Mother's Day

Megan's nursery teacher at church prepared the cutest little mother's day gift for the kids to give to their Moms. Megan however was not in the mood to accommodate the camera.

Her cute little flower had a sour puss face in the middle complete with a bonk on the head. I am still laughing about it. Isn't she a cutie?

Megan's 2

Megan turned two on Saturday. We had celebrated in Utah the week before with my family and on Saturday we had Grandma and Grandpa P over. I made her some dress up things and found some gloves for her and she wanted to wear it all at once. Between the dress ups and the new sunglasses she was really workin' it.

If you asked her how old she was going to be she would tell you "Three." That explains a lot about her- she wants to be older and bigger and doing all the same things that Mark is. She loves wrestling with Dad and Mark. She is a good tickler. She enjoys her dolls except when they wont stay in their blankets. She is my little organizer and loves arranging things. Give her a stack of cards and a bag and she can be happy just taking them out and putting them back in. Her favorite colors are pink and yellow. She wears at least three different pairs of shoes every day (not all of them are hers either). She is happy and content nearly every minute that she is not being bothered by Mark. We are so lucky to have such a cute little girl in our family.

The beach

On Sunday afternoon of our trip we went to the Huntinton Beach. We got there a little later than planned because our kids had taken really long naps so we only ended up staying for a little over an hour. There was a storm rolling in which made it really beautiful, but Megan is not a huge fan of the wind.

She refused to touch the water and spent most of the time bundled in a hotel towel on the sand. I loved it because she is usually not a snuggler, but she let me hold her for quite a long time.

Mark was in heaven as soon as he learned that there was no way a shark could get him if he was just jumping the waves or playing on the sand. Mike and Mark set about building the best sand castle ever- the engineer and his protege.

Megan relaxed a little bit near the end and we played in the sand with our matching pink painted piggies.

Mark and Mike played in the waves and then broke out Mike's birthday present- a new baseball glove and played catch. It was a really fun time.

DISNEYLAND!!!

Wahoo! We went to Disneyland for our first official family vacation. It was an experience.We had a bit of a slow start due to Mom forgetting her ID and needing that to get our tickets. So this is Mark waiting patiently while Dad runs back to the car to get Mom's wallet.
We got into the park and began planning our day. Megan and Mark had a whole lot to say about what they wanted to see. Mark was mostly worried about everything being scary. We did a lot of reassuring. Saturday was pretty busy, but we got a lot of the lesser loved rides in. The kids had the most fun on the train that goes around the park. The parade was their other favorite thing. Those dancers really put on a good show. I was amazed.
Sunday we went to church and then to the beach (I'll post about the beach later- I took a ton of pictures). We stayed at La Quinta Inn and I was so impressed with the meals I was able to make with just a microwave. Here is our fabulous Sunday dinner- microwavable mac and cheese, hot dogs, corn and mandarin oranges. That's like all the food groups out of a can or the microwave.
Monday we went back to Disneyland. While Mike and Mark went on some big stuff like a roller coaster and Dumbo, Megan and I met some princesses. She got totally shy as soon as she saw them (notice the finger in the mouth) but they were really nice to her.
We popped over to California adventure in the afternoon and really the only highlight there was the Muppet 3D movie. Mark is so handsome in his glasses. It was a great trip. We had a lot of fun. The kids survived all the waiting in line like champs. Taking a day off in between our days at Disneyland proved to be the smartest thing we did. It gave us all a chance to rest and the kids were ready to go back to the park the next day. We ended our trip getting a light saber for Mark, some Minnie ears for Megan and some theme park lolly pops. It happened to be Mike's birthday and we were going to celebrate with dinner but because everyone was pretty pooped we postponed to the next night. We hopped in the car at around 4:15. The kids were asleep by 4:17 and we got home around 8:45 that night. It was awesome!

State Fair

So we took a trip to the state fair a couple of weekends ago. We met Grandparents P there. We had a great time. The only downer was that the pig races didn't happen but other than that it was great.

Mark and Megan loved the rides.

Megan completely inhaled her corn dog and even ate some of Mike's too. I guess we did have another downer- we all got a stomach flu from the fair. Mark had it that night, Mike the next night and Megan the night after that. I was lucky and only got a fever, but I did have to clean up after everybody else so its a toss up.
Here Megan is looking at the baby animals. There was so much to see and smell. All the animals were cute. Mark's favorite was the mama pig and all the babies. The kids really enjoyed all of it. We went to Mesquite after the fair and had a great weekend celebrating Mike's birthday and having fun.

Even super heroes have chores!

Oregon Vacation

Mike had to go to Oregon for work training at the beginning of March. I was pretty bummed because he was going to be gone for my birthday. It turned out that I could go with him- my parents were awesome and watched the kids. It was the best birthday present ever. We were staying in Eugene and I got to explore a lot of the city. It is really a cool place. They had miles of walking trails along their river and a nice downtown area. The first night there we headed out to the beach. It had been raining all day, but let up just as we got there.

I convinced Mike that we had to at least get our feet wet even though it was cold. He had never been in the Pacific Ocean.

It was freezing and as you can see we weren't very good at watching the waves- our pants were soaked too. We saw some seals playing in the water and got to watch the sun set.

The other nights we were there we saw a movie, explored the town and had some really great dinners at the local restaurants. On our way back to the airport we stopped by the Portland Temple- I didn't get a picture, but it is one of the prettiest in my opinion. The whole trip was so much fun, we had a great time.