Monsters, Inc.

The Monsters Inc. ride was my favorite part of the whole day! Why? Maybe because we were hot and tired and it involved sitting in the air conditioning. Maybe because I love this movie.
Maybe it was the creatively entertaining signs in the waiting area.
Or riding on a taxi through Monstropolis, seeing Sully wait for Boo in the potty while she's singing that song....
Nope. It was this part. At the very end of the ride, you go past this statue of Roz. I took a picture. Then I heard Roz's voice say "Young lady in the third row, your lens cap is on." I thought it was a recorded thing so I laughed and she says "It's not that funny." Then, as my mouth fell open in shock, she said "Take a picture of my good side."
As our car continued on I heard her harassing the people in the car behind us.
Now that's the stuff that makes me like Disneyland! The unexpected!

More Fun at CA Adventure

Here is Addie riding the carousel
And Greg, taking a picture of the reflection of the three of us on the carousel.
"Daddy, you can have some of my fruit leather"
With Pluto

Faces

Here is the face of a woman who doesn't like heights, while at the top of a very tall ferris wheel.
Veeeeeery tall people.
Here is the face of a reeeeaaaally cute guy!
And theface of the Magic Kingdom- the big mouse himself!

CA Adventure: Pixar Parade

The last big event of our great day at Disney's California Adventure was the Pixar Parade. We are much bigger fans of Pixar than Disney overall, so this was where we saw our favorite characters, some of which Addie actually recognized (because she is oblivious to the whole Disney Princess thing, thank goodness!). However, we've had many a bad reflux night that finds us all on the couch watching "Bug's Life" at 2 am, so....
The Pixar parade was great!
Here's Lightning McQueen who started the parade.
This was Addie's reaction.

This IS her "I like it" face.
Don't be fooled- she's just not the jump around with excitement type.

Some cooks on stilts- pretty cool.
Remmy from Ratatouille! One of our favorites!

Good Thing it was Hot

Because it was such a hot day, we didn't mind that much of the parade involved water. In fact, many of the characters were armed with water squirting devices of some sort or another. Is this payback for them? Having to wear hot costumes and walk a parade route? At least they get to fire water at the guests? Maybe.
Here's Woody, anyway, with his big squirter.
And Sully at the start of the parade.
And then, my favorite part. One of the "CDA" characters walked up, stood right in front of Greg, stopped, took aim, and since Greg still had his camera aimed at the guy, Mr. CDA just blasted him right in the belly. It shocked Greg a bit, since he was aiming the camera for the picture at the time, but the guy was careful to aim for belly, not camera, so it was funny.
We laughed pretty hard.

Addie Meets Dory

The highlight of the Pixar Parade: when Dory came over and gave Addie a kiss.


While out garage-saling this week, I picked up a Nemo and Dory stuffed toy for Addie and we brought them to the park with us. During the parade, she was holding them, and the Dory operator spotted them and came right over to her. She loved it!

We also liked Heimlich...
who came apart and then went back together.


What a great parade!

Funny Photo Shoot

Addie wore this great dress on Sunday and then added my sunglasses to the ensemble.
Greg took her outside for some pictures, and this is what we got:

The day that gets better and better

Today is one of those days that was soooo good, you want to pinch yourself!

First of all, this round of Addie's reflux seems to be clearing up. She was very happy yesterday, able to sleep good last night, and today is cheery and eating normal. All the normal indicators of reflux have gone away! Yippee!

So this morning, she and I went garage sale-ing and had a great time. We found some fun things, like this Fisher Price A-Z zoo set, and a stuffed Nemo and Dory toy (some nice lady gave her the Dory for free!). Also, Addie did a great job of listening and obeying while we were out, and that was better to me than any bargains found.


