Saturday, January 25, 2014

We Can't Breathe!

There are so many great things about Utah, Farmington, our neighborhood.  So much that I love.  My family is close, my friends are close, my kids have an amazing neighborhood with so many friends, good school, so many things to do, Station Park so close is great.  So many positives about where we live but the air is killing us!  That and the fact that they're probably building a freeway a mile from my house.  Uggh, it's such a drawback and every winter Mark and I toy with the idea of moving.  Usually it's talk of St. George.  This year we got pretty serious about moving to Hawaii for a couple years.  When it comes down to it though the positives outweigh the negatives still.  In the mean time we'll do what we can to get our State to help clean up our air and hopefully one of these years we'll be able to have somewhere we can escape to a little more often for some clean air and sunshine in the winter.  

I took the girls out to the Clean Air Rally at the Capitol on a Saturday afternoon with Colby.  We took front runner into downtown.  Made an appearance, listened to some of the speakers and walked down to City Creek for lunch.  The sun was shining so that was nice.  Hopefully our government will take some action and take some initiative to help this very serious problem.










Friday, January 17, 2014

Goodbye Florida


 Our last day was spent relaxing by the pool.  Our flight didn't leave until that night so we checked out in the morning and spent the day at the pool.  They had great amenities so we were able to work out, swim, shower and head out to the airport.  It was SO hard knowing we were coming home to smog.  That sunshine felt so, so good.  

I adore this little relationship.  Kenya is so good and sweet with Cora.  She's a huge helper.  Charlie is too but Kenya plays and plays with her.  It's so cute.


 The kids were great on the plane ride home.  Cora slept for almost three hours of it in my arms.  We got home really late.  Mark unloaded the car, including Leila.  Just plopped her on the ground next to all the luggage.  She was out.  What a great family trip, so many fun memories.

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Animal Kingdom




Our last park day we were unsure what to do.  We didn't think we had our Disney World hook up one more day, and we didn't expect it.  They were so nice to get us in for two days.  We were debating between Animal Kingdom and Universal.  We went back and forth a lot.  After much deliberation we decided that Mark would take Charlie to Universal since there's a lot that Leila and the baby couldn't do and I would stay with the girls and swim and shop.  Well all the kids were fine with that idea but the morning of we got a phone call from Emma saying she could get us into Disney World one more day!  We felt like we couldn't pass up that opportunity so we switched our plans last minute and let me tell you, we had a fit fest from the kids!  They all were set on our earlier plan and didn't want to steer from it, which just made us upset that they were whining about going to Animal Kingdom and for free too!  Once they got the new plan in their heads and a good lecture from Mark and I they were fine and Animal Kingdom was so much fun.  They loved it, I'm really glad we got to go!

Pocahontas was a first for us.  We haven't seen her before, Leila especially loves her.  I was not very impressed with this Pocahontas though. :)

The sun was shining but it was pretty cold this day.  Only around 50 degrees.

Kenya in front of "her country" :)


We were pretty impressed with the Safari tour.





The petting zoo, they loved brushing the animals.

These pigs were pretty cute, all nestled up and sleeping together.  They kept snorting in their sleep too.

Kenya especially loved seeing all the Lion King stuff in Animal Kingdom.  They usually have a Lion King show but they just closed it down until April.  Again off season problems. :)

They had this little wilderness explorer program for the kids that they were so excited about.  We discovered it a little late in the day but they would've been happy just to do that all day and earn their "badges" and different spots through out the park. 




The bird show was fun to watch.

Everest in the background.

Playing in Dino Land while Mark took the kids on Everest.

I love this picture!  Total real screams from all of us.  Everest is a new ride there and was really fun.

The park closed at 5:00, we felt rushed all day but we caught the last show of Nemo.  It was cute.


We couldn't pass up on a chance to head back over to Magic Kingdom when Animal Kingdom closed.  Kenya loved this little dance station they had, the Incredibles would come out and dance with you.  She didn't want to leave.




Charlie taking us for a ride on the cars.

It wasn't crowded at all this night, we saw some more princesses.  Finally we got to see "I Know You," as Leila says.  She was thrilled.



Love this pic.  Can't she just stay three forever?  



Cora got some good attention from Aurora. 


Kenya was begging to go to Story time with Belle again, the wait was short so we headed over there right before closing again.  They ask for someone to "roar" and choose them to be the Beast in the story, well Kenya did a raging "roar!" before anyone else could so they made her the Beast.  She was super excited! :)
All those times being the prince and dancing with Kiley paid off. :)




Leila is so shy about it all when she gets close to the characters.  I had to laugh because as they were waiting in line for their picture at the end one of the cast members was asking Leila what her name was.  She just stared at him, wouldn't say a word.  Then he asked her in Spanish, still not a word.  I tried to get her attention and he looked and me and said "does she speak English?"  I said "yes, she's just really shy."  Too funny.
Coming back to me with a big grin.

On our way out.  I love walking Main Street at night.  So fun all lit up.  Goodbye Disney World.  It was a dream come true. :)