Easter! What a Wonderful time!

Yesterday was a wonderful day!  Christie and I spent the day doing what we do best. . . . .shopping!!!  It was AMAZING the deals that I was able to find here!!!!  Justice was having a 40% off of EVERYTHING in the store. . . . even sale items!!!  I got Abby 10 shirts for a grand total of $30!!!  We then spent the day taking advantage of AMAZING sales all over the place!!!  Children's place had a sale of 25% off of already reduced items!!!  Old Navy had the same sale.  Then there was this TOTALLY cute store called "Crazy 8's" which is a cheaper Gymboree store. . . . . ADORABLE STORE!!!!!  My kids will be SOOOOO CUTE this summer!!!  (I even managed to squeeze in some clothes for myself too!!!)
Last night, the men/teenage boys went out to watch the Priesthood session of conference and so Christie and I went out and picked up some chinese food, hung out with the girlies and relaxed after our day of shopping.  The kiddies then put out their easter baskets and Christie and I hung out until about 1 am filling easter eggs!
The easter egg hunt this morning was SO MUCH FUN!!!  It is so fun spending holidays with other people and learning what their traditions are!  I think we may have to adopt some new easter traditions because we have been having a blast!!!
Now it's shower time and then off to go sit in the Conference Center and watch Conference LIVE!!!  None of us have ever done this before, so we are very excited to go!!!!

Easter Fun with Family

It's great to have family, isn't it???  I mean, we were sad to leave Disneyland, but we were so excited to drive up to see my Aunt Christie and her family and spend Easter Weekend with them!  From the moment that we got here, it has been nothing but fun and excitement.  We went to a big bouncy house park and played all morning long there!  After that, it was off to McDonald's for lunch!  Chicken and Fries. . . . you just can't beat chicken and fries!
In the afternoon, Christie and I ditched everyone for awhile, picked up some extra Easter stuff (as though we actually needed it) and I found some tasty treasures at Target!  Did you know that in the US, there are more than 3 flavors of Goldfishies????  Did you know that there are about 15 flavors????  SO TRUE!!!!  I bought one of every kind!  I HAD to try them ALL!!!!  We love goldfishies!!!  I can't wait to try the pretzel and cheese ones.
It has been a great day!  We finished things off by decorating eggs with cousins!  It went surprisingly smooth considering we had 9 kids trying to color eggs at once!  Now comes the HUGE task of trying to convince all of these grumpy kids to go to bed!

Farewell Disney

Yesterday was our last day at Disneyland.  It was magical and amazing!  It started off with the announcement from my sister that she had her baby!  Best day ever!!!  We started off in the Magic Kingdom getting special entrance to Mickey's Toontown.  It was awesome!!!  After that we rode on all of the rides that we hadn't gotten to ride on before that didn't have fast passes.  We also got fast passes for all of the ones that we could get them for. Then we hopped over to California Adventure and ran into our friends again.  We joined forces and conquered  "A Bug's Life" and "Playhouse Disney" together and the kids had so much fun hanging out with their best friends!!!  Then it was back to Magic Kingdom for dinner and some awesome rides!!!
I have been so impressed with my kids because they have gone on absolutely every single ride that they have been tall enough to ride.  There have been no complaints and no crying and they have done EVERYTHING!!!!
We all have our favorite rides, but mine is Space Mountain and Indiana Jones!  Abby loved Splash Mountain.  Anne loved Space Mountain and Star Tours.  Caroline loved Big Thunder Mountain.  Dustin loved Midway Mania and the other Buzz Lightyear one.  Lee loved seeing the Characters!  In fact, one of my very favorite things about being at Disneyland was being there with Lee and Dustin and watching how magical it was.  Lee would call out to the characters as they would walk by because he was so excited to see them.  He would keep shouting their names and waving to them from the line while we were waiting to get pictures with them.  It was SO PRICELESS!!!!  Dustin was awed and amazed by everything he saw!  One of my favorite things that he did was when we were going to get lunch.  We told him that we wanted to get pizza.  While we were walking around to find the pizza place, Dustin all of a sudden looked up, pointed to a sign that read Pizza Place and said "We can get Pizza there!"  There was no picture of a pizza and no one around the sign had a piece of pizza. . . . . it was amazing!!!  He is 4!!!!
Anyways, it was so wonderful and magical!  I definitely loved Disneyland and I hope that everyone gets a chance to go there. . . . especially with young children!
Now it's off to visit my Aunt Christie for the weekend!  We are VERY excited about that!

