Newport Marina and Knott’s Berry Farm

December 28, 2017 by

While we were in San Francisco, Grammy and Grandpa kept the girls busy at the zoo, We Play Loud and at all the parks around town. When we returned, Jake took a few extra days off work to work on putting in the new floors upstairs, so we took the kids on a few long excursions to get them out of the house.

Not missing Mommy and Daddy at all…

Our favorite beach park: Marina Park in Newport Beach.

Cheese! Grandpa remarked that the fact that the girls love eating seaweed so much goes again the natural rules of kid food!

Stylish beach baby.

Concentration.

The girls had never been to Knott’s Berry Farm, so to give Jake another full day to work on the floor, we took off on our adventure for the day. We mostly stayed in the Snoopy/Peanuts characters area, which was perfect for small kids, and ventured off to some of the bigger rides later in the day. It definitely was not Disneyland, but the girls had fun, especially mining for gold in the old western town and scarfing down the famous Knott’s chicken and boysenberry pie at the end of our long day.

Being pregnant, I couldn’t go on most of the rides, which was very convenient! Grammy and Grandpa win “Best Grandparents Award” for accompanying the girls on all the rides!

Grammy is a trooper!

Poor Grandpa!

Just watching the spinning Mexican Hat Dance ride made me nauseous!

Jake completed a good amount of flooring during our all-day excursion, and now that we’ve experience Knott’s, we don’t have to go back! Mission accomplished.

Lots of love,

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American Cutie Pies 2017

July 31, 2017 by

4th of July 2013:

2014: Sorry, Meredith. With you being the third child, we no longer have the time/energy to spend an entire evening decorating a festive wagon for you.

2015:

2016 in Utah:

2017: Note the lack of coordinated outfits/done hair compared to past years (everyone wore dresses they already had that just happened to be blue or red). Yeah, we’re tired. Special holiday outfits and holiday photo shoots are a thing of the distant past at this point. But it might be better this way!

We crashed our our friend, Sheela’s, block party the day before the 4th and the twins must have gone up and down that waterslide a hundred times.

Getting soaked with a game of water balloon hot potato.

Grammy and Grandpa drove from Utah to see our new house for the first time and spend the week of the 4th with us.

The girls loved showing Grammy and Grandpa their favorite neighborhood attractions.

Picnic time while Jake and I were getting some house projects done.

Pass the La Croix, please.

The twins have been obsessed with climbing trees lately.

The girls were excited to swim at Grace’s pool and try out her water slide, although Meredith was such a pain that afternoon and did NOT want to be in the water with us.

Special delivery!

Bandit shows off his swimming skills.

BBQ time.

Mmmm…chicken…

The morning of the 4th, I stayed home and unpacked more boxes while everyone went to the local pancake breakfast and waited for our tiny, but cute, local parade.

Meredith looked liked she grew into a two-year-old overnight! She’s so much bigger at 17 months that the twins were at the same age:

Amelia leads everyone in a rendition of a song they made up in honor of the 4th: “Three cheers for the red, white and blue!” (sung over and over again ad nauseam).

Daddy’s girls.

When will this dumb parade start?

 

Waiting for the parade in 2014 and 2015:

Please throw candy!

The highlight of the parade:

The twins concluded that, once again, the parade was worth it due to all the candy being thrown to them.

Amelia shows off her spoils in the parade a few years ago:

After the parade, everyone headed back  for our own neighborhood block party. We will always cherish the awesome block parties hosted by the Hossfelds in our old neighborhood, but we were also ready to make new 4th of July memories in our new one. Even though we had already met some of the neighbors, this was our first official meet and greet with everyone, and I didn’t see the twins for about three hours, thanks to the waterslide!

Amelia at one of our old neighborhood 4th of July parties:

We’ve finally found the key to being able to hold adult conversations more than five minutes while the kids are completely occupied:


Meredith on the 4th last year:

Juicy watermelon!

Nap time, anyone?

   

In the evening, we walked down to the carnival, where the twins were in carnival game heaven, and Jake

   

   

I promptly took advantage of Meredith being occupied with the shaved ice to walk her home and we were both fast asleep by 8 p.m.! Meanwhile, Jake, Grandpa and the twins hiked up the hill behind our house and stayed up to watch our local fireworks, as well as those from the beach and surrounding cities. I was happy to offload the firework responsibility to someone else and the girls were excited to finally be able to stay up late enough to see them (barely… the following day was rough).

Lots of love,

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Beaching and Jeeping

March 30, 2017 by

While Grammy and Grandpa were in town for the twins’ birthdays and Disneyland, we had two Open Houses at our house and needed to be out for several hours. It was so much easier cleaning and getting everyone out with the extra help, especially after being used to doing it all myself whenever we had showings during the week. Sometimes, I’ve had to have the place passably clean and the kids out with only an hour’s notice, and have been so stressed out!

One weekend during our Open House, we spent the afternoon at Dana Point and the Ocean Institute, where the girls touched starfish and other sea creatures, toured a pirate ship and learned all about whales, while Meredith ran around the park and ate. And ate. And ate.

On her third course for lunch.

Ready to start paddleboarding.

