::hike::

We went on a hike this afternoon after doing the normal Sunday afternoon stuff--such as dishes, eating, laundry, trying to nap.  We forced Max to go and Sandy bounced along happily.  Lucy was all in.
Max had a blast once we got going.  He found a "hiking stick" and poked it into everything possible.



Within the first 10 minutes Sandy compared the hike to Thunder Mountain and Cars Land.  That was after on the way over when Kris and I were talking about the hill near our house named Sun Mountain.  Sandy asked what ride that was at Disneyland.



Lucy rode along in the carrier and sang pretty much the whole time.  She was very cheery.



We were right next to the little Santa Fe River on this hike, and the smell really reminded me of our yard growing up.  There were cottonwoods with leaves all over the path and it was wet and fresh smelling.  I was happily reminded of the smells of fall in my parents' yard.  I loved it.



Sandy is all adventure and pretending right now.  Not sure what he was doing here, but I do know we kept him from completely falling in the water--no small feat.



Lucy is way aware of everything that's going on.



And that's the end.  We went home and ate dinner and read scriptures and did laundry and put everybody to bed.  Busy days.  It's always nice to get to breath the fresh air and enjoy the vistas of our beautiful place.

::disney with the fam 3::

It was a really fun trip, like I said.  Cousins got to hang out together, we got to watch some fun shows, ride lots of awesome rides and eat treats.  Boy are there ever some great treats there.  You've got to be careful not to try all of them or you end up driving one of those scooters around and not being able to fit into the seats at Soarin.

One day Max got a big rice crispy treat shaped like a mickey head.  Sandy got a cake pop that looked like Olaf the snowman.  There are always the mickey head ice cream bars that are one of our favorites--don't think we got any of those this time though.

We all shared a bunch of ice cream sundaes at Ghiradelli's and boy they were good, despite the confustion of 10 people trying to share and trade around 5 sundaes.   I guess we're lucky we're all still healthy with that sort of heavy duty germ sharing.

On the last day we ate lunch at the Mary Poppins place which is also a bakery, so we got a couple of cookies there.  How can one resist?  I got a huge coconut macaroon called a Matterhorn cookie.  I should've taken a picture, it looks just like the mountain.

Sandy got a HUGE mickey head sugar cookie.  And he loved it.



Loved it with a deep and tender love.



But the love wasn't deep enough to keep him from devouring it, luckily.





I spent a lot of time the last day sitting with sleeping babies and saving seats and etc.  It was pretty low key which was good for me because I'm just tired right now.



And everybody was always very happy to see us when they got done with their various exciting activities.



Max and Scooter both got to picked for the Jedi training academy so that was pretty exciting.  Max is pretty much an expert by now.  But evidently it never gets old.  Maybe next time he'll actually strike down one of the Darths.



There they are, the Utah Valley Marathon Randles!!



At one point we were waiting for our fast pass time to come so we could go on Soarin and Dad found this great little lookout spot by the splashy rapids ride.  The kids were having so much fun.  It might've been the most fun they had the whole entire trip.



Even Gigi was having fun because she was going up and down the stairs over and over again.



And then of course they were all totally drenched and got very cold when we went to Soarin, but oh well.  I guess the whole point was everybody having fun and that was accomplished.



Sandy got to go on Soarin with me for the first time and he was pretty scared but enjoyed it quite a bit once it got going.  Best ride ever still as far as I'm concerned.



These two crazies had a ton of fun together, they stayed out later than anybody else and rode all sorts of big scary rides.  They're good company for each other, neither one of them ever really wants to be done.



So since they're so crazy and can't ever really be done, we'll just have to do it again.

::disney with the fam 2::

Cars Land!  The first thing that we did was get in line for the new Cars ride.  The big kids went with most of the grownups, and Grandpa and I stayed with the little ones.  We found a nice spot at a nearby cafe with a view of the ride--kind of loud as the cars drove by every 2 seconds--but a great view and some shade.  We had fun playing with the little girls and feeding them.





Bryce and Nancy dropped by and Gina got to a little Lucy time.  We sure do like little girls.



More Grandpa and Lucy.  We took all the little ones for a while so that Cammon, Lorri and Gram could take Scooter and Max on the Tower of Terror.  Evidently everybody loved it.  We had fun going on Monsters and checking out Bug land with the splashy leaky faucet.  Lucy once again just loved hanging with Grandpa.



