Utah in February

The morning after the recital, my mom and I packed up the girls and drove to Utah for a few days. Willa had the week off of preschool, so it seemed like a good time to visit since we hadn't been for a while. The day after we got there, we visited my friend Alyson and her new baby twin boys. It was so fun to see them, and to see her as a mom, and to admire their new house. Unfortunately, the next day Willa woke up with a fever and had it almost the entire rest of the trip! It put a damper on our plans for a bit, but I also cranked the ibuprofen and forced a few outings.

We got our hair cut. Willa fell asleep mid-cut! It was a warm afternoon and I don't blame her a bit. Her little head kept bobbing into Max's stomach as he cut. I needed a big cut, Willa just needed a little trim up.

We did the zoo one morning when she was feeling a little better (then she crashed for the afternoon).

My mom and I did a Thai cooking class at Harmons, which was a fun excursion. My dad put the girls to bed by himself! He forgot to have them go potty before, which wasn't a big deal for Willa since she's still ins pull-up, and it didn't end up being a big deal for June either, even though she held it from about 3 pm until 7 am!!

On Friday I drove down to meet Carey and Robbie for the temple open house. It was nice to all go together. Willa still wasn't 100%, so I don't feel like the girls got the most out of it, but I wanted to bring them because temples are important to us and they never get to go inside. I thought the open house would be a good experience for them to see a little why temples are special and to have something to remember besides the temple grounds.

After the open house, Carey and Robbie treated us to Chik Fil A, oh, how I've missed it. Then we went to their house to babysit and spend the night. Robert has been going through chemo again in preparation for another bone marrow transplant, so I was able to hold down the fort so they could have a day and evening out together. He goes in for the transplant this week, we are hoping and praying it all goes well and that his recovery is smooth.

And these little boys are really so sweet and easy. Happy, happy boys and easy to please. It was nice to spend time with them. 

Saturday morning we packed up and hit the road for Las Vegas. I filled the tank and since we were already in Pleasant Grove, I made it home without stopping for gas! I had to pull over once to check June's tv, which broke and which I could not fix, but then we hauled home. Luckily June fell asleep for about three hours and when she woke up, she watched Willa's tv and Willa did the iPad. My gas gauge lit up around I-15 and Tropicana, but I took a risk (we were soooo close!) and made it to our exit and local gas station and then home.

Willa had a birthday party at 2 pm that we made it home for. Then that evening, June started throwing up. It was sad, but I was so happy that it didn't happen in the car or at anyone else's house. It's just nice to be home when you are sick. She was a real trooper and sweetheart. I laid with her on the couch all night and she would start to moan, barf in the bowl, take sip of water, and lay back down. No crying, but once during an episode a single tear rolled down her cheek as she was dry heaving. It just about broke my heart. Thankfully, it was just a bug and she recovered sufficiently for us to all come down with Strep two weeks later 

Willa's Piano Recital

Willa worked her way through the entire "A Day at the Zoo" piano book, so it was time for her to give her first solo recital, or house concert, as her teacher likes to call it. It was exciting and reminded me of preparing for Suzuki book concerts whenever I finished a Suzuki book. She had to learn and have memorized every piece in the book. The biggest trial for me was that by the time we got into the last dog days of polishing, she was tired of these songs and wanted something new to practice. We probably could have pushed her to do the concert in December or January, but with the holidays and the Disney cruise we opted for the more cushiony time frame of February 20th.

I printed up some invitations through Costco and we were able to invite some of her friends and teachers. We held it at the church in the Relief Society room because I thought our house might be too cramped. We have about twenty people come and it was really sweet. 

All the little songs are about animals, so we had zoo-themed refreshments. Cupcakes in zoo wrappers with little zoo decorations on top, iced animal crackers, last minute cookies when we thought the other food wouldn't be enough, and water. Ryan took the girls to a different recital a few weeks ago and said there was a full dinner after. I just wanted to keep it all very simple.

