My Girl

Many years ago, when I turned eight, my best friend and I spent a day in Salt Lake with our moms shopping, eating at nice restaurants, sightseeing, and having a great time. It is still a treasured memory. I wanted to have that same opportunity with my soon-to-be-eight daughter. So after chatting with her best friend's mom, we came up with a plan that entailed some much-needed girl time, combined with their current favorite thing...American Girl dolls. Santa brought the girls a "Day at American Girl Place" package. So Madison and I and Coralee and Mindy set off for a weekend in LA to spend a day at the American Girl store.

First on the agenda, get beautiful!

Just before setting out for our day--aren't they gorgeous?

On our way to the American Girl store, we stopped to see the LA Temple. The visitors center was being remodeled, but we did get to walk around the grounds and take some pictures.

We have arrived at the American Girl Place! The dolls in the display case are called Just Like You dolls, and Madison examined every one to find the one that looks just like her. The girls shopped and spent every last penny of their allotted gift card money. (But thank goodness not too many pennies more!)

We took a break from shopping to browse the Farmers Market across the street. Madison had crepes with strawberries for lunch. Yummy!

Then we made our way back to American Girl Place where the girls had a photo shoot with their dolls. Madison's picture was then put on a personalized magazine cover.

The doll hair salon was so cute. A whole line of doll-size salon chairs, with the stylists working their magic. Madison's doll even got her ears pierced at the salon.
We finished off the day with a dinner in the American Girl Cafe. The cafe was so girly, all hot pink and black and white. The napkin rings were hair ties that the girls got to keep. The dolls got their own little seats next to their girls.
Is this girl excited or what? This is the dessert plate--flower pot chocolate mousse, a tiny heart-shaped cake, and a tiny star sugar cookie.
The whole girly group...two moms, two girls, and four dolls! (Oh, and don't forget the little girl in my very large belly!)
Since we went all the way to LA, and we had one more day, we rounded out our weekend with a day at Disneyland.

Two sweet girls! They had a great time and I think they even realized how very lucky they were to get to go on this trip. They were very well behaved the whole time. And the moms...well, we were well behaved too. I sure love my boys, big and small, but I enjoyed every minute of our girl time. I can't wait to do it again in eight years with the next little girl!

Levi...growing up!

We took pictures of the kids the other day against the wall, so the next time I pulled the camera out, Levi ran to the wall again for his pose. Then he got back to business of cutting fruit. This task has occupied a lot of his time the last few days. He is growing up so quickly and has such a cute personality. He finally stayed in nursery for the whole time on Sunday. He is sleeping better--in his room with Wyatt, and only waking up in the night occasionally. I am starting to have a little hope that I might be able to handle both him and the new baby sister!

Our New Ride

In 96 days and counting...(or maybe even less), we will officially outgrow our 5 passenger Saturn Vue. So we finally have upgraded to the typical mormon wagon. We now have a minivan! It is a Nissan Quest, smoke gray. It has some little extras that the kids love (built-in DVD player) and some that I love (mostly that the kids can buckle themselves because their seats are not so crammed in). It's a few years old and has a couple of minor scratches and dings, but overall it's in good shape. We're loving our new ride!

Halloween

I'm finally getting around to posting Halloween pictures...if I do it before Thanksgiving, I figure I'm okay. Levi was a puppy this year, Wyatt was a Transformer (Megatron because he "likes the bad guys just a little bit more than the good guys"), and Madison was a clown. She wore this same costume three years ago. She has grown a little, but we adjusted the suspenders and added some crazy tights, and it worked great. She also had to have a matching doll costume. We had a fun night trick or treating with cousins. Their neighborhood gets way into the holiday, and most of the houses were fully decorated. The best one even has a haunted house through their garage and into their house, complete with live scary people, bloody footprints, and creepy sound effects.

Fall Break, Part III-The Pumpkin Patch

To finish off a fun Fall Break week of vacation, play dates, the zoo, and lots of Halloween crafts, we went to Apple Annie's Pumpkin Patch. Our friends, the Swain's, came with us. We had a tasty lunch of hamburgers and hot dogs and pie out in the apple orchards, played in the huge basins of dry corn, then boarded the hay wagons to ride out to the pumpkin patch to pick out the perfect pumpkins. Wyatt picked out a tall, skinny one. Madison's is perfectly round. And Levi, well he didn't really care, and his parents are cheap, so he got one of the smallest we could find. Levi did love crawling around over all of the pumpkins. He didn't seem to mind the stickery vines at all. It was record-breaking hot that day (at least it was a few degrees cooler at the pumpkin patch in Willcox than in Tucson), and it was super windy. But we're not complaining...we had a great time!
By Sunday night, the kids were at each other's throats, and they were bored. We had a fun, busy week, but they were sure ready to go back to school on Monday!

Fall Break Fun, Part II--Levi's First Trip to the Zoo

Since Levi gets so excited about the birds in the Wal-Mart parking lot or any dog we may run into, I decided he was ready for his first trip to the zoo. And being Fall Break and nice weather, we invited our cousins to join us, and we did the zoo. We love our little Tucson zoo. It is big enough to have all of the major animals, but small enough that you can see them all. We can do the whole zoo in under two hours and for 10 bucks for all of us. Levi's cousin Aaron is six weeks older and it was his first zoo trip, too. They both did surprisingly well at finding and watching the animals. We had a great day at the zoo...

Fall Break Fun, Part I--Mexico

Last week was Fall Break for the kids. I was worried about keeping them entertained for a whole week off of school, but it turns out we had more than enough to do. We had a super fun, busy week. We started off with a weekend in Rocky Point with the Burns'. I was afraid it would be too cold to swim much and we would spend most of the time in the hotel. I was sure proven wrong! The water was beautiful, both the pool and the ocean. We spent almost the entire time in the water. The ocean was a little rough and the waves were too big for the kids to go in very far, but Darin and I liked swimming. The kids stood at the edge of the water and they spent hours playing in the sand. Levi wanted nothing to do with the water this time, but judging from the contents of his diaper for a few days after, he had a great time in the sand! We buried all of the big kids in the sand. They loved it and laid there for quite a long time. Levi tromped right over the top of them when they were hidden in the sand. The resort had a great pool with a nice kiddie pool and a fun waterslide. The kids especially liked that there were no rule-enforcing lifeguards on the slide (like they are used to in Rancho Sahuarita), so they were able to go in trains and on their bellies.