Ah, How Cute!

What would Easter be without a new Easter dress for a cute little girl. I am happy to report that we made it through church without spitting up on the cute dress. We think she is just about the cutest thing ever. Enjoy our top picks out of 180 pictures.

Can you tell that Anna just LOVES her little bunny?

Happy Easter Everyone!

The Easter Bunny Came!

We have had a wonderful Easter weekend. Friday night we had fun decorating Easter eggs. We bought the cheep 99 cent decorating kit and we feel that we got our money's worth out of it.

Anna did a lot of watching. This last week or so she has discovered how much fun her walker can be. (We love the fact that we paid $10 for it.) She loves to pile everything up on the tray and then knock everything off.

Devin felt that the drying tray that came with our decorating kit was not sufficient for his artistic needs so he made his own. I thought the box was fine.

We had lots of fun. We only decorated six eggs because...well we just did.

Somehow in the process my fingers turned blue.

I also forgot to take a picture of our finished eggs. It's ok, imagine the most beautiful amazing eggs, and that would not be what they looked like. I have a feeling that when Anna helps us for real next year they will look about the same.
Even though our eggs were less than beautiful the Easter Bunny still took the time to hide the eggs. Anna had fun finding them Saturday morning with the help of Dad. I'll have to post the video later. More than the eggs, Anna loves her Easter Bunny and the Easter grass.

As a side note I think Satan had a hand in creating Easter grass. It make look cute in the basket but it just gets everywhere and it sticks to everything.

Done!

I am happy to report that it is Thursday night and Anna's Easter dress is done. No staying up late to get this project done. I am really pleased with how it turned out. It makes me mad though that it probably would have been cheaper to buy a dress at Wal-Mart or Target, even buying things a piece at a time with my 50% off coupons. It is a sad day when it is more expensive to make a dress than just buy one. But I guess it is WAY cheaper than buying a dress at a fancy kid's clothes store. Devin keeps telling me that we'll keep this dress forever and remember that it was Anna's first Easter dress that mommy made. For whatever it is worth, I am grateful that I am brushing up on my sewing skills. I am pretty determined to make sure my daughter can have cute modest clothes no matter what they are selling in the stores. This dress actually didn't have sleeves. I feel pretty cool that I just added some using an old pattern.

I finished her little sweater tonight. I especially like the little flowers on the bottom. Not bad. I can't wait to see her in it. Devin has just been itching to do another photo shoot. I figured Easter would be the perfect excuse.

Disneyland Day #2

Tuesday we went to Disneyland. It was Anna and Devin's first trip to Disneyland. The last time I had been there was in 1997. A lot has changed since then. We were excited to put some good miles on our stroller. Anna was happy not to be in the car. The stroller is lots more fun.

It was nice going with David's family because we were able to take full advantage of the "stroller pass." It works just like a "fast pass" but all you have to do is show them that you have kids who can't go on a certain ride and they give you a stroller pass so two riders can go now and then two more can go as soon as the other set is done. Marthe and I would stay with the kids and David and Devin would go, or Devin and I, and so on. While Devin rode Space Mountain Anna got to meet Buzz Lightyear. Then we went on the Buzz Lightyear ride. Anna loved all the cool lights.

Then Marthe and I went on Space Mountain and David and Devin hung back with the kids. Mark and Tommy were too chicken to go on Space Mountain again.

While they were waiting for us the guys had plenty of time to pull out their cameras.

Sadie spent a lot of time just waiting in the stroller.

Anna was pretty happy the whole day. We got this cute hat for her to keep the sun out of her eyes. We had lots of fun taking her on as many rides as we could. She loved Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion. We had tons of fun going with Dave and Marthe's boys on rides too. It is a whole different experience going on a ride with a 7 and 6 year old. Especially when it is their first time. It made my day when we went to the Haunted Mansion and Mark said, "I think they do this stuff with projectors and mirrors. Yup, I'm pretty sure this part is done with a projector." What 7 year old says that??? We had lots of fun teaching them the importance of holding your hands up and screaming on the rides.

Typically what would happen is Anna would fall asleep waiting in line and then wake up just before we got on. I felt bad we had to wake her up a couple times because some of the rides they have to sit up. Here we are waiting for the Roger Rabbit ride in Toon Town.

While we were in Toon Town we stopped by Mickey's house so Anna could meet Mickey Mouse. Just our luck, she was out cold. I didn't have the heart to wake her up. We still got a cute picture though.

We all went on It's A Small World. David and Devin took lots of pictures. I'll spare you, but I hope that the song is now stuck in your head..."It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all..." Yes Anna slept through the whole thing.

The highlight of the day had to have been the Tea Cups. I took all three boys because everyone else couldn't handle it. BABIES!!!!!! The Tea Cups are one of my favorite rides. We had tons of fun getting our tea cup to spin as fast as we could. Look how happy we all are. I just can't understand why no one else wanted to be happy like that? :) The boys were a little tipsy once we were done. It was funny watching them try not to fall over or run into things.

We ended the day in Fantasy Land. Anna LOVED all the rides there. She loved holding on the the bar. After the first few rides she would start reaching for it even before they lowered it.

It was a great day. The weather was really nice. A little bit colder than I would have liked it. (But I'd be happy with 80's or 90's, so the low 70's weren't that bad.)

By the end of the day we were all very tired. But in a good way.

Disneyland Day #1

I decided that rather than waiting until I have time to post about our trip to Disneyland, I should just make time. I am going to post one day of our trip at a time so that way I don't spend all day blogging. Here we go, Day #1...
We woke up early Monday morning to find this...

and a bit of this...

Not that we needed a good reason to leave Utah, but with this much snow I was more than excited to go somewhere warm. We drove until Anna woke up and wanted to eat. We thought one of the nice "ranch" exits would be a nice secluded spot to stop and feed her. Boy we were wrong, it turned out to be the dump truck gathering spot. Who knew?

Anna learned very quickly that she LOVES to drive, or is it just anything that gets her out of her car seat?

We kept going and stopped for lunch and a nice break in St. George. We had a nice stop at the temple. Look how green the grass is. I forget how much I just LOVE green grass.

Anna loved all of the pretty flowers and bushes.

We drove on

and made it to Barstow where Anna had her only melt down of the trip. Poor kid, I've never heard her cry like that! So we stopped at In-N-Out for a good long break.

We plugged on for another couple hours and finally made it to our hotel after 14 hours on the road.

I now understand why my dad would put all the seats down in our car and just let us lay around and play in the back of the car on long trips. That is a long time to sit strapped in for a kid. Anna did amazingly well with only one small meltdown. We were all glad to get out of the car. It wasn't too late either. I think we got there around 8pm. Just in time to get a good night's sleep so we could play hard the next few days.

Ah, Conference

I am grateful that this weekend my family has been able to pitch our "tents" round about the temple, that we might remain in our "tents," and and our pajamas for that matter, and hear the words of the Lord's servants. I am grateful that I don't have to wait to listen to the messages again and again. I know what I'm going to be listening to this week as I run. I am happy to report that Anna was a complete angel through all of conference. In fact, Anna slept through it all.

One talk that made me smile was Elder Stevenson. He talked about the temple and how important it is to prepare to go there. He said that even little children can go to the temple grounds and touch the temple. This last week we stopped at the St. George temple on our way to Disneyland. We walked up the temple steps so Anna could knock on the door of the temple. Even though she doesn't look too happy touching the temple, we had a great time just wandering around the beautiful temple grounds.

We Are Back!

We made it back from our first family trip to Disneyland. As you can see, we are a bit tuckered out from all the fun. It was SO much fun. We will post more pictures and details soon.