Disneyland

We just got back from a week long vacation in California. We met my Mom, Dad, sisters, and their families for a trip to Disneyland.

We flew out a day early to have some family pictures taken on the beach, and met my family at the hotel. Our kids were SO excited to see Grandma and Grandpa! Oh, and Mickey.

After we landed in California, we headed to the beach. We did not last long. It was cold, and as soon as Georgia got out of the water, it was apparent that she had a case of pink eye.
Dr. Jared Tyson to the rescue!
We gave Jared a call for some drops. I was anxious about it because we had our photos in the morning, and it was pretty obvious that she had an issue.
Luckily the drops helped clear things up within hours. Family pictures always stress me out! I think every year that the NEXT year I won't feel the pressure, but I always do.

We were excited to get our pictures taken at Huntington Beach though.

Mac and Walker. Cousins.
Lauren co-ordinated all of us so that we would all be wearing turquoise the first day, and Disney character shirts the second day! Don't we look so cool?
It was great, except that we all kept trying to gather up children wandering by who happened to be wearing turquoise! Ha!
It did get a little intense a couple of times when some of our children decided that they knew their way around Disneyland without parental supervision. We had a couple of moments of sheer panic as we split up to search for the wanderer. We did leave California with all of our kids, not to worry!

Georgia and Woody. I don't know how these characters can stand it. It was almost 100 degrees the first day! It dropped to 60 by the last day. We had to pack for all seasons!

The kids and Jessie.

And Jessie, and Jessie. She was a good sport.

The always long line, at Dumbo.

The Nielsen Fam.

Here we are before our first ride on the Tower of Terror.

And here we are ON the Tower of Terror. Super fuzzy, but can you believe all of these little kids went on it? Okay, maybe SOME of them got off crying. But most went back for more after the first time!

Mom and Wally on the bumper cars.

Toy Story line.

Planning their day at Disney while we waited for the park to open. Maps out and everything.

Georgia, Alice and the Mad Hatter. Georgia chose to spend the money Grandma and Grandpa gave her on an autograph book. She was SO thrilled about getting signatures. I was not expecting her to be so into it. Alice and the Mad Hatter were really nice to her. They went on quit a walk together.

Then the Queen of Hearts came along. She was also very attentive! She gave Georgia's cheeks a real solid pinch! Then she finished it off with a pat on the head! Georgia was taken by surprise at all that!

Mac and Tigger.

Walker and Mac with Pooh.

More characters. Georgia and Walker with Pluto.

Wally bought a gun with his money from Grandma and Grandpa. Surprised? No.
He love the swings ride.

But it took Will a little more time to get his groove on it. Ha! He actually really did like it. That is why Del is laughing.

Baby Patrick falls asleep nice for Grandpa.

The Haymonds

Us. We kind of look like participants in a jail break with all of our stripes!

The Sweets

Mom and Dad (sorry we missed Lauren and Christopher. They had already headed home.)

In the Matterhorn line.  (or mountain-horn according to the kids.) Anther favorite with the kiddos.

We were supposed to fly home at 5:30 at night on the way back, but we had about six hours to kill before take off after our family dropped us at the airport on their way out of town. We asked to be bumped to an earlier flight. Amazingly, it all went smooth at can be, and we pretty much walked from check in, to the plane, and got home before we would have even left L.A. on our booked flight! I have not had such an easy airport experience in a while! Awesome!

It was so much fun to see family all week. We are really blessed to have such amazing people to love, and who support us! And as much as we hate the moments of kids screaming, or refusing to sleep, or fighting while we travel. It is worth it because of the memories we make. And we are blessed to be able to go away. Family is what matters!

Trick-Or-Treat And Such

It is always a busy season when Halloween comes around. Running to four different parties, parades, or other celebrations means lots of costumes, candy and... pictures!

The boys have a story book parade at school. Wally's class read a story about a ninja together, so he went in his old ninja costume that day.

Will wore his Darth Vader costume. Minus the mask.

Wally's class. He is barley peeking out on the left hand side. He has an awesome teacher!

Walker was a good boy during the parade, even though it was cold.

Our pumpkin patch finds on the porch.

