Family Pictures

We had my friend Jeri take our family pictures the other night. We went to a really fun location in Lehi that had some cool old buildings. Even though we had some technical problems and Jon had to run to Walmart (that is why he is not in some of these), we still ended up with some great Pictures.

Summer Fun

We love summer time because the carnival comes to town. We love going to all of the city celebrations, the parades, fairs and carnivals. We love fireworks and the fourth of July. We love our garden and we love spending time together outside. We love having water fights and staying up late. We love BBQ chicken, steak and the kids love hot dogs. Summer is the best!!!

Here are some pictures of us at the Orem carnival. We took my friend Britni and her daughter Blithe with us and we had such a fun time. Britni was my second counselor in Primary but unfortunately she just moved. We had a blast and we hope to still get together sometimes even though they are far away.

And here is our garden. It is coming along great!
And some blonde highlights in my hair.

Lily is 2

Lily turned 2 on June 22nd. We took her to see UP at the movie theater. We went to the 12:00 show and we were the only people in the theater. It was her first time and I think the sound scared her a little bit, but after she got used to it she really had a good time. That was a really cute show, but it did make me cry. We also took Lily to Toys R Us and let her choose her birthday present. She chose her first barbies, Sleeping Beauty and Prince Phillip. Calvin was very grateful for this becuase he loves playing with Prince Phillip. She also chose a little plastic baby doll that has plastic clothes that clip on and off and a little crib to sleep in. We made volcano cake in the microwave and sang happy birthday to her. She was very excited about blowing out her 2 candles. It was a very fun family day. We will do a combined water birthday party for Calvin and Lily in July.

Lily's update:

Lily you are so sweet. You give so many hugs and kisses. You are the best sleeper. You sleep from 8 pm to 8 am and you take a 3 hour nap. Your smile and laugh are so contagious. You do not like being tickled, I think it is more painful for you than it is fun (you get that from me). You can hold your own with your brother and you definitley let us know when you don't like something. You will say " No, uh-uh" several times in a row. Sometimes you get put in time out for scratching, but you willing go and stand in the corner and then you say sor sor Cal Cal. Calvin is never mad at you afterwards because he thinks it is so cute that you say that to him. You love to read books. I don't think you have a favorite because you seem to love them all. You are starting to learn your colors, although nine out of ten time you say Blue and the tenth time you say yellow. You count like this: two, two, two, eight, two, nine. You know about half of your ABC's. We love to hear you sing Twinkle Twinkle. Sometimes we have no idea what you are talking about because you will carry on for five minutes in your own chinese sounding language, Dad thinks this is so funny! You talk like this a lot on your little purple cell phone that you got in Disneyland. I love to help you say your bedtime prayers. You will copy each word I say as long as I say them one word at a time. You love to drive everything, my car, dad's trucks, the bikes, and you are always asking Calvin to give you a ride in the red powerwheels truck. You love playing with babies and your kitchen stuff. And you will not go anywhere without your sippy cup full of water. You always climb in the pantry by standing on my sugar and flour buckets just to get your fisheys and you call them "mine fisheys". You love wearing dresses and you love being outside, except you do not like bugs, you call all of them bees and you run and scream (you also get this from me). At your 2 year checkup you weighed 26 lbs and you are 33 inches tall both of which are in the 50th percentile for your age. We love you and we love watching you grow and learn. But no matter how big you get you will always be our little Lily Bug!

Lily is blowing out the candles on her lava cake. And patiently waiting for a piece.

