DISNEYLAND!

WARNING: This post will NOT be interesting to you.  I have put it up here on my blog because I worry it will get tucked away into some random file I never open again and forget the details of this day. I can't do that.  It was too nice of a day.

 Hoping they had hot chocolate... let down, but the warm quiche made up for it!

 I love how the castle gate lines up perfectly to give me a crown/halo here!

 Walking onto Indiana Jones??!!

 We ran into our friend Andy and his son- what are the odds?!  It was fun to ride Small World with a little boy reassuring us it was "not scary" :).

 We got to ride the Matterhorn!!!  It has been closed every time we have come for the past 11 years.  The ride is a little lame, but it was fun for a stroll down memory lane.

 Lighting of the castle. Went from this, to this:

For our 31st Birthdays this year, Glenn and I decided to go to Disneyland... without the kids!  It was a rare opportunity of being neither pregnant, or with a newborn-- so we thought we'd Carpe Diem while we could!  

It was an unprecedentedly AMAZING day at Disney!  By noon we had ridden EVERY major ride in the park-- practically walking onto Indiana Jones, Splash Mountain, Pirates of the Carribean, the Haunted Mansion, Big Thunder Mountain... on and on!  It was INCREDIBLE!  We hit the jackpot since kids were still in school, and it was finals week for the college group (plus it was cold in the morning and night, so I think that kept some away).  We don't expect to see it's equal.

Since it was cold, we kept scouring the park for Hot Chocolate and failing (it had been a bad weather week, so people must have been downing it by the gallons!).  When we did find some though, it was some of the best hot chocolate I have EVER had.

By four o' clock we had also hit every major ride in California Adventure and we were happy little clams. So, we actually had time to shop, walk through Sleeping Beauty's Castle, go to the Tiki Room, and watch the lighting of the castle (which was accompanied by snow..literally! There were snow machines on the main street lights.  I had forgotten how mesmerizing and beautiful falling snow is.  It induced some home sickness.)  It was PERFECT. 

Glenn is truly my favorite company on earth, so this was one of those days earmarked in my mental journal as a true treasure.  I will say that my feet sure hurt by the end, and we were both exhausted (we ran between most of the rides... we didn't want to waste a minute!)-- but it was a perfect day.

They are so worth the trouble...

Glenn and I were at Disneyland ALONE without kids the other day and I got a taste of how pathetic I am going to be when our children are grown.

I'll forget all about how hard and exhausting these days were.

I'll bawl when I see beautiful little children (which all little children will look beautiful).

I know I will because we had been away from our kids for about 10 hours at Disneyland when I already began mutating into this form. And Disneyland is not a safe place for a person who thinks all little children are beautiful and need to be bawled over. I'm grateful Glenn didn't know about this internal struggle I was having because I'd hate to see him lose a little respect for the woman who calls him every day at five because she is going to have a break down if he isn't able to come home from work right then (I never get this wish, but he knows the phone call is coming everyday, none the less!).

But, let's be honest. These cute faces are going to be worth longing for. I've intentionally done no touching up to these photos so I can remember to take them just as they were- which to my prejudiced mind is pretty stinkin' cute!

Man, they are wonderful.

*Side note: That blue thing is Jonas' $.99 watering can I got him to award him for being a good listener for not turning on the hose. He was in LOVE with it... even sleeping with it at night!

I didn't know he took this...

Yeah, our nights are still rough.

And they aren't going to get any easier when we fully annihilate these:

Note there are three in this picture. She likes to have one in her mouth and one in each hand. I've recently noted that she tickles her face with one of them as she falls asleep (hence the eye location!)

We are so in trouble.

Trouble...

One day I talked with Heidi on the phone while I put my make-up on. I went outside to get the kids to pick-up Max from school and found this:

Never fear, the paint went up the walls and on the door as well. The guilty party shall remain unnamed, but let's just say he's not going to try this again if he wishes to make it to 4.

One less tooth in the world...

I had no idea I had a "thing" for loose teeth, but mercy... I LOVED to wiggle Max's tooth! It was like tangible evidence that I was raising a growing, changing boy- and I loved it! Max patiently let me wiggle it several times a day until he finally plucked it out at school.

That night we had some fun with our first tour of duty as the tooth fairy. Glenn wrote a poem (well, I helped a little). Then he wrote it out on shrink-a-dink paper. We put it under his pillow with a satchel that had 12 quarters in it (double pay for a first tooth). It was so fun! I thought the whole "Tooth Fairy" thing would be rather transparent to Max, but he came home to report that his classmates who had also lost teeth only got money, no note... and he wasn't suspicious at all! Give him six months...