The Happiest Place on Earth

"Why is it that kids are always grumpy on the day that they are going to the happiest place on earth?" -- Bob

Bob, my brother, and his wife Shellie decided last week, that as a final end-of-summer thing, they were going to take their son Isaac to Disneyland. It sounded like a good idea so Kurt and I told them we would go too and then my sister jumped on the bandwagon and it officially became a big, fun family-ordeal. We had a great time. My mom and dad, being the extremely generous people they are, gave us season passes as an early Christmas present, so we felt no obligation to wake up early and instead slept in, getting to Disney around noon. After a few moments of discussion (and a blister after 5 minutes of walking) the guys decided to get fast-passes to Splash Mountain while Shellie took care of Micaela's blister. Next we headed to the Jungle Cruise followed by the Indiana Jones ride. Micaela wasn't a big fan of the fake rocks and snakes and apparently kept her eyes closed the entire time (Kurt and I stayed with Jon for that ride). I wouldn't have even been brave enough to go at her age, so she's one up on me. After that we grabbed a very good but expensive BBQ lunch, got soaked on Splash Mtn, and then went to meet my sister and Caroline before heading off to California Adventure (a new theme park next to Disneyland). Caroline is only 18 months old, but she has so much personality that it was fun having her with us. Our favorite part of California Adventure was a ride called Soaring California (or something like that) where you sit in a hanging seat and they show this video that covers 180 degrees of your vision (so you feel like you're flying) and they take you all over different parts of California - coast, mountains, farmland, etc. It sounds boring, but it was the best ride I've ever been on. We left around 8pm, all thoroughly exhausted. I remember being 10 where I was able to stay at Disneyland until it closed, but I'm a wimp now and I need my sleep. I'm glad we have passes, because we'll definitely go again, especially if any friends from VA decide to visit (hint hint). And finally, because I'm so excited about college football - FIGHT ON!!!!!!

I'm having internet problems (as anyone who has tried to call can attest to) so I can't upload pictures but here are the ones I was able to get:

Micaela and Isaac showing off their Indiana Jones Medallions that Aunt Shellie bought them


Taking care of Micaela's blister (we ended up buying her Disney Crocs at a Disney price)


My attempt at getting a family photo

Even Jon had a good time

Jonathan

Here are some pictures and a short video (it's a little dark) of Jonathan. It seems like he's grown and learned a lot in the last two weeks.

Paint

I learned something this week - painting is hard. I thought people who painted their rooms but didn't fix the trim or make sure the edges were perfect were just lazy. In a way that's true, but I've learned that I'm one of those people (good thing Kurt's not). I had no idea that it took so much work to get a room looking right. We decided to cleanup and paint the stairway going to the upstairs on Monday and we're just finishing it today. The popcorn ceiling also needed painting, and we learned from that why painters always have paint all over their clothes, it's very messy. I meant to take a picture of us with paint on our faces and clothes, but I forgot. Today we are finishing that up, hanging pictures, running cable, and I'm determined to weed-whack the front yard. Hopefully that's not too ambitious.

For those of you wondering about the kids - Micaela is bored to death and can't wait for school to start. She likes playing with her cousin Isaac, but this week we've been too busy to have him over. Jonathan is growing and learning fast. It didn't take him long to learn how to roll over once he got the initial motion started. He's able to hold his head up 90 degrees while laying on his stomach and his legs are now capable of delivering a serious kick. He still loves being in the jumper. When we went to the doctors for his check-up she told us that he was off the growth chart for his height and at 100% for his weight (big surprise) but that he has an average size head. I don't know what that all means, but thought I'd share.

A Different Generation

Tonight Micaela was reading one of her "Magic Tree House" books to me and the characters were in a situation where they were separated with a T-Rex in between them and Micaela says to me, "it's too bad they don't have cell phones, but it doesn't matter because they probably wouldn't have reception anyways." I almost laughed. I've never heard her talk about cell phones and reception before, she must have picked it up from us since we talk a lot about not having any reception in this house. I feel like a pretty technically competant person, but she's going to surpass my technical knowledge before I expect it.

As promised

Okay, I finally found a cord for my camera. These are in-progress pictures of the house. My dad built the house when he and my mom first moved to CA in the 70s. We had a family of 6, so it's a pretty big house with a lot of character. We did a lot of work yesterday and it was looking great, but now it's a mess again so you'll have to wait to get final pictures.

