be able to fit all of my posts back into one book. Welp, these Disneyland posts aren't going to be helping me achieve that goal whatsoever. Oh, well! There will only be so many Disney trips when our kids will be this little, and I want to remember these moments!

We were originally going to go to Disneyland over our Spring Break, but ITT {which is where we can get deeply discounted Disney tickets through the military} was blacked out over those dates. So we decided to go over MLK weekend instead! We had a fantastic trip with the most wonderful weather ever {it was 86 degrees when we arrived on Saturday afternoon!!}. And we said countless times all weekend that we couldn't believe what a champ Brady was! If there was a best baby at Disneyland award, Brady would have won it ten times over! We'd be walking down Main Street with Brady in the stroller, and he'd just be waving at everyone we passed by like he was in a parade! We were at the parks when they opened and stayed until dinner time, and Brady napped in the stroller and was happy as could be despite the incredibly long days and lack of sleep. We assumed that since he is at such a busy age, keeping him stroller-bound or holding him in our laps for rides would be dicey at best..boy were we wrong! He loved all the people-watching and sights and sounds of the rides! One of my favorite two Brady memories from this trip are when he saw King Triton on the Ariel ride and started shouting "ho ho ho" b/c he looked like Santa! ;)  My other favorite memory was when we saw Snow White, the girls went up to visit with her and she tried to engage Brady but he just stared at her and shook his head no. So she tried to back off a little and settle for a wave or blowing a kiss, but no matter what she did or said in his direction he just kept shaking his head no in the emphatic manner he could. It was hysterical! The girls couldn't get enough of the princesses, and Brady wanted nothing to do with them! ;)

We drove to LA on Saturday and got checked into our hotel before heading over to Downtown Disney for the afternoon. We did a little shopping, ate at Rainforest Café {our table was right in front of a huge aquarium, which was a lot of fun!}, and of course got dessert! Eating too many sweets & treats at Disney is a MUST for our family!

We spent our first full day at Disneyland at the original park.  We got to see Snow White & Mickey as soon as we walked into the park, so we knew it was going to be a good day!!

Our first rides of the day were Big Thunder Mountain Railroad & the Matterhorn Bobsleds. Shelby used to be all about the big thrill rides at Disney, but this year she kept asking me if the rides were "almost over" about half-way through them and telling us they were "hard on her stomach." So after that, we mostly stuck to more family-friendly rides which worked out better anyhow b/c Brady was able to tag along instead of being stuck in the stroller!

{Big Thunder Mountain Railroad}

{It's A Small World}

One of the highlights of our trip was when we were walking through the park, we heard a rude voice behind us shouting "Outta my way, people!" only to discover it was the one & only Gaston!

{waiting in line & still smiling!}

{submarine ride}

{Astro Orbiters, this was the first ride Shelby ever rode by herself! At Disney, seven year olds can ride independently as long as they meet the height requirements} 

We rode the Alice in Wonderland ride for the first time on this trip, and the girls were stoked b/c it is a four (or a small five-six) person ride with 2 in the front and 2 in the back...so they got to ride in front on their own!

The girls were thrilled to be able to see so many princesses on this trip. Hadley was most excited to see Cinderella & Ariel. Hadley loves all things blue b/c of her blue eyes hence the reason she loves Cinderella so much. Hadley proudly told Cinderella that she was her favorite princess & then proceeded to tell Ariel that she was her "second favorite princess!" ;)  Thankfully, Ariel wasn't too offended, ha! It reminded me of when we went to Disney World when Shelby was 3.5 and told Jasmine about how pretty Cinderella was! ;)

That wraps up Day #1 and #2! I'll be back soon with way too many pictures of Day #3 & #4!