California Vacation: Part I--Disneyland

Okay, I figured I better get something posted soon or people are going to really think I'm ill. I am feeling much better now. Thanks to all of you for your well wishes. I think the plane ride really helped to prolong my cold an extra couple days by really filling up my sinuses with gunk. But I am definitely on the mend now.

As with the past couple years, the last half of January represents Super Bowl crunch time for Andrew. He typically spends many MANY hours at the Famous Group office producing the in-game graphics for the stadium. Last year we didn't see him for three weeks. So, I decided this year we would be traveling with him to California and the girls and I would be having our own vacation while he worked! At least we all would be in the same city. On January 19th, we all traveled to Los Angeles and made our way to Anaheim for one last family hoorah before not seeing Andrew for awhile. Saturday night we met up with Cousin Ed, Yolie and Patrick in Downtown Disney and (ironically enough) ate at the restaurant Naples. We enjoyed a nice dinner and then visited the World of Disney store with them and browsed the plethora of Disney gear. They were sweet enough to get the girls each a bracelet (Tink for Ella and Princesses for Lily) while we were there. (THANKS guys!) They are still playing with them every day!

We visited Disneyland for the day on Sunday the 20th. I was nervous about this whole thing. First, we have Lily who seems to be scared of even little things. How would she deal with even the mild rides at Disney. Would we be paying all that money for one of us to sit on a bench with her the whole day? Then there is the whole thing about standing in line after line with little kids, how would they handle that? Among many other things.... Well, it turned out great! We followed the "Dumbo-in-a-day-or-die" Touring Plan from the book "The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland". This book told us the best way to move through the park with small tots and make use of our time. Supposedly cutting down on our line wait time 3 hours overall. I'm sold! We followed the book's suggestions for the Nemo ride and only had to wait 25 minutes instead of 2-3 hours! Who would wait that long for a RIDE?

We used my Ergo to carry one of the kids on my back and the other one either walked or was carried by Andrew. It worked out great to not have to maneuver a stroller through the crowds of people or worry about where to park it or keep track of it. And the kids enjoyed taking turns riding in it.

We saw Nemo, Peter Pan's Flight, Ella did the teacups while Lily went on the Dumbo ride. We visited Toon Town and saw Minnie's House, Mickey's house, Donald's boat and Goofy's house. Ella rode the kiddie roller coaster with Andrew. Then after a nice break and nap at the hotel, we did Small World, the Winnie the Pooh Ride, and the train. An then back Toon Town for some more Mickey fun. We shopped in the Tinkerbell store and the Princess store. And finished off the day by going back to our hotel room where we could watch the Fireworks show right from our window (inside where it was warm!). They had some really great fireworks too. Rainbow effects, cubes, very cool stuff. Ella loved it!

We all had a lot of fun and Lily wasn't scared of anything all day. She even was happy to take a picture of all of us with the Mickey character and he tickled her. She was so excited by that and kept telling us about it. So Disney was not a disaster. :-)

On Monday morning, we grabbed breakfast and headed to Studio City/North Hollywood to check into the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn.

Just a quick note....

....to say we've been in California for nine days. Just got back yesterday. I have a lot to update but I have a cold. :-( Will hopefully have new posts by the end of the week! And it is currently 12 below zero here and feels like 36 below. Oh my GOD! That's REALLY cold! UGH!

To the Mall of America and Back

We spent SEVEN hours at the Mall of America on Saturday to help Emilee celebrate her 5th birthday along with three of her other little friends, Mina, Maren, and Emma. All the girls had a blast riding tons of rides, eating ice cream and getting their hair done at Libby Lu. Lily didn't get her hair done (she doesn't really have enough anyway) but did get to pick some makeup and jewelry out. She had a good time roaming around and looking at the dresses and playing with things. We all had a great time and were very happy to get home afterwards as well. We've never spent so much time at the mall!

There was also a cheerleading competition going on and the last group to perform was an adult exhibition squad. Some of their stunts were really amazing! And to top it off, one of Ella teachers (Trice) from My Gym was performing in the squad. So it was really fun for us to see it. Ella said she likes cheerleading now and wants to be a cheerleader. Oh boy. We'll see if she stays interested in that. :-)

Here's some pictures from the day and there are a few more up in the January photo album on Shutterfly.