At one point I forced Gigi to stay in my arms long enough for a selfie.  She was so unimpressed.  She'll figure out that I'm cool eventually.



Here we are at the Aladdin show.  It was really fun.  I didn't even know it was there!  It was definitely nice to have a break from the warm sun and sit down for a while.



Look how insane I look in this ride picture.  I haven't had a good ride picture for a while.  But this is crazy bad.  It looks like my hair is trying to run away or something.  I like how Sandy's covering his ears.  Once again he was super brave and had a ton of fun on the rides.


And now, prepare yourself.  Here are the 3 million pictures of Lucy in here little Tinkerbell outfit.  You'll be shocked to know that I actually only picked the best ones, so yes, there were MORE taken.  But she's so dang cute I had to put a bunch up here.



You can see that she and Mom have something special going on.  They understand each other somehow.















And Lucy loves me too.  It makes me pretty happy that she can't look at me without smiling.

Here are the rhyming cousins.  Sandy and Andy get along super well and had a lot of fun together on this trip.  I can't remember exactly what precipitated this hug, but it was a good one.



See, they're still hugging in the background.  Impressive!

And to end this day, here's my silly son looking ridiculously silly in Grandpa's hat.  When doesn't he look silly though?

::disney with the fam 1::

The kiddos and I were lucky enough to get invited on a trip to Disneyland with the grandparents and Cammon & Lorri's family.  Kris had to keep on aworkin' so we could afford our rock & roll lifestyle, so I had to man up and take all the kiddos to the airport by myself!

They were all really good on the flights.  They're pretty great little travelers.  We made it to SoCal and my Dad came and picked us up (which was soooo nice.)  And there we were.  We had a pretty great room with a lot of space and enough beds for all the silly people.



Here are the kiddos on the first morning.  Isn't Lucy's outfit to die for?  Her mouse ears were a major hit at the park.  I had so many ladies ask me where I got them.
Sandy was pretty delighted by her outfit too.  He's a Lucy fan.  And a Minnie Mouse fan.



And off we went!  We did lots of swapping around of babies and kids and taking turns to go on rides.  Sandy is such a good sport.  He's hardly scared of anything at all.  I think we were maybe on Thunder Mountain in this photo?


And here's the crew of kiddos.  They got along really well.  There was some good bonding and hardly any dissension.  But poor Gigi didn't have the best trip.  I think it was all a little intense for her.



But look at them all in the cute little Disney outfits that Gram got for them!  So stinking cute!




Sillies!



Grandpa loved carrying Lucy around in the Ergo.  She kept patting his beard with this really perplexed look on her faced.  I couldn't ever get quite fast enough to catch that moment on camera though.

She took some pretty great naps in the carrier and was very patient getting dragged around all day long.

And here's Grandpa with his girls.  He's such a great kid person.  He loves the kids and they love him.  We like this photo because it really shows the personality of these silly little ones.

Sandy picked out his souvineer on the first day.  There was no dithering about what he would get.  He knew exactly what he wanted.  A LIGHT SABER.  And once he got it he didn't want to do any more rides or shows.  All he wanted to do was play with the saber and norrowly miss slicing random passersby in half.  All this was even though I wouldn't let him take it out of the packaging until we got back to the hotel--mean mom.

We were waiting by Winnie the Pooh while Gram & Max went on some big exciting rides.  Sandy made some friends and played serious Jedi games while I fed the baby and talked to Dad.  It was a lot of fun.



And here's my sweet little guy sleeping with his light saber in hand.  Happy boy.  Max was happy too.  He got to spend lots of time with Gram and to go on lots of big rides, two of his favorite things.

::::

Kris looks all tired and scruffy because he'd just gotten back from his Moab trip and he was tired and scruffy but happy.

But honestly that just didn't impress Lucy when it came time for her to eat her dinner.
She was even unimpressed with his special baby feeding faces.



As you can see she's really only interested in me.  You can read it on her face--"you're having HIM feed me because, why?"



I love them both.



And by the way, lest you think Kris is better at this than he really is, I fed her 99% of that baby food and he just took over for the last 1%.  But he's still awesome.  Mostly because of his baby feeding faces.