Here is a wrinkled old program. I think this is the one Willa read off of to remember the song order. The other ones were spruced up with a little animal sticker at the top :). In my defense, I tried to find an online template to use and there were tons of cute ones, but they all required Word. Ryan did an update on the computer a few months ago and had to uninstall all of Office. When he went back to reinstall it after the update, he discovered that the disc reader wasn't working well. So now we have no Microsoft Office, which would probably be an issue if we were students, but for now Google docs seems to be handling things well except for this type of minor annoyance.

Willa did really well and I'm proud of how she could focus on her songs with some of her little friends present. She memorized about 20-25 minutes worth of music, no small feat for a five year old! She wanted to wear her Elsa Frozen Fever gown, which she earned as a special prize earlier for doing three days of eye drops. I love that she wanted to wear it, to her it's her most beautiful, fanciest gown. It encapsulates who she is right at this moment.

Here are two sideways, grainy videos from Rebecca's camera. We took a video of the entire concert with our camcorder that we got way back in 2007. Surprise, surprise, our Iphone videos are better quality and when Ryan downloaded it to the computer, it was in some weird format that took some finagling to read. If we figure it out, I will post it later.  But here are some clips for now.

After the concert with Bridgett and Hailey. I'm kicking myself for not getting a photo with her teacher.

After all the excitement with her flowers. She wasn't in the mood for posing.

It was a fun and exciting night and I'm really proud of her. She was very excited to do her own concert and is especially excited not to have to play from her Zoo book anymore, except when she wants to. The day after the recital we drove up to Utah for a few days and that night she played all her pieces for my dad. He told her he was sorry he missed the recital and asked her to play, so she sat down and played everything just like that.

I really love our teacher, she's just a master teacher, and I think this method that she uses is really excellent. Willa's hands are all over the piano and she's reading almost four octaves (give or take some cheat notes here and there). As we work through the method books, her teachers usually prints off a fun and easy song each week for her to learn from a different piano method. Some of the songs have been from the Alfred and Piano Adventures Levels 2 and 3 already, which is pretty cool. She's not totally polished, but she can sit down and play through them without too much trouble usually, which is something my piano students who are actually in those levels sometimes have trouble doing. Not saying that Willa is this genius, I just think she has been taught well from the start. So, hooray for Willa! I really like having something with long term goals and results, but also with short term enjoyment and work. She can really focus when it's time to practice and she enjoys it, for the most part. It's been a good thing for us while we await kindergarten next year.

This and That for January

Here are a few photos I came across of Castaway Cay. Ryan, me, Chris, and Roxy after the 5k. My dad ran the race too, but took a wrong turn on one of the loops and ended up making it a 5 mile run. Oops.

Back at the beautiful beach after the Bibidi Bobidi. It was getting overcast and windy, but that meant it wasn't nearly as crowded. Ryan and I swam out and did a few waterslides into the ocean.

For some reason, June wanted to eat like a puppy. Some days the girls are really into being puppies and that mostly includes licking my face. I'm not a fan, especially since all three of us came down with Strep over the weekend and Ryan went to a quick clinic today and had a positive swab result. No more licking!

 A few weeks back we went up to Red Rock. It's always so nice to get out there, but it's hard to coordinate a trip between wanting a lazy Saturday morning and getting back for June's nap. June was so bushed on this trip that she fell asleep for the 13 mile loop out of the park, the drive home, and remained asleep while I transferred her up to her crib. Unheard of!

Back in January, this car back out into me after I dropped Willa off at preschool. The driver was very nice and apologetic and we got each others' insurance information. She broke off a weird plastic thing by my headlight and made a few scratches, but nothing too bad. Luckily, I was determined not at fault and her insurance agreed to fix my car. When I took my car in, the place said they needed to replace the whole front bumper. Lucky me, I had another really bad scrape on there that was totally my fault from a few months ago. I told them what scratch was mine and which was from this accident and they still said they had to replace the whole thing. It took a few weeks of coordinating my schedule before I could actually bring the car in so it's actually getting fixed right now.

