Da Bears!

Megan played her first season of soccer and loved it!  She may be the smallest on the team, but she runs as fast as any of them and will run for the entire game or full hour of practice!  She is a little running machine.

She had fun, learned more about the game, loved all the running, and wants to play again next year!

Here she is, mad to be pulled off the field for a break!  Each kid gets rotated out every few minutes to keep them being tired, but she would get upset, she just wanted to keep playing!  Love it!

Craft Fair

My friend, Trina, and I went to a craft fair a few weekends ago.  We each brought our wares and sat in the 90+ degree heat sweating it out and gabbing all day.  We didn't sell a ton, unfortunately, but we had fun together!  She had all kinds of bows, hair accessories, and girly tutus and such for sale.

I had nursing covers, covered wipes cases, and decorative holiday plates for mantel decoration for sale.

Trina has an 8 yr old girl, a 4 yr old girl, and an almost 2 yr old girl.  How awesome is that?  She also has a 6 yr old boy, he's completely outnumbered when we get together!

I still can't believe these didn't sell!  I started at $10 ea. or 2/$18, after an hour or two it went down to $8 ea. or 2/$14.  Finally, I went down to $6 each or 2/$10!!  Seriously?!  I think they're cute, but obviously the crowd shopping crowd doesn't share my taste.  Oh well!

Do Not Try This At Home...

 Somehow, some way, Mikayla got the shoulder strap of her seatbelt wrapped around her torso in a knot.  As we're driving on Hwy 99 she says, "my seatbelt's too tight."  "You have permission to take it off and redo it," I said.  Seconds later we hear whining and complaining and I sigh and decide to risk my life by climbing over the seat, across the fruit loop-ridden floor, dodging books and socks strewn about to get to her.  After a minute of fidgeting, I tell Trent to stop the van because I can not undo her belt and it's only getting worse.

 He pulls over and we survey what she's done and think if only we can lift her body higher, the seatbelt will reach the magical clicking point where it will let loose and give us the slack we need.  'Tis not so.  Every time we moved her it racheted tighter and tighter on her torso closing in on her ribs.  She was screaming and crying in between struggling to breathe.  I propped her up on my legs to relieve a little pressure and we frantically tried to figure out how to undo the strangling, malfunctioning belt.

 Fortunately, a car was pulled over just ahead of us and on a whim I asked Trent to see if the driver might by chance be carrying around some tools in his SUV.  Hallelujah, the man had a wrench and a screwdriver!  He and Trent ripped off the rubber insulation, pried off the panel surrounding the seatbelt, unscrewed the hardware holding the seatbelt up, and of course, all this movement caused it to rachet a few notches tighter causing more screams of pain from the poor 7 yr old.  Finally, they got the belt out of the vehicle panel and we loosened the knot til she could wriggle free.

 The aftermath.  The seatbelt STILL won't loosen up.  It is racheted tight and for some reason locked internally.  We took the vehicle into Kia to be looked at and they said they need to order a new seatbelt since it malfunctioned so badly.

 The next day her abdomen still looked awful.

Poor child will definitely be sitting upright and not moving while in the car from now on!

Happy Halloween!

 Our too cute tiger, Rajah, complete with loud "rahrs" and gnashing of teeth--though with such a sweet smile she was hardly fierce.

 Jasmine was decided upon by Mikayla months ago.  She actually chose our family theme and was so excited to be Jasmine and found her costume online and everything.  Unfortunately, due to a sugar overload at school of cupcakes, donuts, cookies, fudge, and candy, she had too much of a tummyache to do any trick-or-treating!  She put on a good face for a half hour and then asked to just go home and pass out candy.  Poor girl!

 And our little monkey, Abu!  Quite fitting for this little climbing, scampering, curious little thing.  She called her costume her "ooh ooh ah ahh" since that's obviously how monkeys sound.  She wasn't sure what was going on at first at our church's trunk-r-treat, but after a couple cars she said, "chich-o-cheat" without us prompting her and knew that meant more candy to be plopped in her bag.  She'd smile a big smile and say, "day-doo," and then scamper on to the next vehicle.

