Mother's Day and More

Jen had a wonderful Mother's Day.  Perhaps the best ever!  The day started with the kids jumping into bed with us, wishing a Happy Mother's Day and showing their love.  We had a homemade version of Kneader's french toast. Yummy!  After breakfast, the kids excitedly bestowed their gifts upon Mom.  They know that Mom likes to read, and likes when they draw things, so they decided to make books for her.  You can see a few of Jen's favorite pages below...
Kyle prepared a delicious dinner of grilled salmon and rice pilaf, followed by a delectable chocolate fondue with plenty of treats to dip.

 Here is the cover page of their books.  Ethan came up with the title of his all by himself: "The Book by Ethan."

 The book was filled with the kids favorite things to do with Mom.  Here we are parachuting to Disneyland. (this is what happens when the kid watches the movie Hook earlier in the day - we're just glad we all had parachutes...)

 At the park...

 And here's Mom and Brooklyn.  This is the best penmanship Brooklyn has ever shown. It's been hard to teach her since she is left-handed.

Kyle, Ethan and Brooklyn went camping a week ago, and Mom stayed home with a cold. It was weird to have the house so quiet, but she had a lovely time reading.  

Kyle found a quiet little campground by a little river.  After getting the tent set up and campfire roaring, we had a yummy dinner of hamburgers and Sun Chips.

Then we got all set up for s'mores.  Unfortunately, Kyle left the graham crackers home, so we just roasted marshmallows and had squares of chocolate. The kids were very good at keeping their marshmallows out of the fire.  Brooklyn was so good, her marshmallow hardly even got warm.

After dessert, we  got out the guitars and sang "You've got a Friend in Me" around the campfire. 

We started getting ready for bed, but when we looked around for a toilet, there was none to be seen. Ethan didn't have any problems with this, but Brooklyn was not excited about doing her business out in the open, and Kyle was at a loss about how to help. We finally ended up driving up the road to a campground with a toilet, and after some fear about falling in (who doesn't worry about falling into a campground toilet), everyone got their business done.
The next morning we got up and Kyle started to prepare breakfast to a chorus of "I'm cold" and "I want to go home."  Once the kids had food in their tummys and the sun came out, everyone started having a fun time playing in the stream and exploring the campground. During our exploring, we found that our campground's toilet was over the river and up the hill.  If only we'd known about it the night before...

After packing up camp, we headed up the road and found a fun trail to hike on.  Ethan was a good hiker, and he wanted to keep going, despite the many rocks he tripped over.  Brooklyn wanted  to go home and play on the computer.  

On our hike, we found this bridge on the trail.  The kids were very careful crawling over it.

Ethan and Brooklyn wanted to take a picture along the trail with the two of them hugging.  Here's how it turned out.

Ethan cried when it was time to come home.  He wanted to stay there for "100,000 days."

April

Jen took a quilting class over the last month. Here's the finished product.

 

Kyle took the kids on a hike up in the foothills a few weeks ago.  We had quite a few "adventures."  First, we saw this bug on the ground.

We also saw animal tracks on the ground.  We decided they came from a cow!  The kids also found lots of shotgun shells, which they were a little wary of at first, but got more comfortable with quickly. 
The next stop on our adventure was this set of big rocks that the kids had a lot of fun climbing on. 

The last stop on our journey was this big earth mover. 

Apple Juice

Brooklyn has never been very creative when it comes to naming her stuffed animals. She'll often come up with names like "Pink Puppy" or "Bunny." Lately, she's become attached to a little baby doll that she pretends is her baby. Tonight, Kyle asked what the baby's name is, expecting a response similar to "baby," or "I don't know." Instead, she surprised us by naming her baby "Apple Juice." So cute!

Last weekend was a very busy Easter weekend for our family. On Saturday, we went to the Deseret Peak Easter Egg Hunt, where the kids were corralled into a fenced-off field and set loose picking up as many eggs as they could. We tried to coach Ethan to pick up the eggs that had the stickers on them so he could win a bike or another large prize. He was so focused on trying to find one of these eggs, that he neglected to pick up very many other eggs. In the future, our coaching will be, "Pick up whatever you want, and have fun."
Brooklyn, on the other hand, had fun picking up whatever she wanted, and she had a lot of fun. She even got one of the eggs with a special sticker on it. When we picked up her prize, it ended up being a basket with more candy. Oh well.
After Deseret Peak, we went up to Brigham City for Kyle's Grandma Smith's Easter party. It was fun to see a lot of family that we don't get to see very often.
Just before the next Easter Egg hunt, Brooklyn got her thumb shut in a door, and was pretty upset. After finding a few eggs, however, she cheered up.

Ethan and Brooklyn loved going on the "4-wheeler."
On Easter Sunday, we re-packaged some of the kids candy and held yet another Easter Egg hunt. Ethan called it a Yoshi-egg hunt, since weren't able to do one at his Mario-themed birthday party due to weather.

We got this castle-tent as an Easter gift for the kids, and they've loved it.

