Our Little Karate Girl

Rachel wants to learn Karate, but is still too young to join the class. She can do the stances and even throw a good punch or two. Tonight she unofficially became a Senior Orange Belt when Hannah became a purple belt and had no need for her Orange belt.

Fighting Stance
Attention Stance

Father's Day and Ice Cream

We believe Hannah has tonsillitis, so our Father's Day plans of having family over for a BBQ had to be cancelled. We spent Father's Day just hanging out and relaxing, but did end the day with a trip to Dairy Queen for ice cream.

Caterpillars!?!

Recently, Aunt Kim sent the girls a package in the mail, a butterfly garden! A little over a week ago, I mailed off the certificates for the live caterpillars and they finally came in the mail today. Now comes the part of watching the caterpillars grow, and make their chrysalis, ultimately becoming butterflies. We're hoping we don't miss all the action when we are gone camping at the end of the month.

Rachel was a little confused at first when we opened the box...
there were no butterflies.

Disneyland with Friends

We met some friends at Disneyland today, Carolyn and her little boy Matthew. We've known each other for years and years and got to know each other better when our oldest kids, both girls, were born. Carolyn also worked at the hospital where I had Rachel, and when she learned of the circumstances of Rachel's delivery - emergency c-section with Rachel being born with a birth defect, she volunteered to come to work the next day and was my personal nurse. Talk about royal treatment.

Our intentions were to get on the newly opened Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage. However, when at 9:10, only an hour after the park opened, and the line was over 3 hours. We skipped it. Rachel kept asking to go on Nemo, and we will again, someday, in a few months or years when this craziness dies down. We did a few things in Disneyland, but truth be told, it was extremely busy and crowded and people everywhere that we went over to California Adventure. We had lunch and the kids enjoyed playing. We spent some time in Bugs Land, where Rachel got to ride a new ride she is now tall enough for...The Tuck and Roll Bumper Cars! She had fun and it's now another ride that our entire family can go on at the same time. We ended our day with the kids playing in the leaky faucet in Bugs Land. It was a hot day and the water was refreshing. Rachel got soaked!

Breakfast with Cathy

For the last 18 months, Rachel has been going to the church nursery, and week after week, the two workers have been the same for the entire time.

Rachel has developed quite a fondness for Cathy. And Cathy refers to Rachel as her "fill" until she has grandkids of her own. LOL. Rachel goes right to Cathy and if she sees her outside of the nursery, she runs and gives her hugs. It has been such a relief having such wonderful women to hand your toddler over to and know that they are loved and cared for. Unfortunate for us, but fortunate for Cathy and her husband, they are moving to Montana this week and beginning a new chapter in their life. As a special goodbye time for Rachel, Cathy had us over for breakfast this morning. It was such a nice time of fellowship.

We're going to miss Cathy. I'm so thankful and grateful that the Lord blessed us with someone as special as Cathy. For a while, I know the question of the morning on Sunday mornings will be "where's my Cathy?".

Finding Nemo Voyage and Disneyland

A trip to the Happiest Place on Earth with Uncle Bart was on the calendar for today. Upon arriving to Disneyland, the girls and I headed over to see if perhaps the new Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage was previewing today, and it was!! We had to stand in line for just over an hour, but the girls did great and both were excited about seeing the new ride and of course finding Nemo.
Hey Look! It's P. Sherman.
Don't believe me?... look at the writing on the back of his mask.The ride was great and Rachel really loved it. We already have plans to meet a friend and her 3 year old little boy for another Nemo adventure on Tuesday. The girls can't wait!

After exiting the Nemo ride, Uncle Bart had arrived and was waiting for us. We did some exploring over at Pirates Lair on Tom Saywer's Island and a few other things and then we headed over to California Adventure where it was a little less crowded. One of the things Rachel absolutely LOVES is the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail. She loves the rope bridge! We exposed Uncle Bart to the Brother Bear show in the littel outdoor amphithere there and Rachel loved it. She ran right up to the bear and hugged him. Other must do rides for Rachel while at California Adventure includes King Trition's Carrousel and visiting Mike and Sully from Monsters, Inc. Two of her favorite rides!On a positive potty training note....towards the end of our day, Rachel was rewarded with a Nemo bucket of popcorn for having stayed dry ALL DAY! Whooo Hooo. Preschool here we come. Rachel fell asleep in her stroller, with her hand in her bucket. Poor girlie was exhausted from all the fun she'd had all day.

