California Screamin! - Jul 8

Annnnd we're back ladies and gentlefolks.

Last week I found myself a little but stuck without a computer or device capable of acting like an actual computer to make even a simple blog post. Once again my photo hosting site let me down for basically blocking me from accessing the buttons I need in order to get the links to paste into this blog software. Oh well!

So as you may have guessed, last week we found ourselves once again making a trip down to Disneyland. This trip would be quite different from basically all the other trips we have taken due to the fact that we would be traveling down mid week and hitting the park at the end of the week. Heather was not able to get off work Wednesday until mid day so we had planned to drive down and just go all day Thursday & Friday but we had no idea what would be in store for us on the way down! I still have not been able to find out exactly what happened, but it seemed as if the very moment we started to ascend the grapevine, traffic came to a 100% stop. Our original arrival time was supposed to be somewhere around 9 or 930pm, we did not arrive to the hotel until 11:45pm. We were in 1mph stop and go traffic in 100 degree temperature for like an hour and a half. It was basically the most miserable traffic I have ever been stuck in...ever. We woke up bright and early the next day(lol) and hit the parks.

I personally only had 2 things on my agenda that I wanted to see or do. In the California park they updated the "Soarin' over California" ride to now "Soarin'"over the world so I wanted to do that and they have been running the new "Frozen" live show in the big theater(also in the Ca park) so I wanted to see that. I know what you are thinking, YOU WANTED TO SEE THE FROZEN SHOW? YES. YES I DID. Let me tell you, IT WAS FREAKING AWESOME. I'm pretty sure anyone reading this has seen the movie Frozen no less than 2 times(and if you had kids probably 10 times at least) and you are probably sick to death of it. Well, I am here to tell you, the live show was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. The live performances were so good...the music...and singing...and choreography...it was Disney magic like I have not seen in a long time. If you go to Disney California Adventure, GO SEE IT. Thank me later.

Chloe had been telling us the whole trip down that she fully planned on going on Splash Mountain. Our last trip I tried to get Chloe to go on the big "upside down" roller coaster "California Screamin" and she really did not want to. This time, I knew she would be ready. So for Chloe, the two new attractions that she tried (AND LOVED) were both "California Screamin" and "Splash Mountain". If you ask her now what her favorite ride is..she will tell you "California Screamin". She definitely screamed and laughed the whole time. We did it twice (not back to back) and Heather and I were done. Chloe wanted to go again. lol.

After a few days in the park we actually continued on down to San Diego on Saturday to spend some time with our friends that live down there. We spent half the day at the beach, went to dinner and just hung out at their house after. All in all, a great little getaway(aside from all the unnecessary time in the car). We'll be back, I'm sure of it.

Have a great weekend, folks~

-b

Oops, out of town! Jul - 1

Well, technology is failing me. We are traveling this week and all I have is my phone. No laptop, no tablet, just my phone. The site I host photos on, won't give me the proper links I need from the images to post them here via the mobile app and their website won't give me the regular site as a workaround. It's 2016 folks, can we please have some support for our phones? Lol.

So I Can't post photos, it is what it is. If you're bored, scroll back and find a Disneyland post and look at those pictures and just pretend you're seeing what we did. Oh, Also, pretend it's 900 degrees outside in those pictures. Nailed it.

Have a great weekend and a safe 4th of July~
-B

I Almost Have Teeth! - Jun 24

Chloe's front two teeth have been taking their sweet time to make a reappearance. Not having front teeth has not hindered Chloe even a little bit. She doesn't talk funny, she eats literally everything she wants. The weirdest thing I'm sure is going to be how she looks when they are in. Looking back at older photos, I feel like her face has grown up a lot in the last 6 or so months since she has not had those front teeth. I can't imagine how her friend Olivia is going to look once she gets her teeth in and I say that because she hasn't had front teeth since she was like 4. Apparently she took a fall and knocked both of em out so she's literally been waiting like 2.5 years!

Busy summer week around here. Last weekend was my dad's birthday as well as Father's day. We had a swim day this week with a few friends and more of that on deck for the coming days and weeks, I'm sure. Looking forward to whatever is in store..including Chloe's teeth!

Have a great weekend, folks~

-B

Surprise Eggs! - Jun 17

The YouTube Generation.

I don't fully understand it, but we are currently living in a world where kids are absolutely obsessed with watching weird YouTube videos of people literally opening toys. Like, the camera is zoomed in close and you can just watch things being opened. Weird, right?