Ella and Emilee on the airplane ride.

Emilee, Shawn, Andrew and Ella on the kiddie roller coaster ride.

Ella, Mina, Emma, Maren, Emilee and Lily(still waiting for her ice cream)
saying, "We love ice cream!"

A cute picture of Emilee and Ella.

Lily playing hide and seek in Libby Lu. :-)

Ella the Princess

Tid bits

Last night, we took the kids to My Gym where Ella has her weekly gym class. Once a month, they have a Parents Night Out where you can drop your kids off (for a fee) from 5:30-8:30. They order pizza, play games, and do activities. I've been thinking it would be a good thing to try, especially for Lily. She's going to preschool in the fall and we've never really left her anywhere away from home with someone who wasn't a relative. So I thought this would be a good way to get her used to us taking her somewhere and leaving her for a little bit. I figured this would be a good trial because it was a place she was familiar with. And Ella was there to keep an eye on her too. :-) They both did really well when I dropped them off. They said goodbye fine and I just sort of wandered out. Lily was playing and I sort of peeked through the window once I was outside. She was kind of standing there shell-shocked, but not crying. I was a little worried, but left to go pick up Andrew.

Andrew and I were just spending some time together shopping the sales at the mall and returning some things we had laying around the house for a while. We took a swing by the gym on our way there to peek and see if Lily was okay. And she was sitting next to Ella eating her pizza. She was doing great! Whew! I asked Trice (one of the teachers) when we picked her up how she did. Trice said Lily did great. She got a little sad and asked for me once or twice, but then went off to play again. So the experience was not traumatizing for her or for me. ;-)

Nothing else too exciting to report right now. Later in the day we're going to Mall of America for Emilee's birthday. Ella will be in heaven, unlimited park rides AND a makeover at Libby Lu! I hope she can contain her excitement and not spontaneously burst! :-)

But just wanted to share this cute story about Lily. Last night at bedtime Lily says to Andrew, "Okay, it's bedtime, let's read." She had Andrew lay in her bed and then she sat in the little chair next to it (like we do when we read to her at bedtime).

She grabbed an Ariel book, opened the book and "read" the following:

"Ariel says, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Ella. The End."

Then closed the book. :-)

******

Other total randomness for you. Andrew has been enamored by the latest Indiana Jones Lego sets (can be found at Target). He REALLY really wants to buy the set, but can't bring himself to pay the money to play with something once and then have it sit around (yes, I am talking about a 31-year-old.). And since the girls aren't really old enough to enjoy regular lego sets yet, he can't use the excuse that its for them. Anyhoo, he was daydreaming one afternoon on the computer, searching for the lego sets online, and came across this youTube video. Although this is pretty cool, someone has entirely too much time on their hands!

Frosty and other winter fun

It was 40 degrees yesterday so we decided it would be a great day to try out the girls' new sleds. We started off making a snowman. Ella has been asking for a month now to make a snowman but the snow was just not good enough to pack. Well, with the warmer temps and wetter snow, Frosty "came to life one day". ;-)

We broke in the sleds on a tiny hill in our backyard which was just right for Ella. Lily didn't like touching the snow. She mostly played on the neighbors swing set while we played with the snow. Andrew convinced Lily to try riding on his shoulders for one sled run. Okay, to me, that would be much scarier than just going down the sled normally, but she liked the idea, so they tried it. One time was enough for her. It was really fun sledding (or "sliding" as native Minnesotans call it) and I haven't been on a sled since New Year's Eve 1994. Yes, it's been nearly 14 years now. Holy cow, that does not seem THAT long ago. Man, time goes by fast. Anyway, that fateful New Year's, I spun into a metal light pole on the side of the sledding hill and made a trip to the ER to make sure my ribs weren't fractured. They weren't broken, but definitely bruised. To say the least, I was not that much fun to party with that New Year's Eve! Yeah, good times.

