Disneyland Once Again

We went to disneyland this weekend. It has been 5 whole months :-) since we have been. We missed it so much. Here are a few pictures that captured the highlights of our trip.


The characters love when they see these photos of themselves. We still take postcards (like all these pictures) and have the characters sign them. They love to see who is "playing the character" in the photo. I am assuming they all know each other, so they get a kick out of it. It always gets us a little special attention.

We have never seen these guys in the park before. So, we had to get their picture. Even if the kids have never seen the movie.

Ella was crying during this photo opp. But love the picture.

Always a favorite with the kids.

This is my favorite photo. I love Jake's smile. Ella's awe-struck pose and Hannah buddying up to the cowboy!


Hannah was so excited, because she thought Fawn was Rosette at first. That is her favorite fairy at the moment. But Fawn was a nice alternative, as you can tell.

Jake's in love.

Some random girl came up to Hannah and asked her if she wanted this cool balloon jet pack. Hannah in amazement said "YES". She wore it around the rest of the night. Everyone kept commenting on it. It really was a cool contraption.

We went on the canoes for the first time in all our visits. You definitely get an arm workout. And yes that is me in all my pregnancy glory. Not a fan of pregnancy photos of myself.

Labor Day Salad

Here is my new favorite salad i made a few weeks ago and we are having it again for Labor Day tonight. It is packed full of flavor and yumminess and it looks great too.

Here are the ingredients (in case you couldn't tell)

lettuce, chicken, corn (fresh from the cob), black beans, avocado, jicama, egg, bacon, tomatoes, and blue cheese. Served with BBQ sauce and ranch dressing. And then I made these to go with it. and of course watermelon.

Happy Labor Day!

Wedding Project

My Brother in Law is getting married and we are beyond thrilled about this. The wedding is coming up and the bride-to-be has asked me to help design a little something for the wedding reception. The food at the reception has a theme. It is food that you can find around the Disneyland park. You see my BIL is a big DIsney fan (or should I say fanatic :-)

So, the request was to make some signs to hang above each food section highlighting what the food was and how it relates to the Disneyland. So, my mission (as I saw it).... was to make these signs "blend into the reception" while portraying Disneyland without being to obnoxious.

So, here is what i can up with. I used the vintage Disneyland tickets. You know when you use to have to buy tickets to ride on the rides (back in the 50's - 70's) and then I changed the wording to tie into the food.

Here is what the tickets used to look like.



And here is what I created:





You will notice the first section is the land in which the food comes from. Then it lists all the eating establishments in that land with an asterisk next to the restaurant the food comes from. Underneath is the name of the food with a description. And lastly, the ticket number is their wedding date.

I had a ton of fun coming up with this idea. I can't wait to see what it looks like on their wedding day!

More Teacher Gifts

So, I never posted these teachers gifts that I gave during Teacher Appreciation week last year. A little late, huh? I made them all before I got sick with morning sickness and then when teacher appreciation week hit, I was to sick to post about it and then just forgot. But I wanted them to be on the blog for future reference, so here are some simple gifts for the teachers in your lives.

For Hannah in Elementary school, the teacher got a gift each day during TA week. For Ella in preschool, the teacher got something each day she went (MWF). The one gift the isn't there is a glass container full of pencils. I do this every year.... here is a picture from last year.
There are packets of Crystal Light in the water bottle.
There are swedish fish in the box.

I got these fabric apples at JoAnns for a dollar two years ago.

I gave this gift to Ella's preschool teacher at the end of the year. I forgot to share this one.


Here is the tag I used.

Last Utah Trip Post

The last fun thing we did while in Utah, was go to Snow Canyon State Park for an evening Hike. My parents live outside of St. George and minutes from Snow Canyon. It is one of the prettiest canyons to drive by, so I know that going on hikes there will become a tradition with our family. This time we took the Lava Flow Trail and Overlook. It was an easy walk with lots of big lava flows and caverns. The kids had a blast and Jakey even found a desert turtle. How cool is that!

We saw this pretty rainbow.

And these dramatic clouds!

Hannah and grandma.

This is everyone next to a lava flow.

The girls giving their "to infinity and beyond" pose.

The little desert turtle!

That is it. Our summer vacation in a 6 post "nutshell". Now on to other things in life. I have a month and then life gets nice and busy with the holidays! I am already giving the Halloween costumes some thought. We will see what happens.

First Day!

Today was the first day of school. The kids were pretty excited... .Ella more than Hannah. Hannah was excited to see friends again, but not for the school work. And Ella is just excited to get out of the house and play with other kids. It all went smoothly and well... no tears or nervousness (me included :-) I was thrilled to run errands with just one child. Ahhh!

Also, for our first day of school treat to the teachers I bought them each a Rocky Mountain caramel apple and attached a tag to it. Simple and who doesn't love caramel apples. They are my fav!

Utah Trip Part V

After Ephraim, we headed south to St. George, Ut. Grandma and Grandpa Brimhall live there. We went to the town splash park and rode the carousel. And then we headed to Tuachan Outdoor Theater and saw The Little Mermaid. On Tuesday, Chris and Grandpa took the kids to Zions National Park while I spent the day shopping with my mom. Here are a few pictures of the kids at Zions.







And then we spent an afternoon making and decorating cookies.

Utah Trip Part IV

After our fun trip to the mountains, we took off south to Ephraim, Utah. Chris' family has a family farm in Ephraim and so we wanted to take the kids there to explore and experience their heritage. As you can tell from the pictures, the kids had a great time running and climbing around the old buildings. We spent a few hours there just running around, playing and discovering things like old sheep bones, old tools and lots and lots of wood.

The farm has this great big climbing tree that the kids love. So, every time we are there, we always take a picture in the tree.

Ella and Jake could not get enough of the water pump in front of the farm. They kept coming back to the pump to play with. Even though the water smells like sulfur. That only bothered Hannah.









We stayed the night in Chris' Nana's house. Chris' aunt and uncle (Carol and Jay) were in town, so we got to see them and catch up. Ella called Aunt Carol "Nana with the white hair" since she looks like Ella's Nana (they are sisters)... but the difference was the white hair. Jay and Carol also had their little white dog named Jake. The kids were nervous at first, but within a few hours they were having a blast with the little dog and wouldn't leave him alone.



The next day we headed down to Manti to see the temple. We walked around the temple grounds and the kids ran down the big hill behind the temple. As you can tell from this picture below.. there were a few windy moments. I love what the wind did to Jake's hair!

Utah Trip Part III

The next day we headed up to Weber Canyon to spend the night at our brother-in-law's family cabin. We began the trip with a trip to the reservoir so the kids could throw rocks into the lake. Then we went to a campground and roasted hotdogs and s'mores over the campfire. Again, the kids had a blast because they were with each other and in the great outdoors.

We finally put the kids to bed and the adults stayed up until 1:30 am talking. The clock I kept looking at was broken, so I thought it was much earlier than it was. When I learned it was 1:30 am... I had to end the fun and go straight to bed. I don't stay up that late when I am pregnant. It just doesn't work for me.

The next day we spent most of the day riding ATV's through the mountains. The kids (and adults) couldn't get enough of it. It was such a fun little trip within our trip!