The weekend after Disneyland during another Open House, we had a picnic and beach afternoon at Marina Park in Newport Beach. I’ve been wanting to check out this park/beach for a while now, but Newport is about 30 minutes away for us, as opposed to Dana Point, Laguna and some of the other beaches that are much closer for us. It was definitely worth the extra drive, with a wide, spacious green space, awesome nautical themed playground, and a beach right on the playground that was so perfect for little kids. The beach had no waves and calm water, just like Baby Beach in Dana Point, only this one was much cleaner! We will be back!

Meredith’s first time walking into the ocean herself!

She immediately plopped down and got soaked. I could barely stand getting my feet wet– so cold!

Like a moth to the flame, Meredith was drawn to a bouncy house someone had set up.

Coppertone baby beach bum!

The twins are playground connoisseurs and gave this one two big thumbs up.

Before Grammy and Grandpa left back to Utah, the twins spent the morning racing cars on the amazing Magic Trax race car set from Grammy and Grandpa and showing off their driving skills.

Safari with Meredith.

Waving to her adoring public.

It was a rough week adjusting back to our routine after a week and a half of non-stop birthday celebrations, beach adventures, Disneyland and having Grammy and Grandpa around to help out and join in the fun. The week after, everyone was sick, cranky, sleep-deprived, off-schedule, and complaining about preschool being “boring.” With all the excitement, I fear we’ve created thrill junkies and are going to have to get them used to normal life again!

Lots of love,

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“Happiest” Place on Earth Day 2: California Adventure

March 26, 2017 by

After an exhausting day at Disneyland the day before, we had a tough time rousing the kids on Day 2 for California Adventure. Our Dland Hotel extra magic hour for CA Adventure was an hour later than for Disneyland, and we didn’t need to be at the gate until 7:30, but even then, all the kids were still zonked at 7:25. We plopped three half-asleep girls in their strollers and zoomed over to the park, where we dashed over to the popular Radiator Springs Racers in Cars Land. The wait later in the day was over two hours. Who would wait in line that long for ANY ride is beyond me, but apparently there are plenty of willing people out there. Again, we were grateful for the extra magic hour and took full advantage of the low wait times before the park opened and the crowds invaded.

Everyone’s favorite ride! 

Meredith waited with me while everyone was on the ride– maybe next time you’ll be tall enough!

Meredith was sleeping in her stroller for our family pic.

Love Sammy’s belly poking out!

 

 

There were so many rides, playgrounds, and shows at CA Adventure that we didn’t even make it to half of what we had planned on in our original itinerary. We definitely wished we had another day there.

The rides in A Bug’s Land were adorable! The girls especially loved the bumper cars, Flik’s Flyers, and Heimlich’s Chew Chew Train.

Poor Meredith missed most of the morning action while she napped.

Daddy and Amelia.

Daddy and Samantha.

Everyone was hungry and overtired (a common refrain this trip) by the time we made it to our reservation at Ariel’s Grotto for our princess lunch.

C’mon Amelia, Ariel is your favorite princess of all time! I guess she was star struck.

Ariel’s Grotto was supposed to be another fun treat for the girls’ birthday, since they are obsessed with princesses at home, but when face-to-face in the flesh, they clammed up!

Meredith, on the other hand, was not shy about meeting her favorite princesses and I had to keep her messy little fingers away from their dresses and hair because she was continually trying to reach out to them.

We bribed the girls with dessert just so they’d stand near the princesses for pictures. At least Meredith and I had fun meeting them!

The twins eventually agreed to go up to the princesses, as long as they went together. Samantha would say, “C’mon Amelia, be brave with me!”

Would you like a snap pea, Belle?

Meredith enjoyed making a spaghetti masterpiece on the floor while watching the princesses.

Pigging out on the cute sea-themed desserts.

This is the KIDS’ dessert plate? Sugar overload! 

No complaints from Sammy on the jello.

Meredith grabbed a handful of frosting when no one was looking.

While everyone was on the Soarin’ Over the World ride, Meredith found her new love– the splash pad! She was hilarious, chasing the water fountains and shrieking in delight when the water hit her face. We are going to have a blast at the splash pad this summer.

No swim suit on, but don’t care! I love it!

While heading back to the hotel for naps, Meredith spotted Mickey and begged to honk his nose to see how it felt compared to Minnie’s.

After naps, we saw Frozen, Live and thanks again to playing Grammy’s wheelchair access card, we had good seats without waiting in line for hours. Meredith lasted about halfway through, and Amelia was hiding in her seat through the first half hour, but we eventually coaxed her into watching. We couldn’t figure out if the live versions of her favorite characters in such close proximity, plus the noise, scared her or if she was being star struck and shy! Their favorite part was the fake snow falling down on us during the show! It was fun to see a stage adaptation of Frozen condensed into an hour with all of the great music and dancing, live. All of the adults loved it, at least and it was worth the wait.

Let it go!

The Redwood Creek Trail playground was the girls’ favorite out of all of CA Adventure and we wished we had more time there before the sun went down.

Ariel’s carousel.

The silly symphony swings!

The consensus was that we definitely needed to come back to explore more of CA Adventure! Meredith fell asleep in her stroller at bedtime again, and we all headed back to the hotel to conk out. We helped pack up Meredith’s stuff while the girls got ready for bed since she was going back to our house with Grammy and Grandpa for the night and next day so that we’d have one full day with just us and the twins at Disneyland. I’m sure Meredith woke up at home the next morning and was wondering if all the princesses, swirling rides and dancing animals had all been a dream!

Lots of love,

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