Chloe doesn't get very much "screen time" as it's commonly referred to, but every so often she is allowed to watch a few random things on her little tablet. At one point it was simple "marble videos" where kids would race marbles on marble tracks. I don't even understand what would compel someone to make that type of video, but there are millions of views on them. Recently, Chloe happened upon a related video that played and it was basically someone unwrapping these things they called "surprise eggs". I've never even heard of these before but they are foil wrapped, chocolate covered, little plastic things that house some kind of surprise toy in the middle. A quick google search seems to say that these are not really readily available in US stores, but some grocery stores have been known to carry them. Of course, Chloe starts to ask me when she can get some surprise eggs to which I had to break her the news that we probably cannot buy them.

Then, while at a local grocery store getting my propane tank exchanged, I'm paying and I look right next to the ATM pin pad and there is a little box of these things. Chloe was with me, of course, but without saying anything I picked one up and paid for it. She was quiet, but you could tell she knew what it was and was excited. =)
I told her, she has been very good all week and this was her reward. Unbelievably, she waited until we got home for her to open it. One word. Anticlimactic. LOL.

She opened the foil and started to try some of the chocolate. After about 1.5 bites, she was tired of the chocolate and wanted the surprise. HA! So I had to take a fork and scrape off the chocolate. The rest, is history. Will we buy more of these things? No. Probably not. She'll be just fine watching someone else open these things. =)

Have a great weekend, folks.

-B

Goodbye Kindergarten, Hello Summer! - Jun 10

And just like that, Kindergarten is over!!

180 days of school and today marks day 1 of Chloe's official summer vacation. The school year has been, interesting. Very different (obviously) from preschool and pre-k but overall Chloe has excelled. She basically came into kindergarten being able to do most of the things academically they expected her to do by the end of kindergarten but she also learned a ton of stuff. I know when I was in kindergarten we were never expected to be able to do all the things kids today are expected to. I guess from generation to generation that statement could be basically applied to everything. =)

Summer plans are to find lots of things to do, play dates and swimming, etc but I guess not so much on the week after week "camps" that most kids seem to do. I believe Chloe will get to attend a gymnastics camp for a week in July but that's about it. The summer this year is quite short as the school year start and end dates have shifted. The school year starts earlier this year and ends earlier next year but because of that, the summer is really just about 2 months and some change. We will make do.

For Chloe last day of school this year, they had a laundry list of activities planned. Once again I was fortunate enough to respond to an email quickly enough to be one of 3 parents on site to help monitor all the kids in the various activites. Bowling, bikes, jump ropes, bead necklaces, coloring, shoe kicking contest, cherry pit spitting, candy grabbing...fun. The kids said their goodbyes as I tried not to cry. LOL. It was a very confusing group of goodbyes as the kids finally realized that they would not be seeing each other tomorrow. Next year it will be interesting to see who ends up in Chloe's class because while she certainly made some friends this year, essentially none of them have made the jump to being able to have a playdate with them outside of school. Not for lack of trying, it just seemed difficult this year for some reason so I guess which could also be a disconnect in the parents just as much as the kids. The preschool was much better in that respect and ironically the 2 friends Chloe seems to see the most outside of school are from her preschool.

Just a few pics from Chloe's last day, and a look back/comparison of the first day to the last.
Have a great weekend, folks~

-B

Memorial Day - Jun 3

Well, after 6.5 years of doing this blog thing, I might have an issue that may cause me to stop doing this. The photo site that I use to upload the link the images from (flickr) currently underwent some kind of update and they will not allow me to "embed" or "share" images that are marked as "private" when I upload them. I'm not a huge privacy weirdo, but Flickr is a photo sharing "community" and people can share, and comment and whatever your photos that are public and from the get go, I have made a point to keep the Chloe blog photos marked as "private" within the Flickr community. This blog, while available on the world wide web, is not publicly searchable meaning you would not likely be able to google search for text or words that I have included such as names etc or if someone searched for "tilden park" my post and photos about that should not come up on google searches. That being said, I guess I will have to wait a bit to see if they(flickr) are able to correct this new updated garbage. Once It's sorted, I will update. =(

We spent Monday (memorial day) at my parents house where my brother and his family came by for a few hours as well as my cousin and her family. It was super hot and the kids swam for..hours. Chloe looked a little sunburn and her cheeks were all red from the goggles stuck to her face for so long. LOL. It was fun to see everyone and the kids certainly had a blast together.

That's it for now! I'll report back. Have a great weekend, folks!

-B
*Edit* Fixed!