Aug. 27, 2008 - We're Back!!!

We got back from Colorado on Monday night. Our good friends had a new baby girl (their 4th) and we girls (Bubba couldn't make it) took off across the country on Saturday the 16th. We arrived at our destination Sunday night. We had a lot of fun, for starters, there was a new baby to hold... and hold and look at and hold

Then there were old friends to play with (until this new baby (we'll call her Topo) all the girls line up within 7 months of each other Beanie and Tibbie are 6 months apart, Bear and Gabbie are 4 months apart and Monkey Face and Coco are 7 months apart)...

There was a pool to play in and hours of Marco Polo with which to torture the neighbors...

And there was sitting around to do...because WOO WHEE was that pool cold...

And then there were the evenings. I brought two six packs of glow sticks for night time fun. What could be better than six little girls scampering through the grass after dark with glow sticks?? Well, an uncle who is FULL of ideas of how to capture the moment on camera, of course...I give you "Weird glow stick shots a la The Camera King" (formerly known on this and my other blog as M.F.)...

Here we have "Kids Leaping with Glow Sticks"

""Spooky Fire-Starter-Lookin' Bear"

 "Tibbie the Dragonfly"

"Butterfly Bean"

"But I DIDN'T want Antenae"

and "I wanted Fairy Wings" (the series)

Oh and did I mention there was a baby to look at???

See ya around...

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Aug. 8, 2008 - Two weeks of Grandparents

Well I haven't been blogging much...or actually ANYWHERE on line much simply because life has been rolling along here. Starting the last week in July my folks came out to play. During that time, swim team wrapped up for the summer. Swim team made for a pretty busy couple of months because it was every week day from the second week of June until the first week of August. Beanie had a great time. FINALLY something she could play HARD and not worry about hurting herself. We'll have to see if we can continue something "watery" through the winter. Here she is with her swim team medal. Although we've been trying to keep schooling most of the summer, we did take a bit of a break while Grandma and Papa were here. Not much though, Grandma really likes schooling with us. Bubba took the day off and we all went to the aquarium...sadly we went on a Friday so it was pretty crowded...still we got to look at a few things. Lucky for you I didn't take video, as the surroundings were less than peaceful. Still the pictures LOOK peaceful...just don't imagine ANY screaming children wrestling just out of the shot (in one of these you can see the wrestling child's feet). I'm so proud of this shot...I waited and waited and snapped it JUST in time to catch that shark startling Bear...you can't see it in the picture but she actually GASPED...notice Monkey Face reacting to her. Aren't Dads fun? Not only do they let you climb up on the rocks so you can see the crockil-gators being fed...but then they make the dismount funny with tickling!! See ya around...

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Oct. 25, 2007 - Finally pictures from our trip...

Well I finally broke down and just took our memory card to the local drugstore to get a cd made of our travel pictures.  The camera is still dead...still don't know what to do about it.  Actually haven't used very many brain cells figuring it out at this point...I know, I know, LAZY.  But the fact is, I have a camera that works OK...and that fact alone lets me be lazy.  I'd better figure it out soon though, because new cameras do not stay new forever and warranties do run out.  I still don't have the videos because the magic Kodak machine had no idea how to deal with anything other than an actual picuture file...but here what we've got.

We didn't take very many pictures during the first part of our trip...the 3 days it took us to get to  us to Arizona...or the one extra day that it took to get to California once we met up with Grandma and Grandpa...but we took a lot IN California...

My wonderful cousin Mr. Dinosaur took it upon himself to make sure we girls had a great time in the midst of a mourning family.  Remember we grownups had just lost our precious Mother and Grandmother.  My girls had met their Great-Grandma a few times...but they just weren't cut out to be sad for long.  So stepping into the gap was Mr. Dinosaur... He came to dinner...He took days off from work...He went swimming with us...He and his mother Auntie Eenie went to Disneyland with us...Lucky Beanie had Mr. Dinosaur at Disney otherwise she would have been stuck with only the smaller rides.  He quickly became a favorite and both Beanie and Bear thought future marriage might be an option.  I quickly set them straight...don't you worry Mrs Dinosaur!!!

One of the first crazy things he did was allow Beanie to shave his head...Now to be fair it really already WAS shaved...but more fuzzy...so she just took a little off the top!   It was HILARIOUS to watch...especially the HORROR in the older generation when they heard that she was shaving his head that brought them ALL running.

We have a lot of family in California and while we were there we took the 3 hour trip up to Bubba's Dad and Step-Mother's house.  It was interesting because after more than 20 hours in the car, when I told the girls this trip would take 3 hours, they didn't even blink.  All that to say...apparently "good travelers" are made not born.

Here are the girls in their traveling dresses in Grandpa's waterfall.

Here they are the next day as we were walking out the door...Grandma and Grandpa decided that we needed a taste of the local color before we left so they took us to an ice cream parlor...We had WONDERFUL ice cream sundaes all around...but sadly...we didn't have any more room for lunch.  It was such a "vacation" thing to do.  FUN FUN!

