All good things must come to an end

Kate is still a bit torn between the ecstatic joy she has been experiencing for the last three days and the sadness she is feeling at having to leave the happiest place on earth. But I wanted to share a few more details of Kate’s Disneyland excursion.

First, since I knew no one would believe us, Wednesday was the most amazing day at Disneyland as we truly did not encounter the usual crowds. We even took some photos without realizing that there was no one in the background–at Disneyland, when does that happen?

Kate also had lunch on Wednesday with the Princesses and so decided that she needed to be decked out in full Princess regalia. Please notice the Princess t-shirt and Princess hat Minnie-ears. Sleeping Beauty was very pleased.

     

 Kate loves Merry Go Rounds and California Adventure has a beautiful one near Ariel’s Grotto. Here’s Kate with her favorite sea creature.

And even though my daughter adores roller coasters and scary rides, she has a very soft spot for the tried and true Disney kids favorites–Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Snow White’s Scary Adventures, Autopia, and of course, my nightmare of songs stuck in your head, It’s a Small World. 

And then dream of all dreams come true, on Thursday not only did we make it back plenty early for Kate to see the High School Musical 3 show in its entirety (we’d tried unsuccessfully 2 times before), Kate got to participate in the show as one of the dancers.

    

All good things do come to an end and we left Disneyland after sharing a giant ice cream sundae in honor of Granpda David.

“A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.”

It seems like the snow will never end up here in the Northwest.  I woke up this morning (okay Jacob woke me up this morning) to find about three inches of snow on the ground again.  Since most of the schools were 2 hours delayed and a few were actually closed, we decided to stick around the house a little longer this morning and have a little fun in the snow.

Characters, characters… Everywhere!

Kate’s dream of Disney has come true and my master planning around having the park as empty as possible also worked out amazingly well. Case in point, we actually we’re able not only to see many of the Disney characters but Kate was able to get close enough to them to have photos taken. And she was in heaven!!

Day 1: Pooh, Pluto, Mr. Incredible, and Mickey.

  

 

Day 2: Tigger, Goofy, and Donald.

 

Disneyland — The first day of childhood paradise

And the day finally arrived. Auntie Tricia, Grandma Roo, Kate and I flew out of Seattle on a rainy, gray day and arrived in Ontario to a beautiful, sunny, 65 degree day. Here’s Kate at the airport waiting to take off.

After settling in to the hotel and a good night’s sleep, we awoke the next day refreshed and ready to make Disneyland our own. Here are the girls dressed and ready to go.

   

We were able to enter the park early and we beelined for Nemo since Kate didn’t get to go on it last time we were at Disneyland on its opening day. We then spent the day following Kate’s dream. We rode Splash Mountain, Indiana Jones, Tower of Terror, Pirates of the Carribean, Space Mountain, Thunder Mountain, saw the High School Musical 3 show, ate ice cream, and in general let Kate lead the way.

Kate waited very patiently to get on Thunder Mountain. Luckily, this time of year, patiently only meant 5 minutes.

Here’s Kate after Tower of Terror in her new Jack Skelington ears. Gma Roo and Auntie Tricia were too afraid to go on so they shopped in the Nightmare before Christmas section in the Tower of Terror store.

And then we ended the day with some photos in front of California Adventure–Kate chose the “A.”

    

Karate [kuh-rah-taaaaaaaaaay]

Kate has been enrolled in Karate at her school since last fall and Sensei determined that she was ready to go up for her first belt test. Can I just say her Sensei is amazing?!?! The belt test was attended by close to 100 students ages 4 to 13 and he was able to interact with and handle all the students on his own through the warm up and test round. He is one awesome teacher.

Anywho, when I said that to Kate she replied “Whatever, I already knew that.” She is 5 going on 13. But I was so proud of her at the test. Here’s Kate demonstrating some of the punches she was tested on.

   

We found out she passed and we will post new photos of her yellow belt with black stripe once she has received it from Sensei.

Kate and Jake updates

The kids have so much stuff going on, I thought I would do a general update on them for you.

No official milestones for Jake, but most recently Pete and I have been blown away by his language explosion. I swear his vocabulary expanded by 50 words overnight and he has begun stringing words together. His favorite combo is “No + [new word]” but that fits his personality so well. We are constantly bombarded by “No cracker,” “No toy,” “No shoes,” “No milk.” Then he will actually realize he wants milk and he will chase us around yelling “Milk, milk, milk, milk.” It’s too much fun. He also can read almost all letters and tell you their corresponding sounds. He’s just on a roll.

Kate has had 2 pretty significant changes happen recently. First, she is no longer wearing her eye patches at all. We’ve gotten her as close as we can, 20/50 with her glasses on, and she just wasn’t budging from there. So we’re giving her a break for a while, glasses only, before we move her over to contacts. Second, she decided she wanted to cut off all her hair. I am loving the new do and everyone has been telling her how cute she looks. She’s loving the attention. We’re off to Disneyland the last week of February so all she can think about right now is the princesses and her karate belt test on 2/14.

Here she is demonstrating her karate moves with Jake as her imitator.

Look mom, we can punch.

      

And then of course the love!!!

Rock Band is in the House

There has been a bit of Rock Band play going on in the house of late. With Tricia joining in on the action, we’ve been able to get in some good practice time and see what we can do. The rewards paid off for us the other night when Tricia scored her first 100% on drums and I scored my first 100% on Expert.

 

Tricia got very excited by all the perfection which led to Rock Ons all around.

And then the kids had to join in on the fun…

  

Aren’t the little rockers just adorable?