 Naughty little monkey would sneak a sucker out of her bag and wrangle off the wrapper before I had a chance to see her do it in the dark!  sneaky sneaky!

 She thought trick-or-treating was a blast and had no fear as she walked up to each door in the dark, knocked, and opened her bag saying "chich-o-cheat" each time.  Soo cute!

Here we have Aladdin, Jasmine, Rajah, Abu, and I am Jasmine's mom that you never see in the movie.  I had to come up with something because the girls told me I should be a big, fat palace guard and well, that just didn't fly.  Thank you sweet children...

Disneyland was fun for all!

We had a great trip to Disneyland with Trent's brother, Brock, wife Chelsey, and their 2 cute girls, Paytin and Presley.  Here's 3 of them totally excited to start another fun day.

This is how real men do Disney--carting around 110 lbs. of kids.  Go Daddy!  And me with a very tired Kendra.  Disney just wears you out!

The beloved Ariel ride we rode again.  And again.  And again.  And then a little more.

Our Disney tradition--a Cold Stone bucket of ice cream for dinner one night at the hotel.  The girls remembered it from a year and a half ago and we had to do it again. 

Only at Disneyland can you start everyday with a donut or a danish!  We kept them munching on apples and oranges all day to balance it out though!

Ah, the Mad Hatter.  He cracked us up joking with Mikayla and putting her hood over her eyes, pretty funny.

I know it's blurry, but it's the best I could get of Megan "driving" her Autopia car.  It's more like, Megan purposely trying to whack us back and forth on the track just to hear me scream!

Chillin' wit my apple yo.

Ready for Star Tours--they really like this ride too.

Auntie Chelsey made these super cute skirts for the girls--again we got so many comments and compliments and characters stopping to say hi to the cute matching girls.

Megan's favorite!

They each picked something out from the store on Main Street.  Presley got a Lion King baby animal, Paytin got suckers, a necklace and rings, Mikayka got a Lady and the Tramp doggy with a blanket, Megan got a big Minnie Mouse...

and Kendra got Boo, from Monsters Inc.  She ran to it in the store and said, "Boo!  Boo has gigi! "  Gigi means blanket in Kendra-ese.  She started patting her back, "Shh, go ni-night Boo, shh, shh, shh."  It was so cute I couldn't resist and she has not put Boo down yet!

Right after we got our picture with Woody, 3 Japanese girls came over and motioned and asked if they could get a picture with Kendra.  One crouched down by her and gave a peace sign.  "Cute American girl!" they said.  It was so funny that they wanted a picture of her, I was cracking up!

Stopping to play a little poker with pumpkins.

All of us together!  We had such a great trip and had so much fun with Brock and Chelsey.  The girls had a blast with their cousins and I'm glad we were able to make the trip to see each other. 

Back from Disneyland!

 Tinker Fairies!

 I love watching Megan on the rides.  She showed every emotion from jubilation to excited anticipation to pure fear.  Who knew Snow White could be so scary for her?!

 Lovin the carousel

 All our Minnie's on a teacup.  I made these shirts before our trip and they were a hit!  Everyone kept asking where we bought them.

 Daddy with Kendra

 Kendra never wanted to stand near a character, but was fine if we held her.  She liked to give the characters kisses on the nose, too cute!

 Again, love watching her emotions!  This was her first time on the new Ariel ride!  She was MOST excited about this ride above all others and I'm pretty sure we went on it 9 times!

 Trying to figure out the 3-d glasses for the Toy Story ride.  Mikayla has to cop a cool pose in every pic.

 Had to document the fact that she was so worn out she actually fell asleep in my arms.  NEVER happens!

 Oh yeah, look, we're on the Ariel ride again.

 Trent gets pretty intense on the Buzz Lightyear ride!

 Mikayla loved driving her own car in Autopia--I think I'll be recovering from whiplash for quite awhile.

 I have no words...  :)

Ah Rapunzel and Flynn Rider, very cool new additions to Disneyland.  We thoroughly exhausted ourselves and the children and enjoyed the hot tub at the hotel each night to relax.  The kids couldn't even stay awake during the 8pm World of Color, we couldn't believe how tired they got!