How To Feed A Bat Ray

Here is a little video of Ethan feeding a Bat Ray at SeaWorld. I'm just now getting around to posting about the tail end of our family vacation. We ended it with a little visit down to San Diego. It was a really nice and relaxing way to end our trip after spending four crazy days at Disneyland. For three of my kidos, it was thier first time seeing the ocean. They loved it. Kaylie and Meghan discovered that Manatee's are thier favorite animals. And Mark and I started thinking how much fun it would be to live in Southern California. You guessed it, I'm working on another slide show from this part of our trip and will be posting it soon.

Oh Matthew, What Did You Find?

Okay, first of all... the hair! I know! I'm tellin ya I've tried just about everthing. We wet it, we comb it, we moose it, gel it. You name it, doesn't matter. Three or four minutes later BWING! It's sticking straight up again. I'm telling ya it has a mind of it's own. I don't know what the poor little guys gonna do (about the hair). Anyway, onto our story... So I'm on the phone just a yammering away with my sister Emily, who by the way was totally entertaining me. (Love ya Em!) And I was not paying attention at all to what was going on with my little guy. When low and behold he walks into the room covered in... who knows what? I about died when I saw him. Needless to say I got off the phone immediately to find out what havoc had been wrought. Luckily it didn't turn out to be too bad. Matthew had just found a random, homeless M&M and did what any self respecting chocolate lover would do. He ate it! Well, at least he tried to. Come on, it's sugar, he knows how to take care of business. I'm just sayin. Matthew had a death grip on that M&M and was not about to give it up!
That picture just cracks me up. Doesn't he look like he stepped right out of Whoville? Little Macky-Loo Who. He found a small morsel he couldn't resist. So he grabbed it and clenched it tight in his fist. Then he licked it, and gummed it, 'til it was gobelty goo! And when his mother saw it, she cried out, "EEWWW!!" Right off the page of a Dr. Suess book, don't ya think?
MMMMM! Chocolate in a hard candy shell. Melts all over your face! Looks like he's moved on from paper folks. We're so proud!

Ah-Oh... There Go The Strawberries

So I'm at the store doing the grocery shopping. Not one of my favorite "to do list" chores, but we gotta eat, right? Things were going along pretty nicely. I'd only had to tear into one box of crackers to keep Matthew quiet when I preceed to the check out lane. As I am putting the groceries onto that conveyer belt thing, I think to myself, "We might get out of here relatively unscathed". Of course this is a thought thunk too soon. No sooner had I thunk it, than I hear a bit of a ruckus coming from the front of the cart. I hear Matthew say, "Ah-Oh!" Now usually I find this first attempt at language utterly adorable. But not at this moment. I look up, and somehow Matthew has reached around and grabbed the pound of strawberries in those clam shell things and... DROPPED IT on the floor. Strawberries were everywhere! So I get down on my hands and knees and I'm trying to gather up all these strawberries that have shot all over kingdom come. As I'm picking them up I notice that half of them are now bruised from the 4 foot fall they just took. Yum. These strawberries will be especially delicious. And then, when I finally get them all picked up, I can't get the blasted container to shut because apparently the strawberries have to be stategically placed. At this point, I'm starting to think that a childs whole purpose of existence is to see all the different ways they can imbarrass their parents. Well done, Matthew! You definately earned 10 points, out of a possible 10, for that one. Although Meghan still has you beat. My children. They are the frosting on the cupcake of my life!

Disneyland Montage

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No Time To Say Hello Goodbye....

Okay, so this story is absolutely mortifying. But I figure I'm going to tell it anyway. Maybe someone else can learn from my insanity and I'm sort of hoping that in the retelling of it, I might help myself feel better. (Maybe one day I might even find it funny.) Yeah, right. So it was our third morning at Disneyland and we had early entry passes. Which by the way, I'm not quite sure what the purpose of those are, seems how there are still ELEVENTY thousand people there! Anyway the plan was to hit Space Mountain first cuz I hadn't been on it yet. Then high tail it out of Tomorrow Land because let's face it folks, according to my agenda we had already spent way too much time over there. My favorite place to be is Frontier Land. Splash Mountain, Thunder Mountain, right? Alrighty, so I'm booking it over there as fast as I can, to say the least. I start grabbing my kids that want to do Space Mountain with me. As I'm half running to get in line Mark starts talking to me about, who knows what? I mean seriously, couldn't he see that I was in a huge hurry? So I turn to talk to him while I'm still speed walking to get in line. Can you see where this is headed? It's about to get ugly. Bad things happen when you don't watch were you are going in a crowded place. I was on a collision course with a little girl in a stroller and her grandma. To say that I completely mowed them over would be an understatement. And I will never, till the day I die, forget the way that little girl looked at me. Like I was some kind of horrible monster. Then she started screaming her bloody head off. Not that I blame her. The poor little thing was totally traumatized, as was I. I have to say that I don't think I have ever felt so utterly remorseful in my live long life. So the moral of this story my friends, is that if you ever find yourself at Disneyland racing to Space Mountain, slow down! Are you insane? Take a deep breath. Ten extra minutes in line isn't going to kill you. But having to remember the look on a little girls face when you unexpectedly plow into her will haunt you for the rest of your natural born life. That said, would you believe that in all those throngs of people, we bumped into... wait, maybe "bumped into" isn't the best choice of words. We saw "you know who" at least 3 more time that day. Each time I wanted to crawl in a hole. I mean really. What are the odds on that? Bottom line? Lesson learned. No more "White Rabbit" behavior from little old me.

Sweets For The Sweet

I've had a few of you tell me that you are waiting for my slideshow of Disneyland. Trust me I am working on it. But if you've ever made one, you know how much time they take. And I have to sneak an hour here and there after the kids are in bed. I'm happy to say I'm almost done, but in the mean time here is a little something from our trip that makes me smile.
This is a little video clip from our last afternoon at Disneyland. We had decided to stop for a little break and have some ice cream. While Mark was ordering our treat Ethan completely zonked out. By the time he woke up we had gobbled up all the ice cream. So Mark went and got him a cookie. Of course Meghan wanted to Know why we all couldn't have a cookie too? Well, at 3 dollars a pop... You know my kids- sugar, sugar, sugar! That Meghan of mine is a real ham.

Spring Has Sprung

While we were away my tulips opened up to show off to the World. As soon as we drove up to our house they were shouting, "Look at me!! Look at me!!" I love the Spring time. The CrabApple we planted last fall was blooming too. I couldn't resist taking some pictures.

Some Favorite Moments

So we are back, and adjusting to normal life again. We had loads of fun and I'm thankful that we were able to take off for a week to one of our favorite "laughing" places. Here are some of my most favorite pictures. It was hard to narrow down, we took a lot of them. I'm working on a slide show, but until I get it done here's a little sneek peak.











Stay tuned, there's more to come.

The Happiest Place On Earth...

...With The Occasional Meltdown