Back to the Beeshee abode...(My aunt and uncle's house)...and a rip roaring good time.  By the way...I love to watch Beanie laugh...well all my kids really...but Beanie has gotten to an age where she doesn't always just throw her head back and laugh...so to catch it on film is fabulous...

What is she laughing at???
See this little dog???  Her name is Lucy!  The big girls LOVED Lucy and chased her and teased her with flash lights and such...She is laughing at Lucy...Bear was shining the flashlight on the ground while Beanie and Mr. Dinosaur were playing catch...Lucy's running and snorting antics brought game to a halt.

You can't take a 4 day car trip to California and NOT go to Disneyland...even though GRRRRRR...are they ever expensive!!  Thankfully, my mommy, my Auntie Eenie and Mr. Dinosaur were able to go with us.  It was wonderful to have extra hands and extra arms so that everybody could ride...I'm sure that we wouldn't have been able to go if everyone wasn't ready to come with us...THANKS YA'LL.

Mr. Dinosaur rode ahead of all of us on Dumbo and got these shots...remember to mouse over for captions.

The next picture is at the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House...or at least what used to be the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House...apparently SFR is no longer popular with the kids so they've redone some of it as Tarzan.  What was interesting to me this whole trip was how much LESS Disney is into RE-DOING on a grand scale these days.  This tree house was a case in point.  They pretty much left the original SFR intact, redid the signs to talk about Tarzan and put an interactive big screen T.V. playing scenes from the movie in one of the rooms and called it Tarzan.  They did do a pretty extensive camp UNDER the tree house that would have been Jane's camp...but there was still a lot of stuff there from SFR.

Being SFR fans...my kids have seen both movies and we talked about how if you've seen the movie (SFR) you realize that this stuff HAD TO BE from SFR.  One example...this tree house is chock full of stuff...dishes, trunks, books, curtains, furniture, the bow of a ship...etc.  How on earth, did Tarzan's parents get all that stuff to shore???  Remember, their ship SUNK, there was no bow to be had! 

The Robinson family had access to their ship for quite a while...they ended up BLOWING IT UP themselves to throw off the pirates...but before that I distinctly remember them bringing the animals and most of the usable stuff to shore...and that is all the stuff that the first generation Disney people fully RE-CREATED for this attraction...the only thing really missing, that I noticed was the piano.  All the other niceties were there from the china tea set to the library...Tarzan???  HUH???

 I'm really glad that Disney didn't take the stuff down...the tree house has always been one of my favorite walk through attractions...but at the same time I feel like saying..."Wait a minute, you can't pretend this is Tarzan by slapping a big screen TV in there.   You USED to remake stuff and wow us...now you don't even pretend to...and charge us $63 bucks a head."  Sad!  Just sad.  I'm afraid real physical quality is the stuff of earlier generations, nowadays we will be wow'd by technology, or not at all.

This next one is interesting...well it's really just Ariel with Beanie and Bear...what is interesting about it is that we took a picture with this VERY Ariel when Beanie was 3.  She has this autograph book that we bought the last time we went to Disneyland and sure enough THAT Ariel is the same lady.  I'm VERY impressed...and she played it so cool...she saw the picture in Bean's book and said, "Oh, I remember you...you were about 3 right...oooo you've grown into such a young lady".  Mr. Dinosaur thinks she must have a pretty nice 401K...cynic that HE is.

Here we all are waiting in line for the 2000 Leagues Under the Sea GONE Nemo ride.  This is another incident of cleaning up what was there and putting in a video screen...although even I have to admit it was pretty cool in that you couldn't SEE the screen...it really did look like they were swimming out there...still it was a video.

See what I have to look forward to?  Mr. Dinosaur said that she was NOT very good at staying centered on the track...maybe I'll get lucky and she won't WANT to learn to drive until she is 20...Stop growing so fast little girl.

Monkey Face LOOOVED the parade...she just grinned and grinned.  I have so many pictures that it was hard to choose one...so here are two...

This was more old school and made me so happy to see it...my kids just loved him...there were also flowers on jumping stilt shoes...again...more old school...and we talked and talked about how hard it would be to jump and dance on them.  Although Beanie is pretty sure that SHE will be able to handle them when her leg is better.  (Legg Perthes...BAH...that's not gonna stop Bean,)

We found out that Beanie had an affinity for roller coasters (Big Thunder was her favorite, although she liked Matterhorn) and that Bear REALLY did not!!  (For some reason I thought it was an okay idea to take her on Matterhorn...I don't know WHAT I was thinking.)...so here is Beanie and Mr. Dinosaur in action on the pretty great 'baby' rollercoaster in Toon Town.

Here are some shots of Mr. Dinosaur...for the most part he was behind the camera, giving me a chance to experience Disney with my girls and I'm so thankful...but here he is...the man behind the camera...and the crush of my two oldest children and my very favorite Boy-cousin-who-went-to-Disneyland-with-us-in-September-of-2007...(I have several other favorite boy cousins and wanted to be clear).  We love you Mr. Dinosaur.

I took more pictures but can't access them with the camera right now...I'm hoping that they are not gone...so Mom, Daddy, Mr. Dinosaur, Auntie Eenie, other family members not pictured above...if you have any pictures of the off Disney days, could you send them to me???

See you around...

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