Santa Ana Zoo

Rachel was so excited when I told her we were going to the zoo with Gracie this morning. She absolutely loved our trip to the San Diego Zoo last week and loved seeing all the animals, so I knew when Christy called inviting us to go with them to the Santa Ana Zoo that Rachel would love to see more animals.The Santa Ana Zoo is a simple zoo, right in the middle of the city and next to major California freeways. We wondered how the animals dealt with all the noise, but apparently they do just fine. There weren't many animals, but it didn't matter to Rachel, she still enjoyed seeing what animals the zoo did have. The zoo did have an electrical train ride around half of the zoo grounds. Rachel loved that! It was a short visit to the zoo, but a fun outing none the less. We ended our time at the zoo with a trip into the zoo gift shop and look what I came home with....a little monkey.

Washing the Car

Who knew washing Dad's car could be so much fun.

Her Very Own Build-A-Bear

Hannah had a birthday party to attend to this afternoon for a friend at school, where the birthday girl's mom so graciously invited Rachel to participate as well, and boy was she excited!!!

Rachel has a new vanilla teddy bear who she initially named 'Night Night bear', but I think has been renamed 'Tinkerbell' seeing how that's the outfit she picked out for it.

A little worried as to why her bear is so flat, and not stuffed. Getting her bear dressed as Tinkerbell. Rachel was so cute this evening. I found some pajama's of hers to put on the bear and Hannah let her borrow her Moses baby basket. Rachel put the basket right on her bed next to her. When time came for us to go to bed, the baby basket was on the floor and Rachel was hugging her new bear.

Disneyland

As if we haven't walked enough the past two days, we spent the entire day, and evening, at Disneyland. Steven never gets to go to Disneyland on a weekday where it isn't a holiday, so we were hoping he would get to experience some of the weekday slowness, but for some reason, it was busy today. But we had fun nonetheless.

Upon arriving at Disneyland, we went straight to Tom Sawyer's Island, where they recently turned the island into Pirates Lair. We spent over an hour exploring the caves and looking for treasure, we also saw the new show where Captain Jack Sparrow fights another pirate for a treasure map. We were also hoping that despite an official opening date of June 11, that perhaps soft previews were happening with the new Nemo Submarines. While the ride was up and running, the people in line were employess of Disney and ABC getting a preview. So no such luck for us, we'll have to go back on June 11 to experience the ride. Rachel was bummed as Finding Nemo is one of her most favorite movies. Leave it to Rachel to find water to play in. A leaky hose in Toontown.

San Diego

Lately Rachel has been fascinated with animals...dogs, cats, birds. So when Steven decided to take this week off, we thought that a trip to the San Diego Zoo was a perfect thing to do.

We went to the Zoo yesterday. We had a great time and was blessed with beautiful weather. The sun was bright and shinning and it hasn't too hot. Most of the animals were out and about and easily spotted. Because this zoo is so big, there are buses you can hop on and off of at several spots throughout the park. Knowing this ahead of time, I planned to not use the stroller and just take advantage of using the bus. We ended up only taking the guided tour and didn't use the bus the remainder of the day, Rachel walked just about the entire day and did a great job at it. It was so much easier just carrying the backpack and not hassling with the stroller.

This was Rachel's first time to the San Diego Zoo, and she loved seeing all the animals this zoo has to offer. In the middle of the day, Rachel spotted a little girl who had had her face painted to look like a Dalmation puppy face. Rachel wanted a "puppy face". Seeing how the prices are cheaper than what we're used to at Disneyland, we told the girls we'd get their face painted. However, upon discovering that the price to have the entire face painted was $11.95, we went into the nearest souvenior store and were able to get off with purchasing them each a Panda mask. LOL. These are just a few of the many pictures I took on our adventure at the San Diego Zoo. To see more of our pictures, you can see them here.