Swimming lessons rain or shine

We signed Calvin up for level 1 and Lily up for the parent tot swim lessons. It was a 30 minute class everyday for 2 weeks. However, 30 minutes was more like 3 hours. Let me explain, we would start getting dressed, slathered in sunscreen, and stuff in the car around 11:00. Drive over, have swim lessons and get home around 12:45. I would feed the kids lunch, give them baths, get Lily down for a nap, Calvin settled with a show and I would be in the shower by around 2:00. It seemed like a lot of work everyday. But the kids had a lot of fun, even thought it rained more than half of the days we were there, and it was freezing cold a few days. Which brings me to this crazy June weather. When did we move to Oregon? Rain, Rain go away! Atleast for a day at a time so that we can play outside. Anyways, we will do swimming lessons again next year. It was a lot of fun having organized play in the water. Jon and I both had a lot of fun playing with Lily. Lily did not have as much fun with Jon because he would dunk her when we sang ring around the rosies. I thought this technique was horrible, so I never dunked her. Calvin had a blast with his teacher and he was so sad when it was over. I am hoping to learn a few things while watching the kids do their swimming lessons because I have a lot to learn when it comes to playing in the water.

Disneyland

One day Jon and I got talking and we decided that we would like to take the kids to Disneyland. A couple of days later the plans were made on getaway.com, and a few more days later we were on our way there. This was also my birthday present. It was my first time ever going to Disneyland. I think I was more excited than the kids.

We left Tuesday May 26th when Jon got home from work. I was so excited that I packed the car up and we were pretty much waiting at the door for Jon to get home a couple hours before he was suppose to get home. We stayed in Mesquite that night and woke up and drove the rest of the way. The kids were fantastic in the car. We got to Disneyland on my birthday so they gave me a birthday gift card in the amount of a day pass. We bought some fun things with that gift card. My favorite being the Disney story book that we read out of every night now. We went on a few rides the first day, mostly the rides in "A bugs life," but we were tired from the drive, so we didn't do too much.
On Thursday Jon's aunt Diane, his cousin Jennifer, and Jennifer's boyfriend Steve came to Disneyland with us. Thursday was by far my favorite day of the trip. It was so fun to hang out with th0se three. We have such a good time. We went on so many rides, laughed, ran around, ate some expensive Disneyland food, and just had a blast. My favorite ride was Thunder Mountain. It was just scary enough to be fun but not scary enough to make me sick.


On Friday we went into California Adventure and saw the play Aladdin. We also went on some rides like California Soarin' and the Golden Zephyr. But it was more of a low key day. We did stay up late and watch the firework show, which was really fun and sooo loud. Lily got a little bit scared for the first few booms and then she was in awe. Calvin danced around and cheered while watching the fireworks, he just loved it.
On Saturday Jon woke up with food poisoning and spent a good part of the morning in the bathroom. At one point he thought he was feeling better so we got on the shuttle and headed to Disneyland. Our hotel was one mile from the parks, so about a twenty minute shuttle ride. Not bad, but next time I want to be within walking distance. Anyways, we got into Disneyland and Jon was sick again. He spent a couple of hours on a park bench while I hauled the kids around to ride some of their favorites again. Jon ended up taking Lily back to the hotel in the afternoon so that they could both take a nap. Calvin and I spent the afternoon in California Adventure. We went to the Disney Playhouse show. Watch the video of Calvin dancing, it is so cute the way he shakes his hips. He really loved that show. We also saw the pixar parade, I love the guys doing tricks and flips on the float for Toy Story. That night we ordered pizza from a local Papa John's, yummy! And we sat in the hot tub. It was never really hot enough to go swimming. It stayed around sixty degrees all week. Which was perfect for standing in lines. The lines to the rides were about 15-20 minutes each. I hear that is not too bad but I don't know if I could have handled much longer than that. The lines to the rides amazed me, how they wrap back and forth and back and forth, it was crazy to see.

Calvin was the perfect age to take to Disneyland. He could ride almost every ride. And he was so excited about everything. I could not believe what a little daredevil he was. His favorite ride was "Star Mountain" (aka Space Mtn). That ride made me sick because it was so dark. Calvin on the other hand was screaming with his hands straight up in the air the whole time. When we got off of the ride and I was about to throw up he said "Let's do it again!" He also loved Astro Blasters and the Pirate ride. And of course he loved the castle, we had to walk through it too many times to count. He got a new sword and a Disneyland hat and he hasn't stopped talking about our trip since we got home. And he keeps asking if we can go back "next week".