Disney Cruise Concluded

 This is a hilarious video of Willa dancing. She LOVES to dance and the functionality of a skirt or dress is related directly to its ability to twirl. Hence, ever putting her in pants or shorts is a huge battle which I normally don't fight. Anyway, late one night after seeing Goofy and Daisy, she saw this singer and another little girl dancing and she was dying to join them. It's so funny that my reserved little girl can really pull out the stops if she wants to.

 They have a 5k fun run the morning the ship docks in Castaway Cay. We ran it with my dad, brother, and his girlfriend Roxy. I lumbered along wheezing next to Roxy who was running in sandals with the legs of a gazelle. Ryan won first place, but it was strictly a fun run and there were no timers. Still, it was a fun thing to do together and a nice way to start the day. It also gave us a good feeling for the island so we knew what was around and didn't feel like we were missing out later for mainly staying on the beach.

The same day as Castaway Cay, we had an appointment for Willa at the Bibidi Bobidi Boutique. I wanted to make the appointment for a different day, but by the time I went online to sign her up before the cruise, they were all booked up! We spent all morning on the island, then came back around 1:00 for the appointment, then headed back to the beach again.

This place is soooo darling. Carrie and I have been planning to take our girls there from the very beginning. You can choose a princess dress and they will do your hair and make-up, or they have a cruise-only option for a mermaid package, or you can just get hair and make-up done. We were planning on the mermaid, but I brought some of Willa's dresses just in case. No need paying for the full package, which was about $200 including the dress and all the accessories, when I had a bunch of really nice Disney dresses that I'd gotten on some sweet sales for about $10. The mermaid option was still a shocking $100, but she would get a cute little swimsuit with it. So we went in preparing for the mermaid, but then she saw the Rapunzel dress and WANTED it. So... I let her have it. But, as they started doing her hair I fretted and fretted. I thought she probably really wanted the mermaid but got distracted and I thought she could probably be talked back into it. So, I started talking and the workers were really nice. The brought out the mermaid outfit and said she could go try it on. Luckily, it did the trick and she went for it. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Prices are all inflated at Disney things, but for me $100 is still a lot of money and believe it or not, $200 is even more, and I just wasn't ready to pay all that, but I still wanted her to be happy.

They brushed out her hair first, which took a while since she'd just been at the beach that morning. I kind of laughed that we were paying money to have them do what she yells at me about every morning. Then they did put some "mermaid stripes" on her cheeks, which was sunblock that she got to rub in later.

 They painted her fingernails.

 Finally, they used a magic wand to sprinkle pixie dust all over her hair to make it sparkle. It was adorable.

There she is, our mermaid princess.


Presley and Willa together. The "Fairy Godmothers In Training" were so good. They didn't break character once. We kept trying to ask them how long they had worked on the ship, but all they said was that it take 100 years or something to become a Fairy Godmother and that they were training hard. The girls got the swimsuit and little skirt/fin cover up, the princess sash, a little flower clip for their hair, a pink bag, the little tubes of sunscreen they used on the face, and their own special sparkly nail polish that says Bibidi Bobidi Boutique on it. It was our only splurge on the trip and very fun to do something just for Willa that she thought was amazing. She wore her special Elsa shoes, if you can see.

This is a picture of our door. We found out that most people bring things to decorate their doors, so my sister Carrie made the cutest one for my parents that says 50th Anniversary, and since she is awesome and I am horrible at this type of thing, she pulled one together for our family too. 

The other picture is dessert one night. June is having a Mickey Mouse dilly bar and Willa is having ice cream that has mouse ear sprinkles. They are usually about done by the time dessert rolls around.

The cruise was awesome and amazing and so worth it. I know that Disney is all kind of expensive, but they just do it all better than everyone else. Every night they had amazing, Broadway-quality shows. My favorite was a new Rapunzel one, it was amazing and they've only just started doing it in the last few months. The special effects for everything were just amazing. The last night the show was a mixture of all the big songs from the Disney movies and each song was out of this world. I mean, just the costumes and the props for each song was crazy. For Let it Go, it snowed. The Lion King had all the costumes and props that you see on Broadway.  It was just amazing. It was so fun to watch with the girls. Willa kept catching her breath every time at each new song; it was magical to see it live.  One night they did a magic show, which sounds not that interesting, but was really amazing. Magic Dave was his name and he was perfect for both kids and adults. The tricks were really cool and everyone was laughing. I just love how Disney makes things accessible for both kids and adults. On a regular cruise, none of the shows would have been kid-friendly.

