On Our Way to Disneyland

One of the best parts of anything exciting that happens is the anticipation. Nathan agrees with me. He loves to talk about "anticipation". Anticipation for Christmas, for a Birthday (for which we wait all year), Disneyland...

So here are our "Anticipation" pictures.

I love these pictures. The girls are just so excited. And they even loved the bus that took them to Disneyland the two days we were there.

Here's Rebecca and myself on the bus to Disneyland.

It was a short ride to Disneyland on our bus, and yet here is Rebecca with 3 pictures and each one on a different lap. Can you tell what game Rebecca played while we were waiting in lines at Disneyland? Yip, Musical arms.

Waiting in line at Disneyland. Like I said, I love all of the excited faces.

Emily, getting her first glimpse of Cinderella's Castle. We had been looking at Disneyland pictures online, so she had at least a few things in her mind that she knew she would see. Cinderella's Castle and "Finding Nemo"!

The Picnic

I feel incredibly blessed right now to live near my sister. So near, in fact, that we are in the same ward. It's fun. We went into the mountains, the day after our zoo trip with my sister and her husband.

It was a momentous occasion where Rebecca tried her first cheeto (spelling this escapes me. I ask google and all it can tell me is how to spell "cheetah". Well, duh! but what about cheeto?)

Cute face. She loved it! I'm sure she's wondering why it took us so long to give her one of those.

And here is the last picture we took while we were out there. (Note to self - PLEASE take more pictures next time!)

Rebecca's First Trip to the Zoo

We love the zoo. You know that by now. So, here's a few pics from Rebecca's first trip to the zoo.

It's blurry, but I love Emily's smile.

Me, with the precious baby with all that HAIR! And I hope she keeps it, but I don't want to hold my breath.

This picture of the two older girls is just SO adorable.

It was a little bright for Rebecca.

All 3 girls together. That was the best we were going to get w/o waking the baby.

Grandma Twyman and Meredith looking at the Polar Bear.

Safford Trip cont.

*Post with lots of pictures. I'm too tired right now to think about how to rotate pics, so just tilt your head, ok? :)

We went to Burger King where I snagged a couple of crowns. Here's Nathan trying out Meredith's crown. It worked out perfectly because he wouldn't have really taken a picture like this. I just lucked out with a nice smile and everything as he glanced up and saw that I'd been pointing a camera at him that whole time. I love this man.

Our sweet, little Emily.

Not being particularly cooperative, of course. So wiggly.

Some more of that great 2-year-old cheese.

Smiling at Daddy.

Such a ham.

One person in a group picture is bound to not really cooperate. :)

I think the 2-year-old was getting burnt on the whole picture taking thing. I had no idea that was possible with her.

We visited some cemeteries with some of Nathan's ancestors. Here he is by the headstone of Mosiah Hancock. Anyhow, basically a family line with some church history significance.

Gila Valley Temple Trip

The Gila Valley Temple - not the best pic, I know, but why take a really nice picture when you can just go onto lds.org and get a fabulous picture of it.

I took this picture of the girls before we got out of the car to go to the temple. There were no cameras allowed on the tour. Interestingly, I did see one or two. And of course we could have, and should have, stopped to take a family picture in front of the temple after the tour, but we didn't. Here's the one fairly cooperative picture the girls took.

One pretty smile out of Meredith. Emily was not interested in photo taking.

The wonderful 2-year-old cheese.

This picture was while we were at the motel. Grandma gave the girls a new little quiet book and Meredith quickly claimed it.

Motel w/ Kids = No SLEEP

Friday and Saturday we spent some time with some of Nathan's family in Safford/Thatcher. His grandma is from there and was excited about the new temple built and she went around looking at different places that held childhood memories for her. We loved going through the temple. The girls loved the adventure of being at a motel.

(No, I did not dress the child, but I did insist that she change before she saw her grandparents.)

(See Nathan attempting to work in the corner. Ya, that didn't go so well.)

So, after we had dinner on Friday we went to bed around 8. Me included in the number because I was SICK and felt horrible. So, Nathan put everyone to bed and fought with the 2-year-old to stay asleep. Maybe it was a mistake to let her take a nice long nap up to Safford? Remind me of that next time please. It was a very bad night for everyone. Nathan was in one bed with Meredith and I was in the other bed with Emily. Each time one of them would start to we would soothe them back to sleep. Nathan was up with them a lot, and I had a hard time sleeping. I was sick, and while I don't have morning sickness, I still have a hard time with smells, yucky things, and apparently, the wonderful gunk in my stomach. So, after visiting the bathroom I went to go find Nathan and he'd moved the girls to the same bed so he could be with me. After, oh maybe 5 minutes, Meredith starts sniffing up a storm. Finally, after Nathan figured she was going back to sleep he took her to the bathroom to blow her knows and found that she had a bloody nose. So, it was an adventurous night.

The girls blessed me last night (I'm sure they realized it was Mother's Day. :) with one full night of sleep. Now, if I can have a few more of those maybe I can get over this cold.

Easter Egg Coloring

So, I told Nathan that I really didn't want to color Easter Eggs because nobody eats the eggs after we're done. So, while I was taking my Sunday Afternoon nap (the only nap this pregnant woman gets all week) he made sugar cookies for the girls and I happened to have bought an egg shaped cookie cutter for Easter last year. We didn't use it last year, but we won't go there. Then we had 4 seperate bowls of different colored frosting. The girls loved it!

Then, we were able to immediately enjoy our efforts.

The 2yo really just wanted to eat the frosting.

This picture is from later in the week. Meredith has been actually needing a nap lately. Completely surprises me because at one point she dropped her nap and I let her because she stayed happy throughout the day and it was nice to have her go to sleep immediately instead of wandering. She even fell asleep with her favorite thing we got the girls for Easter.

*I just love pictures of my beautiful, sleeping girls. They just look so peaceful and beautiful.