Spring Break

Are we ever going to get sick of pictures in front of this castle? I don't think so. For Blake's Spring Break, we headed back down to Anaheim for more meetings and more Disneyland! We left early Wednesday morning and after checking into our hotel, we went straight to the Magic Kingdom. I can't believe there are still rides we haven't gone on. The first ride we did was the Astro Orbitor, that we've never been on. It went around in circles so fast that I thought I was going to fall out. And you better believe I was holding on to Jack for dear life. I tried to reach up to hold Max at first, but he was out of my reach. I don't even think he noticed my attempts since he was too busy making the rocket go up and down. We also went on the Snow White ride for the first time. But we weren't very impressed. There wasn't a single thing about the prince kissing her to wake her up and definitely too much of that scary witch.
Our little family also went to California Adventure for the first time. Poor Jack wasn't quite tall enough for many of the rides. So, he spent most of the time in the stroller and was in heaven when we'd let him out to roam around. And he was especially happy when he got to play in the little shops--so many fun toys. Max was such a brave boy and went on Tower of Terror. Afterall, this boy LOVES elevators. After his first ride I asked him if he liked it and he said yes. But when I asked him if he wanted to go again he said no. Silly boy. But he did go again with Blake and you could tell he was so proud of himself for being so big. He also went on Soarin' Over California, the best ride in California Adventure, as well the jelly-fish ride and crazy cars. We also had our first bad Disneyland experience. And it just so happened to be in the super kid-friendly Bugs Life part of CA Adventure. They have a Bugs Life 3D show that we thought it would be fun to watch and kind of relax for a while. No go. After 30 seconds into it, when acorns started flying at our faces along with puffs of air for the effect, Max started screaming and wanted out. We tried to calm him down and took off his 3D glasses, but after we got squirted with water, he had it and Blake took him out. Jack and I braved it a little longer, but when the hornets came to sting us and I jumped and screamed when I was startled by the little pokes in my back, Jack had enough too. After that show we had planned on seeing the Aladdin show. Max was a little worried, but once I assured him nothing would come and get him, he settled down and really enjoyed that show. In fact, I think it was his favorite thing of the whole weekend. My favorite part, however, was after Max had fallen asleep in the stroller and Jack entertained me and Blake with his silliness for over a half hour. He was making the funniest faces whenever he wanted more food and then would laugh at himself for being so clever. I really cherish my one-on-one time with this silly baby.

We were planning on going to Disneyland again after packing up and checking out of the hotel, but once we saw the line to just get into the parking lot, we turned around and hit the freeway home. We told Max that Disneyland was closed and he got so upset. After he settled down Blake said, "It makes me happy when you're a nice boy." Max replied, "It makes me happy when Disneyland is open." And he wore his "mad face" for the next little while. I guess Disneyland really is the happiest place on Earth.

San Diego Children's Museum

Today we took a break from our Anaheim activities and drove down south to meet up with our favorite friend, April, and play at San Diego's Children Museum. We thought the museum was fabulous and activities included blowing bubbles, hula-hooping (only April and of course I didn't get any pictures), molding clay, driving funny scooters, kissing the animals painted on the wall (only Jack), climbing through trees, painting on cars, and playing in little houses.

But the highlight of the museum was definitely the pillow fight room; a room with mattress-covered walls and tons of tire-shaped pillows. Max loved climbing up the mattresses and sliding back down. Jack wanted to play with the kids but kept getting stuck, so I got to go in and play too.
We finished up our time with April eating hot dogs and chasing birds at Horton Plaza. The perfect ending to a super fun day.

Part of a Day in the Life

So I was going through the pictures of a day in the life of Jack and decided I took enough pictures of Max to do part of a day in the life. Really it should probably be entitled "A Day at the Discovery Museum Plus Daddy Comes Home Plus Tub Time and Bed Time," but I like "Part of a Day in the Life" better. I sure love this little guy, too!

Seals

Today when I asked the kids if they wanted to go see some seals, Blake asked me, "Where are we going to see seals?" WHAT? I guess it's definitely been too long since we visited Pier 39. Us locals hardly ever venture down with all those tourists. We're not surprised by the bush man and we're much too smart to fall into any of those tourist trap "great deals." But Jack has never seen the seals and Max doesn't remember, so that's what we did. We stayed down there and watched the seals for over an hour with the rest of the big crowd. They are just so entertaining barking and pushing each other around. But don't worry. After we were done, we left. Remember, we're too smart for the traps. Well, except the tasty mini-donuts. We did get some of those. :)

The Jacks In My Life

Jack Bauer: Will those terrorists never learn?

Jack Shephard: I'm so lost with Lost and loving every second of it.

And last, but not least, Sweet Baby Jack. Even with his whispy, multi-length hair, he is the most handsome Jack of them all.

