My favorite National Parks

Death Valley has to be my all time favorite...not!!!! My favorite is Yellowstone. We always have good luck there and see a lot of animals. One time when we went we went down a back rode and watched two bear cubs (maybe 2 years old) play for a long time. We were the only ones there. We kept looking around for momma bear to attack us. That was our best animal adventure.
We have spent many great weekends in Dinosaurland. Once when the kids were really little Julie and I took the kids for part of her homeschooling. I took Nichelle and Shaylin to the Evergaldes where they got to put a baby alligator on their head. Gettysburg was fun to drive around. We bought the tape to listen to as you drive around. It was nice to hear about all of the battles. eddie and I rode bikes across the Golden Gate Bridge. Next summer we are going through Mammoth caves. I remember going there as a little kid. I even remember my souvenir it was a wooden box with a diary in it and a key. Niagra falls is beautiful. Our favorite restuarant is on the Canadian side overlooking the horseshoe falls. It is all glass and has a great view. You really need to look for it though because it is upstairs and not well advertised. Olympic Park was cool because it had the mountains, the beach and the rainforest. Some day I will have to go back to Petrified Forest. I remember driving through it and thinking it was cool but I really do not remember why so I'll have to go back and rediscover it. Sleeping Bear sand dunes is awsome. If you camp there bring a tent and do the walk in sites. They are pretty isolated and only a short walk to your car and bathrooms. You can then take the trail from there that leads to Lake Michigan and have your own private beach. My kids will never forget the Star Spangled Banner Museum. They got to change the flag there thanks to Jim. They change it every hour and you can ask to take part in the ceremony. Timponogas Cave is a hike. I remember going up it as a kid when one of the little kids had on non walking type sandles. Ouch!!! Of course all the southern Utah parks are great too. I guess I also need to count almost the whole city of DC since all the monuments are National Parks. So many to see and such little time!!!!

So far behind

Ok so I am using the same excuse I always use...there is no excuse I am just lazy and behind in my blog. I still need to finish up Disney but I will do that later. This week I painted my bathroom. It looks much better, however, the pink toilet still has to go. I do not know what the people were thinking of when they did the guest bathroom all in pink.
I cut the grass yesterday. It was a beautiful day!!! Perfect fall weather. Fall is my favorite season.
My parents closed on their condo in Daybreak, so they will be moving in soon. I am excited for them to be in a place where they can help serve in the ward.
I am still trying to train my little Wrigley. I guess that is the loony part of my life right now. Cleaning up dog messes. He is a cutie though!!!
So basically my life has been pretty boring.
My friend is starting a FAS group in her community in Mi. I admire her she is doing a great thing. I wish I had enough energy at the end of the day to do something like that. But most of my days seem to be spent in trying to make 11 and 12 year old acting like 11 and 12 year olds and not 1 and 2 year olds. Whenever I have some spare time it is spent in watching eyes role because I have to be the dumbest, meanest parent in the world.
The rest of my time is spent praying for the family and hoping they find as much happiness in life as I have. I have the most wonderful husband!! If everyone could find someone like him my life would be fulfilled!!!

Day 3 Disney World Hollywood Studios

The day started with Mike and Nichelle racing across the park to get fast passes for Toy Story.  (Well, actually Nichelle was running because she needed to go to the bathroom….as seen in my previous blogs she did not yet know she was pregnant but boy the bathroom sure was our first clue!)  We waited in line to ride Toy Story. It is a 3D ride that you play arcade games in.  It was a lot of fun.  Of course I always had the lowest point score.  The line was just as neat as the ride. It was all decorated with life size childhood games.

Grandpa Roy meet us for a day at the park at this point.  It worked out perfect because Eddie went to the front to get Roy and we waited while Amanda got to watch the High School Musical 3 pep rally.

 

I then spent the rest of the day walking everyone to death.  Somehow our day ended up going from one end of the park to the other end and back again.  Roy started to joke about how many times we had passed “the hat” every time we passed them he would joke that at least he knew where we were now.

  The lines again were in our favor.  We rode Toy story a couple of times, the Rockin Roller Coaster, the Stunt Show, the Tower of Terror…now that was our favorite.  It really scared Josh and Amanda.  We had fun torturing them about it.  We had a great day!  We called it an early night and went back to our room to play killer bunnies.  We were all after Mike and managed to keep his bunnies dead the whole night.