There and Back Again (A Disney Tale)

For Ethan's Birthday this year, we decided to take a family vacation to Disneyland! Since Ethan loves everything Disney (except the Pixar logo, but that's another story), we figured his fifth birthday would be the perfect time for him to meet some of his heroes. Jen hadn't been to Disneyland since she was 11. Kyle, Ethan, and Brooklyn had never been before. We invited Grandma and Grandpa Taylor to come along as well, both to show us around and to keep an extra set of eyes on the kids.

We were originally planning on driving to California, but after finding $120 round trip plane tickets, it was a no-brainer that we would fly instead. When we first told the kids, they were both nervous about flying. After a little convincing (thank you, YouTube videos of other kids flying), they changed their tune, and were excited to fly.

After a close call at the airport (we made our flight by about 10 minutes)because of extra long lines and issues with parking, we were on the plane and flying to Disneyland! Both the kids did really well - it helped that Grandma Taylor sat next to them and had all kinds of things to keep them busy.

The Long Beach Airport is much smaller than Salt Lake, and we got to get off of the plane and go down the ramp.

After a quick shuttle ride from the airport, we checked into our hotel, and headed over to the park. We flew out of Salt Lake at 8:30 am, and were at Disneyland within an hour of the park opening!

The first ride we went on was one of Ethan's favorites - The Astro Blaster (or as Ethan calls it, the Buzz Lightyear ride).

The kids both loved driving cars all by themselves! (If you look closely, you can see Ethan's head peeking over the edge of the dashboard)
After the cars, we went on the Finding Nemo submarine ride. The Kids loved going under the water and seeing the fish from Nemo. When the ride was finished, though, the music from the Finding Nemo credits came over the PA. Ethan started getting scared that the Pixar logo was about to show up outside of the submarine, and pinched off his ears and closed his eyes until we were safely off the submarine.

(Unfortunately, at this point our camera ran out of batteries and we didn't get any pictures for the rest of the first day.)

We went to meet Mickey at his house in Toon town. Ethan was really excited about this. He wanted to get some mouse ears and take them back to show Mickey the next day.

The second day was filled with rides and both Disneyland and California Adventure.

Winnie the Pooh Ride

Riverboat Ride

The Little Mermaid Ride

Ethan and Brooklyn as Toy Story toys. We happened to go to Disneyland on Leap Year Day (Feb 29), which was the first time in about 25 years that they had the park open for 24 hours. This was a big deal for some people. We stood in line with a couple of girls who had been waiting in line since 8:30 the previous evening, 10 hours before the park even opened for their 24-hour stint. We could tell when school got out in the afternoon because it started getting busier and busier as the evening went on.

Grandpa Taylor stayed with the kids and slept while Kyle, Jen, and Grandma Taylor went out to party. The park was SOOO crowded, this is one of the three attractions we did. No, this isn't the Dumbo ride, this is place designated to take pictures with Dumbo. We also went to the Tiki Room which had no real wait (surprise, surprise) and on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, which was only a half hour wait (any other time during our trip we could walk right on).

We were sad that Cars Land was still under construction, scheduled to be opened later this year. Were were able to get a sneak peak from the top of Mickey's Ferris Wheel, though. It looks like a lot of fun! It looks really big and just like Radiator Springs out of the movie Cars.

One of our favorite things to do was let Ethan meet his heroes. He asked for the better part of the morning to go and find Woody. We finally found where he was hanging out, and Ethan was super-excited to meet him.

Ethan got to touch McQueen and Mater. Afterwards, he told us a secret - McQueen felt like a real race car, and Mater felt like a real tow truck!

While waiting in line for the Toy Story Mania ride, we saw Jessie walking by. She was busy with some other kids, and we moved forward in the line without getting to say "hi." We thought we lost our chance, but a minute later she came and sought Ethan out. She gave him a big hug and two kisses! He was thrilled! Afterward, he bashfully said, "Jessie gave me two kisses!"

We all had a really great time at Disneyland. Ethan was the perfect age, and was tall enough to go on most of the rides. Brooklyn was probably a little bit too young, and didn't get to go on everything, but she still had a lot of fun.

(Ethan was just looking at this picture, and said,"I really like Walt Disney's haircut." lol)

After our adventure, we asked the kids what their favorite rides were.

Ethan liked "The Fastest Train in the West" (Thunder Mountain), as well Buzz ride and Toy Story Mania, of course.

Brooklyn liked Pirates of the Caribbean best, but also loved The Little Mermaid ride.

Part of the way through our trip Kyle noticed he couldn't find our van keys. Thankfully, someone turned them in to the airport in Salt Lake on the first day of our trip. In all the chaos at the airport they must have gotten left at the security check point. Dear person who turned them in, we are eternally grateful!

Mario Birthday Party

Ethan had his birthday part on Saturday. He has been obsessed with Mario Brothers lately, and insisted on a Mario Party. Here's the cake:
Jen spent the week making a piñata out of paper mache. (For those of you who don't know Mario, The piñata is a Boo)
We made these invitations. Ethan LOVED them.

Mario bingo
Pin the mustache on Mario.

Here the kids hit the bad guys with "fireballs."
Breaking the pinata

Ethan was really excited about everyone singing "Happy Birthday" to him.

As a parting favor we gave everyone a chocolate mustache sucker.