My Assistant

Today is the last day of my photography class. My homework pictures aren't that interesting (testing white-balance and focal lengths), but my little subject was. I love Max. When I asked if I could take some pictures of him, he said, yes--and I'll take pictures of you. So, we spent the afternoon taking pictures of each other. Max is really talented and it's nice to have some pictures documenting me taking pictures. :) I loved the photography class and am now planning what class to take next. I think I have it narrowed down to a refresher calculus or sewing. But I'm pretty sure I have 18 months before I need to make a firm commitment.

Oh wait. Did I say I don't have any interesting pictures? I do have some and I'll share one. One of the assignments was about head and body positions. Max is good, but not good enough to hold positions for longer than me showing him and then putting my camera up to my eye. So, I enlisted another very willing model. Can you tell by his face? And don't worry, I didn't turn these in.

Back Into the Swing of Things

I've had a hard time getting back into the swing of things this week. In addition to recovering from a fun vacation, our mail was stolen and Blake lost his wallet. Luckily the wallet was found, but we're still dealing with the mail. And to make matters even worse, our oven doesn't work, our freezer is dead, and our fridge is slowly following. And they've been this way since the middle of February. Every time we scheduled someone to come take a look, we left town. So now, we are finally dealing with it. Turns out the oven needs a whole new computer and the part to fix our fridge costs more than a new fridge. Great. So, we've been eating out...A LOT. Which is actually kind of fun. But I've been noticing I feel very unmotivated to get things done around the house. I never realized planning and cooking meals made me so much more organized and prepared. So tonight (after eating dinner at In-N-Out) we went to buy a new fridge. Unfortunately the fridge we had decided on is out of stock and may be discontinued. We just can't catch a break. So, on to Plan B fridge, which won't be delivered for 2 weeks, and we're still waiting for the part for the oven to be ordered. Hopefully the time flies because we've never craved fresh, warm, home-baked, chocolate chip cookies more!

A Little Possessive

Today, whenever Blake would kiss me, all of the sudden we would feel some little person squeeze between us and start tugging at me saying, "Up! Up!" Then, when I picked up that little person, he would give Blake a mean look then turn and give me a smoochy kiss of his own. And if Blake tried to kiss me again, he would get a little hand in his face, pushing him away. It sure is nice to be the most popular girl in the house.Thanks Michelle, for the picture.

A Day in the Life

One of this week's homework assignments is "A Day in the Life." And since Max is my subject for everything else, for this project, it was Jack. It was completely exhausting following this little monster around with a camera for an entire day, thus more pictures at the beginning of the day than at the end. And I know none of the pictures are super great. It still takes me a long time to adjust the settings and my subject is not one to hold still for a long time. Anyway, enough disclaimers. I love this little guy.

Photography 101

After having my camera for over a year, I am finally learning what it can actually do. I signed up for a photography class from the oh so talented Nicole and I'm loving it. I already feel like I'm over-flowing with knowledge and I want more. This class even has homework assignments. And in addition to all the camera knowledge, I am also learning that I stink at "styling" pictures. I am so left-brained. In fact, my favorite part of the class was when we got to calculate the steps between shutter speeds and f-stops. I wish I would have brought my TI. Anyway, here are some of the pictures from Week 1's homework. They're nothing fabulous, but I'm still pretty proud of them.
Depth of FieldRule of Thirds

Creating Motion vs Capturing Motion

Smurf the Whole Day Long

I think if I let him, Max would watch Smurfs all day. He loves it. He's even picked up on some of the little things they do. For example, Gargamel (who Max calls Gargamellow) always says, "Must be the smurfs!" Now, Max will say things like, "Where are we going? Must be to the park" or "Look at that sign. Must be for the zoo." Everything is "must be..." And I'm just proud I figured out where he was getting it from. But of course, it can't all be cute. Today he tore all the books off the shelf and was stomping around on them. When I asked him what he was doing he said, "I'm being mad like Gargamellow." And don't even get me started on Grouchy Smurf. You know, the smurf that hates everything, even smurfberries? The other day Max was eating a banana and said, "I hate bananas." And then later said, "I hate trains" while playing with his trains. I asked him if he knew what the word meant, and he didn't. And actually, after I told him what it meant, he stopped saying it, so I guess it was a good learning opportunity. But why couldn't he just pick up on Brainy Smurf's "Papa Smurf always says..." and say something like, "Papa Blake always says..." Now that would have been cute. La la lalalala!

P.S. I'm in a photography class (more on that later) and Max is nice enough to be my model. I needed him to hold something out for me and this is what he chose. And thus, a post was born! :)

Birthday Bash!