This Christmas, I got a new zoom lens for my camera. Yesterday was a perfect opportunity to try it out and I love love LOVE it! It takes much crisper pictures than the standard lens that came with my camera. I'm a little sad the smaller lens doesn't take quite as nice pictures. But I'm loving the new lens and even though its bulkier, its fun to use. I'll be toting it around to our various outdoor activities. I'm sure at some point when the girls become more aware, they are going to be very embarrassed by their mother lugging around such a gigantic, conspicuous camera, especially compared to the microscopic digital cameras out there today. But, boy, its amazing the quality of pictures you can get with a good camera. Okay, enough photographic gushing. I'll be uploading pictures to the Shutterfly site later this afternoon so you'll be able to enjoy the MILLIONS of pictures we took yesterday. There's a few in this post to tide you over. :-)

The girls and I ventured outside again this afternoon. This time, Lily walked in the snow for a while. At first she had to hold my hand, but after a bit I made her do it by herself. She kept thinking she was "stuck" in the snow if her boots sunk in at all. And she did go down the hill with me on the sled at least three or four times. So there's improvement. She was interested in going down by herself and told me so. But when the reality of it hit. As I was about to put her on the sled, she changed her mind. At least she seemed to enjoy being out there a little more today.

Enjoy your winter adventures whether they are snow or sun related! :-)

Random Updates

After finishing the girls rooms at 5pm on the dot New Year's Eve, we left the girls with my dad and Clare and had a very nice dinner at Biaggi's and went to see National Treasure 2. The movie was pretty much as entertaining as the first one. It followed the same formula, but the acting was even more forced and over the top. No matter what, it was really nice for Andrew and I to get out and go to a movie just by ourselves.

We finished out the rest of the week getting the house in order and cleaned up from the holidays and home improvement projects. We got back into a regular routine of speech, school, and gym class. Then Andrew's parents visited for the weekend. They came bearing gifts--actually just the ones we had already opened in Racine and couldn't bring on the plane. The girls were excited to have the rest of their new toys and it was nice that it was spread out so they had more new things to play with. Andrew and Tom put up the purple crown molding in Ella's room which completes the room project entirely. And the girls had a good time with Andrew, Bubba and Grand Pat at Chuck E. Cheese on Saturday. I got to have a some girls' time away and had lunch with my friend Melissa and then we saw the movie Juno (hilarious movie! We laughed through 2/3rds of it!). Oh, and Bubba got the girls' new swing hung in the basement so they can have "outside" fun inside anytime they want!

New Photos!

Okay, finally, there's new photos up. Our startup disk was full so we had to clear a bunch of stuff off the computer just so I could get the photos off the camera! But here you go, LOTS of Christmas photos and some home improvement progress photos. Enjoy!

The Final Product

Lily's new Princess room!





Ella's new Tinkerbell room

Rooms for Two

So, when we moved in, we loved how almost all of our house was painted with the exception of the overly wine-themed but tolerable kitchen, and the *gasp* wallpaper in Lily's room. Ella's room is painted with these really cools stripes in bright, fun colors. Lily's room was khaki wallpaper. Now, I'm an only child so I can only speculate, but I believe at some point Lily might complain if her room was left so dull compared to Ella's. I've also heard from various people with siblings that we might want to spruce up Lily's room at some point because Ella's room was so cool. SO, I have been wanting to remove the wallpaper and paint in there for pretty much a year now. Well the opportunity came on the 26th.


A before shot of the wallpaper

I half-joking said to Andrew now might be a good time to do it because we had my mom and Dave to watch the kids while we worked. Well, he thought about it and actually said he thought it was a good idea. I was kind of surprised but we jumped right in. We visited Home Depot, bought a chair rail, paint and other supplies. And rented a wallpaper steamer. As with all these types of projects, things take longer than expected or end up being harder than first thought. So what Andrew estimated being a three day project has turned into a 5 or 6 day project. But that's still a pretty quick turn around.


Patched and Primed, ready to go!