Our Mr. Skeleton pillow got to hang out for a couple of weeks.

Walker was in the children's parade with all the kids in the child care at the health club. He got ready with a little face paint while I was in yoga class. We didn't realize the parade was going on, so he had no costume.

We (I) carved four pumpkins. Carving pumpkins can be a lot of work when those tiny little knives keep breaking! Wally did do a lot of his on his own.

Our neighbors invited us to go trick or treating with them this year. Several different neighbors started renting hay rides to drive them around because the houses are pretty far apart. We were lucky enough to be invited to go with two different groups!
The families load up on the trailer and make their way around all the houses. The kids jump on and off to gather their candy.

Our transportation.
Our neighbors are also nice enough to provide everyone with pizza on a short break.

Supervision and traffic control was provided by the fathers. The moms got to ride.

The kids got far, far, tooooo much candy! I have never seen such a haul! They each got at least six full size candy bars, four kings size, an entire bag of licorice, and bags, and bags of chips! It was an insane amount of junk! Whenever I would find candy on the floor, or sitting around anywhere, I just threw it away.
Here is Wally with just a fraction on his loot, after they all came home and ripped their warm clothes and costumes off. I hid a garbage bag of candy I collected in the closet after they kids had to empty their sacks to fit more on the hayride.

Halloween is always fun, always exciting, and I am always glad to see it go away for another year! Boo!

Use The Force

Some of us need the "force" more than others in our family.

Our kids are embracing Star Wars this year.  We have Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and a little Yoda.

Walker has been a good sport about being Yoda since the beginning. He even tells people willingly to, "Use the Force!"

I was not sure that I was going to get Georgia in the Leia costume until the last second. She kept insisting that she was pulling out an old princess costume to wear. I told her to just put the Leia costume on for a picture for me. She actually obliged, and once she was wearing it, I kept going on and on about how cute it was.
The next thing I knew we were out the door without a fight. I guess she decided she was going to be able to pull of Leia better than she had originally thought! That girl knows how to give her Mama a run for her money!

Will loves his costume so much that he has lost, and then found the pieces to it again, and again, because he keeps wearing it around the neighborhood. I have seen Darth Vader running down the street with his light saber in hand at least three times now in the weeks leading up to Halloween.

Wally was willing to be any Star Wars character except anybody from the "Dark Side."

Del and I decided once again this year that we should just accentuate our true colors. So we went as very last minute, thrown together, nerds.

I will post some of our Halloween festivities later. We have crammed quit a few in this 2012 season.

Walker's Room

I am finally getting around to putting up some pictures of my house. This is Walker's room/the guest room. He gets kicked out when we have company. 

It is nothing too fancy, or styled. But I am good with it being simple. I would say it is nothing special, but I think it is so cute how much Walker likes his space, so it is special to me in that way!

Please pardon my unexceptional photography. It is so hard to photograph interiors. Difficult to get the light to look right! Arrrrggg!

Because I am keeping guests in mind, as well as Walker, I wanted to go with a vibe that would be fitting for adults with just the removal of a few small things. So the room ended up not being very toddler-ish. I am good with that. I like that it can transition to a bigger boy room if we decide to move Wally across the hall in the future.

I pretty much used what I had for this room. I was not feeling any DIY projects when it came to the space. I did get a few new things, but what we had ended up fitting nicely. I had a rug in here, but ended up returning it because it felt too busy to me. I wanted a pretty neutral, calm feel. Maybe I will come across another one that I feel fits the room better. You may not care where I got stuff, but I will tell you anyway.
Walker's room is painted Cloud Cover, by Benjamin Moore.

The dresser is a Craig's List find that I painted before Walker was born, for his nursery. The mirror had been sitting in our storage room. So I pulled it out. The framed word cards are from a local antique shop. I put them in a frame.
The bed used to be mine and Del's. I grabbed a quilt at TJ Maxx, and just used white sheets for the other bedding. The pillow shams were picked up on clearance at Alice Lane while I was in Utah. I found the trellis pattern throw pillow on Etsy.

