Rebecca

Oh my.  Apparently blogging about Disneyland took everything out of me because I just haven’t been able to bring myself to blog since.  Good thing Dallas snuck a couple of posts up.

Where to begin?  How about here:

‘Tis the season to look like you swallowed a baby pumpkin.

Not looking forward to when I appear to have swallowed a full-grown watermelon.

But yes!  It’s true!  Baby #4 is on its way!  It’s been about four weeks since the above photo was taken, and we found out we are having….another girl!

Dallas and I were convinced I was gestating a boy and I still can’t keep it straight in my head that baby he is actually a she.  Coming up with yet another girl name is proving beyond impossible.  Our best options so far have been Caroline’s suggestions:  Dora or Rapunzel.  Baby girl is doomed.

I feel really good now.  The first trimester was probably my worst yet (even though I never actually threw up).  I was really nauseous though and had no energy at all.  It’s nice to feel more like myself now.  The baby is due March 7th.

Now to continue onto some Halloween pictures.  My extended family didn’t know I was pregnant, so I decided to let my costume do the announcing.

Here I am – a pregnant Minnie Mouse with my baby Minnie.  Brooke is a peacock.  There was another Minnie in the house and a cute little Alice:

My aunt and uncle’s family:

My mom and her sister:

Another aunt and uncle’s family:

The patient costume was best when viewed from the back:

My grandparents:

We grew pumpkins in our garden.  We got exactly one pumpkin that was large enough for carving.  Dallas carved that one while the kids just drew faces on theirs.  Less work and mess.  Works for me!

We went to Brooke’s school to watch the costume parade.  We killed time taking pictures:

The best picture I got of my little peacock in the parade:

Here are the kids on Halloween.  We still had Disneyland on the brain and decided our family costume theme would be Disney.  Brooke is the peacock from Sophia the First (I guess there are peacocks on that show?), Caroline is Rapunzel, and Spencer is Lightning McQueen (or “Lightmeen a Queen” as he says):

You’ll recall I was Minnie.  Dallas was going to go as a tourist.  He was going to wear one of our matching Disney shirts and a camera around his neck.   It would have been so cute had he been able to make it to the family costume party.  Oh well.

The kids trick-or-treated and then came home to raid their loot:

Brooke loved to use the candy bones to make skeletons:

I probably should have skipped asking Spencer to say “cheese”:

And there you have it!  The Golden Family 2013 Halloween post is now a wrap!

We’ve finally come to the end of our Disney trip.  The final day.  Am I the only one out there that’s sad that this series of Disney posts is coming to a close?

Don’t answer that.  You know you find looking at other people’s vacation photos riveting.

Our last full day started with the kids watching Disney shows while the grown-ups got ready:

Caroline decided she had had enough of the matching shirts and chose to be a princess instead:

She got into her princess dress and said, “Now I want my picture taken with Mickey and Minnie.”  I started trying to explain to her that it’s hard to just run into Mickey and Minnie, and we might not see them together, so don’t be sad, blah, blah, blah.  Then I saw she had gathered the house’s stuffed Mickey and Minnie and was already posing for her picture:

Well, fulfilling that picture desire was easier than I expected.

The Toy Story ride had been closed all week.  It finally opened on Friday so we went there first thing:

We went to A Bug’s Land again to do some rides we missed and we ran into Flik:

Brooke had fun trying to dodge the water:

Caroline got comfortable while we waited for the Muppet Show to start:

Spencer and Dallas also took a load off:

Our rave reviews convinced the rest of my family to see the Aladdin show so we all met up for that:

Just as enjoyable the second time around (even if this viewing included a wiggly baby behind me kicking my chair, raking his fingers through my hair, and playing peek-a-boo).

Dallas noticed there was a place where we could learn to draw Disney characters.  I wasn’t too interested in this, but then he mentioned that he thought Brooke would really enjoy it.  Duh.  Of course she would!  They taught us how to draw Jack Skellington.  Brooke was so careful to listen to the instructions and do just what the teacher said to do.

Her picture:

The top picture of Jack is what she drew during the class.  The bottom picture is what she did the second we got back to Belle’s Castle that evening.  She spent a lot of time drawing more pictures all around the border of her paper.  I wish we had gone to more of those classes because Brooke really did like it.