In the meantime, Ella has requested on multiple occasions that we turn her room into a Tinkerbell room. At first I ignored this because she's only had her fish-themed room a year. But then again, I chose that for her. And since again, I'm new to the sibiling thing, we decided to just spruce her room up a bit, since Lily was getting a new room. So we got Tinkerbell bedding (a great deal on a bed-in-a-bag from Costco), some decals for the walls, and we're going to put up crown molding painted in a Tinkerbell purple. We also bought her a new bed, trundle and nightstand yesterday and rearranged her room. Lily will be getting Ella's old bed (or I should say MY old bed--from about eighth grade!) as we retire the crib to the basement. So really in the course of 6 days, we have redone 2 rooms. Although, the crown molding in Ella's room will probably wait until next weekend when Bubba and Grand Pat come for a visit. :-)


Starting to paint and finishing up the difficult chair rail

Lily's room turned out fantastic with a lavendar on the top of the walls and a bright dark pink (called Strawberry Freeze) on the bottom of the walls with a white chair rail in-between. It will sort of be a Disney Princess room, but not overkill on the Princesses. So hopefully she'll think its as cool as Ella's room. Oh, and as my young cousin (a fifth grader) informed his grandfather at Christmas, "We don't say cool anymore, we say sweet now." Sorry to inform young Mike, but that is not a new phrase. As I recall in my old age, I said that as a kid in middle school. What goes around, comes around I guess. I digress...anyway, hopefully both Ella and Lily will think their rooms are "sweet" and it will last them for awhile. :-)

And a HUGE thank you to my mom and Dave for all their work watching the kids and making meals for us the last few days. Especially when they didn't really sign up for all that when they decided to spend the holidays with us. :-)

And Happy New Year's to everyone!
(Photos coming very soon, I promise!)

The Christmas Letdown

I don't mean "letdown" as in disappointing or unexciting. I mean letdown as in, time to recuperate, relax, regroup. We spent all month getting geared up for Christmas. It was especially fun this year with Ella so into it and having a full understanding of the holiday (we even began to tell her The Christmas Story and that Christmas was celebrating Jesus' birthday--not just about presents). However, after 5 or 6 days straight of celebrating, family get togethers, and present opening. We were exhausted! We have spent the last five days recuperating and not even leaving the house much. :-)


Celebrating with the Comandes

We started the festivities by flying to Racine Dec. 20th. We flew not wanting to risk a minimium 6 1/2 hour drive in bad weather. We enjoyed visiting with Andrew's parents and brother and sister-in-law as well as the Comandes and a few of the Isaacsons. About halfway through gift opening, Lily was so overwhelmed she had to leave the room and relax a bit. This was somewhat of a theme throughout the rest of our Christmas festivities. She still had two Santa gifts to open on the 26th because she just couldn't do it on the morning of the 25th. We really enjoyed our visit to Wisconsin. I especially enjoyed my annual trip to the salon for pedicures with my sister-in-law Jenelle and our cousin-in-law Gina. We were trying to figure out how long we've been doing it, it's either 3 or 4 years now. But we always have a good time! Especially with coffee and chocolate in the mix.


Eating and getting ready to open gifts with some of the Isaacsons.

We flew back to MN on the 24th after being delayed for nearly 2 hours at the Milwaukee airport. Upon arrival, we went to B-pa and Gramma Clare's house for a Christmas celebration. Then came home and promptly put the girls to bed. It was nice to have Santa's arrival as an excuse. We even checked out Santa's progress and impending arrival on an internet Santa tracker! Poor Lily though. I've already mentioned how she is scared of Santa. Well, we kept telling her she had to go to bed so Santa could come. Well, she got all upset and didn't want to go to bed. We finally figured out, she thought Santa was going to come in her room and see her. We assured her that Santa just comes, eats his cookies, and then leaves presents in the family room. After that, she was fine and excited. :-)

Leaving cookies for Santa before bed and the gifts that Santa left!

Christmas morning the girls actually slept later than we thought they would and when Ella got up, she didn't even notice the two giant sleds or mini-trampoline in the corner of the family room. Talk about a letdown for those of us who helped Santa get ready and stayed up putting said trampoline together! Once she did notice though, she was pretty excited about everything.


Don't worry Lily's Christmas is almost over. :-)

We spent the late morning (we were late again, but I beat my dad! He's notorious for being late on Christmas, so as long as I beat him, I was satisfied) and early afternoon at Grandma Mazie's to hang out with the Engelhart family. It was loud, boisterous and fun as always! After that, we headed over to my uncle Joe's to visit with my mom's side of the family. We enjoyed a nice relaxing time there as well as another delicious meal.


Ella with Santa at the Engelharts and everyone at Zawislak family Christmas.

