An Evening with Papa

Papa babysat Hannah and Rachel this evening so that Mommy and Gramma could go have their Mom and Daughter Date to the movies. This was the first time that Papa has had two granddaughters to watch at the same time. The girls behaved for Papa and didn't give him any trouble, except for when Rachel felt the need to take off jammies, diaper included. :)

Another Mommy and Hannah Date

So it wasn't exactly what I was thinking for our next Hannah and Mommy Date, but we spent time again together this evening in a trip to Urgent Care.

Late this afternoon, Hannah started complaining and crying that her ear hurt, and that her throat hurt. Her moodiness and crying just got worse through dinner, so I took her to be checked out, and sure enough, she has an ear infection. She hasn't had a runny nose or any other symptom that would bring on an ear infection, so I was a bit suprised when she was complaining. But we caught it, and now she's on antibiotics for the next ten days.

Mommy and Hannah Date

It's hard to believe that a week from today, Hannah goes back to school. I had many things I had wanted to do while she was off track, but the time just seemed to have disappeared. One of the things I had hoped to do was to spend some one on one time with Hannah, have a Mommy and Hannah date. We got to do that today.

I didn't tell Hannah what we were going to do today until we were cleaning up breakfast and I asked her to get dressed, etc because we were going somewhere that was a suprise. She kept asking questions as to where we were going, but I didn't tell her until we dropped Rachel off at Gramma's house. She was pretty excited, as far as Hannah's outward showing of being excited goes. LOL.

First stop, Starbucks for an apple juice and iced tea. From there, we went to get Hannah a manicure and for myself, my eyebrows waxed. Hannah is always asking to have her nails painted, so she loved getting her nails done. She got pretty little flower decals put on a couple of her nails. I told her we'll have to come back in a few months when it's sandle weather to get our toes looking pretty. :) She also talked about getting her eyebrows waxed, but I informed her she was way too young to do that. LOL. After relaxing and getting purty nails, we went to Target to spend what was left on Hannah's gift card she got from Christmas. She was really particular on what she was going to spend her money on, she settled on a cute lavendar purse. We finished our morning together by running a couple more places. We had planned to go to lunch, but knowing that Papa was over at Great Grandma's house watching them put a new heater in, she decided she wanted to go get Gramma and Rachel and then head over to Great Grandma's house to see her and Papa. Isn't the blue sky and clouds beautiful?
We had a good time this morning, looking forward to perhaps doing more Mommy and Hannah dates next time she is off track.

Disneyland with Emily

Ever since our trip last June, Hannah and Emily have been talking and planning for our next trip to Disneyland, that trip was today! This time both families were complete, Emily's dad returned home last week from serving in Kuwait for eleven months and today we got to show him a good time at Disneyland.

We left the house at 8:00am and didn't get home until close to midnight. It was a FULL day to say the least, we saw and did quite a bit, including the parade and fireworks that were a big hit on our last trip with the K***** Family. We even ventured into Downtown Disney and had dinner outside the park at the ESPN ZONE. Which was something new even to our family!

Hannah and Kayla, Christy and Gracie behind in the Green Dumbo,
and Mike and Emily farther back in the blue Dumbo. Everyone in our party who wanted the teacup to spin fast,
was in this teacup! Showing Mike how good of a driver she is. Waiting for the parade. "We're Pirate Princesses". Finally hitting the wall, after over 14 hours of fun. We had such a great time today. The K***** Family got 2Fer tickets, where you buy a day at Disneyland, get a day at California Adventure free. We're looking forward to figuring out a day when we can go and act as tour guides for that park.

High School Musical

Our family LOVES the movie High School Musical, the girls probably watch it at least once a week. Hannah likes it so much, she's having a High School Musical birthday party this year. There is a concert tour currently touring the U.S., however tickets for those performances are very expensive, as the performances are by the actual actors and actresses from the movie. So I was excited when I discovered that a little theater in Yucaipa was putting on a production of Disney's High School Musical. We tried to see it opening night, but it was sold out by the time we got there, so we made reservations for today's afternoon matinee. Today was the last day for performances. They did an awesome job! The director of the production was one of our school's Kindergarten teachers, which was cool! We asked her when she was going to do something like that at our school, especially considering we're a performing arts school, and unfortunately the teacher who is in charge of the performing arts, has no room, or shall I say need, for help from another teacher. :( We really enjoyed the perfomance, the singing, and the acting were all awesome! It's too bad today was the last day, we'd probably go again it was THAT good.

