disneyland-day3

The kids wore matching outfits...

we rode lots of rides...
found Jasmine, Aladdin, and the Genie.
The day ended with dinner at Goofy's kitchen!

Goofy signing the Grimes' book on John's head.

Minnie was at dinner...

and Snow White...

along with Princess Aurora...

Jackson was at dinner also, just less than thrilled with the princesses!

Finally, we saw Chip & Dale.The night ended with matching jammies!

disneyland-day 4

We used our Toontown morning madness passes and entered Toontown an hour early. We finally found Donald...Jack's favorite!

We watched the celebration and become honorary citizens for the day.

Saw Mickey once more at his house

We all rode on the Dumbo ride

One last stop to see Mater and McQueen

Disneyland 2010 was a blast...

*****

who knows, maybe we will have to make it 4 years in a row.

detour 2010

We left Disneyland at noon and headed to the cars. After a quick stop the get gas and grab a bite to eat and we were on our way home. So we thought...

at 2:53pm...we had been on the hwy for over an hour and still had 352 miles to go
traffic backed up on 91...we would later find out it was due to a tanker explosion that happened earlier in the day

Assuming that we would just be rerouted around the accident, we followed the lane closures to exit only to be told that we could try a different route or wait on the side of the road for 3-6 hours. After 4 hours and driving only 30 miles, buying a California map, and plenty of highway recommendations we were on our way to San Diego...

... except there was more traffic!!

lots of traffic

an unexpected view of the ocean

It was 8:46 pm and we still had 368 miles to go...

-----

...after 13 hours in the car we finally made it home at 3am!!

swing

Our new & improved backyard got a swing in the tree this weekend. How much do we love it...Maddie told us when we picked her up from school today that she wanted to "go home to the backyard and swing"!

Maddie is kinda a 'swing hog' so Jack plays in the house...mostly he puts rocks in it!

seeds

Our sunflower seeds that we planted a few weeks ago did so well we decided to try it again. Maybe we will have a watermelon in a few months!

Our sunflowers that we transferred to a big pot.
Maddie putting dirt in the greenhouse cups.

Watermelon seeds placed and ready to cover with more dirt.

Now we wait for the seeds to sprout.

pool

It's swimming time at our house...

We jumped in the pool yesterday and officially kicked off summer swimming!

backyard makeover!!

***before***

this is after we had the rocks removed

***after***

Today we got beautiful green 'fake' grass!!!

It changes the entire look of the backyard...love it!!!

I even pulled the slide out of the garage to test the new grass--the slide hasn't been out of the garage since we moved here!

Pretty sure we will be spending lots of time in our 'new' backyard.