Whew! Christmas was over. We were all set to enjoy the rest of the week with my mom and Dave visiting. Until I got the bright idea on the 26th that maybe we should start a home improvement project. Since my mom and Dave were here and could watch the kids for us. See next post for more on this project and pictures will soon be uploaded from Christmas and our new project. :-)

Christmas is a long time!

We're getting close now! Just a little over a week away! The trees are trimmed, the presents bought, plans made. Ella sighed and said to me yesterday, "Christmas is a long time." I'm pretty sure she meant, its a long time until Christmas finally gets here. :-) I told her she didn't have to wait long now. Just a few more days. We'll be visiting Bubba's house toward the end of the week and the present opening extravaganza will begin on Friday and not let up until the 26th. I think the kids are going to be very overwhelmed, overstimulated and overtired by the end of the holidays. But they'll have a lot of fun in the process.

We had a nice weekend. Andrew was in California for Friday and Saturday. He went to his company holiday party and then visited the 49ers for their game Saturday night. The girls and I busied ourselves by visiting with B-pa and Gramma Clare. Ella helped me wrap some presents in the morning. She picked out all the bows. :-) And we had Kelly, Hope and Isabelle over to make Spritz cookie press cookies. Although the girls had fun decorating the cookies with various sugars, I learned I am not adept at using a cookie press. I assured Kelly I make a mean chocolate chip cookie. We'll have to make those next time. It also probably didn't help that I was distracted by talking and having a good time myself. I kept forgetting to set the timer and check on the cookies. I think we'll be making a new batch of cookies to give away to people. :-)

We've started a new activity around here. It seems a lot of our weekends I tend to recuperate from the week and do laundry and random things around the house, while Andrew watches the girls. And Andrew tends to be a bit fixated with football during the day on Sunday (is the season over yet?!). We've decided to do "Family Movie Night" on Sunday evenings. We've viewed Jingle All the Way (we discovered this one was probably not the best choice for 2-4 year olds, more like 9 year olds), Daddy Day Care, and last night we had a special treat. We went to the movie theater to see Alvin and the Chipmunks! It was a really good family movie for little kids. Ella LOVED it! She told us she wants to watch it at home. I told her she'd have to wait a bit for that. She said it was silly how the Chipmunks made such a mess of the house and she thought it was funny when Simon was flying around the fan because his balloon got caught. Even Lily was interested in a good part of the movie too. She did much better than she did with Shrek 3. We would love to hear any suggestions you might have for good (preferably non-animated) family movies for future movie nights!

As we get closer to the holidays, we hope you all are finding the time to get everything done, take a deep breath and relax a bit. Enjoy the holidays and festivities, and time with friends and family! Merry Christmas from the Isaacsons!

And another year goes by...

Andrew celebrated his 31st birthday on Tuesday this week. Actually, we really celebrated it on Sunday. That way he could have a full day of relaxation, football, and fun. He opened his gifts Sunday morning. Besides a new jacket and shirt, he received Guitar Hero III (with a wireless controller!). He was pretty excited to receive it and I think we will ALL have fun with it. :-)

Cindy, Shawn and the kids came over in the afternoon to watch the Viking game. Ella, Emilee and I made chocolate chip cookies with Cindy supervising. Andrew and Shawn watched football, side-by-side on the couch, with their laptops open, refreshing the stat tracker every 30 seconds. My dad and Clare joined us for make-your-own-pizzas later on. And we all had a fun evening hanging out.



I think all in all Andrew had a nice birthday! Soon I'll be adding a picture of Andrew and my dad with their chocolate chip cookies complete with birthday candle in it. My dad's birthday was Dec. 1st and we didn't get a chance to celebrate because we were having a blizzard that day. So we added him to the celebration also!

Andrew has been working on a lot of NFL stuff this fall. Recently, he was talking to the Buffalo Bills about Marshawn Lynch. Apparently, when Marshawn gets the ball he goes into a state of mind which he coined "beast mode." It means that at least two or three defenders need to tackle him before he is brought down. Andrew sold them on this idea to do an animation of Marshawn in beast mode with the style of a comic book character. Apparently, it turned out awesome! Here's a link to what fans were saying about the spot after seeing it at the game. And here's what the video looked like:

He's Makin' a List, and checkin' it twice

Last Wednesday, I spontaneously decided we were going to spend the latter part of the morning and early afternoon at Mall of America. My mom sent the girls cute Christmas outfits and Ella had been eyeing them. I figured I might as well give the girls a reason to try them on and wear them. They were so excited they even posed for a bunch of pictures for me beforehand. "To get ready for Santa".



