Disneyland

Well, it's time to post about Disneyland. We had a good trip and are so glad we went. Mckinley learned how to say Snow White's full name before we left and all she would say is "I want Snow White." Over and over and over. Every time we would talk about Disneyland.

I think she was a little confused when we got there and she saw that there are actually other things to see besides Snow White. But we did make sure she saw her.

We had to wake Mckinley up a 4:20 a.m. to catch our flight. I thought for sure she'd fall asleep on the way to the airport. Or at the airport. Or on the plane. Or on the way to the hotel. Nope. She stayed awake the whole time! Yikes. She was still pretty good though. When we got on the plane all she wanted to do was look out the window at the other planes in the airport. She didn't realize we were sitting in one.

She did fall asleep for like 15 minutes when we drove to go buy our tickets for Disneyland that day. And then I ended up walking back to the hotel with her later for a nap because she wouldn't fall asleep in her stroller at the park. We were as close as you can get to the park though so it was no big deal.

The first ride we went on when we got there was Toy Story. That ride wasn't there the last time I went and it was so fun!

These pictures aren't in order anymore, but the second morning of Disneyland Shannon waited forever in line and we jumped in with her to see the princesses. They only have 3 princesses at a time and we were very lucky to find that Snow White was one of them.

Mckinley was happy to see Cinderella. She knew who she was.

Then we saw Sleeping Beauty and Mckinley just kept saying "I want Snow White."

Last was Snow White and Mckinley was more than happy to meet her and give her a hug and take a picture with her. It was so cute.

The Little Mermaid is the only girlie Disney movie we own so Mckinley watches it over and over. She thought she met Ariel just from seeing her picture on the wall, which was perfect.

This is what she looked like the whole ride. She was mesmerized by everything and wouldn't look away no matter how hard we tried to get her attention. She didn't laugh, smile, or point on the rides. She just stared at everything.

Mckinley's very favorite ride was the carousel. She asked to go on it a few times

Once we taught her to wave, it was so cute, she would wave even when there was no one to wave to.

The first night we were in the park at the end of the day we were wandering around wondering where to go and we went over to Toon Town and walked through Mickey's house. It's usually so crowded but there were no people there and we walked straight through to the end and got to meet Mickey without a wait at all. It was awesome. Mckinley gave him a big high five and was so happy to meet "Me Mouse."

We also went on the Snow White ride and once again, just from seeing a picture of her on the wall, she thought she had met Snow White. (This was before we met her in person.) This ride actually scares a lot of kids but I think she was too young to notice. It didn't seem to bother her at all. It was also the end of the longest day in her life so far, so maybe she was just tired. Either way, it worked out great.

We watched the awesome water show at California Adventure. It was a really cool show but way too long.

Monsters Inc ride with her cousin Brynlee.

We watched the parade one night (and my brother Ken and his wife joined us so that was really cool) and Mckinley was so excited when she saw Snow White coming on the float. She just yelled over and over "Snow White!! Snow White!!" So funny how she was so obsessed with her.

We walked around Downtown Disney one day and Mckinley was hilarious in the Disney Store. She was so excited to see any of the princess barbies. And when she saw some dress up shoes next to the Snow White costume, she sat on the ground and immediately started trying to take her shoes off. It was hilarious. I need to bring her to the Disney store in the mall. She'll probably think she's at Disneyland again. So easy to please at this age.

We spent a very cold, windy day at the beach (not my favorite day of the trip...to say the least).

Mckinley wouldn't touch the sand or the water.

Family picture.

Brrrr...cold.

We drove to Huntington Beach to get some fries at Ruby's out on the pier. We saw some dolphins swimming in the ocean on our way back which was pretty cool. I can't think of anything I love more than seeing dolphins in the wild. Or anywhere really. I need to go to Sea World!

And just for fun, this is a picture of me and Bran on almost the same spot on that pier over 5 years ago the last time we were there. I almost forgot for a minute that I used to have braces. Ha ha, good times.