The kitchen

New shelves we put in the kitchen
The front patio after we cleaned the flower beds
Jon's Room
The dining room (we now have curtains)

The entry-way / living room

The Family room (don't mind the mess, we were hooking up the surround sound)

The old office, now a guest room


And because Georgia was complaining about my lack of Micaela pictures, here she is playing dress-up with my old German dress that was bought on our 1989? trip to Germany

And finally, I thought this was funny - you know you're in California when ads in the paper have to advertise that they are English speaking

P.S. I'm also adding pictures to the blog below

Moving - Part II

Quick refresher - right before we left for CA, we spent the weekend up in Blue Knob, PA with our friends from T.Estes Acres (aka Williamsburg). Kurt had convinced everyone to come up because that was the weekend of the Hellfire Shootout Golf Tournament (the best tournament EVER according to him). It was a great time, not because of the tournament or location, but I think because of the people on our teams. It was also pretty cool to see an apache land right in front of us.

We got there a little bit early to sign in and get our t-shirts and I did a baby-handoff with Grandma Sharon (thanks!). The tournament itself started well with us getting lost and going the wrong way (way to go Petree) but we managed to get to our hole and the game began. I had no intention of having beer that morning since we had polished off about 5 cases of Yueng-ling over the weekend, but when the beer girls came around at 10am and told us that the beer was free, well, you can't pass up a good deal. It was a fun tournament, we progressively got worse with the more beer we consumed, but we weren't in it for the $ anyways, especially not with Van Deusen on our team :). I think the pictures accurately depict the day:


We started out serious:

And then we drank beer:

I had my own fan section (good thing he doesn't know the difference between a good and bad shot)

We had one final night at Blue Knob where we cooked out and got our revenge on Logan for kicking our butts in poker the night before. I missed a lot of the poker game because after talking to Georgia and my brother, I realized my moving plan sucked and that our plane tickets needed to be changed. I changed our tickets and the dogs tickets for the next day. I'm pretty lucky that Kurt's mom didn't kill me for springing that on her, she was very nice about it. It was a little crazy getting everything ready in such a short time and getting the dogs on the plane was a big pain in the butt. I bought them tickets on United because they had a direct flight to LAX and I was worried about the heat. We found the cargo terminal alright, but it took three tries to find the correct door. It was a bit of a hassle getting the kennels put together and at first they said they said they weren't going to accept our kennels because they didn't have the right type of screws, but then they took pity on me and said that as long as I reinforced the screws with zip-ties, it would be fine. Getting the paperwork filled out took after about an hour and a half, but we managed. Next we went to parking. It must have looked hilarious seeing us all try to get on the tram. We had a stroller, carseat, baby, three carry-ons and three checked bags. We took up all the luggage room on the tram with just us. At the airport someone very nice man took pity on us and brought over a luggage cart and helped us to the ticket counter. From that point on everything went pretty smooth. The baby fussed when we first got on the plane, but by the time we were taxiing he was asleep and didn't wake up until after we landed. I owe the lady next to me who gave me her seat a big hug. It was nice that the baby had his own seat to sleep in. When we got to LAX, my brothers were right there with the big church van helping us with our luggage. They were also great in waiting for the dogs and helping get them to the car despite the fact that they had pooped in their cages, it was gross. It was an exhausting trip, but overall it went pretty well.

The house here is in need of a little TLC, but it's a really cool house and it's going to work really well for us. Our furniture arrived a while ago and Kurt has worked tirelessly getting everything cleaned and in place. I get to take breaks every time the baby needs to be fed or is fussy, but Kurt just keeps going. The weather out here is perfect and the beach looks so nice, I can't wait to go (I think we're going this afternoon). We haven't met anyone out here that is cool (besides family) or has frizzy hair and we miss Williamsburg, but since our friends promised to come visit we'll be alright.

Next blog: pictures and mini-vacation to San Diego

Pictures

I wanted to do a blog showing the pictures of our progress, but somewhere along the way I've lost the cord that connects my camera to my computer. It may be a while before I find it, but here are the pictures I was able to get:

Jon looks scared, but he actually loves this bouncer

Mari's girls and Jon getting ready to go on a walk with Dad

(I think Caroline is trying to stick her finger either up his nose or in his eye)

My brother Doug, girlfriend Chris, and Jon in his new monkey outfit they got him

Getting ready to paint the upstairs
Once I find that camera cord I'll put up some better pictures of the house, before and after.

Quick Update

Moving is exhausting. I was so tired from cleaning and fixing things that I went to bed at 7pm last night. We got the house in decent shape just in time for our furniture to arrive and in one day the house went from pretty nice to a complete disaster. Our furniture fits nicely, but we had so many boxes that there isn't a single room in the house you can walk into without having to step over something. I'll post some pictures later. Once things slow down I have a lot to blog about.