A trip to San Diego wouldn't be complete without having dinner at our favorite Mexican restaraunt. Over the course of enjoying our dinner, we decided we weren't ready to go home and wanted to explore some more of San Diego. We made our way to the only place we knew we could access the internet, The Apple Store, and got on Orbitz to look for the best hotel deal. Rachel didn't quite understand it when Hannah kept telling her we were going to spend the night. But for someone who was falling asleep at dinner, she found another burst of energy once we got to the hotel room. The girls wanted snacks, and at 10:00pm, a trip was made to the vending machine and both girls came back to the room with chocolate. One of the enjoyments of being on vacation - having candy at 10:00pm. LOL. Rachel eventually fell asleep, clutching onto her bag of M&M's. This morning we got up and took advantage of the free breakfast the hotel had and then we were off. The USS Midway is on display and open for tours, so we planned to head there. However, it didn't open until 10:00am, so we walked Front Street and looked at the Tall Ships on display. The Midway was a fun adventure (althougth not if your prone to claustrophia). Rachel enjoyed all the little areas she could explore, and did well for the four hours it took to explore the aircraft carrier. After the Midway, we headed towards home, with one more destination in mind, The San Diego Wild Animal Park. We barely made it in time before they closed the gates to incoming guests. We had only an hour before we had to be off the grounds, so we went straight for the Safari tour that takes you out onto the animal grounds. This is a new tour, as their old way of touring the grounds got too expensive to repair, etc. This tour takes you in trams out on the animal grounds were you are eye level with the animals, which was awesome!When our tour was over, the Park was officially closed and we needed to make our way out. Rachel was disappointed she wasn't getting to see more animals. Now that we have a membership to both the Animal Park and the Zoo, we'll be back when we can spend more time there.

We had a great two days in San Diego. Rachel really enjoyed all the animals she got to see. And it was fun getting away.

Helping in the Backyard

We've been putting in some long, hardworking hours into our backyard the last week and last few weekends. And Rachel has been there to lend a helping hand where ever she could. She loves being outside. Here, she's doing her part to spread some fill dirt we got. With the warm weather heading our way, it was time to get the sprinklers working, they haven't been hooked up since before our cement work in January. Steven's been working on the sprinklers for a few weekends and some evenings. Once that job was done, there were a lot of holes and uneven places in our yard. So with the help of Steven's Dad (and his truck), we were able to get two truckloads of fill dirt yesterday and filled in all those places. Once all that dirt was in place, this morning we decided to lay sod in a few of the larger places and reseed the smaller spaces. It was A LOT of work! Here are a couple pictures of the progress. The yard is really looking nice.

Sister Sleepover!

Bedtime often finds Rachel not wanting to go to her bed, but to stay with Hannah in her bed once bedtime prayers have been said. But because Hannah has school the next day, Rachel is always sent to her own bed. On occassion we've found her having sneaked back into Hannahs bed.

Because today is Saturday, we let the girls have a sleepover last night. They opted for both sleeping in Hannah's bed rather than making a bed on the floor. When I checked on the girls before we went to bed, and found them sleeping like this... I think there might have been more room on the floor. LOL. Rachel stayed in Hannah's bed until around 3am and then moved her sleepover to our bed. I think Hannah was a little disappointed to wake up this morning and find that Rachel had left their sleepover in the night.

Some Pictures from Our Day

We spent the majority of Mother's Day at Mommy's favorite place, Rachel didn't seem to mind spending the day there as well. We ate dinner in New Orleans Square where a jazz band plays on the patio. Today, The Queen of New Orleans was there to sing along with the band. Towards the end of her performance, she invited all the kids to come up and grab a tamborine. Our little performer didn't waste anytime in running up there and grabbing a tamborine. The kids stood there and danced while The Queen sang, and then they paraded around the patio. Gramie had never seen this side of Rachel and was pretty impressed. At the end of their performance, they got a strand of colorful beads.

Preschool Open House

Tonight was Open House for the Preschool in which Rachel will be going to in the Fall. It's an evening that allows incoming families to come and check the place out, as well as those families already attending to come and see what their children have been up to. We went tonight not only as an incoming family, but also to check out all the fun things McKenzie has been up to as a Pooh Bear.

All day long Rachel kept asking when we were going to school and when she would get to see Haylee and McKenzie. Finally dinner came and went and we were off to preschool. Rachel had sooo much fun. She ran from one thing to the next on the playground, checking in with her cousins every once in a while. Pretty much exploring everything. It was the same once we went inside the classrooms. Exploring everything, trying everything out.

"Come on McKenzie, I'll drive you to school."
Playing with some brissel blocks.
Rachel LOVED the KoolAid playdough. She played with this the most.
Next year, the three little ones will go to preschool together.
There's no doubt in our minds that she'll do just fine. Although Gramma witnessed a situation that might just get us a phone call from the preschool director come the start of school. Rachel walked up to a little girl playing at the basketball hoop, kicked the little girl in the shin, not once, but twice, and then stole the ball from her. We have four months to pray she outgrows her bulliness. LOL.