Anyway, it was a great trip. Mckinley won't remember any of it, but we will. It's so much fun going with kids and watching them enjoy everything. Good to be home too though.

Lack of Posts

There is a reason for my lack of posting: Lack of pictures. I seriously haven't taken hardly any pictures lately. Reason why. Our camera sucks. I am so disappointed with it and I wish I would have realized how much I hated it before it was too late to return it. All of our pictures are blurry. Not to mention it's winter outside and there is nothing to do so we never go anywhere. Also, most of the cute stuff Mckinley is doing these days is more things she's saying, not things she's doing. She is learning so fast! She recognizes the entire alphabet now except for a few letters. She knows most of her shapes, a lot of colors, and a few numbers. And she is way into it all! She loves playing games on the iPhone with shapes, letters, etc. Every time we drive in the car she points out letters she sees on signs, and she gets so excited about them. Lately in the car too she will sit in the back and say "I like...circles! I like....stars!" Ha ha, it's so cute.



As for the iPhone, I feel like a lot of the pictures on there are blurry too. But, the main reason why I don't take tons of pictures on it is because Mckinley is usually playing with it. Lots of the pictures on there look like this.

Anyway, Mckinley is a dream. She is so much fun and we still, after 21 months, cannot get enough of her. She finally decided she likes bread so she eats sandwiches like crazy, crust and all. She even eats the sacrament bread now. She still wants to eat 24/7 and I dread the day when she is strong enough to open the fridge by herself. She asks me to open it for her countless times a day.

We decided to join Brandon's family at Disneyland in a week and we are so excited to take Mckinley and watch her enjoy it. She is excited and knows we are going to see Me Mouse, Arilla (Cindarella), Snow (Snow White), and she knows we are riding on an airplane to get there. She is obsessed with planes and although she probably won't really understand that she is inside one, I'm excited for the trip anyway.

Sick

It's been a while since I've posted. And there's a reason. Mckinley has been SICK. Yuck. I am so tired of winter and her being sick! Brandon vows she will not go to nursery again for the rest of winter.

She's now totally addicted to watching "shows." Heaven help us. :)


The day my parents left Mckinley got a cold. Then that weekend she got the throw up/diarrhea sickness and oh my gosh, it was the worst. We scrubbed so much barf and poop out of her clothes/blanket/sheets/mattress pad, and yes, even her stuffed animal. And did SO many loads of laundry. It was by far the hardest time I have ever had of being a mother.

She finally got over the stomach crap and has still had a little bit of a cough and runny nose this week. Yesterday we took her to Church, just sacrament meeting mind you, and then last night she had a horrible cough all through the night. Does it ever stop?

She is still so happy and adorable even when she's sick. But oh, I just feel so bad for her and want her to be 100% healthy again.

Lonely

Well, my parents are gone. And this house is LONELY!! I miss them. Mckinley and I dropped them off at the airport yesterday and now the house feels so empty.

I realized I didn't even take a single picture of them with Mckinley while they were here. Oops.

Speaking of Mckinley, remember how I said she likes her shapes? Here is a video (it's a little long, I won't be offended if you don't finish it) of her naming some of her shapes. This was back when the only letter she knew was R. Just now I drew an M, H, W, O, A, R, D, B and she recognized all those. She is learning so fast!



She has been watching a lot of movies lately and now she is a little addicted. One of her favorites is our wedding video. Now after having watched that a million times, anytime she sees someone kiss on TV she has to reach around and kiss Brandon. It is so stinking cute! On a side note though, we are thinking maybe we need to hide all the DVD's for a while. Out of sight, out of mind. We hope.

Kristen is Married! Wahoo!!

Okay, wow, that took a lot of time to upload this pictures. Some of them are from the photographer so I had to upload them individually. Anyway, I couldn't care less about the order. All that matters is Kristen is married! I am so so so so happy for her.