We would eat dinner, then my mom and Debbie and a few others would go to the theater and save seats for everyone. Ryan and I usually headed back to our cabin to bathe the girls and then we would bring them in the pj's to the theater. It was fun having all 27 of us there sitting in the same seats and cheering at night. Curtis got called up and had to Whip and Nae Nae for the cruise director. Just silly, fun things.

On the Grand Cayman day, which was the second full cruise day, Ryan and I decided to spend the day on the ship with the girls instead of going on land. I think it was a good decision. The weather would have been nice for the beach there, but the beach wasn't right where the boat docked and you had to take a small tender to land, then get a taxi to take you to the beach. Anyway, it just seemed like a lot of work with the girls (and trying to fit a nap time in) when we would be doing the beach on Castaway Cay. So we stayed on the ship and enjoyed having the pools and everything to ourselves and the few other people who stayed. It was nice to just spend time swimming and playing without all the crowds.

The ship had a movie theater that was playing all the latest movies. Ryan went and watched the new Star Wars while the girls napped one day. I wish we had taken the girls to the kids club one time and gone to another movie together, but the times never worked out with everything else we wanted to do. It was just a perfect family vacation. It also sold me on doing the Disney vacations at other spots, like I think they have one in Hawaii. Just to have a family friendly environment and a really good kids' care available makes all the difference in a vacation. I think of going to Hawaii and not having all inclusive food or kids care, and it just doesn't seem relaxing. For us on the cruise, we wanted to spend most of our time together and swim and play with the girls, but it was soooo nice to have the option to drop them somewhere where they had fun so that we could spend time together and try things that maybe they wouldn't be interested in. That's all I can think of for now, it was just a very fun time. I know these posts are a little discombobulated - must be from writing them over the period of a month :).

Disney Cruise continued

I don't know why I never have time to sit and write these days, but dang it, I'm going to keep trying. June was puking all night so I'm home from church with her today. She's napping, so a blog update seemed appropriate. As a side note, she was the best little puker I've ever seen. No crying or noise, she would just sit up stoically, grab the barf bowl and start heaving. During one particularly sad bout in the middle of the night, I rubbed her back as she was dry-heaving and helped her hold the bowl. She didn't make any sound, but one lone solitary tear made it's way down her cheek. How precious and heartbreaking! Thankfully the throw-up has stopped, but she's still quite hot with a fever. I'm nervous to give her medicine because I don't want her to throw it up.

Back to the Disney Cruise!

 Soft serve ice cream anytime was a highlight of the pool deck. They had a new special flavor each day in addition to the chocolate/vanilla twist. My favorite was the mango. This was definitely the best way to vacation with children. Too excited to eat breakfast? No problem, we could just grab food anytime they felt hungry from the many eating options up by the pool. It was nice not to worry about forcing them to eat a big breakfast because we'd just paid for it or we didn't know when we would be stopping for lunch. Lots of days they would get hungry around 10 a.m. and I'd just go grab them something a few yards away while Ryan played with them in the pool.

There was lots of napping because we played pretty hard. We enforced naptime big time and the girls didn't complain. Beyond our bed is a privacy curtain and a bunk bed. In the daytime, the bunk bed becomes a couch, but at night the room service pulls down the top bunk and makes the couch bottom into a bed. We would put the girls to bed and pull the curtain and it worked like a charm.

Meeting Elsa and Anna. It was very impressive and I love how they stay so well in character. Of course, the lighting is set up in each of these pictures to get a killer shot if you are the official photographer, but for the rest of us we had to be satisfied with bad lighting and not great pictures. And since it was pretty expensive to buy the ship photos, I decided to be satisfied with my not so great ones.

The were happy to meet Olaf too, but wondered where Kristoff and Sven were.

