Botanical Gardens

We went to the Botanical gardens last week, two weeks ago...time is mushing together, I think it has to be the fact that Ella still nurses at night...a lot!

Anyways, our membership to the gardens in Alabama expired at the end of March so we FINALLY went to the gardens.  Overall I was glad that I hadn't made the hour trip earlier.  It was extremely disappointing.  I think mostly because Huntsville's (HSV) Botanical Gardens are so awesome!  In HSV the gardens have a kids section, many water rocks/features, trains, tree houses throughout the gardens and many, many more 'kid friendly' activities.  We could (and did) spend all day there and barely get through one section of the garden.
Here, the gardens were much larger but they had almost nothing for kids to do/see.  Even I was bored.  Sorry, but the four different desert types isn't very interesting and the cactus's looked pretty similar in each...

We did have fun and I'm glad we went, if only to check it off our list. 
*On a random side note, I got fried on my upper arms (missed a section with the sunscreen.)  I was told to try lavender oil and by morning the lobster colored burn was gone!  I still find it amazing! 

Proof that even the desert holds some beauty

This cactus was beautiful!

Grinding beans - the ONLY kid friendly activity
*we spent 45 minutes here :)

I want this sundial in my backyard! 
It was really fun for Kira to figure out what time it was. 
My girl is super smart and after a little explanation of why and how it works could read them :)

 

The butterfly tent was fun, except that they were hard core not wanting you to try to let them land on you.
Very grumpy about it...made me miss AL and all our fun trips to the gardens there!

Crazy Kids!

Every night before either Josh or I go to bed, we take Rora to the restroom...this is how I found the girls passed out the other night.  Crazy Kids!

*Usually they are tangled up in each other....my guess is Rora was wanting to snuggle and Kira didn't so she put the 'wall' up between them :)

Happy Birthday Dr Seuss

A few weeks ago Josh took Rora on a date while Kira had dance.  They went to the library for special activities centering around Dr. Seuss.  I just have to say, that I am completely in love with Dr. Seuss!  Having a child learn how to read I got so sick of the stupid easy readers that either were to easy or had way to many 'exception to the rule' words.  It was really hard and frustrating for both Kira and I.  BUT she could read Dr. Seuss' books and now has a couple of them memorized and "reads" them to Rora all the time.  She puts so much inflection in her voice when she reads them.  His books are pure genius!

Anyways, Josh took Rora to the library.  She really wanted to have Dr. Seuss hair, so we went with a nod to the Who's with her hair.  I am rather proud of it, I used no wires, gel and only a bit of hairspray. 

Rora had a blast playing the games, doing the crafts, but mostly just having special time with her Daddy :)

Our Last Day in Disneyland :(

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end and our last day came way to fast.  Everyone told me we were crazy for spending 5 days in DL.  There wasn't enough to do, we would get bored, etc, etc.  I am happy to report that wasn't the case.  We didn't get to ride every ride and even though we tried to slow down and enjoy every minute, one more day would have been nice.  There were a few rides that we intentionally skipped on our previous days because of long lines.  We tried to hit most of these, although we didn't succeed. 

Josh ran to get fastpasses for space mountain while I took the girls and got in line for dumbo.  The girls loved it and were only a little disappointed that they couldn't ride alone together. (Kids under 7 have to be accompanied by someone over 14...) 

 

 

Read to ride the circus train...they were in the monkey car :)

The next few pictures are from the Storybook Land Canal Boats. 
They were miniatures and totally awesome!

 

 
We had planned on staying until around 2-3pm, but ended up leaving around 1pm since Rora was exhausted from all the days of fun.  It was a great trip and I can't wait until we can do it again!

Disneyland Trip - Day 4

This was the day we had been gearing up for.  Kira was dancing!  We took the morning to 'sleep in' (it means an entirely different thing with 3 kids that aren't used to their surroundings...we were at the park by about 9:30, not 9 when they open...)  We went to California Adventure since that was where Kira would be dancing.  We braved the lines and went to Car's Land to ride the kiddie rides, even though they had longer waits.  *Yes, we have become snobbish since our trips to DW have been in the off season so there are rarely lines and skipped many rides because of the wait times...

 

*Blogger is having issues, NON-user error related ;) and I can't get the pictures back in order...





Josh and I enjoy SNL and recently they have 'The Californians' skits.
 Every mirror we passed we had to make our Californian's faces.
 It made us laugh, and those around us stare uncomfortably :)
Josh and the girls were waiting in line for Luigi's Flying Tires when he captured this picture :)

 

 

 



Posing just before her performance with Frozone

Excited to perform!

Heading backstage to perform

Hi Mickey!

Cinderella was just coming out as were were enter Disneyland after Kira performed. 
Kira told her all about her dancing :)

Even Ella liked her...from a distance :)
*Rora was napping so no pics of her....

Pinocchio loved Ella and was the only costumed character that got her to smile :)

Group dinner - adult conversation is so nice!

All the kids sat at the other table.  Grace was wonderful to have Rora sit by her.
 I didn't have to do anything the entire meal.  Bliss!

Ceylan her dance teacher with most of the girls

 

 

 

As a Mom of course, my favorite portion of the day was watching Kira dance.  This may sound boastful, I'm not perfect and I think it's part of the job description of being a Mom, but she was the best of the 6-7 year olds out there.  She worked so hard on her dancing and did great on the stage.  She just needed to smile more! 

 

Josh's favorite was watching her dance, and dinner at PCH Grill - no surprise, he loves to eat!