She and Dayne had their reception on Thursday night and then the sealing and lunch were on Friday. It seemed weird in the beginning but I think it worked out pretty well.

Love that Mckinley is looking at me in this pic!


Outside the temple waiting for pics to start.


Ahhh...sweet.

Adorable!

I stayed and helped Kristen the whole time with pictures since she was switching back and forth from her coat (that she made) and her veil and stuff. I had so much fun staying with them and chatting with the married photographer couple. (Pointe Digital, they did an awesome job.)

Check out that blue blue sky!

I had to put the veil somehwere while I was holding it. Ha ha ha.

My two out of state brothers flew in for the wedding so we were all there except Amy who is on her mission. :( Missed her.

Sisters.

Mckinley looked so cute in this little dress that Kristen made for her 2 days before the wedding. She loved wearing it too!

Family pic.

Best friends.

Great family picture. Too bad it wasn't quite complete...Missing Ken, Kjera, Elizabeth, and Todd's 3 boys.

Anyway, the reception, sealing, and lunch were all amazing. Dayne's mom is a caterer, she did all the food and it was delicious!!!! What a great event. Kristen and Dayne are off cruising in Jamaica and other such places and I am so happy for them but a little jealous too. He he.

Life

Uh....how did I let so much time pass since I last posted? Well, I guess Mckinley was sick for a good week (not fun), then she gave me a cough, which isn't that big of a deal, but not the most fun thing ever. And then my parents came home from China and we have a wedding this week. Wahoo!!

Mckinley is better now. We luckily never had to take her back to the hospital although that next Wednesday night I was worried we might... She has been slowly getting better and has a little bit of a lingering cough but that's it.

So...the week she got sick my parents were supposed to come home from China that Thursday. They got delayed a day and a half which sucked because we were so excited to see them, but they finally did make it home safe and sound.

We had a couple bridal showers for Kristen that Saturday which were really fun and made me so much more excited for her wedding. Not that I wasn't excited before, it just made it more real.

Anyway, this week has been busy. I thought there would be more relaxing and just hanging out with my parents but my mom is almost always gone running errands and stuff. Oh well, it has still been awesome to have them home and to have them see how big Mckinley is.

Now, for some pictures. If you can tell, Mckinley's doll is wearing one of her diapers. She totally takes care of her dolls, she gets wet wipes and wipes their nose, face, hands, and feet. She wants me to help her put diapers on them. She'll go in the kitchen and get bibs for them. She tries to feed them her sippy cups or crackers. It's all absolutely adorable.


I think I was making cookies in the kitchen for Kristen's shower and Mckinley decided that instead of eating her yogurt she would spread it all over her tray, face, clothes, and anything else she could reach. I'm thinking I should let her try out finger painting some day because that's pretty much what she was doing and she loved it.


Okay, this picture I love. I went to Kristen's with my mom and dad the other day to help her rearrange some stuff in her house now that she is swapping out roommates for a husband. Mckinley was so cute and wanted to help clean. She walked all around the house with this rag wiping the walls, desks, my pants, my shirt, anything she thought needed to be cleaned. It was awesome.

Kristen went to Hong Kong to visit my parents when they were serving there in 2010 and she bought these cute matching jackets, one for her and one for Mckinley. We've been waiting a long time for the jacket to fit Mckinley. It's so cute.

I didn't want to feel left out so we took one of me wearing it too...

Mckinley is so fun and is changing so so fast. Brandon and I were watching some videos of her the other day from when we first moved into my parents house just 5 months ago and we couldn't believe how much she has changed. Especially her hair. I didn't realize how long it is compared to back then! I can't believe she'll be 2 in 3 and a half months.

She is really into shapes, thanks to three things. The iPhone, Baby Einstein, and the game Perfection. She first learned to match shapes with a game on the iPhone. Then she learned to pick out certain shapes if you told her which ones to grab from the game Perfection. She can put all the shapes in their places in Perfection. Now, if she's watching the shapes movie from Baby Einstein she can recognize a few different shapes when they come up on the screen. And I can even draw the following shapes on a piece of paper and she will tell me what they're called. Circle, rectangle, triangle, heart, star, moon, diamond, oval.

