The carousel rides!

The carousel was by far Ella's favorite ride. The funny thing is I remember the last time I went to disneyland, the carousel was Mia's favorite. Time flies. Mia is posing as usual for her pictures. I have her trained fairly well. Ben is looking very bored on his carousel ride.

The Tea cups!

The tea cup ride is among my favorites at disneyland. I remember going to disneyland with grandpa carter and I think we went on the tea cups. As I have very few memories of my grandpa, this is important to me. Mia seems to love the tea cups like I do. Don't get me wrong, I don't like the spinning. I mostly just like the atmosphere of the ride.

I am way behind!

I have had one of the busiest fall/winter seasons that I have ever had. It is now December 30th and my body has finally had it. I have had the flu (or what I think is the flu-I did not have a flu shot!) and so I have been realizing that I have to slow down a little. I am going to go back in time and post some pics from disneyland ( like I promised). Hopefully I can catch up in my life and my blog! These are from the Minnie and friends character breakfast. I love the character breakfasts! It is nice that the kids get to meet a lot of characters without standing in line. I love to take pictures at the character meals too!

Trip to California

I think that I am going to put these pictures of Balboa beach and pier on my wall. They are so beautiful and calming.

We have been back for exactly one week from our 9 day trip to California and I still have not had time to update my blog. I have decided to just start tonight. I have a million pictures (not kidding!). We had a really fun time and I think it will be a trip that the kids will remember. We spent 4 days at Disneyland, 1 day with my friend Shawna in Irvine, a day hanging around Irvine and Newport and the rest was travel time. After 11 hours of driving, we arrived very tired and sticky (we had to feed Ella a lot of treats to keep her happy) at my friend Shawna's house. The kids were so excited to see her. She has a beautiful home and Riley said that it was the most beautiful he had ever seen. He also mentioned that she must be rich. We had a wonderful meal of my favorite Persian food! The kids made cookies with Shawna and we had her famous hot chocolate. I really miss seeing her and the kids love her too. When I go to Irvine, I always shed a few tears. It feels like home even though I have not lived there for 10 years.

We left Shawna's house around noon and went to have lunch at one of my family's favorite restaurants, Asia Noodle. The food was excellent as usual. After that we headed to our hotel near Disneyland. My friend Sara recommended the Candy Cane Inn and so we tried it out. We actually really liked the hotel. It was close to the park, clean and had a shuttle to the park. My mom and Ben arrived that night and the next day the fun began!!!

I will write about Disneyland tomorrow!

Halloween

The last couple weeks have been a blur. My main objective tonight is to take a few minutes to update my blog with a few pictures from halloween events. We went to the annual halloween party at Grandma and Grandpa's house last Sunday. The kids had a great time and I got some fun pictures. We carved pumpkins on Monday night for Family Home evening. Then on Halloween I went to the school and put on a halloween party for Riley's class. We went to the church for a trunk or treat and then came home and passed out candy while the kids went out trick or treating. Auntie Karen came over and Ella gave her lots of hugs. Ella is taking off with her talking. She is repeating everything. This weekend she said pizza and cheese. Ella discovered halloween candy this year. She wants to eat candy all of the time!!! She bangs on the pantry door for more. She doesn't understand why she can't eat candy 24 hours a day. Well, we are headed into another busy week. I have to be at the school a lot and work on reflections quite a bit. We are packing up and heading to So. Cal on Saturday for a full week!!! I am excited, but I have a lot to do.