Back From Gramie's

Gramie came down Valentine's Day evening to watch the girls while we went to dinner. Because Hannah is still off track from school, she was able to go home with Gramie. She came home this afternoon in time for our High School Musical reservations. Hannah went to work with Gramie on Thursday and Friday and came home excited that she did all the paperwork for Grandpa's Tuesday delivery route and did a bunch of filing for Gramie. Hannah and Gramie also managed to get in a movie, Germ Chuck E. Cheese, and had a movie marathon on Saturday.

My Little Helpers

Unloading the dishwasher has become one of Hannah's regular chores in the last year. Rachel can't stand to let her unload it alone and always offers a helping hand.

Disneyland with Family

Today, the girls and I met Uncle Bart, Uncle Robbie, Auntie, McKenzie, and Haylee at Disneyland. Steven is still not feeling totally better from being sick this week, so he opted to stay home and catch up on rest.

We had a great day. It was forecasted to rain, but never did. That's what happens when you come prepared with rain ponchos, extra socks, and umbrellas. LOL. It lightly misted as we were entering the parking structure to come home, but other than that, it was a beautiful day.

Three of the four girls. Going after McKenzie and Uncle Robbie on the bumper cars. Hold on for this fast moving train. At the end of the night, the double stroller held three,
until the wheels started to buckle from all the weight.

The Park: Twice in One Week!

Wednesday nights are usually our date night, the girls, especially Hannah, think it's "THEIR" date night. But for the last two weeks, the girls have missed out on their date night, as Steven was in Chicago overnight last week on business, and this week Steven wasn't feeling well. The girls have been missing their grandparents.

So, today, we met Gramma at the park with lunch, and Papa joined us on his lunch break. The park, twice in one week, and the park name didn't even include the name "Disneyland", that's a first.

Lunch on the new Patio

The girls have been enjoying being able to go outback and ride their scooters and bikes on the new cement. Today they enjoyed having lunch outside. I dragged the Little Tikes picnic table out of the garage and set it up. They loved it!

Lunch at the Park

It's hard to believe the weather has changed so much in so little time. Just three weeks ago it was literally freezing and had snowed, today it's 91 degrees out. Beautiful day to take lunch to the park. Which is exactly what we did. It was a spontaneous thing, a friend called and asked if we wanted to grab lunch and take it to the park, so we did. With Hannah off track, and my friends 3 kids, and her two daycare kids off track, it made for a lot of kids! They all had a great time chasing each other about and playing hide n go seek. All complaining when it was time to head home for naps for the little ones.

Peter Pan on the Big Screen

For a limited time, Walt Disney's Peter Pan is showing on the big screen at the El Capitan in Hollywood, in celebration of the release of the movie on DVD next month. We got to go and see the movie today with Gramie. We had a lot of fun watching all the strange people on Hollywood Blvd and looking at some of the stars on the sidewalk, and having ice cream at the Disney's Soda Fountain Shop.

Snow White has always been Hannah's favorite Disney Princess. Wearing Tinkerbell shirts in support of their favorite Fairy. Wasting no time in digging into their Lost Boys Sundae.

Valentine's Day Party / Officially off Track!

Hannah's class had their Valentine's Day party today. It's so funny to watch kids when they can actually read what the conversation hearts say and understand it. On more than one occassion I saw several wrinkled up faces as a result of what a candy heart said. LOL. The kids had a great time passing out their valentines and having heart shaped cakes and candy. I remember when I was in school, and how exciting it would be to get a Valentine and inside it's envelope to have a couple conversation heart candies, now a days, every Valentine is accompanied with some sort of treat, and the little white envelopes no longer exist, you fold your Valentine and close with a sticker. The party soon came to an end and it was time for lunch before the 11:30 dismissal. Rather than send Hannah to the cafeteria for lunch and return thirty minutes later to pick her up, I signed her out of school early and we went to McDonald's with our friends, who are also two of Hannah's classmates, Zachary and Alex. The school day has ended, as does another trimester of school. Hannah officially has 2/3 of 1st grade behind her. She came home with an excellent report card with the praise from her teacher of how good she had improved in math this last trimester. We're so proud of her. It's hard to believe that when she goes back to school on March 6th, that'll be her final trimester of the 1st grade. Her next vacation will be prior to just starting the 2nd grade!! :::sigh::: Where does the time go?!?!