California Wedding

Almost two weeks ago, my sister was married. I now have a big brother.

The wedding took place in California so we loaded up our suitcase, 3 car seats, and double stroller and took an airplane with all four kids. The flight down was great...the flight back was not so great. Let's just say I have no plans to fly in the next decade. (although I'm sure I will fly sooner then that.)

It was a jam packed weekend. We squeezed in a trip to Legoland during the wedding weekend as well. I'm a fan of Legoland. It's not as crowded, we were able to do pretty much every single ride (good luck doing that at Disneyland) and since it's geared for ages 3-10 it's less crowded in general (no teens!)

And of course, there was the wedding itself. It turned out great. All the kids did amazing...granted I had to pick up Verity a few times during the ceremony but there's always one wayward flower girl, right?

The Rest of California

I'm sure by now you have read enough about our California trip to last you awhile but there are a few odds and ends that I wanted to write about so you are getting one last mod podge of a post for all the remaining stuff.

Down in California there's an ice cream place called Handel's, it's probably in other states too but as far as I know it's not in our state. My parent's took us out for $1.00 cones. $1.00 and they had tons of flavors that were all yummy. Ironically, Everly probably got the biggest scoop of ice cream and her mouth was totally red from eating the cold ice cream the way she so weirdly did.

If you go to California, you HAVE to get some In n Out. There's nothing that compares. Besides my youngest brother works there now so we go to see him work. In n Out really needs to branch out to Washington. Mmmmm Animal Fries.

My Daly family. Whenever we go down to California, these are the people that I know I have to see. The Daly's (well a few have gotten married since then and are no longer actually Daly's but they still are to me) were my second family growing up. They were the ones that I could just drive to their house on the way home from college practically unannounced and hang out with. Lots of good memories with this lovely family...unfortunately not all of them could be there but I at least got to see most of them.

 Apparently this is what the kids did when Justin and I were still laying in bed trying to wake up. Cuddle time with Aunt Tiff.

We also visited my grandparents (the kids' great grandparents) and while there the boys got to check out their custom classic car. Something about the way Ransom looks while driving makes me fear the day he gets his driver's permit.

A Knight to Remember

While in California we did one other big outing: Medieval Times. In case you aren't familiar, Medieval Times is basically like dinner theatre only instead of watching performers on stage, you watch performers jousting on horses.

We were served quite the course of food, all of which you had to eat with your fingers. Thank goodness they somehow allowed wet wipes to be invented back in Medieval Times because the kids were covered in food. It was a lot of food but the portion size for the chicken was insane. It was literally half a bird, I'm convinced. The boys ate it ALL..ok almost all, when Logan heard that there were boxes to bring food home he found a few pieces of skin and bones to bring back. Why is beyond me as there seriously was not much left.

We were on the black and white knight's side and as Logan's luck would have it (as I mentioned, he'd been extremely lucky at Disneyland and it carried on to Medieval Times) our knight won. Both the boys loved the show. Ransom started getting into the cheering towards the end, Everly clapped her hands whenever there was clapping, but Logan, well you should have seen him! The kid was getting so caught up in the show what with all the sparks flying, that he actually had veins popping out of  his neck. He was so into it that he was that tense. Apparently Medieval Times trumped Disneyland in his opinion.

The Magical World of Disney

Justin and I always planned on taking the kids to the amusement parks in California when we went down for our years to go visit my family. (We alternate years, so this year it was our turn to go down to Cali, next year it will be my parent's turn to come up here.)

This year was the first year that we felt they were old enough to make an amusement park worthwhile. We decided to start with the big one: Disneyland.

Disneyland is expensive! Ridiculously so. It's $80 or so for adults or kids! I remember when it was $25....back in my day!

However, we had some wonderful people help us out. A friend of my grandma's (so the kids' great grandma) can get people into Disneyland free (if you work there, you get so many free passes for others.) Wonderful, wonderful Yolande was able to get 3 adults in free. Yolande really is a very sweet lady. So sweet that I even remember her from my aunt's wedding that must have happened when I was 16 or so! So right there we had my parents and Justin covered. Then my grandma paid for the remaining adult (me) and the two boys (the girls were free). We weren't really expecting any of this. We were planning on getting at least 2 of us in free (via someone who worked at Disney...we apparently have a few connections) but we figured we'd have to pay for at least 2 or more people on our own. The fact that we were able to go to Disneyland free of charge was great! A huge thank you to my grandma and Yolande.