Disney Day 2 Epcot

Day two of unbelievable heat….destination Epcot.  This is the day when we REALLY felt the heat.  The day started out perfect we went on Soarin” two times at the start of the day.   Once again the lines were all pretty short.  That is until we got to the Mars ride.  We knew it was one of the longer lines that we would have to stand in but  decided to do it anyway.  Well about half way through the line the ride broke  down.  This is not fun on a ride with fast passes.  That means when they do get it working after 45 minutes you than have to wait for all of the fast pass people to go on the ride.  It was a VERY long wait.  The ride made Mike feel sick.  So of course this was a perfect time to really rub the curse into Josh.  Later that day we visited the countries and it was HOT!!!  We all got a little cranky because we were so hot it was making us feel sick.  Not the most enjoyable day of the trip.  But more chances to rub in that curse. The rest of the day went smoothly.  We even took some time out for an ice cream break.  That was a highlight!!!  At night we watched the fireworks.  It had been a long hot day and we were all tired so we finally just stopped at a place to watch.  Nichelle had done a great job before we left of compiling tips for all of the parks.  Well, we forgot about a very important tip until half way through the fireworks…Do not stand where the wind is blowing.  It actually wasn’t the smoke that was so bad.  It was the pieces of ash we were getting hit with.  About half way through something hit my stomach.  I said “ouch!”  I looked down and this is what I saw.

I’d call this a very big ash!!!!  We had a great time building our own pretend worlds, talking to turtles, and walking, walking, walking.  Needless to say we were all very happy to go back to the hotel to shower and go to sleep.  But oh no that curse was still with us.  We lost our electricity.  No cooling showers for us!!!!  Oh well, another opportunity to rub that curse in some more.  By this point the curse was starting to make Josh very  nervous!!!

Disney World Day 1 Magic Kingdom

We decided that we would not feel like we were at Disney unless we went to the Magic Kingdom.  So that is where we started.  We arrived a half hour early to see the official opening.  The kids were all really excited!!

Nichelle and Mike brought the kids real cool Disney glasses to where.  We watched the opening as the characters arrived on the Disney train.  Then it was off. We raced first to Buzz Light Year.  We went on it a couple of times in the first 10 minutes of our visit.  We knew this was going to be a great day!! We even saw Buzz Light Year.  Mike gave him rabbit ears because he said, “How often do you get to give Buzz rabbit ears?”

We continued to fly through lines.  By noon we had been on everything we wanted to be on during the whole day.  Recessions are nice for Disney lines.  It was also VERY hot and humid!!!!  I mean VERY!!!  We only waited 5 minutes to ride the cars.  This is where Mike found our first hidden Mickey on the gas pedal.

 

We had a day full of short lines!! We went on the Jungle Cruise and Josh got to drive the boat through the tunnel.  We were all in hysterics because he really thought he was driving it.  He kept getting mad that we were distracting him.  At on point we yelled at him to watch out for the wall and you should have seen him jump and start cranking that wheel.

We even had time for both parades.  Josh had a stare down with the wicked witch in Snow White.  She put an evil curse on him.  We told him thanks a lot because now we would have bad luck for 2 days.  (we actually had him believing it by the end…we found every little thing that went wrong the next 2 days and blamed it on the curse)

At the end of the night we watched the fireworks from Fantasyland.  They were amazing because they were going on all around us, even right on top of our heads.  It was hard to figure out where to watch in the sky there were so many.

Well our first day was a HUGE success!!!! We managed to ride a lot of the rides two or three times, we got to sweat a lot and we had a lot of chances to scare the kids.  Josh and Amanda hated the Haunted Mansion. We were really ready to hit the hay!!!

First Picture

Well here it is hot off the press...the first picture of my Grandbaby (or Grand Lima Bean) I think I will use that for a nick name. This picture was taken on 9-9-09 at 9 AM. Pretty cool huh???

So far behind

Ok, so I am soooo far behind in writing in this loony blog. I still have to blog about our trip to Disney World so stay tuned it is still coming...but for now I will just report all of the latest. I am sitting in a hotel in Rexburg, Id, right now. Tomorrow I go help Shaylin get checked into her dorm and get set up for school. I am really excited for her because I know she is going to have a blast!! It will be sad at home and I will really miss her but am excited to her about all of her daily activities!!! We stopped over in Utah on the way her and had some great visits in the short amount of time we were able to spend there. The biggest news of the trip was that Nichelle announced to the whole family that she is pregnant. Of course Eddie and I have known for a few weeks. We are really excited but I do not think reality has set in..I'm not ready to admit I am a Grandma but I can not wait to spoil, spoil, spoil!!! We got to visit with Grandma Stringham. She had a good weekend so we were able to have some nice conversations and just spend time sitting by each other enjoying. I also got to visit with Ester. While we were there we watched the BYU Oklahoma football game. BYU won. It was a big upset and fun to watch. Ester just couldn't believe that people would want to play a game were they are just knocking each other over and hurting one another. We also got to attend McKayla's baptism. It was fun to be a part of. That is one thing we miss living far from family. Well, that catches us up a little. More to come....