Disneyland!

Before I get too far ahead of myself, I should finish up with Halloween. These are the pics from my phone.

Ward Halloween party/chili cook off.

 Halloween jammies with grandma.

Post trick or treat candy evaluation. She done good. Mommy ate most of it. 

Heading out for our trick or treat adventure. We only did our three little streets here. I know there are some really cool places to go, like Val Vista Lakes, and while I would love to take the kids there, I also want to support our neighborhood. If people keep going elsewhere then eventually no one will come here at all. Plus it's a great way to reconnect with neighbors. 

Rewind. The week before Halloween my parents came to town. My mom brought my dad as a surprise birthday present. We had a party for him here with all his old friends. Then my mom surprised him with tickets to Disneyland. We were lucky enough to be able to go and my mom paid for the tickets! 

She sure loves her Papa

 Outside the gates to Disneyland. Why couldn't I manage to get the sign in there?

 It's McQueen! Raegan loves Cars and was super excited to see Lightning McQueen in person. Sadly she was too short to go on the McQueen ride. She would have loved it. It was a really fun ride.

 Super cute the way they captured Radiator Springs so perfectly.

 The winner of the favorite ride award goes to Dumbo of course! Weston had about the same reaction to every ride except one ride in Bug's Life land in CA adventure. He LOVED it and beamed the whole time he rode it. We rode it multiple times. But Reagan only had eyes for Dumbo. Close seconds were the Carousel and the roller coaster in Mickey's Toon Town. She LOVED that roller coaster. She did NOT like any ride that went indoors, whether it was a "scary" ride or not. All those little ones like Peter Pan, she did not like at all.

 Raegan is a big fan of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. So she really enjoyed Toon Town. Weston was extremely uncooperative when it came to taking pictures. Trust me, we tried.

 Michael's brother Tyler has a year pass so he met up with us for a couple hours on both days. The kids of course loved seeing him and so did we.

 Loved seeing Mickey in his house. There was no one in line to see him.

 Matterhorn Fun Fact: They recently redid the tobogan seats for the ride. I thought I would give it a try because I normally don't ride the Matterhorn because it is so jerky it just isn't fun. So I tried it. Still not fun. FYI.

 We probably waited in line the longest for this ride. The stupid train that goes around the park. We waited about 20 minutes, but then the train was already too full so we had to wait for it to come around again, which took another 20 minutes. The kids were not fond of standing around.

 But when we finally got to sit down it was oh so nice!

 Weston was uber excited about the orderliness of this candy display. He's never wanted to destroy anything more.

 Moving around a cone in the McDonalds. Also a highlight of the trip.

The kids did better than I had hoped. We took them home for naps everyday. It was good times. Thanks again to my parents for letting us tag along. Probably won't be doing Disneyland again for a few years. I decided I want my kids to be older so they enjoy it more and we don't have to take a three hour chunk out of our day for naps. 

Halloween and such

Weston cannot resist a good pile of dirt. He also cannot resist anything orderly that could have potential to be strewn about. He embodies chaos. My life for the last 16 months is best described by that word. I do love the little tornado though. Here he is playing in the backyard in a good pile of dirt he discovered. The only thing he wished for at that moment was some water to mix in. 

Raegan was never one to be left behind, so she likes to help in his overall dirtiness.

Add in some blond hair and a club, and I just knew he had to be Bam Bam for Halloween. This of course meant Raegan HAD to be pebbles. She was not happy about it and told me repeatedly that she wanted to be an elephant. Too bad. Maybe she can pick next year. Maybe. But she did enjoy having red hair. And she said to me "people like when I'm Pebbles". She got lots of attention as pebbles, so she didn't fight me too much. But she always let me know her real hearts desire was an elephant.

Carolyn helped me with their costumes quite a bit. Like all the sewing. But I did the measuring, cutting, pinning and gluing. So I was pretty proud of myself. I just can't figure out a bobbin!

Below are pictures of Carolyn's annual Halloween party. The kids absolutely love it ever year. It's like a mini carnival in her backyard. Here you see Weston excelling at the donut on the string game. Except he cheats and uses his hands. He pulled down like four of those suckers and ate about half of each one.

Here is Tracy with her adorable fly. Mack was a Venus flytrap. You've never seen such creativity, I'm sure. His costume was my favorite of Halloween this year.

 Raegan got tons of treats playing all the fun games, including the fish pond, which was her favorite.

Not this fish pond. This is the duck pond. She liked this one too.

The cake walk was another hit.

Pure bliss and excitement. If only she had been allowed to eat any of it.

There was also digging for pirate treasure.

If you got a Halloween care from us, you are familiar with this picture.

This was my second runner up. This one was better. Why did I choose the other one? Not sure. But it was a great Halloween all around. Raegan loved trick or treating. Love these kids. I was probably more excited about their costumes than they were.

Ray Cabin

Every year Carolyn gives all the kids halloween jammies and christmas jammies and tries to take a picture when they are at their worst. The resulting pictures are always a bust. This happens to be the best one, so you can just imagine.

 Happy Grandma. :)

In other news... The first weekend in October we went with a bunch of friends up to the Ray's cabin in Pine. It is really close actually. Like 90 minutes close. And it was nice and cool and really fun to be with so many friends. And even more surprising, the kids did pretty good. They slept well in their unfamiliar beds.

Thank you Chloe and Tyler!

They had super fun swings that went REALLY high.

Philip and Melissa. So in love :)

Lots of blurry shots of kids on the move.

Fun going up and down the ladder to the loft.

Dirty faces, but lots of smiles.

Chloe and Kellen and Brady.

No makeup. Don't judge.

Another blurry one. Sorry guys. Maybe one day I'll learn how to use my camera. Maybe not. At any rate, we love hanging with Chloe and Craig and her cute boys and sweet little baby girl.