Trip to Disneyland

What better way to start off Hannah's vacation than with a trip to Disneyland. After picking up Hannah and a trip through the McDonald's drive thru, we were on our way.

Today kicked off Halloween Time the Fall season at The Disneyland Resort with everything decorated so pretty with fall colors and leaves and pumpkins, special shows, and special fall foods and treats. All the decorations made for some really great backdrops for pictures. I was extremely happy that both the girls cooperated with so many picture taking opportunities today. We're now entering my most favorite time of the year at Disneyland...the holidays. Arriving to the parks shortly after noon, we made it in time to see the new High School Musical 2 street parade at California Adventure. It was really good and look forward to seeing it again!After the parade, we spent some time roaming about Candy Corn Acres, a new thing this year. There were candy corn carrots, candy corn corn, candy corn grape clusters...There was candy corn everywhere! From there, we headed over to where the 'real' magic is, Disneyland, where we spent the remainder of the day. We strolled back to Woody's Halloween Roundup and spent some time taking pictures and the girls coloring and decorating a little pumpkin, and enjoying the music of a Cast Member playing the fiddle and singing 'Fall' songs. Since turning 7, Hannah has now reached the 'magical age' whereas she can go on rides by herself. She's very excited about this and today she tried driving her very own Autopia car all by herself. She had a little trouble keeping the gas pedal pushed down all the way and her car stalled out on her a couple of times, which unnerved her. When she got off, she was a little upset and might wait a while longer before driving on her own again.It was a beautiful day for going to Disneyland. The weather was beautiful and enjoyable, and the crowds, well, there were none. Popular rides had wait times as little as 10 minutes! Which would have made for an even more perfect day had I had kids that meet the requirements AND were willing to go on them!! We managed to hit some favorite rides, and do some of our favorite things. A fun window to look through, the candy making window located in the shop back in Pooh Corner. This afternoon, the ladies were dipping apples! YUM! We had a really good day. The girls were cooperative and stood in lines well, and Hannah was extremely helpful on several occasion! We're looking forward to a few more trips while she's off track!

Happy to be Off Track

Some of the words from the chorus from the song, "What Time is It?" from High School Musical 2's hit song, fits just fine with today's event:

What time is it?
Summertime!
It's our vacation.
What time is it?
Party time!
While it may no longer be summertime here in Southern California (thank goodness!), it is Hannah's vacation time! As of 11:15 this morning, she is off track from school for the next four weeks!

Some things Hannah has said she'd like to do while on vacation include: spending the night with Gramma and Papa, spending some time at Gramie's, Disneyland, the pumpkin patch, The La Brea Tar Pits, trips to the library, San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park (we have passes), a sleep over with McKenzie and Haylee, reading to Rachel's preschool class, and a few more I've seem to have forgotten at the moment.

Parent Teacher Conference

We've just returned home from having had our Parent-Teacher Conference.

Overall Hannah is an excellent student. On her report card, she scored 3 A's (for Advanced) and 2 P's (Proficient) in the graded areas of Writing, Reading, Math, Social Studies/History, and Science.

The teacher had a lot of good things to say about Hannah. However, she did tell us Hannah can be a bit 'chatty' at times. :::GASP::: No! Not our Hannah! Must have skipped a generation on both sides and the chattiness came from her grandmothers, as I recall a particular grandmother telling me she used to get in trouble at school for talking. :)

Needless to say we're very proud of her and how well she's doing in school! And can't believe tomorrow is the end of the 1st trimester and she'll be off track for 4 weeks!

Collecting Box Tops

Once again, Hannah's school is collecting Box Tops for Education. And while there are class awarded prizes for the most brought in, we are doing a contest within our class. The student who brings in the most Box Tops by November 1, wins a Coldstone gift card. Hannah was at the top, until a fellow classmate brought in 135 in one day!!! Thanks to Aunt Judy who supplied Hannah 35 Box Tops this week, in addition to the bag we got from Gramie last week, Hannah is about 30 Box Tops from catching up. If anyone would like to contribute to Hannah winning, please send us your Box Tops!! :)

An Afternoon with the Cousins

Hannah came home from school this afternoon to her cousins and Aunt Kim visiting. They are heading home to Oregon this weekend, so we had one last afternoon of the kids playing together and visiting. We went to the local park and fed the ducks and went to the playground to play. The kids had SO much fun.

I was really amazed at Hannah on the monkey bars!
She went all the way!

An Evening Hike

This evening after dinner we went for a hike/walk up the local mountain that is popular for walking, biking, and running up. It's been a few years since we've walked it, before Rachel came along, that's for sure. Hannah walked the entire way, not whining or complaining once all the way up. She did a great job! She even pointed out some rocks and the moss on rocks along the way...all thanks to her current science lessons at school. We arrived to the top as the sun was beginning to set, and I got some really nice 'magic hour' pictures.

You can see the local mountains in this picture,
if you look past the brown haze.