Meeting Pirate Minnie. Willa was very excited meeting the characters. It was so cute. I think maybe June was napping or in bed when we did this photo.

As a last minute fluke (long story), my parents ended up with my brother and niece who were unable to go. What to do with two already-paid-for tickets on a Disney Cruise? We invited my Aunt Debbie and cousin Kephren. The best Disney lovers of all. It was an unexpected treat to have them along. It was pirate night for this photo.

The first day, you go and get special tickets (the tickets are free, but you have to know to go get them) to see some of the princesses. The princesses are there at other times, but with the tickets you don't have quite the line. June had a matching Cinderella dress and glass slippers. She still talks constantly about meeting Cinderella and how that Cinderella had gloves, but is it okay if she doesn't have gloves?

Rapunzel was a big treat too. The next day we were sitting down to eat dinner in the restaurant and Rapunzel walked by and stopped for a minute to wave at the girls through the window. They were in heaven.

 And of course, Belle.

We worked to coordinate princess dresses and swimsuits with Presley. It was fun having another little girl cousin.

Willa LOVED to go to the kid's club on board and I was majorly impressed. The kids all wore wristbands that they scanned when they entered. When I would come to pick Willa up, they would scan my room card and tell me exactly which area she was playing in! They had areas with Ipads, a sitting area that played little Disney shorts, a slide area, art, and more. In addition to all the independent activities, they had group activities that the leaders would do scheduled regularly. Like, once they pretended to go on a magic carpet ride all together and stopped along the way for lots of adventures. Or they would bring out dress ups. Once I specifically took Willa because they were going to have story time with Belle, but when I picked her up later she had been so distracted playing the individual games that she didn't even participate in that one! You could leave the kids in as long as you wanted, but we didn't take Willa that often because we wanted to swim and do other things together. The nice thing was is that they would serve meals at regular mealtimes if you wanted to eat without the kids. A formal restaurant at the end of the day was a little tough on the girls, so one night we took Willa to kids club instead.

The kids club was only for kids 3-11, if your kids were younger, they had a nursery option. I asked several people beforehand if they might let June go to kids club with Willa since she was only about six weeks away from turning three. I think maybe several years ago they might have let it pass, but now things were much stricter. And with the chip in the wristband, the computer wouldn't even allow them to check June in. The main reason I didn't want to do the nursery was because you had to make reservations and it was $9/hour. Neither of those things are horrible, but I like flying by the seat of my pants and if suddenly we wanted to drop the girls off or sleep longer and not go somewhere, I didn't want to be left in a lurch. If you didn't keep your reservation, they still charged you for it. Well, I was very pleasantly surprised with the nursery too. The staff was so nice and if I got there early and they had an opening or if I wanted to change my reservation ahead of time, it wasn't a problem. We ended up only taking June once, but I was impressed. They had a bunch of cribs, so your babies could nap. You could bring all their lovies and toys and food for them, and they also served snacks and food regularly. The last day of the cruise I got a manila envelope delivered to my room. Inside was a cute card from the nursery thanking June for visiting them. It included pages of drawings and artwork that they did with her, including a couple of adorable finger painting sheets, and some photos of her there. It was definitely worth the money and I wish we would have used it more.

Disney Cruise, Day 1

Last Christmas, in 2014, my parents' gift was that we would all be going on a Disney cruise the following year (January 2016), to celebrate their upcoming 50th wedding anniversary. It was a pretty big gift, notwithstanding it covering two Christmas's worth of gifts. So we had a year to look forward to it. I probably told the girls more details about it sometime in the Fall. I sat down with them and looked up some youtube videos of Disney cruises so that they could get an idea. They were very excited, even though I still don't think they really knew what to expect.