The chair is from on overstock/scratch and dent outlet in Milwaukee. It used to be in the basement. The bin is from Hobby Lobby. I got the pillow on Etsy. I wrote in a past post about how I must have hit submit twice on the order and I found myself with houndstooth pillows coming out my ears! I still have unused houndstooth in the closet!
And that is after using THREE others in the older boy's room!
I got the lamp from The Land of Nod. It was one of the new purchases for the room.

The fox/field print above the bed is from Etsy. I found the frame on clearance at Michael's and threw it together with mats and glass I had around the house. The ladder and blankets are from Walker's nursery. Originally, the ladder was in Georgia's nursery. I made it while I was pregnant with her.
Idea, courtesy of my friend, Leslie.

The drapes hung in the front room of our old house. The bamboo shade was left by the previous owner! Score!

Like I said, nothing fancy, but it is cozy enough for Walker!
And hopefully for anyone else who would like to come and visit! The door is always open, and Walker is willing to be a floater to accommodate our loved ones! Hope you like houndstooth!

Red Barn Farm

We made our trip to the pumpkin patch for the year. There is a really cute one really close to our house.

Now I don't have to feel quit as guilty about our house looking so boring compared to all our festive neighbors. At least we have a couple pumpkins on the porch. Good enough, right?

Then it was off to eat soup for dinner, and watch an extra spooky episode of Scooby Doo.

The kids are soooo excited for Halloween.

 I got their costumes yesterday, and as soon as Will saw his, he threw it on, and went outside. I saw him a minute later running down the street in his full Darth Vader costume, light saber, mask, and all. I laughed out loud when I looked out the window! Now it sits perfectly arranged on the ottoman at the foot of his bed. Ready for the big day!

The gang.

Me and my girlie.

The tunnel.

Minnetonka.

Ride em' cowboys! I love Walker in this picture!

I told my kids we are going to plant a ton of pumpkins and set them up with a stand to sell them on the side of the road next year, with a cardboard haunted house to crawl through, behind them. How can they charge such an insane amount for some gourds?! Sheesh! We could make a fortune!

A couple from Instagram.

That's all!

The Dells

The kids had almost an entire week off of school because of Parent Teacher conferences, and Columbus Day.

So the question of what to do over the long weekend arose yet again. It does every year. Every year we have big ideas.

We will drive to New York! (we do really need to do that!)

We will drive to Canada! (that was a new one.)

We will find a beach house up in Michigan. (yes, they have awesome beaches.)

Most years, we don't end up doing anything nearly as exciting as our plans would have us do.

Finally, Del talked me into two nights up in The Dells, Wisconsin. It is only a few hours away.

I must admit that I am not the biggest fan of the indoor water park. And the Midwest has plenty of them.
Huge warehouses, with water slides, and fountains of,  just a little too cold water, pouring all around you. I used to have more patience for them.

But now in my old age, they have lost their appeal. Basically, if I am wet, I am cold. Add years of chasing babies through the water because they need constant supervision for two or three full days at these parks, and I am burned out.

So, as I said, Del talked me into it. And of course the kids could not have been any more in love with the whole thing.
We stayed in a condo on the Lake at the massive Wilderness Resort. And while I may not be jumping in the car full of excitement to return, any time soon...

I must admit that it was kinda fun.

Or it could have been a lot worse.

Okay, it was kinda fun.

Anyway, having the kids be even just "that" much older this time around made the whole experience a lot less stressful than the last time we were there.

It is fun to watch the kids have fun.

Oh, and one cool thing that happened while we drove up there, was that the entire opposite side of the highway was closed off as we approached Madison.

I knew President Obama was campaigning at the collage campus there that day.
And sure enough, after a few miles, about 15 police motorcycles, then cars, came down the other side of the road. Then the two important looking black cars with the American flag, and the Presidential seal came cruising down the middle of the highway, with another dozen cars following.

I will come right out and admit now, that I am rooting for the other guy in the upcoming Presidential election. That would be Mitt Romney. But there is definitely a level of respect and awe for the office of President of the United States that you feel when you see those cars, that flag, and that seal go by.

I love America!
But my, oh my, when the President comes to town, and shuts down half the freeway for miles, and miles,traffic becomes a disaster!