After coming home with all our bargain goodies, we had a nice lunch and a great afternoon rest. It was nice to be inside comfortably, since it was 104 degrees in the shade today.
This afternoon we went to the pool with the Kropf and Kaneversky families. Addie did great and we all had a blast!
(see post below)
When we got home, we discovered that the much-anticipated shipment from Christian Book distributors had arrived! It was like Christmas! Some of these resources we've been wanting to get for quite awhile. Some of the books we've already read, but wanted to own our own because they were so good. Here's a sneak peek into our minds- we got:
-Volume 4 of a set of "Read Aloud Bible Stories" which are FANTASTIC for toddlers.
-Addie's first Bible, the "Jesus Story Book Bible", which is darling
-"Big Truths for Little Kids" which teaches kids the Catachism. It's a bit over Addie's head still, but we can get started. I know it sounds heavy, but it's just a systematic way of teaching Addie about hte truths about God and this world, so it's not so scary.
-Volume 2 of Steve Green's "Hide 'Em In Your Heart" CDs- we are addicted to Volume 1!
-Another CD- "Go the the Ant" which is many of the Proverbs in song form. They are catchy little tunes. We've borrowed the Kropf's CD and loved it, so are excited to have our own!
-The Heart of Anger, which is a WONDERFUL book for parents, teaching how to deal with all types of anger.
-A book called "Seeing with New Eyes" which we just read through in our Sunday School class. It is very, very good.
-"Shepherding a Child's Heart", one of our favorite books ever, and one every Christian parent should read.


The great day continued with Brooke and Grant Kropf as dinner guests for beef gyros and Greek salad with lots of iced tea. The kids played after dinner with the new zoo toy.

Then, after Addie was down, the Murrays stopped by for a chat and brought fresh strawberries.

What a day! And tomorrow is CHURCH! And no one is sick so we get to go!!!
So many things to be thankful for!

Fun at the Pool

Addie shows off her new swimsuit- even cuter because we got it for a bargain in Ventura and it's a name brand!


















Father daughter pool time.
This was Addie's first time in the pool since last summer, and we weren't sure how she would take to it (she's usually pretty timid). Well, no worries here! She LOVED it, and with the help of her floaties, even swam a little on her own!







Here she is, having jumped in all by herself!
Super-cool Grant.

David Kaneversky with their son, Clayton, who will be scarred for life because he had to wear pink water wings.

Mother's Day at IKEA

What are our kids doing playing, fully clothed, in a bathtub? Well, last week, on Mother's Day, we took a little trip to IKEA with the Kropfs for some fun times and shopping.
The kids had a blast playing in the mini homes set up throughout the store. The Mommies liked the low-priced home goods.
Brooke and I celebrate Mother's Day playing on a see-saw in the children's department.
Grant and Addie share a seat reminiscent of that scene in Sleepless in Seattle where Jonah and his friend listen to the Beatles... you know the one?
Just a random picture from yesterday- Addie is checking my ears. Last time we took her to the doctor, he told her he was looking for dinosaurs in there, and now she says it every time she plays doctor- "Mommy, there's dinosaurs in your ears!"

Today

Today it is 95 degrees in the shade on our patio.

Today I am using my rusty sewing skills to fix Greg's pants, and make Addie a little pillow for bedtime.

Today I sold a few items on ebay- I love ebay.

Today I am wearing all new clothes from my bargain hunting in Ventura- a new outfit for under $10- I love bargains.

Today I appreciated the helpfulness of loved ones who have suggested a corrolation between Addie's reflux surge and her grapefruit eating habbits. (For the record, she ate them mostly last week, and had the reflux start this week, but we are suspending grapefruit for a while just to be safe).

Today I get to start using the new PDA my husband got me for Mother's Day. Yippee!

Today I enjoyed this statement by C.S. Lewis: "Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither."

News Potpourri

I see you!












Yes, we're still here, even though there hasn't been much on the blog lately. Our lives have been busy with lots of smaller, unreportable-type things:
Both cars having been in the shop over the last few weeks, so we've been living with one car most of the time. It hasn't been that bad, since Greg works so close to our home. Some days he is even riding his bike into work.
Speaking of fitness, Niki has started a low-key workout routine. If you know me at all in the area of physical fitness, you would be shocked to hear this. Usually I am pretty much against any exercise whatsoever, mostly because I am an uncoordinated spaz. But my neighbor loaned me a video I can actually do without wanting to cry, so I'm gonna try to make it a regular part of my life. We'll see how long it lasts. Can you sense my optimism?

And speaking of health, Addie's reflux seems to be acting up again. As of yesterday, anyway. We'll hope it will go away on it's own.... has it ever done that? Am I being foolishly optimistic? Maybe. Maybe it's the lack of sleep talking.

In other news, Addie has discovered grapefruit. And she really likes it. Here she is downing the juice after eating all the fruit parts.







