A Beautiful Day

Today is a rare day for me. Noelle and Indy are simultaneously napping. I think this has happened 2 other times in the history of Indy's life. So what do I do? I check my email (for the first time in 4 days) and check out blogs.

Have you ever noticed that having children causes you to work so much more than the regular maintenance of child raising. For this reason I do not like to add "projects" to my day. By projects I am referring to crafty or other activities which take 5 minutes to set up, entertain the child for 4-6 minutes and require 10 minutes of clean up time. That's twice as much work for me than entertainment for my child, a bad ration if you're asking me. Well yesterday I decided to take a risk and do a "project" with Noelle. I got out the shaving cream and filled a cookie sheet with it. Noelle and I proceeded to play in the shaving cream. I heard that if you have your child draw circles and lines it is one of the most effective ways to introduce your child to writing. So Noelle and I drew circles and lines and it turns out that's pretty much all it takes to write Noelle's name. She got the N and o and l down, but the e was a little bit trickier. After she got tired of writing we just fooled around trying to make a shaving cream snowman, singing "Once there was a snowman" and squishing him flat at the end. Long story short, we both had so much fun. And guess what, it cleaned up in a zippy. So to all of you clean freak moms out there, try shaving cream, it's fun and wipes up easy.

This picture just makes me laugh. Doesn't he look happy? We took him to the doctor 2 weeks ago and he was 14 lbs-just look at that big Buddha belly.

Rollercoasters and More

Stephen and Beth and theirs friends, Liesel and Mark, met us in Disneyland. It was quite a day. We rode all the big rides and waited in no lines, thanks to fast passes and switch passes. My favorite ride? Soaring over California, with California Screaming a close second. Cody's favorite ride was the Mater horn he rode it at least 5 times. David loved California Screaming.

Sleeping

I peeked into the stroller to check on Indy and this is what I found. Hmm . . . I wonder who has been here.

David's 30 seconds of fame

I've never blogged a movie before. We'll see if this works . . . At California Adventure David won a little contest and as a prize he got to sing with the band! It was pretty exciting for him.

Disneyland and Back

We had a fantastic trip to Disneyland. We made it home on Sunday with ALL of our four kids. We did leave several other significant things behind, like my cell phone, but the kids are most important right? And I did get a new cell phone.

Here's some tips for your next trip to Disneyland:

1. Check to make sure all lights are off in your car after every excursion.
2. If you do jump start your car, match up positive to positive and negative to negative. DO NOT Assume that the post with the black cover is negative . . . look for the plus and minus signs.
3. Write your cell phone number on your child or an attached label, in case you lose said child he/she will be returned quickly.
4. If a weird guy is following you around the Science Museum, report him, don't try and use the avoidance tactic.
5. Watch all of the Disney Movies before hand, especially the obscure ones like Alice in Wonderland.
6. Brush up on your Disney trivia.
7. Bring lots of Advil and Tylenol for children and adults. You can take a full dose of both at the same time.
8. Take full advantage of the switch passes for every ride.
9. Super glue anything of value to your person.
10. Catch up on everyone you've ever met's blog . . . you never know who you're going to run into.

What an amazing vacation! I'm so sad it's over, but that could be the 8 loads of laundry talking.

Did you know?

David and I were looking through a book together and David pointed to a platypus and said to me, "Mom did you know they are the only mammals that lay eggs?" I think I may have learned that at some point in my life, but I had forgotten. I'm not sure I'd do so well on an episode of "Are You Smarter than a Kindergartener"

Take a picture of me!

Noelle loves to have her picture taken. This morning she came downstairs and demanded that we take a picture of her. Here it is.

Cody's Run In

It's Pinewood Derby season again. This is our first year entering the marvelous racing sport. The idea is that each cub scout takes home a block of wood with wheels and crafts it into a race car. It sounds great on paper a father and son working/bonding together to build the fastest block of wood possible. In reality I have learned that the busy fathers build the fast block of wood virtually on their own. I'm not saying Cody wasn't involved. He did choose the body style. And after dad spent 3 hours carving and sanding Cody did go out to watch the spray paint application. Cody bent low to see the car and just as dad started spraying Cody stood up directly in the stream of paint. So now he has evidence that yes, he did indeed help his dad build the car.

Growing too fast . . .

My friend sent me these adorable Nikes. Micah is growing so fast. We think the majority of his weight is carried in his cheeks. I am surprised he's growing so fast because he spits up everything I feed him and then he wants to eat more often. Of course I'm not complaining, because the more he eats the skinnier I get, right? Today at church everyone kept commenting on how big he's gotten and they kept asking us how much he weighs. So tonight we checked . . . he's a whopping 13 lbs. Another thing everyone keeps asking is whether we call him Micah or Indy. I think generally Jeromy calls him Indy and I call him Micah. This was confirmed by Noelle the other day; I said to Cody, "Go get Indy for me." And Noelle said, "Mom, you just called the baby Indy like me and dad." She's very observant. He's still the sweetest baby ever and he has me wrapped around his little finger.