Also randomly she knows the letter R and the letter A. She loves playing with her sponge letters in the bathtub.

She will come up to me or Brandon, grab our finger, and drag us where she wants us to go and say "come."

She loves to color, but mostly just with a pen. If I'm ever sitting at the computer desk she'll come over and sit on my lap and draw on some scratch paper.

She knows how to get DVD's in and out of the DVD player and loves to watch her Baby Einstein shows. Most of our DVD's are covered in fingerprints and have to be wiped down before they will work.

I have no idea how many words she knows but it's a whole lot. She is starting to group words together now and we just love how easy it is to communicate with her. She surprises me every day with a few new words I had no idea she knew.

She will tell me when she's poopy and if I ask her if she's poopy and she's not, she says "wet."

She loves to dance around and will shake her bum back and forth if you ask her. I need to post a video of that. It's so cute.

She finally makes the kissing noise when she kisses you and she loves to kiss owies and have you kiss any owies she has.

She loves her "daddy" and asks for him all the time. Especially when it's time for bed because she knows he'll get her out and bring her into bed with him.

A Birthday and a Few Sad Things

Tuesday night last week we had dinner together before Lincoln got set apart as a missionary. Every year that I've been married to Brandon he has blown out candles on a shared birthday cake with his sister whose birthday is the day before. This year the candles were blown out on Chandra's birthday, that same night.

Then we all headed over to the Church for Lincoln's setting apart. I wish I could say it was a good blessing but I really didn't hear much of it, I was trying to keep Mckinley quiet.

I wanted to take a picture of these girls standing by Lincoln so we can see how much they grow while he's gone. Now the only trick is to remember to take the same picture when he gets back. Maybe I'll put an appointment for it in two years on my phone.

The whole family.

The next day was Brandon's 28th Birthday. I made him some breakfast burritos since his parents usually get Beto's breakfast burritos. I would have given them to him in bed but it's always hard to eat in bed so I brought him upstairs.

I brought Brandon a muffin with a candle in it and sang Happy Birthday to him to wake him up and Mckinley slept through the whole thing. So he and I ate upstairs and then she ate later when she got up. She was so excited to hold the little plastic balloons. This girl loves any kind of balloon.

I also snuck into Brandon's office before the setting apart to hang up a birthday sign there and leave him some treats. The best part was that it took him a while to figure out it was me who did it.

For lunch we all went to Pizza Factory to have lunch with Lincoln before he left. Since it was Brandon's birthday he got a free pizza in the shape of his age. (minus 2 years, they accidentally did 26 instead of 28. Still tasted amazing.)

Saying goodbye one last time...

Lincoln with all his nieces and nephew.

Even more sad than Lincoln leaving was our day yesterday. Back up to Saturday first though. Saturday we went to the temple and Karen watched Mckinley. She had a cough and when we were done at the temple she really didn't feel well. We brought her home and gave her some medicine. She fell asleep on Brandon's chest watching TV (which is SO uncharacteristic of her). He was loving it. If only we knew what was in store for us that night.

Mckinley got worse throughout the night. None of us got very much sleep. Not only did she have a horrible cough, but she was starting to have trouble breathing. Her breaths in were really loud and she was breathing faster than normal. Finally at about 5 a.m. Brandon said this is not normal, call the doctor. So we called the doctor and the nurse told Brandon to check and see if her ribs were retracting (pulling in with each breath). They were. She said take Mckinley to the ER.

Um, yikes. I have never been to the ER in my life and I am not the type to run to the doctor as soon as my nose runs. But we were pretty worried about her breathing and of course you will do ANYTHING for your child. We live really close to an Instacare as well so we checked that out but they didn't open till 8. We have new (and crappy) insurance and so we weren't really sure where to go or what to do. At 6 we drove to the Timpanogos ER. But by the time we got there Mckinley seemed to be breathing pretty well. Brandon thought the cold air was probably helping. So we decided to go back home and wait till the Instacare opened. Brandon bundled Mckinley up and sat out on the porch with her in the cold air a few times.

