The Volcano Place

Collin's favorite restaurant is the volcano place (Japanese Steak house)

Kelsey was getting into it and using her chopsticks and fork to chop and slice like a pro
We brought along Micah too for a new experience

Luckily they have special holders for the kids chopsticks so they're easier to use - still it's best not to dress your kid in white!

More Sharon

I realized I didn't post all the pictures of our visit from Sharon...

Sarah and Heather are incredible gymnasts and dancers and my kids love watching them do their tricks on the trampoline - or just jumping and having fun with them...

Collin, Heather, Max, Kelsey & Sarah
My kids and their recently returned grandparents
(I don't know why mom's face looks like she was in a flour fight once the pictures were downloaded - she didn't look like that in normal light... weird!)
Me and my 3 oldest sisters, Debbie, Mom, me, Chris and Sharon

It's always fun to visit with family. Man, if we lived nearer to them it would be great because they would totally spoil my kids. I don't think Kelsey hardly walked the entire time, one of the girls was always carrying her off somewhere and Collin loved playing with them too! Still I shouldn't complain since we do have 7 aunts, 3 uncles, 11 cousins, one set of grandparents, a step-grandpa and a great-grandpa that all live in town - the fun of coming from a large family...

More Disneyland

You'll have to be patient with me because if I don't post about each Disneyland trip I forget about what happened and why I took certain pictures and it's much harder to scrapbook later (much, much later)

I was trying to get a picture of Collin and Kelsey in one of the "Picturesque Spots" when we met one of the park photographers...

Collin had to bring his toucan with him to Disneyland this time - which worked out really nice since one of the park photographers stopped to comment about it. "You know that the toucan is the National bird of my home country?" I asked where he was from, though I had a suspicion. He said he was from Costa Rica so I had Collin list his sweatshirt to show him his t-shirt underneath - of course it was his toucan Costa Rica shirt! They started talking about all the places in Costa Rica... It turns out that the 'cast members' are given a certain amount of passes each year so our new friend gave us his cell phone number and told us to call him and he would get in 3 of our friends for free the next time we came - sweet!

I try to get the kids to do new things each time we go... Finally it was not raining when we were there so Tarzan's Tree House (formally Swiss Family Robinson's Tree House) was finally open and we were able to go up and around

Kelsey has no fear but she would stop every once in a while, "Come on, Mom!"

We did get to see a couple of characters this time though we didn't stand in any lines to see the princesses or fairies - maybe next time.

We did finally go over to California Adventure this time though we didn't stay too long. We also saw Mr & Mrs Incredible (Kelsey was scared of them) and we rode the Monsters Inc ride (Collin was crying like a little girl all the way in the line) It was pretty cool - just like the movie and not scary at all!!

This was the first time I went with the 2 kids and no Chad. I was tired but I think we did okay and had a fun day. I was worried about being able to fit 3 on some of the rides but on the bumper cars at Bugs Life Collin was big enough to ride his own and on Autopia we were able to all squeeze into one - so it worked out ok.

Family Dinner at BJ's

Grandpa-Great wanted us to get together for Helen's birthday...

Since Linnae had to work we had it at her work - lucky her, she got to try to serve all 20 of us while working and visiting the best she could...

Collin, Betsy, Ellie & Alaina
Karissa, Alaina & Kelsey dancing

The Missing Tooth Gang!

Malloy, Linnae & Collin

I finally got her to stop for 2 seconds to get a picture

Malloy and Collin had a slo-mo sword fight

Kelsey and her boy-friend

Beth, Andy & Chad

The girls: Ellie, Alaina, Karissa, Kayley
Grandpa-Great and about 1/2 of our grandkids

I Need Some Advice

Someday I'll get back to posting pictures - I've gotten a bit behind in the whole downloading and everything - but right now I need to ask for some advise...

I know there's a lot of great moms that I really look up to that read this blog so I appeal to you for some help.

Most of you know my son, Collin. He's super cool, smart, athletic, curious, cute :) but lately he has been making me crazy. I think it's just a phase he's going through but I still need to figure out a better way of dealing with it.

The problem: he has become an incurable whiner! Mixed in with it is the whole you-never-buy-me-anything, why-don't-I-have___, and the simple I'm-bored! The thing is is that he will say these things right after he finished playing with his new toy with his friends etc. It's completely unjustified and unreasonable which means that even when I try to reason with him it doesn't work.

It's as if he is trying to make even the fun things we do awful and it's taking away the fun of the whole family. I can give you example after example (some of them actually kind of funny because they're so extreme and ironic) but basically I have a ungrateful whiny little kid that thinks he can just yell at me and I'll magically make it better - "If you love me you'd buy me a webkinz!"

So what's your advice? I usually start off patient but after about 2 hours I start to lose my cool - so what do you do???

Do you have any helpful examples, websites, FHE lessons - anything! I'm starting to hear K use the same grumpy demands so I have got to nip this in the bud quick!