The ship was leaving Friday at 4:00 pm, so we all ended up taking a red eye with a layover on Thursday night. Not the funnest two flights of my life. The girls were troopers, but I expected that they would sleep the entire time. No such luck. We actually bathed them on Thursday night, got them dressed in their clothes, and put them down for an early bedtime around 6:45 pm, or so. Then, we woke them up around 9:00 pm when it was time to go to the airport. Neither of them slept at all for the first leg, which was about a 3 1/2 hour flight to Detroit! They just couldn't get comfortable and maybe having them sleep before messed them up. I thought about doing Benadryl, but sometimes I feel like it doesn't really work on them (especially June), and if anything, it messes up their sleep. So, I decided to chance it we had to live with the consequences. Here they are after the first leg, waiting for the second flight. Happily, they fell asleep before takeoff on the second flight and slept the whole time.

Then, we took a little shuttle bus to Miami, where they slept a little more. But still nowhere near the kind of sleep they usually get. They were pretty good troopers, all things considered.

Waiting to get on the ship. Willa and Ryan were too tired to come get a picture. June came by virtue of the fact that she was too tired to do anything but have me hold her. Still, we were excited!

We packed swimsuits in our carry-on so that we wouldn't have to wait for our luggage before enjoying the pools. It was a rainy first day, but the hot tub felt so nice. 

June's taking a last look at Miami before departure. There was about a two hour golden period between swimming and dinner, which would have been perfect for a nap - except that the muster was schedule smack in the middle. June slept about 30 minutes on the couch before we had to pick her up and go, poor baby.

The rest of the day was kind of a tired blur. We were scheduled for dinner not long after the muster. I think all 27 of us were feeling exhausted because the servers asked if we were grouchy :). The girls barely made it through dinner without major meltdowns. A formal sit down affair is risky, even in the best of circumstances. We put the girls (and Ryan) down around 7 pm (4 pm, Vegas time!) and then I met the rest of our group who was still awake to watch the opening night show, which was so much fun. It was a tiring, but great start.

Little girls

Man, oh man, I'm going to have my work cut out for me with little Junie. I've been working on blogging about the cruise, but I've got to take a break and first post a couple of hilarious (and sneaky!) things she has been saying and doing around here.

She's very bright, but her intelligence might not always be directed in the best manner. She keeps me on my toes with the knowledge that she scrapes up, though. A few weeks ago we were taking about bathing suits in the car and she somehow told me that you could also call it a bathing costume, like Peppa Pig!

Last week, I was playing with her and let her sit at the harp for a few minutes. I showed her how to play a glissando and said the word just once or twice to her. The next day she wanted to sit at the harp again and without any prompting said, "Mommy, is this the biggando?" She just remembers things so sharply. Weeks after we had turned our passport documents into the post office, she offhand asked if we had our "pasaports for our trip."

Again last week we were driving in the car and my lane started to slow down. She asked me what was happening and I told her we were slowing down. She said, "Oh, are we going 'Dagio?" I didn't quite understand her so she said again, "'Dagio, like in my Einsteins!" Ha ha, "Yes, Junie, we are going Adagio." Then she gets this kind of self-satisfied smirk that I can hear in her voice and says, "Yes, 'dagio means slow."

On Saturday morning she and Willa were playing really well, but after a while Willa wanted to play by herself which is totally normal, but June was pretty upset about it. She kept wanting to go in and I said, "No, we need to leave Willa alone. She wants to be alone right now." Well, a few minutes later I was cleaning up the kitchen and June comes in all innocent holding a hair rubber band and said, "Oh no, Mommy, we need to put this away! We need to put this in the bathroom and clean up!" Well, the sneaky girl knew that the bathroom is attached to Willa's room, so if she could find a reason to get into the bathroom, she would get to Willa's room. What a sneak! I could barely keep myself from laughing at that one.

Finally, I wouldn't be surprised if this queen bee ended up being a Mean Girl in school. We joke that there is a little nursery squad going on (like Taylor Swift's squad). When I dropped her off at nursery yesterday, Ryan was with me and asked, "Who is that girl hugging her?" I looked and saw another girl, Quinn, who hugged her and then showed off her dress. According to Quinn's mom, they show off their dresses to each other when they get to nursery each week! Sometimes when I ask who she played with she will say, "Quinn! And no one else!" She actually is friends with a lot of the little girls there, but it's funny that she and Quinn have developed this ritual where they hug and then show off their pretty dresses to each other.