At 8 we went to the Instacare and the nurse checked her out and said they only had one of the medications she would need. They wanted to give it to her, and then transport her by ambulance to the hospital. We thought that was unnecessary so we signed an Against Medical Advice form and drove her to the ER ourselves. The Timpanogos ER was slammed with a few ambulances that had come in so they were verrrrry slow to help us, but eventually we got things figured out.

Over the next 5 hours Mckinley had 2 breathing treatments, a steroid shot, a chest x-ray, and a neck x-ray. They told us she has Croup. It's a viral infection and there's no antibiotics or anything you can take for it. You just have to let it run its course. Which we are hoping is only a few more days. The Dr. was thinking about admitting her to the hospital but in the end, she responded okay to the treatments and we were able to bring her home.

We all took a nice nap once we got home. Later that evening we went to Brandon's parents' house and he and his dad gave her a Priesthood blessing. She slept fine all night last night and is definitely sick today, but at least she can breathe! What a scary experience that we hope we never have to have again. The love in our house grew tenfold yesterday and for that we are grateful. Most of all we are so grateful for modern medicine that allowed us to have Mckinley in the first place, and that helped her little body to heal. I can't get the image out of my head of her little chest pulling all the way in as she struggled to take a breath at the hospital yesterday.

We did enjoy all the time she slept in our arms.

This picture shows you how Mckinley felt about being in the hospital. Whenever we gave her a breathing treatment she would say "all done, all done" and she kept saying "I go" (I want to go). It broke our hearts.

Here she is trying to muster a smile.

She actually did really well for her x-rays and shot. Even though she definitely didn't want to do them, it was as if she knew it had to be done so she could get better. We were very proud of her.

And just to end this post off on a positive note, here is my little "Punky Brewster". Mckinley insisted on wearing her pink dress and pink boots with these purple pants the other morning. And then I wanted to try on this jacket that Kristen bought in Hong Kong. I've been waiting for forever for it to fit her and it finally does. The end result reminded me of Punky Brewster.

New Years

We have had quite an eventful holiday. Before we get started though, here are a few cute pictures I couldn't resist posting.

Mckinley still loves babies and one day last week she just had to eat lunch with her baby doll. I caught her trying to give her doll a drink of orange juice. So cute!

Then she pushed the doll around but didn't forget her snacks on top.

I forgot I took this picture. I don't even have an explanation. I'll just leave it up to your imagination. (Don't be mad at me Bran for posting it.)

Thursday night last week Brandon's parents took us to the Provo Beach Resort to check it out. Mckinley had fun on the carousel, after being scared at first. Now seeing the pictures she is so excited and yelling "Elephant! Horse!" (She rode on the elephant the first time around.)

Friday night we were lucky enough to go to a Jazz game that came with dinner. Kristen and Dayne came with us and we had a really good time. Mckinley did really well the whole time. She must have drank a lot because when we got home her diaper was soaked through her pants and on to her carseat. Yuck!

Saturday was New Years Eve. We had Chinese food with Brandon's family and then went crazy with the party supplies. Mckinley didn't like it very much. She just sat on my lap the whole time and didn't want to touch anything.

Monday Brandon didn't have to go to work so we had another fun day with his family. We had a BBQ for lunch and made some home made fries in the deep fryer. Then that night we all got to go to the Jazz game together and sit in the box, which was so nice, especially with little kids.

Mckinley followed Brynlee around like usual and did every little thing she was doing. We think it's cute, Bryn thinks it's annoying. :)

We've got more fun plans tonight and tomorrow before Lincoln enters the MTC. Brandon also turns 28 tomorrow. Wow, we are getting old.