Caroline was nervous to draw her picture and kept telling me over and over again before it started that I would need to help her.  She also did a great job listening and following directions and this is the Jack Skellington she drew all by herself.  I think it’s cute:

Spencer wasn’t so great at following directions (obviously lacking the listening and fine motor skills necessary for such a task), but he was still happy drawing on a paper with Dallas.  His picture is on the left and Dallas’s is on the right (in case you couldn’t tell):

And here’s mine:

We found Chip ‘n Dale’s Treehouse:

Finally, the show we had all been waiting for…Mickey and the Magical Map!  We tried to see this show several times earlier, but our plans were always foiled.  Since it was our last day, we made it a point to see it.  I thought it was kind of a dorky show and my brother thought the moral of the story was to disobey so it really wasn’t worth our great efforts to see it.  We did get a cute picture out of it, though:

Brooke and Caroline gathered up the streamers after the show was over and took very good care of their little souvenirs:

It was Friday so the parks were open later than they had been the rest of the week.  Since it was our last day we decided to stay as late as the kids’ behavior allowed.  On our other Disney days, the parks closed at 8:00 which I actually loved because we were able to get home at a somewhat decent hour and put the kids to bed before they really got delirious from lack of sleep.

What we didn’t realize was that on Friday Disneyland actually gets MORE crowded as the day goes on.  By 8:30 the lines were so much longer than they had been all week and our kids were starting to go crazy so we were happy to call it a day and head home on the monorail:

The next morning, Spencer had to get in his last moments of playing with the cars before we left:

We said our good-byes:

And then Dallas and I cried because we didn’t want this vacation to ever end:

Here we are driving home.  Coincidentally my sister and I realized we were within one mile of each other the whole way home from Beaver to Salt Lake:

Have I sufficiently conveyed how much fun we had on our trip?  It was so fun.  Dallas and I just couldn’t stop talking about how much fun we were having.  When we were driving home we were remarking that we couldn’t think of a single thing that would have made the trip better.  It was just that perfect.  Our kids were so well-behaved.  The house we stayed at was so nice.  My whole family was there.  We had matching shirts.  There were cheese balls.  The things we did each day were so enjoyable.  We loved every second of our trip.  It was just so fun.  Take my word for it.

And if you don’t believe me, well, I have about seven blog posts you can reread proving my point.

Our next Disneyland day started off with a bang (according to Brooke) before we ever even made it into the theme park.  Brooke spotted roller skating My Little Ponies in the Build-A-Bear store.  Now she thinks her life will never be complete until she owns at least one:

The Dumbo ride was first on the docket:

Then Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride:

Of course we had to have another stomach-churning experience in the teacups:

We went to Tomorrowland and saw the robot ASIMO do tricks:

My favorite memory of Tomorrowland was when Caroline had to go to the bathroom.  The men/women signs outside the restrooms had aliens on them.  Caroline ran up to the women’s side, paused, studied the sign, ran over to the men’s side, looked at that sign, ran once more over to the women’s side, then came up to me with a confused look and said,  “Mom, I can’t tell which side is for girls.”

We tried out the Buzz ride:

They had a Halloween Carnival.  It had some goats we could pet:

Games:

And lots of characters just waiting for us to meet them:

The girls started working on a coloring project:

…And were surprised to be joined by Donald!

You can see Donald’s drawing on Brooke’s paper:

Here’s Caroline’s cute picture:

Then we visited Toontown:

It was almost time for Mickey’s Soundsational Parade so we decided to stay for that.  We killed time inside this little theater watching some of the first Mickey cartoons that were created:

Then it was parade time.  The kids loved seeing each of the floats.  Spencer was especially fun to watch.  Each time he saw a new float he’d say with great excitement, “Look!  There’s another one comin’!”

We had to get a shot of the Genie since he was the kids’ favorite character after the Aladdin show:

A new vacation day meant new matching shirts to wear:

Disneyland!

We had to get a shot in front of the castle even if it meant squinting in the full sunlight:

Brooke tried her hand at driving on the Autopia ride.  She took her job as driver very seriously:

I got a picture of Dallas, Caroline, and…Spencer’s arm:

We met up with Jacob’s family and did the Storybook boat ride:

That’s a cute teacup:

Do you prefer your tea with one child or three?

Laurie and her kids on the It’s a Small World boat:

And again:

We were waiting to ride the train and I just couldn’t help myself.  Those cute, blue matching shirts were begging me to take picture after picture:

Laurie suggested we all ride the ferry over to Tom Sayer’s Island and let the kids explore the island.  I had no idea what this was, but it ended up being great fun for the kids.  There were dark, scary caves to explore:

And pirate’s treasure!

This pirate treasure kept the kids entertained for the longest time, and I don’t really understand why it was so fun for them, but whatever!

We hopped over to California Adventure for the World of Color show:

But first we hit up the Monsters, Inc. ride again.  Spencer was excited:

Caroline is looking a little tired as we wait for the World of Color show to start:

Spencer is looking surprisingly perky considering the hour:

Dallas and Brooke are looking pretty cute:

I was calling Jacob to try to coordinate a meet-up: 

It worked!  They found us:

The World of Color was a fun show.  They had fountains that sprayed water up and they projected scenes from movies on the water and made the fountains look like they were different colors.

Then the kids promptly fell asleep on our walk back to our car.  Perfect!