May Update

So I mentioned our morning routine was changing drastically since I got a new job in March. I’ve been working in Miami, AZ as a contract administrator for Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold. Since it’s a 1.5-hour commute one way, I have to leave by 5:00 every morning. It took a little getting used to, but it’s not so bad. Miami is my hometown, so it’s kind of fun to go back there every day. Plus they have the best Mexican food in the world!

Because my work day ends earlier, I actually get home earlier in the evening than I did when I was working in Mesa. Weeknights have always been hectic, so that’s been helpful.

Rob is now getting the kids up and ready and driving the carpool every morning. Their routine is pretty much the same as when I was doing it, except Erin does her own hair now and she also makes their lunches in the morning.

Erin did well at her piano recital. She played a duet of “Beauty and the Beast” with her friend Lily.

This was the first year both kids were eligible for Honors Night at school (it’s only for grades 1-8, so Robbie was too young last year). They both got trophies for Principal’s Honor Roll!

What We Do - Mornings

I wanted to do a post about a typical day, so I took some pictures of the kids a couple of times during out morning routine a while ago.  I was glad I did, because our morning routine changed quite a bit shortly afterwward.

Rob was working four 10's, so he would go in early and get off early, and he had Fridays off.  I worked from 9 - 5:30, so the kids and I had a couple of hours together every morning and I would drive the carpool to school.

Erin would get up and would be dressed and making her bed right as I was finishing getting ready for  the day, so I would help her with her hair.  Then she'd start practicing piano while I got Robbie up.  He would be ready when Erin finished piano, and we'd sit down to read scriptures together.

After that, it was time for breakfast, usually cold cereal.  But sometimes we'd have cinnamon toast, and sometimes I'd make eggs.  Their favorite was mornings when I needed to run to the store for something.  They loved this because it meant they could get donuts for breakfast! Yay for an unorganized mom!

After breakfast & brushing teeth, they would "do their writing".  We have them write their spelling lists every morning - it's good practice for spelling and it helps their handwriting!  Robbie also works on his Rocket Math, and if they have to work on memorizing any poems, they practice those, too.

 

 
If they got their boring stuff done quickly, they had time to play before we had to leave for school.  For Erin, this was mostly messing with the cat, checking her e-mail, drawing, or listening to music.

 

 
Robbie dawdled a little more, so he didn't always have much time for playing.  But he usually played with Legos.  Erin's best friend and her twin brother would get dropped off at our house shortly before we had to leave, so the girls would do girl stuff together and the boys would try to annoy the girls.

Then we'd pick up two more kids and drive to school.  I'd wait for the crossing guard to get them, and then head to Mesa for work.  This picture is from last year, but this is all our little carpool buddies crossing the street wtih Mr. Glen.  They're all good kids.

Now I have a new job, and I have to leave much earlier in the morning, so Rob changed his schedule around and it's his turn to have mornings with the kids.  I miss it, but it's a good job, and I get home a little earlier in the evening now.  I'm glad Rob gets a turn to have mornings with the kids - it's a good way to start the day.

Disneyland

A few weeks ago, Rob's parents invited us to go to Disneyland with them.  Erin had only been once, when she was 3, and Robbie had never been.  We decided to surprise the kids, so we got them out of school at lunch time one Friday and off we went!

We learned that if you register as a first-timer, you get to ride in the front car of the Monorail.

I can do all kinds of crazy, scary rides, but I can't do spinning anymore.  Rob took the kids on the Teacup ride and whirled them all around.

Erin has been over princesses for several years (yay!) and Robbie is indifferent toward characters, so we didn't have to spend much time looking for any.  But they both liked the Star Wars villains!  They were pretty cool.  Here they are with Darth Maul:

 

Erin chatting up Vader:

 

We rode the rockets in Tomorrowland.  I like this picture, because Rob is in the rocket in front of Robbie, and you can see Sandy and Dan leaning on the railing below us.



 

 

Erin was behind me.

 

 

In California Advendure, we got to go to Radiator Springs and meet Lightning McQueen

And eat a turkey leg.

The highlight for Robbie was Jedi training.  He was SO happy they picked him to participate!  Here he is getting his robe.

 

I love this picture - pure joy for a 6-year-old boy getting ready to become a Jedi!  He was pretty sure his "first-timer" pin is why they chose him.  The training was really cute, and he got to fight Darth Maul with a lightsaber.

 

I was really happy that everyone was tall enough for all the rides and nobody was scared of anything!  We rode Space Mountain first, and everything was fair game after that.  We loved Tower of Terror, and I think the whole family's favorite was California Screamin'.  The line was short for that one on our last day, so we did it several times in a row.

 

Who knows when we'll go back, but it was a lot of fun!

Christmas 2012

On Christmas Eve, we had dinner at Macayo's and then went out to look at Christmas lights. I thought we had some cinnamon rolls on hand for Santa, but we didn't! Poor Santa had to settle for cookies. But Erin left a note and a nice drawing for him.

We "over-saved" (is that possible?) for our cruise, so we were able to buy a few extra things this year.  We had a pretty good spread on Christmas morning.



 

My parents and my sister came over on Christmas morning and the festivities began! 

After all the presents, we made breakfast and cleaned up the aftermath. We talked to Bob, Sandy, and Annalice in Illinois, and then we went to Rob's parents' house. Both his sisters and their families were there, so we got to spend a lot of time visiting and opening more presents. And there was a nice spread of appetizers & munchies for everyone to graze on.