Lily was so cute. Her eyes were wide open with surprise at how colorful and big everything was. She picked out a princess cell phone that she did not let go of the whole vacation. And she also got this beautiful princess crown. She loved every ride that she was tall enough to go on, I think her favorite was Dumbo. She got a little scared on some of the dark rides, like the Haunted Mansion and Pirates. But for the most part, she was in heaven.

On Sunday morning we packed up the car and headed to Huntington Beach. We didn't plan to get too wet because of the weather and we didn't have a hotel to go back to. We just wanted to let the kids see the ocean. Lily loved the ocean waves splashing on her feet. She would laugh and scream every time a wave came up to her. It was fun to watch. Check out the video but just pay attention to Lily, not the mom.

And then we headed home. The kids were perfect on the ride to and from California. A couple of movies and a couple of books and they were set. They only slept when it was dark. I sure am glad we tinted our car windows before we left or else it may not have been so pleasant. The ride home was sooo long for both Jon and myself. Jon was still not feeling 100% and at this point I was starting to get sick. We had to stop and use the bathroom about 10 times! That was the longest drive of my life. I like doing half one day and half the next way better than a straight shot. It took about 10 1/2 hours to get there but 12 1/2 to get home (I think the time change and the bathroom stops are factored into this time).

All and all it was a wonderful vacation and we look forward to doing it again someday. If you ask Calvin, we are going to Disneyland again next week!

Knights

This is special enough to get it's own post separate from the humongous Disneyland post even though it is related.

Calvin picked up some Knight's on the way home from Disneyland. Now you may think that I am talking about some figurines, but no, these are real knights with armor and horses and everything. There are four of them and they are now his best friends. We found out about them right about the time we drove past St. George. Calvin speaks up from the back seat and says, "Dad you better hurry up, my knights are going to beat us home." We both looked at him and said, "What knights?" He said, "The ones that are riding on their horses in front of us." Then he told us that one of the knights was having a birthday party at our house the next day, so we had to hurry home and make a cake.

Over the last couple of weeks his knights have told him all sorts of strange things. They also tell him that he can have stuff even though Mom or Dad said that he couldn't. And last I heard Calvin told Jon that the knights were hibernating for the summer in the toy room.

Some of the stuff Calvin comes up with just cracks me up. He has such a fun, wild imagination and he is so smart. I don't even know where he learns stuff like hibernating. And he knows so much about castles and knights it is unreal for a 3 year old. He told us where the portcullis was on the Disneyland castle. When he likes something, he really gets into. So far in his 3 short years he has had an imaginary elephant friend that used to ride in our car with us. He has learned the names of every digger truck there is and watched Bob the Builder and worked on Bob's crew. He has built Lego castles with Jon and read a lot about Castles and Knights. He has been Calvin Nephi for about the last 6-8 months. Nephi is his hero. He has memorized so many Book of Mormon stories and acted them out. We just love having Calvin around. He is so much fun!

Preschool Graduation

On May 21st Calvin had his preschool graduation program. I told Miss Janae that I was a little nervous about him actually sitting up in front of everyone (because he gets really scared when people look at him). She said she was not worried at all because Calvin was one of the leaders of the class. He loved singing and helping all of the kids learn the songs. When we walked in Miss Janae's backyard Calvin said, "what are all of these people doing here?" I said that they were there to watch the kids sing, at that point he kind of panicked. Needless to say, he did sit in his seat but he would not sing or dance. He put his little cap over his eyes when he walked up to get his "diploma". When we were on our way home he said, "Can I sing you my songs?" and he sang all of the program songs in order to our little family.

Calvin loved being in preschool. Miss Janae said that he is ready for kindergarten. He is only 3, so that is not going to happen. She said he always wanted to help everyone else learn. That he was such a good team player and that he is really advanced in sequencing. She said when he tells a story he won't just skip to the plot, that he will do the begining, middle and end of the story. She also said that he knows all of his sounds and can start to sound out words. I hope that I can keep him interested in reading this summer so that he is still excited about it for his second year of preschool.