We didn't get to do too many rides. It's amazing what waiting in line will do to your day. Justin and the boys (along with one or both of my parents) hit all the big rides and by big I don't mean popular, I mean big. Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Star Tours, etc. I on the other hand did Pixie Hallow and Minnie's House with Everly.

The boys loved all the rides. Logan came out of each ride exclaiming that THAT one was his favorite. Logan also had some crazy luck in that he was always in the front for pretty much every ride. He also proved to be quite daring in that on one ride (a roller coaster no less) he rode in the very front all by himself. The kid definitely gets that from Justin and not me that's for sure!

Everly on the other hand was not a huge fan of the characters. She loved the idea and all the way to the front of the line she was excited. In fact, in Pixie Hallow (where the fairies are) when we got to the front of the line, she dashed towards where the fairies are and I had to pull her back as it wasn't our turn. Of course, by the time it was our turn, she didn't want to be anywhere near the fairies. I had to actually pick her up for the pictures and she wasn't happy even then. Minnie Mouse was the same way. In fact, she begged to get out of line at one point. Of course, now if you ask Everly about Disneyland she exclaim that she got to see Minnie and fairies! Crazy girl. Everly did however love to ride in the stroller eating her carrots. That's all she really did for at least 4 hours.

Verity of course slept through the entire trip. She only woke up to eat every few hours and then it was right back to sleep. Got to love my Ergo baby carrier!

It was quite the day. We couldn't have done it without my parents. Four kids at Disneyland needs at least 3 adults and 4 was better as that meant I usually had someone to hang out with when everyone else went on the rides.

All in all it was a great day and I know the kids loved every minute of it.

Strike!

Bowling seems to be a tradition now. It all started last year when my parents bought the boys one of those toy bowling sets. The boys of course were in love with the set and naturally my parents decided they needed to find out what it was like to go "real" bowling.

But that was last year.

This year we went while we were down in California, to a much nicer bowling alley I might add. The boys got their balls; Logan had green and Ransom should have had green because it was the lightest but he didn't want the same color as Logan so he instantly chose the pink. Whatever. It goes to show you that kids don't know gender colors until they've had them ingrained in them.

We had the bumpers up so no gutter balls for us although honestly, the boys seemed to do really well this time and I don't know if we would have had many gutter balls anyway.

The boys actually really got into it this time and tried to bowl the "right way". Not perfect of course, I mean what kid that young can swing a ball with one hand? It was more of a slow and steady approach. Even Everly joined in a bit and helped Justin bowl on his turns. Pretty adorable watching her get down and push the ball that was probably half her weight down the lane.

You wouldn't necessarily think so considering all that we did in California (Disneyland, Medieval Times, etc) but bowling was ranked one of the boys favorite things they did (granted Disney and Medieval Times outranked it)

Down on Grandma's Farm

While we were down in California, we stayed at my parent's house. This meant that the kids finally got to see the chickens that Grandma bought months ago and they've seen via Skype. Yes, we have Sykped with chickens!


Despite the title of the post, Grandma (and Grandpa because he lives there too!) doesn't really have a full fledged farm. She has a large chicken coop in the back yard with 3 chickens.


The kids got to feed the chickens as well as collect their eggs. Everly took a little while to warm up the the birds but she eventually was just as daring as the boys, entering the coop to collect her egg. Everly somehow missed the memo that you need to hold eggs carefully because the second she had it in her hands she decided to give it back to the chickens by tossing it to one of them. Miraculously the egg landed right on top of the chicken's back, stayed there for a bit, and then fell unbroken to the ground.


Every day the kids asked to feed the chickens which they were able to do a few times. Towards the end of our trip, Everly would start to cluck like the chickens whenever they would start making noise (which was only when someone was laying an egg apparently. Glad those chickens weren't in my delivery room! I wouldn't want someone announcing to the world what I was doing! But then I'm not a chicken.)





It turns out that chickens are highly entertaining for kids. Who knew?

California Report From the Boys

I asked the boys to draw a picture of their favorite part from the trip to California. 

I also asked Logan to write about it. 

Here's what they did.

Ransom's favorite part was Space Mountain and the Rockets at Disneyland. The picture above is of him riding the Rockets.

 Logan's favorite part was Medieval Times. The picture above is of two knights (our knight is on the right) jousting. As you can see, he still needs to work on leaving a space in between his words. It's a bit small to read so here's what it says (without corrections), "My fravorite part at Calivornya was Midevil Times becuse we won. The end."