Since the kids were in school clear up to the 21st, they had two solid weeks to play with all their stuff before going back to school.  Score!

Christmas Concerts

After a couple of weeks of Blogger not allowing me up upload photos, and then having trouble with the format of the videos I want to post, I'm just going to post what I'm able to so I can move on to 2013!

Erin had a piano recital a couple of weeks before Christmas.  She played “Frosty the Snowman”, and she did a great job!

The Friday before Christmas was the kids’ last day of school, and they both had their Christmas concerts that morning.  They were very cute!  They do the concerts by grade, so we got to see 90 first graders and I think about 60 fifth graders.  That's entertainment!

Robbie is on the left in the white shirt in this photo.  The little girl in green in the front row is one of our friends, and she and her brother ride to school with us every morning.  Their mom drives Robbie home in the afternoon.  The little girl in the 2^nd row from the top in the light blue shirt was in the Seussical play with us.

As I was going through my photos, it struck me that this is what a group of about 20 first-graders looks like.  It's unfathomable, what the families at Sandy Hook Elementary have been through.  What sweet little kids!

Erin is in the row 2^nd from the top in this picture.  The girl behind her with the white headband and the boy to Erin’s left in the Santa hat are twins that we've carpooled with since kindergarten!  They're some of Erin's best friends, and she's happy they're all in the same class this year.

 

Erin was also in elementary choir, so we saw that performance as well.  The elementary choir is extracurricular, so they had practices every Monday before school.  Erin had some interest in trying out for one of the duets, but ultimately decided not to.  She thinks she might go for it next year.

Disney Cruise - Last Post

Of course, it all had to come to an end.  It was a little cloudy when we came back into port at L.A.

The debarkation was really organized.  We had to leave our luggage outside our room by 10pm the night before, so we used our backpacks for all our "getting ready" stuff in the morning.  At turndown service, the room steward left us some colored luggage tags.  All the rooms were divided into maybe 6 or 8 different groups, and each group had a different colored luggage tag.  Ours were red Mickey tags, others had blue Donald tags, etc.

 

For the last morning, they actually assign breakfast times.  We had the later breakfast time, so we didn't have to rush around getting ready.  Throughout the morning, there would be announcements like, "All passengers with blue Donald luggage tags have been cleared to leave the ship" so you'd know when to go get in line.

 

We had to wait in a line for a bit to go through customs, but even that wasn't too bad.  After customs, we walked through the terminal and saw big signs matching the luggage tags that showed us where we'd find our luggage.  We grabbed it up, got the shuttle to the hotel, got our car, and we were on our way home!

 

 Watching movies on Rob's Kindle

Not watching movies

 

Since we got back the Sunday before Thanksgiving, it was a nice gradual transition from vacation back to the real world.  We all had a couple of days to catch up on stuff and then a nice long weekend before we really had to be back in the swing of things!

 

This was SUCH a good vacation! We're tentatively planning another one for 2014 to the Caribbean; all the saving was definitely worth it.

Disney Cruise Part 8: Cabo San Lucas

We spent two days in Cabo San Lucas.  Cruise ships can’t dock there, so we got to ride on smaller tender boats to shore.  We booked a snorkeling excursion through Disney, so on the first day there, we rode on a catamaran around the bay, past Lover’s Beach and the arch, and then out to a cove where we anchored and hopped off the boat to snorkel.

The water was nice and clear, and since they made us wear life jackets, we didn’t have to worry about whether the kids were sinking.  Erin caught on right away and just floated around looking at all the fish.  The tour guides had some bread they were using to attract the fish, and one of the guides would dive way down and stir them all up to the surface.  There were A LOT of fish!  Sometimes we could barely see space between them.  Lots of blues and yellows.

Robbie took a while to catch on.  He’s not a super-confident swimmer yet, but he loves all kinds of animals, so we knew he’d really like the fish.  He had trouble trusting the snorkel and didn’t want to put his face in at first.  He was comfortable breathing through it above water, but just wasn’t sure about under water.  Rob and I took turns working with him, and finally Rob told him that if he kept putting his head back, he’d get water in his snorkel.  He put his hand on the back of Robbie’s head and that’s when Robbie decided to just do it.  He put his face in and almost immediately, we heard him shrieking through the snorkel, “Fishies!  FISHIES!!”  He was SO excited!  After that, he couldn’t get enough of it!  Even when he would get water in his mask or cough on a little of it, he’d fix it and move on.  We’re so glad he finally did it.

We got back on the ship that afternoon, and the ship actually went out to sea for the night and then came back to Cabo the next morning.  That was the night we had the fireworks for pirate night.

The second day in Cabo, we rode the tender to shore and we walked around and shopped with the other family from our table.  Rob’s Spanish came in handy again, because he negotiated everyone’s prices while we shopped!

Erin took a picture with the E in a big Mexico sign:

And a sad one where we joked that she wasn't allowed on that sidewalk:

We listened to this dad and his little girl for a little bit... they were really good.

We bought a few things and then walked to a beach.  Our kids have never been to a beach, so this was a big deal!  They loved it!  I liked watching them check it out.  Robbie was mostly excited about all the sand at first, but then he figured out that the waves are a lot of fun.  Erin played in the water and found quite a few shells.  We weren’t too far from the ship... It was kind of strange to see it that close to the beach.