Dining with the Princesses and other Electrifying Experiences

Today was day two of our Disneyland vacation!  It was AMAZING!!!  We got up early and took advantage of our Early Entrance option on our passs!  We used that time to ride some of the rides in Fantasyland that do not have the Fast Pass option and get long lineups during the day.
After that, we had some time to spare before the California Adventure park opened, so we decided that we would stand in the line to get some autographs from some fairies!  Let me just say that the look on Anne's face when we saw Tinkerbell was TOTALLY worth it!!!  Anne was is Heaven and so that made the morning so much more special!!!
After that, as we were leaving the park to hop over to California Adventures, we ran into some good friends of ours.  We knew that there might be a small chance that they would come to Disneyland, but they hadn't solidified their plans by the time we had left, so it was AWESOME to run into them at the gates!
California Adventure was full of fun shows, rides and more!
Caroline's favorite Princess is Ariel, and from doing my research beforehand I found out that the only place that she is guaranteed to show up at is at Ariel's Grotto.  So, I prepaid for us to all eat lunch there today!  IT WAS WORTH EVERY PENNY!!!!  The food was AMAZING and we even got to personally meet and take pictures with the 5 major Princesses!!!  Caroline was in HEAVEN because we were in Ariel's house and Abby was in heaven because she got to meet Cinderella!!!  (I LOVE living the magic through my kiddies!)
The afternoon started off by watching the AMAZING Aladdin Musical Spectular!!  Because I had contacted a travel agency before my trip and booked everything through them, I was able to get these special passes that gave me preferred seating at every show!  It also gave me the early entry passes, and tomorrow we get to visit Mickey's Toon Town an hour before it opens up to the public and the Mickey Mouse characters that live there will interact with the kiddies and sign their books!!!!  AWESOME!!!  Anyways, because we had these special VIP seats to Aladdin, we were able to sit 5 rows from the stage and be surrounded by the entire musical!  The kids LOVED it and if I could have recorded Dustin's face, you would laugh and laugh.  Everything was so magical to him today!
One of the awesome things we learned about Lee is that his favorite Disney character is Donald Duck!  Who knew hey?  If you are not my friend on facebook yet, ask me and I will accept you so that you can see the cutest video of him calling out to Donald Duck!!!
After various other shows and roller coasters and dinner we settled down to watch my favorite parade which is the Disney Electrical Parade.  It definitely didn't disappoint! The girlies agreed with me that it was amazing and I was a bit sad that Dustin slept right through it.
Tomorrow is our last day here.  It has bee fun!  It has been REALLY magical.  It has been worth EVERY penny!!

Disneyland or BUST!!!

For those of you who don't know, we have been planning on surprising our kids with a trip to Disneyland during our Spring Break vacation.  It was really hard for me to keep it a secret for so long, but I managed and the KIDS WERE SO SURPRISED!!!
We had told the kiddies that we were going to go hiking in the Grande Canyon, but instead we drove to Anaheim.  We stopped to eat lunch at a Burger King that is right next to Disneyland.  The kids didn't even notice! While we were eating lunch with the kiddies, I told them that their daddy and I were thinking about our future vacations and asked them where they would like to go most in the whole wide world!  They all shouted at the same time without hesitation. . . .DISNEYLAND!!!
Otto and I smiled at each other and then loaded the herd back into the car.  While we were driving into the parking lot, I turned on the video camera and reminded them of our conversation at the Burger King.  I then asked them if they would be okay if we went to Disneyland instead of the Grande Canyon.  Abby said yes, Anne wanted more information and Caroline asked if that meant that they would have to be in the car longer.  I told them that we were there and that we just had to park!  They all got so excited and then Caroline, in her own monkey way threw up her arms and said "I'm going to Disneyland!!!  Whooo Hoooo!!!"  I don't think that Anne actually believed me until we were on the bus heading into the park.
Right now the park is PACKED!!  However, we have still had a lot of fun!  The kids have been great about going on every ride without complaining!  We even had Lee on the Madderhorn roller coaster!  (There are advantages to having a HUGE baby!)
We got great seats for the parade where we had a dance party and we just had a blast!!!  As each of the kids said to me at some point during the day. . . . this was the best day ever!
Abby said it best though when she told me that this surprise would be hard to beat in the future!
Oh kids!!!!

St. George

Well, we made it!  After another 8 hours in the car together, we MADE IT!!!  It was so much fun to be able to pull up at my Grandparent's place and see them!  We only live 5 minutes away from them at home and so when they winter in St. George we miss them alot!!!!
As soon as we got here, Grandma and I went fabric shopping so that my friend Annette can make me a beautiful dress for my sister's wedding in June.  Otto and Grandpa took the kiddies for a walk.  When we were all done, we all went SWIMMING in the swimming pool by my grandparent's place.  It was great!  The kids had so much fun!  Otto and I had fun too.  Then it was pizza for dinner followed by some visiting, playing outside with toys and then falling asleep watching Wall-E!
What a great day!
Today we will go to church with my Grandparents and then it will be off to my favorite LDS temple to take pictures with my family!  SO MUCH FUN!!!

ROAD TRIP

Yesterday was DAY 1 of our road trip.  It consisted of 11 hours with 5 kids in the van.  With the exception of a little bit of fighting, I think that it went pretty well.  I was proud of the kids!  Now I just need to convince them that another 8 hours together in the van is something to look forward to!