Post-it #225

Lydia is a musical little person. She loves to sing, though I can't get her to memorize a real song to save her life, she is always making her own up with fake words. One night she requested that I sing her a song for bed, but named one that didn't exist. I asked her how it went and she showed me this:

Post-it #224

We have our Daisy cat and Allison LOVES her. She even tries to say kitty, but it sounds more like "tt-thhhhh-s". Here's a video from back in August. Alli scooted around like this until she was nine months, maybe even almost ten, when she finally learned how to crawl the real way.

Post-it #223

Back in the summer Allison finally figured out the jumparoo. She eventually got it down better than the video indicates.

149th Passage

The last full day of vacation, Thursday, we went to Old Sacramento. Great Nana came along. We didn't any pictures other than at the train museum, which was fun.

 There was a giant train that the kids got to sit in the conductors seats.

 We stopped in an ice cream shop and all ate some ice cream. This was Owen's face afterwards.

 In the ice cream parlor they had little samples of the craizier Jelly Belly flavors. The guy who scooped our ice cream got a kick out of giving them to the kids to see their reactions.

 After exploring everything there we went back to Nana's house. But not for very long. Soon we drove over to David's Uncle Greg's house where we swam and had pizza. It was a good time.

The next morning we packed everything up and drove home. The drive seemed so much longer on the way home. Usually it's the other way around, but this was a LOOOONG feeling drive.

But it was as super fun vacation! It cost a lot of money, but not as much as it could have since we were housed and fed by Nana Mary. One day we'll do something like it again.

148th Passage

After the day at Six Flags, instead of driving back to Citrus Heights we stayed at a cheap hotel nearby. First we went to pick up dinner, then headed to the hotel to eat it. We all found a bed or spot on the floor and slept soundly.
The next morning, after a continental breakfast, we drove to Dillon's Beach. It was the first visit to the ocean for William, Owen, and Allison. The day was very cold though, probably low 60's and windy. But we didn't let that stop us from having fun.

We had to use a terribly disgusting restroom to change. I don't think they'd been cleaned since the dawn of time. Actually, since we were pretty secluded, I chose to dress behind the cover of a car door rather than risk touching anything in the bathroom.

When we were all ready we gathered what we needed from the car and hiked over a big sand dune to find the ocean. We tried putting Allison in a little carrier on the back, but it looked very uncomfortable, and she hated it. So I just carried her after that.

We explored the beach, buried children, played in the surf, (the kids wouldn't go out much at all. Knee deep and they were nervous) collected sea shells, built sand castles, and, despite the cloudy, cold, windy day, got sunburned. Here are some pics of the day. And videos.

Believe it or not, this was me narrowing down the photos.

147th Passage

On Tuesday of our week in California we drove to Vallejo to go to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. This was one of the most fun days for everyone, I think. We tried to get there just as the park opened, but they put their parking lot at least a mile away from the entrance to the park. Seriously. So we walked with hoards of people and then stood in line for awhile and by the time we got into the park it was already time for a bathroom break. :) 

But we finally got on our way. Discovery Kingdom is huge. We didn't realize how big it was until the afternoon. There were many sections with different rides that we didn't even make it to. We also saw lots of cool shows. 

First we saw a little show with tigers. Pretty cool.

 There was a circus type show, which was very entertaining. The picture is of someone using their feet to sort of juggle a hoola hoop and a ball and other crazy antics.

Allison spent much of the time enthralled.

We also saw an elephant demonstration. The kid even all got to feed and pet it!

We went to the Splash show too. We all got pretty wet. Poor Alli hated it.

We watched another show, which David and I thought was pretty annoying, but the kids got a kick out of it. It involved mostly people, but also sea otters, a walrus, and a little river otter, I believe.

There were lots of animals there to see, like in a zoo. The penguins were a favorite.

And the rides. Oh how we loved the rides...except David. He didn't hate them, but mostly we did kid rides and he almost always opted out to stay with Allison while I rode with the children, if it was a family ride. I love rides, so I was happy with that.

I even got to go on a real roller coaster. Morgan came with me! He got a little nervous and screamed for half of it, and on the way down his head was permanently forced down, but he said he loved it! Yay!

We are in the front of the third car from the bottom.

There were so many we didn't get to because we ran out of time. We thought we had a couple more hours, but the park closed earlier than we thought since school started that week and it was a week day. Bummer.
Lydia wanted to go on all rides, but she was too short for many. Poor thing had to sit out much more than she wanted. Nothing scared her. William and Owen sometimes sat out due to fear, but went on most of the rides that they could.
Alli was a champ. She just mostly sat in her stroller and sometimes got whiny, but most of the time she was great.

Then we had the huge trek back to the car. Boy were our feet sore. Here is a picture of the long line of people that goes so far into the distance that you can't see the end...

Here is a video of a couple of rides and when we fed the elephant. I don't remember what happened, but I either ran out of space, or I foolishly thought I was recording when I wasn't, so I missed everyone but William feeding the elephant.