Postcards from Disney
Caleb and Alex each received post cards from Disneyland. Caleb's was from Mickey, and Alex's was from Goofy. Jonas was *suppose* to get one from Donald, but it must of gotten lost in the mail. He was so busy playing video games the day they arrived, that he didn't even notice. Both cards told the boys they were looking forward to seeing them at Disneyland. It was fun to watch. Both boys, are plenty big enough, to know that they are costumed characters, but their eyes got *so* wide, when they saw who it was from. The magic is still alive.
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Deviled Eggs
My grandma made the world's best deviled eggs. Every dinner she came to, she brought these wonderful creations. They were always served on a fancy glass plate, with slots for each of the eggs. They always had paprika on them. Kevin would pop them in his mouth, and eat them whole, and tell me, this is how civilized humans eat their deviled eggs.
I never got her recipe. I image that most of the goodness was wrapped up in love. I do know she used farm fresh eggs. That's a pretty good reason to get chickens when we move to the farm! I was given one of my grandma's fancy egg plates, but I passed it onto Kevin.
So, I just used the faithful Betty Crocker recipe. We're out of paprika, that's no good. But, Alex was drooling over them, so they must still be acceptable.
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Easter in June
I bought the easter egg dying kit right before Easter, but it just sat on the cabinet. I had a request for deviled eggs, so I thought I would break out the kit. It required a bit more patience than I thought it would, but all in all, good times were had.
Alex hasn't taken off his pin trading lanyard since we got them out yesterday. I wolk up this morning hearing about all of the different trades that happened between the kids in the wee hours of the morning. Here he put on his national parks hat for the full vacation effect. They sure enjoy collecting. Badges from the National Parks, pins from Disneyland.
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Pins are ready
We got out our lanyards from our Walt Disney World trip, got out our pins, that we previously sorted for this trip in February, and put them on our lanyards. This year I bought some locking pin backs. Last time we lost a couple pins, this should stop that problem. It brought back fond memories of our pin trading times, made us all anxious to get going on our trip.
We've been watching Disney movies on pretty much a nightly basis. Movies that the rides and shows are based on. I think we have three waiting for us tonight.
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New Road
Our house, is on a road, with a tight corner, that goes around our house. People fly around this corner. We really have very little traffic in front of our house, but the traffic we do have, is either very cautious slow drivers, or crazy flying around the corner people. Therefore, my poor deprived boys are not allowed to ride their bikes in the road in front of our house.
To the west of us, they are building a subdivision. This started over a year ago. It's been just a road for a very long time. A nice road, perhaps the nicest road in town, since no one uses it. So, today, I asked the city clerk (who happens to live just a few houses away from us), if that road was public or private, the bottom line.. can the boys ride their bikes there. Absolutely! She agreed, about the crazy drivers, and agreed, it was a wonderful, safe place for the boys to ride.
So, I mowed a path from our back yard to the road. (Sticks caused that area to be ignored up until now.) Gave a quick tutorial about crossing the road in THAT spot. (It is very close to that corner.) Use your ears, not just your eyes to look both ways. And they're off.
They learned quite quickly, that it is much more fun to go down the hill than up the hill. I told them, that hill will get easier, with practice. But, for now, that annoying subdivision has become quite fun for the boys.
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For Rent: One cup holder
*"Will you scratch my back" His favorite taco sauce packet. He can't get enough back scratching.
Jonas got a new booster seat today, because his old one was covered in glass, from the hail storm. His new seat has two cup holders. He was always the envy of the backseat, because he had one cup holder in his old seat. He's decided he's going to use one cup holder, and rent the other one out. Ten cents a day. Both of the older kids are thinking about it.
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fewer video games
Anyone that's talked to the boys within the past few years, knows they live and breathe video games. Well, as summer hit, they seem to be glued to them. We have a decent system in our house. Each kid gets 8 coupons Monday morning, that are good for 30 minutes of video games. It works great. But, then we got into the habit of earning "free" video games. For example, with the ice storm, picking up sticks is an easy way to get video games. Going out and picking all of the yellow dandelions, so they don't turn into puffballs, is another favorite. Cleaning is my personal favorite. Clean a room, get video games. But, it was getting out of control.
I think the kids were being less well behaved. They were tending to get upset easier, tending to throw fits more often, and bickering with each other. I blame video games. So, we revamped the system.
I couldn't give up that wonderful cleaning crew. So, now there is a list of chores for each kid. These are called "binder chores". (They are in a binder.. hence the name.) IF they have their binder chores done by 9am, they get to participate in the daily, one time only free game time from 9 to 9:30. This free time is non transferable. From then on, there will be NO MORE FREE TIME. They must use coupons.
Jonas is already out of coupons. It's only Wednesday. Yesterday, he had the saddest look on his face, and told me he was bored. There is NOTHING to do.
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More vacation preparation!
Some may think I go overboard. I think I've barely skimmed the surface!
Ok.. up first. My binder. Everything we need for vacation. Itinerary, hotel addresses, phone number, maps, information about the areas we're visiting, ect, ect. It's full.
Second. Luggage tags. Custom for this trip, of course.
Next are the shirts. Three per kid. Except Jonas found a Cars shirt on clearance when we were buying the blank shirts, that LIGHTS UP! I can't beat that. Here are the shirts.
For Caleb:
For Alex:
For Jonas:
I was going to make Sea World shirts too.. and shirts for the character meals we're having. But, I have to draw the line somewhere.
Caleb yawning.. thinking perhaps this is a boring post.
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Yummy yummy grub
We did some more vacation preparation today. Today we made trail mix. Jared read last year, that when you go hiking in the parks, that you're suppose to eat trail mix. I never saw anyone else with trail mix, but we're prepared. This is our second year, making trail mix.
It's an event. Each kid takes turns adding whatever ingredients they desire, stir, and name it. This years batch's names had some pokemon theme to ithem. We do take Jared into consideration, and did make a batch called "Vegan delight". They continue, until all of the ingredients are out. Friends came over, which halted the process, but we have a lot of trail mix made.
Tomorrow, I will start working on their custom shirts.
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Good bye, beloved car!
The car is off to car retirement. We told Caleb that other cars will get to use pieces of this car, so it will be like sharing our memories with a lot of other cars. Poor kid was so attached to that car. I think part of his sadness came from the fact that he got to hang out with his grandparents alone, and we're a lot more boring than they are. So, it is "fun times" withdraw, combined with the car leaving. I saved him a hubcap.
That was our transportation for our vacation. We're still working out the kinks in that problem.
We'll be taking our laptop on vacation, since Jared has classes that don't like "vacation" as an excuse to miss. This means I can post photos every night! However, to ere on the side of safety, they will be available for family and friends to view only, on flickr. (Can't let the *crazies* know when we're gone.) This means, if you want to see photos, of the trip, while it's happening, you need a flickr account. Email me your user name, and I'll add you to my list. Hopefully I'll see my parents before we leave, so I can help them out with this process.
When we get back, I'll make all of the photos public again. And write about it.
I did just learn that the Indiana Jones ride will be down for refurbishments. This just happened within the last 24 hours or so, but it will be down while we're there. That's a bummer. We've been watching the movies and everything! I didn't drag the family to the Indy stunt show at Walt Disney World, because I was the only one that had seen the movies. But, I was ready to go on the ride! Oh well, another reason why this shouldn't be our only trip to Disneyland in our lifetime.
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