Also, starting today, we have an extra kiddo at our house two days a week. I'm watching a friend of a friend's baby twice a week for the next month or so. This baby is a little shocking to me, since Addie was VERY high-maintenance, I can't believe a baby will just lay happily and grin at the ceiling.

And that's about all the updates! We'll try to do something exciting soon so that our posts are more interesting to read!

Story Time With Addie

Welcome to story time with Addie! Hope you enjoy the video!

Memory Lane

Mentioning the bee incident this week made me think of our first anniversary, and when I saw that Becky at Something Good was asking "How did you spend your first anniversary?" it gave me the chance to tell the story.



Greg had been on a trip to Uganda and barely made it home the day before the anniversary. He was pretty tired from jet lag. We had agreed I would plan the day, and though I had a lot of ideas, I simplified them because Greg was so pooped.

So we went to Santa Barbara for the day. I packed a picnic lunch and got directions to the Santa Barbara botanical gardens. Figured we could lay out a blanket, eat, and rest for hours. Well, when we got there it wasn't what we expected. It was more... desert-y than we wanted. So we ate, and left to find a prettier place to rest.

The problem was that it was also Father's Day weekend and graduation weekend and there was some big volleyball tournament at the beach. Every street was packed with traffic. We spent so much time in traffic trying to find a pretty place to spread out a blanket that we finally gave up, drove into a residential area, found an elementary school, and used their grass. Greg laid down and immediately fell asleep. And I... well, I had to go to the bathroom. I let him sleep as long as I thought I cold stand it, but eventually he was woken up with the urgent prodding of his wife, "Get up, get up, I need to find a bathroom!" So we found a gas station, and then more traffic, but we decided to head for the beach and try again. Nothing was going as I had planned.

We got to the beach, finally found a parking spot, and set out the blanket for some nice scenery. Uh-oh, I had forgotten my sunglasses, so I went back to the car. I returned and stepped on a bee. Barefoot. BACK to the car, and more traffic and now we're looking for a drugstore for some tweezers to get the stinger out. Oh my.

Niki's foot grows bigger and bigger as we finally find the drugstore. Greg runs in, returns, gets the stinger out and I dry my eyes. Do we try to fight traffic AGAIN? No- let's forget it. We have reservations at one of our favorite restaurants soon, let's just wait in the car till then.

Well, we got to the restaurant and got seated, then Greg's gut started acting out. He had eaten some bad bamboo in Uganda and gotten very sick, and now the remnants were coming back for more. So we are sitting in a nice restaurant and I've got my foot propped up on a chair and Greg's in the bathroom for most of the meal. We decided at that point to scrap our plans about the beach at sunset and just head home.

And this is one more reason I love my husband- because as we drove home, we started laughing. The more we thought about the day of disaster, the more we laughed. And we are so glad now that our anniversary turned out that way, because we will NEVER forget that day! (And I always laugh when I think about it)

Better than All Better

Yeah! We have finally won the battle with illness and injury! At least for now, anyway.

Addie and I started feeling better the end of last week, and by the time Greg's mom left on Sunday, we were well on our way back to normal. We were so thankful that Julie stayed as long as she did. She was a huge help in the worst of the sickness, but also it was really helpful to have her around as I needed a few days to get my strength back and be back in the swing of things.

On Sunday, we celebrated by going on a big outing to the nearby park. We had barely left the house in two weeks! After being there for about 30 minutes, Greg stepped barefoot on a bee and back home we went. We now know that Greg is mildly allergic to bee stings and will swell. So poor Greg had to be off his feet for almost 3 full days before the swelling went down enough for him to walk again. (Incidentally, this same EXACT thing happened to Niki on our first anniversary).

But now, we really are better. In fact, we are better than better, because Addie has really come out of feeling crummy and the last two days she has been... electric. It is really hard to find a word to explain the little firecracker she has been. She has been talking almost non-stop, is super-silly, and saying the FUNNIEST things ever. Last night after being kissed by mommy before bed she informed me that she was going to "wipe all the kisses off" her face. She also brought a blanket to me this morning and asked me to make her into a super-hero. Well, we've NEVER talked about wiping kisses off or super-heroes, so I don't know where this stuff is coming from. We will start taking fun pictures again soon and post something besides words- I promise!