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!

Kelseyisms

• Today Kelsey asked Chad why her car window was sad? (It was raining)
• When going potty she says she made a waterfall in the toilet.
• She saw Grandma's hair dryer on the counter and asked me to "vacuum" her hair...
• I asked her what her name was, she said, "I'm Kelsey. My brother's name is Collin, My mom's name is Cate, my dad's name is Chad, my grandma's name is ... gran...ma and my grandpa's name is GRANDPA!"
• When she's cold she always complains she's "I cold freezing"
• I was trying to rock K to sleep and told her to close her eye. She replied, "no, it's too hard to see with my eyes closed."
• At church, during the prayer, Kelsey kept telling Chad, "Dad, Wake Up! Don't fall asleep!"

Disneyland

I'm getting behind in my Disneyland pictures... this is actually from our trip in January...

This picture reminds me of the Charlie's Angels Logo...
Kelsey had to wait in line for nearly an hour to see the princesses but she was still doing a happy dance at the thought of seeing them! We stood in a separate line to see the fairies and it was the same thing - happy dances the entire time!

Tinkerbell & Rosetta

Pocahontas

Mulan

Snow White

Princess Aurora (Collin was a good sport and met them all too)

Autopia, Collin Favorite.

He bought the snake in the morning and I told him I didn't want to have to carry it. He assured me that he would - and he did, around his neck all day long!
Our new ride today was the Monorail - we rode it out to the part then walked back to the tram... What a fun day!

K Dress up

This is not the clothes I dressed her in... she found her tink jacket, Collin's cowboy boots and her back pack - then brought me my camera to take her picture :)

Airplane

They found this laundry hamper in the garage... instant airplain!
they probably flew around in this thing for 2 days!

Talent Show

At the Primary talent show Collin showed his movie he made...

It was really fun watching all the kids sing, play piano and show off their talents - those little guys are really talented!

A Surprise Visit

I got a call tonight from Sharon, she was in Malibu on her way to visit Mom and Dad (Who should have had their own post about them coming home from their mission on Thursday but I'm a bit behind...) So I packed up the kids and went over there.
We had to get a grandkid shot. This is everyone but the two oldest (Brian and Samantha), the two youngest (Ike and Carsten) and Robert's (Shantell etc). By the end of the year there will be nearly 20 grandkids... lets just say it's a little crazy at home right now :)

Reminiscences

Tonight I did something I haven't done for nearly 20 years... I went to a youth dance. I was having serious flashbacks. It was weird being a chaperon now - I was never one to stand around along the wall, I was always out dancing with Katrina, Lane or a dozen other friends.
I also thought I was doing pretty good, music-wise since I still listen to KROQ and everything but I rarely recognized the songs they played :)
I'm a terrible chaperon, though cuz I just don't really care... If I did stop someone from something it was more of a warning to stop before one of the real chaperons came by.
But otherwise it was really fun! I think it's going back from the old dances when I had fun no matter what I was going on... Next time I'll have to take Chad so I can sneak out and dance ever once in a while.

Farewell Party

I knew this time was coming for over a year... Jessica never made a secret of the fact that she wanted to move to Utah to be near her family... but I'm still in denial that she is really going to up and leave me!

Kelsey is really going to miss IZ. They both said a very casual goodbye to each other this morning - not realizing that it will be a very long time before they get to play together again...

Celebrate Today! at Disneyland

We went to Disney land for Chad's Birthday - our favorite place!
We were determined to go on some new rides - can you believe I've never been on Peter Pan - at least not that I can remember... I think it's my new favorite!

We finally switched partners for Autopia and I let Kelsey drive :)

While Chad went to Space Mountain we went on Buzz Lightyear, twice (The park really emptied out at night, I think cuz it was cold and it was a school night - fine with me!)

Collin finally got a level 3!

Another first (and I know I didn't just forget this one...) we had dinner at the Blue Bayou by the Pirates of Carabean ride - very cool. Collin made friends with the women at the table next to us and one of them gave him one of her pins so when our check came with two pins he gave her one of those. Collin loves talking to strangers - and Disneyland is a great placve to do it!

We had "the guy" take our picture as we were leaving so you actually get to see me for once!

Chad's Birthday

I asked Chad if he wanted people over for his birthday on Sunday but he said no, I think he knew how tired I was... Luckily Tiana stepped up with out being asked. She invited us over for a little birthday dinner - very nice!

He even got to use the "You are Special" plate!
Kelsey loves playing dress up at Karissa's. She was actually waltzing while I was taking this picture...
Thanks again, Tiana for always remembering our special days.

Art Club

Ok, I'm not sure what tortilla making has to do with art club but the kids had fun pressing their own tortillas

Kelsey got pretty good at it too...
Luckily they didn't have the kids cook their own...

They even got to see how they grind the corn meal to make the tortilla dough...

A Day at the Races

For Christmas I gave Chad a slot race racetrack... He's now made a drop-down track for it in the garage.

Collin has gotten pretty good at it - he hardly ever crashes now :)