Mother's Day

Me and my girls

When I got home from work on Friday, Maria had helped the girls make me this beautiful card. So sweet of them and got my Mother's Day weekend started off right!

I was fortunate enough to be able to visit with my mom for a bit on Saturday because she came down to help my Aunt pack up some stuff to prepare for their move. The girls and I left Dada at home to work on the bathroom - yes, it's still in the works - and we drove out to Temecula. We got to see Grandma, my Aunt Kathleen, my Aunt Paula, and my cousins Justin, Georgie, and Austin. I felt like I was in the way with a two year old running around, getting into everything, and a baby to tend to, but I'm glad we got to see everyone for a little while. We brought Grandma her Mother's Day gift that was a total fail! I attempted to do one of those Sharpie decorated plates/mugs like this. J is obsessed with Grandma's banana bread [it's actually a requirement for Grandma to bring some when she comes to visit], so I thought it would be perfect to make her a special banana bread plate. 

I found a plain white rectangular plate at Target, picked up a pack of colored Sharpies [my first mistake - or maybe it was my second - I'm not sure if the plate is made of the right material for this project], and went home to try it out.

I followed the tutorial and used pencil to plan out my design and trace the girls' handprints and then used a mixture of black, royal blue, sky blue, pink, and purple Sharpie to complete the actual drawing/writing. 

The plate went in the oven - preheated to 425 - for 30 minutes. I took the plate out and let it cool down a bit, but not completely [this was probably my third mistake]. It looked horrible. The purple was now a muted gray, the pink was practically not visible, and the light blue was gray. 

BUMMER!

Since the damage was already done, I figured I'd test it out further and see if it was washable. And it was. Very washable. So washable that with a few light wipes with my sponge, the Sharpie was coming right off.

DOUBLE BUMMER!

Long story short, because I left the final baking to be done Friday night, I did not have time to start over before seeing my mom on Saturday. I wrapped the thing up and took it with me along with the explanation that I needed to take it back home and try to fix it for her. 

She loved the idea and she even had a loaf of banana bread for us to take home with us! I'll have to update you all with how my second attempt at this goes!

On to Sunday, Bobby decided that he was going to take me to breakfast at a restaurant that he was taken to that Friday. To be sure we missed the crowd, we got up and going right when the girls woke up and were there shortly after 7am. We were sat right away, had a wonderful breakfast and then we were off to Disneyland with a quick stop at Nana's house. 

My beautiful Mother's Day card!

Unfortunately, J was just starting to fall asleep in the car as we were pulling into the parking lot for Disneyland. I thought the surprise of going to "Mickey's House" would put her in a good mood, but it didn't last very long. My goal for the day was to see the new Disney Jr. Live show. By the time we got in the park, we would have had to rush to see the next show at 11:30, so we decided to do some other things, and hit the 12:30 show instead.
We played around in Bugs Land for a bit and then made our way to Disney Theater for the show. 

Disney had a flower for all the Mamas

 Once we finally made it into the show, I thought J was going to have a full on tantrum before the thing even started. Thankfully, she just stood right in front of me and did her own thing until the show started and then she was just amazed at what was going on in right in front of her!

Thank you for the photo bomb, little girl in the hat!

It's Captain Hook, Mama!

After the show, we tried to get J to take a nap in the stroller with the promise that we could go on The Little Mermaid when she woke up, but there was no chance her eyes were going to close for one second. So we went anyway. After that, we made our way over to Small World. Dada and J went on this together while I stayed back with B, who was taking a much needed nap in the stroller.

 Between the heat, the events of the day, and the lack of a nap, J was about toast by this point. She was full on screaming since we put her back in the stroller to make our way out of the park, but somehow managed to pull herself together when we came across Goofy! She was a little more apprehensive about taking a picture by herself this time, so Dada got in there with her.

Needless to say, she crashed hard in the car on the way home, but it was nice to be home early, get some dinner and get the girls to bed on time so I could still enjoy a low key evening.
Happy Mother's Day at my mom and all of the other moms out there <3

Disneyland

I can't believe how long it's taken me to get around to writing this post. It's quite embarrassing, really. 

Regardless, back at the end of February, we took the girls to Disneyland for the first time. My sister and her family decided that they wanted to take JP to see the new Cars Land and so we ALL decided to go. By all, I'm talking my sister's family, my brother's family, my family, and of course, Grandma!

Before we went, we decided to purchase season passes and make the best of the fact that we live less than an hour away. My brother and his family have passes as well and Grandma decided to buy one while we were there. This took away a lot of urgency to see and do for our first trip with the girls and I think this help tremendously. I wasn't so caught up in making sure we made it to certain things or saw specific characters cause I knew we'd be back again soon. I tried to let my sister and her family do what they wanted to do so that they could see as much of the parks as they wanted in one day. 

We started off heading straight to Cars Land at California Adventure, but came across Pluto right from the start and were able to get a few pictures with him.

I thought for sure J was going to freak when we tried to get her to take pictures with the characters, but she wasn't even the slightest bit hesitant. After we saw Pluto and I saw the excitement in her eyes, I had to keep myself from crying. I could have left the park at that point and still felt like the day was tremendously successful. I feel so blessed to be able to take my girls to such an amazing place and blow their minds with so much wonderment. It truly is so rewarding and special for me as their mom. 

While JP waited to go on the main ride there, the rest of us wandered around a bit and hit up a couple rides in Bugs Land.

When we met back up with Brian (my brother in law) and JP, we made our way over to Disneyland and were headed to meet my brother and his family for lunch. We ran into Minnie on the way and then had a wonderful lunch at a Mexican restaurant (where B tried her first taste of real food - a piece of cooked carrot), and then we were off to Toon Town.

On our way, we made a pit stop at Pirates of the Carribean.  J wasn't a fan of that experience, but B sat quietly strapped to me in the Moby with her eyes wide open taking it all in.

Once we made it to Toon Town, we let the kids play for a bit, went on the Roger Rabbit ride, saw Donald and got to give him a high five, hit up the Tea Cups and then we made our way to grab some dinner before heading back into California Adventure.

On our walk back to CA Adventure, the parade was going on and I think this was probably at least the tenth time I had to fight back tears when I saw J's face light up seeing everything in the parade go right past her.

My brother and his wife, Brenda, recommended that we see the World of Color show and we got so lucky that there was a gentleman wanting to get rid of seven fast passes to see it and there were seven of us that needed them! We snagged them from him and were then able to hit up the Little Mermaid ride before the show started. Oh my, did these girls love the Little Mermaid. J still talks about it and we had to promise to go on it again the next time we went back. B went on the ride with us still strapped into the Ergo and she had her head craned practically upside down trying to see everything!
The light show was very cool, but by this point, J was toast and decided she would rather sit in the stroller and play with Dada's iPhone before she passed out. B slept in the Ergo for most of the show as well. This brought an end to our first Disneyland adventure and I think we all enjoyed ourselves thoroughly!
Till next time Mickey!