On Saturday afternoon, the party Suzuki arrived with the rest of the party-goers. My dad was in charge of planning that afternoon's activity, so we headed over to the La Brea Tar Pits. I had never heard of them. Apparently, it's a not-so-big (at least now it's not that big) tar pit where fossils of mammoths and saber-tooth tigers have been preserved found. All this right in LA. So, after plenty of sign-reading, hill-running, and elephant noise-making, we ate dinner at Outback and went straight to bed for the REAL party on Sunday.

We arrived at Disneyland as the gates were opening and after some pictures, headed straight to Max's favorite ride--Dumbo. And if you can't tell by the expressions in these pictures, everyone LOVES Dumbo!

After Dumbo, Grandma and Grandpa took the two little boys and rest of us began Operation Birthday. Okay, I just barely thought to call it that, but really, it was like we were on some sort of mission. We split up. Some people ran to get fast passes, others to hold places in lines. It was amazing how many times we rode Space Mountain, Indiana Jones, and Thunder Mountain Railroad in comparison to the amount of time we waited in lines.We even got good enough to actually pose for the pictures. Look at Tony, he's sleeping! And yes, we took pictures of our pictures instead of buying them. :) And during this time Grandma and Grandpa were taking Max and Jack on their inaugural rides of the tea cups and It's A Small World, plus many other rides. They loved every minute of it. Well, except Grandpa, who chose to stay off the tea cups.

When we finally caught up with each other for a little Jungle Cruise action, this is how we found sweet little Jack. Grandma and Grandpa must be magic since they said he didn't fuss once and fell right asleep as soon as they put him in the stroller, which is nothing short of a miracle since Blake "accidentally" had kept Jack's paci in his pocket.While Jack was asleep and the weather was getting a little warmer, we decided to take Max on {gasp} Splash Mountain. I can't believe my baby is tall enough to ride the big-kid rides. He is such a brave boy and loved every minute of it. You can see him over my left shoulder in the first picture. He even has his hands up in the air, something his mom and dad didn't even do. He only got a little upset after we came down the big hill and went around the corner when a little water got on his pants. I don't think Andy or Bri, who got completely soaked and were freezing the rest of the day, could sympathize.

After lunch, we had a special surprise visit from April. That nice girl took some time out of her super busy schedule to come be with us. She really is so nice. So, then we all split up again--some to California Adventure, some to Toon Town, others to Space Mountain until we all met up again for dinner, where April surprised us again. Instead of carrying around her laptop and workpapers in that big EY backpack, she was carrying little Nothing Bundt Cakes so I could have cake on my birthday. Seriously, could a person have a better friend than April? After dinner, we said good-bye to April and hit some more rides. We rode Nemo, had a Buzz Lightyear tournament (Grandma won with a whopping 300,800 points), watched the fireworks, and basically rode and rode and rode until we had two little boys who looked like this--

I had such a wonderful birthday. I'd say, the best ever! I've never had so many people tell me "Happy Birthday!" thanks to the "It's my birthday" button I was wearing. I think I'll keep it and wear it every year. Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who made my day so special.

Come to my party!

It's my birthday tomorrow and everyone is invited to my party! See you there!

Beverly Hills--That's Where I Want to Be!

A simple compare and contrast situation:
Our first night in Southern California we stayed at the Hollywood South Sun Inn.
*Headboards nailed to the wall
*Remote control attached to the night stand
*Stale donuts for breakfast
*Nothing to keep young children occupied--you don't even want anyone to walk barefoot on the carpet
*Shower head about a foot too low
*Blake chose the hotel

Our second night in So Cal we stayed at the Beverly Hilton.
*Choice of feather or foam pillows
*Balcony with table and lounging chairs off every room
*Guests offered gourmet bottled water upon registration
*Lots of amenities to keep young children occupied: safe, mini bar, satellite radio, etc.
*Flat screen TV in the bathroom
*CDA chose the hotel
Hands down winner: Beverly Hills. My, what a difference a few blocks makes. I am so grateful to CDA, ASDA, and ADA for making it possible for me to stay in nice hotels.

It's a good thing/too bad we didn't spend more time at our hotels. The boys and I did cruise Rodeo Boulevard in our sweet Honda Accord with scratched up bumpers and little finger prints all over the windows, but that was about the extent of our Beverly Hills exploring. We were spending most of our time in Disneyland. All four of us went Thursday night. Then on Friday, while Blake was in meetings, I even ventured to the Happiest Place on Earth alone, with my two little boys. The three of us went on the Jungle Cruise (twice), Winnie the Pooh (I didn't even know there was a Winnie the Pooh ride), and The Haunted Mansion. The Haunted Mansion got a little interesting since we got stuck in the cramped room that expands and I had two nervous boys. But we got out alive and with no tears. I was pretty proud of myself.