We headed out and there was absolutely no line at the time and we made it right before Santa took his lunch break. Ella was very excited to talk to him; Lily cowered the whole time. But I did convince Lily to get on the rocking horse and she took a couple pictures, but only if I was right next to her. She would have nothing of it when I tried to back out a couple inches so the camera lady could crop me out.



After that, we visited the bookstore, the aquarium and the Lego store. Ella played with the Legos for nearly an hour(!) while Lily and I raced Lego cars and browsed the store. They have some REALLY cool Lego sets out there. I sure hope the girls continue to like them when they get older so I can have an excuse to buy a couple of the more unique sets. :-)

Other than that, we've actually been relaxing a bit around here. Sort of nice before the holidays get underway. We received about 8 inches of snow on Saturday and at least that much again today. It was really coming down out there today! And we still don't have any gas for the snowblower yet. :-( Ella loves playing in the snow this year. She is always asking to go play out there. Lily, again, she's not so sure what she thinks of it all. Once she is bundled up and out there, and you help her walk to where she wants to go, and plop her down, then she's good to go for a few minutes. She thinks she can't walk in her boots and snowpants. :-)


There's some new photos up in the November and December photo albums!

Holiday Book Drive

(I posted this on my book blog, but thought some people who read our regular blog might be interested too.)

Stepping back on my soapbox....ahem...is this thing on? *tap* *tap* :-)

Barnes and Noble is doing their annual book drive again this year. If you have the opportunity and inclination, please visit your local store and buy a book for a child. This program usually teams up with a women's shelter or other organizations who work with children who are in a situation where their parents may not have extra money to buy them books. The Barnes and Noble near us is doing a great thing this year where you can buy a children's book or an adult book (or both); the organization they are giving all the books to will let the children pick a book for their mom and the mom gets to pick a book for their child. I think that's pretty cool!

I'll be taking the girls again this holiday to pick out a book for another child their age and explain to them that some mommys and daddys aren't as fortunate to be able to buy their children books. This way we can help those kids have some of the books we love so much!

Christmas is on its way!!!

We started decorating the front of our house a few weeks ago. I got some grief from our California friends about how early we were putting up our lights. But you know it does get cold here! ;-) We got almost all of them up before it turned really cold the last week and half. Here are some pictures for you:



Ella and I could hardly wait for Thanksgiving to be over before putting our Christmas trees up. That's right, you read that correctly, we have treeS, plural. Three to be exact! We have our tree from past years in the front window with generic, bought as a set, ornaments from Target. Then we have our deal of the century tree in the family room with our special ornaments that all relate to us somehow or someplace we've visited. The third tree is a little Princess tree we got on clearance after last Christmas. The girls have had a ton of fun decorating and redecorating that tree. They helped put the non-breakable ornaments on the other trees. It was very cute, they were all clustered along the bottom. But of course, anal person that I am, I rearranged them later. :-)



We went to Eden Prairie Center the Friday before Thanksgiving to see the arrival of Santa. We waited outside with a crowd of other parents and children and watched Santa arrive in a red wagon pulled by two real reindeer. All the kids were given jingle bells to shake while he rode by. We didn't wait in line to see him that day, but plan to go one day soon. We did pet the reindeer before we left though. Ella is VERY into Santa this year. While we were watching him arrive, she told me, "I want to see him fly, Mom." I told her that Santa only flew on Christmas Eve when he had to deliver all his presents. She also informed me that she was going to ask Santa for an Ariel Glitter Barbie doll and the Curious George Christmas book. I told her those were both very good things to ask Santa for (and easily findable for those little elves helping Santa make his purchases. ;-). When you ask Lily what she wants from Santa, she just says she's scared. She doesn't want to have anything to do with Santa, but informs us that it is okay for Ella to see Santa. Lily also calls Santa by the name of Ho Ho Ho.




So now that the house is all decked out, we're looking forward to more holiday fun the rest of the month!