February Roundup

Last night my parents took us out to dinner at Tucano's, a Brazilian BBQ place. It's where they just literally bring you skewers of meat and carve it onto your plate until you beg for mercy. I still feel full and just want to loaf around all day, so... I will. They're flying out this afternoon and that officially checks off everything I had on my packed calendar. Er... until Friday at least.

In the meantime, here's a quick recap of all the crap we did in February. Because, you know, inquiring minds and such.

First it was my little A's birthday - he turned five and is the man.

 Oh hey super stud. We had to go to church on his birthday and I felt bad so he got to wear a Batman ribbon. 

 I used to spend like, a day, making my kids' birthday cakes. They were these huge undertakings that usually involved several tiers and fondant. And then I realized that I hated it and stopped doing it. This took about 20 minutes and a Batman symbol I printed off of the computer. And lots of sprinkles. 

My daughter got a store-bought cake. Pinterest would be ASHAMED. 

The next weekend, we made our way to California, with a brief stop in St. George. We've been tossing around the idea of looking into condos down there, so we spent some time checking out models. But then also eating, swimming and shopping. 

We also went to the dino museum for the millionth time. 

My kids like it and therefore, we go. Here they are watching a scintillating cartoon video about fossils while I looked at Instagram. 

Excellent behavior, as always. 

When Justin wants to leave, he wants to leave. 

After our night in St. G (I'm starting a trend, let's all call it that) we broke the news to our kids that were going to Disneyland, which we had somehow manage to keep secret. 

Here was my daughter's reaction. 

She just has a lot of feelings. 

After that, it was off to DL.

Can I just talk for a minute about my mixed feelings about Disney? Being from Canada (Toronto is right above New York State) and have four brothers, we never went to Disneyland. It would have been too far and too expensive with our family. We did a lot of traveling, but it was mostly to Eastern Canada. SO I kind of always thought about DL as one of those "childhood" things that I'd missed out on. So naturally, when I had kids I felt like we needed to do it too. So we waited until we thought ours were the ideal age to go and finally booked the trip.

And I kind of thought it would be more magical. Like I'd sit back and think about how many special memories we'd make and our kids are only young once and blah blah feelings. But after three days I was kind of done and kind of glad it was over. Is that bad? Am I crappy human?

I'm glad we checked it off our parenting "to do" list but it will be a long while before I ever consider it again.

Stuff I liked:
-Our hotel. We stayed at the Paradise Pier and it was lovely and perfect and there was good room service and a pool that made my kids very happy. 

-Cars Land. My son is all about McQueen, so it was a big deal. And it was adorable. Also, we got the McQueen car on Radiator Springs Racers and I thought he might actually pass out. 

-California Adventure in general was cool. There was tons of stuff, shorter lines and a really good Chinese food place. I was a fan. 

Stuff I didn't like:

-Actual Disneyland. I thought it would be more spread out? Instead I felt like it was super congested and I got crazy claustrophobic. 

-The Roger Rabbit ride. Shoot me in the face. 

-The Bug's Life movie, which made my children scream and cry to the point that I thought Andrew was going to have a nervous breakdown and we'd have to invest in counseling. 

I feel grinchy admitting that it really wasn't my thing. Like I said, am I glad we did it once? Yeah. But we usually spend our vacations down in San Diego and I think we had as much, if not more, fun there. I think we're just lazy travelers. When I go on vacation, I want to go on vacation. The crowds were definitely not relaxing.

ANYWAY. Those are my thoughts on that. Moving on.

When we came home, my parents literally flew in that night. And of course, my kids were so excited that they stayed up until they got here. This is also when I lost my car keys, and spent two days looking for them, despite the fact that my 5-year-old repeatedly told me they were under the couch. 

Guess where they were.

THEN it was my daughter's birthday -- she turned a ripe old eight. My mom and I brought treats to her class and then my dad and Andrew met us at the school for lunch. Addie forgot that we were bringing her a lunch, so she accidentally bought one anyway. My dad gallantly offered to eat it and three seconds later he was asking another 2nd grader if he wanted to trade.

Yeah. 

We went out for dinner that night and neither of the kids had fully recovered. Here's an excellent picture of Andrew sleep-eating pizza. 

The next day, Addie was baptized, which is a big deal in our religion. One of the fun parts is that girls usually wear white dresses afterward. Addie was adamant that we go shopping so she could "say yes to the dress." We watch a lot of TLC around here.

Unfortunately, we found two dresses that she wanted to say "yes" to. So we bought both. And she wore both. 

First dress. 

 Second dress. 

We had all of our family and friends over for a big party afterward. My house has yet to completely recover. My mom thought it would be a good idea to decorate with Easter grass and I'm finding it EVERYWHERE. 

My parents are getting ready to leave right now. But they did have time to take my kids to the park.

 JK my kids took my dad to the park.

So that should explain my generally crappy blog for the month of February. Luckily, life will calm down and I can stop cursing the fact that ALTHOUGH I planned my children's age gap perfectly, Andrew was accidentally born super early and ruined everything and one month the year is a complete write-off. Thanks, buddy. 

So anyway, I wanted to get your thoughts on the whole DL thing. I have friends who LOVE it and I can see why, so I don't know why it wasn't the happiest place on earth for me.

Maybe it's because the title of "happiest place on earth" has already been filled. 

By my pillow.