Thursday, September 23, 2010

Montana Vacation

After Disneyland we ventured to Montana for some country fun! The boys loved running in the woods, playing hide and seek and seeing all the animals. We didn't have any apples to peel for apple pie, but we were fortunate to pick some zucchini from my mom's garden and make homemade zucchini bread (so homemade the flour was freshly ground from wheat grains)! Alex loved stirring and stirring and stirring..Until the boys discovered that eating the flour was more fun than helping make the bread :) While the zucchinis were not this large, this squash seemed to be on steroids...Our next adventure was Splash Montana. This was a community pool complete with water slides, kiddie play pool, and my favorite... Dippin Dots!!! The only thing it was missing was a heater for the pool for the Arizona wimps! Can you tell Little Man is freezing?And of course our ruler follower Little Ax decided to try the kiddie slide head first!!Cows were the next thing on the agenda. We met Bo Jangle, Hello Dolly, and the calf Sweet Sugar Plum. Here's Hello Dolly smiling for the camera!Little Man and Alex loved that Sweet Sugar Plum was just their size!

What better way to end a great family vacation than with a perfect picture with Big and Little Man?

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

More Disneyland Adventures

Usually around August I am a little frustrated and annoyed with the heat in AZ and ready for a vacation. So this year we decided to go to Disneyland for five days and then go to Montana to spend some time with Nana, Pa, and TaTa. The first stop was Lightening McQueen and Tow Mater (if you are wondering our next trip to Disneyland/California Adventure Park will be in 2012 when Radiator Springs opens)

The next morning was the character breakfast. This is the ONLY way both the boys would come within a 1/2 mile of the characters. Which I am perfectly okay with and didn't have to worry about standing in line or elbow punching anyone who cut in front of us... Pa was reunited with his distant relative Brother Bear..

We stayed at the Grand Californian Hotel and as hotel guests were able to get into the park at 7:00am and get into ToonTown an hour before it opened to the public! This was the best! Take a look at the castle and barely anyone was around it, it was great! The only downside is I was ready for lunch and a nap at 9:00am.... Here's the ToonTown Welcome!
Here's Little Man using all his body strength (literally) to open the mailbox...Alex was really excited about driving Toad's car, Little Man on the other hand was a bit frightened.And of course one of our favorite rides is Dumbo. Here's Little Man posing for his picture (this is very rare)

Most of the group pictures were taken by my mom's camera, so I will have to wait to post those, but this is one of the family shots.There's a new Disney collection that is called Vinylmation and you can buy a mystery Mickey Mouse figurine from various collections and trade it at designated stores in the Park and at Downtown Disney to collect different figurines. It was fun and we felt like it was a treasure hunt. And here's Alex's best pirate face...

Overall, it was a fantastic trip and we can't wait to go back to see Radiator Springs!!