Update #2 - Disneyland!

Thanks to some very lovely connections and lots of wonderful people, we were able to drive to southern California to visit Brian's grandmother and spend 3 days at Disneyland. And yes, I do realize that we just took Colby to Disney World in September, but this was too good of a deal to pass up.

Our first day at the park, Colby got absolutely soaked on Splash Mountain. It was actually pretty chilly and windy, so we ended up needing to buy Colby a sweatshirt and strip off his shirt until it dried. The poor kid's teeth were chattering, so that's why he's so bundled up in all these pictures. We spent the whole first day at the Disneyland park, and I think we went on every ride. Colby even dared to try Space Mountain, but was decidedly against doing it a second time!

The next morning we had breakfast at our hotel with Lilo, Stitch and Daisy. Colby wasn't very happy with us for waking him up so early, so he was not enthused about the three characters who were trying so hard to get him to smile. He finally decided just as we were leaving that he wanted pictures with the three of them, so we had to go hunt them down. Silly boy.We spent the second day at Disney's California Adventure park, which was a lot more fun than I was expecting it to be. Other than the huge roller coaster (it's awesome!) and the Tower of Terror (not even Brian could talk me into that one after I tried it in Florida), we went on every ride there. Much to my surprise, Colby's favorites were this really jerky roller coaster called Mulholland Madness and the giant swings inside of an orange (only in California right?). We went on the roller coaster and the swings 5 times, and the last two times on each, Colby started holding his hands in the air and yelling "Wahoo!" while assuring me that it would be okay. Apparently my squeals of delight had him worried for my sanity. The kid is turning into quite the daredevil - as long as there is plenty of light. Pirates of the Caribbean freaked him out, but the zip line at California Adventure didn't faze him.All three of us had a great time. We stayed at the Paradise Pier resort, so it was really easy to walk to all of the parks and Downtown Disney (where there was a Lego store, much to Colby's delight), plus we had a great view of the fireworks from the hotel pool. We had a blast on this vacation. It was great to just get away as a family, but it's nice to be back home. I guess at this point that anything we do as a family is heaven!

Update #1 - Colby's an unbelievably old 5

Due to the rather, ahem, exciting event that occurred at the end of February, I've been much less attached to my computer than usual. Alas, this has resulted in a dearth of blog posts, which are woefully behind our extremely newsworthy lives. Consequently, we'll have to tackle this one event at a time. First on the list, chronologically, is Colby's 5th birthday!
His birthday is March 1st, so we had lots of family in town that weekend. He got a special dessert at our family dinner on Friday night, a birthday cake at another dinner Saturday night, and Sunday was stake conference, so we did his presents at home with just the three of us (I love saying three now!). He's been slightly into Ben 10, but I have to say the highlight of the presents was the Bakugan set from Grandma and Grandpa. Sigh. A new obsession has begun. The actual birthday party was on Tuesday at Jumpin' Jacks in Springville. It's one of those places that has a bunch of giant inflatable toys and slides indoors. All of the kids had a fabulous time, if I do say so myself. They pretty much just played around on the toys until we practically had to force them to come eat pizza, and then they played until their parents dragged them away. We all had a great time just watching the kids play and getting to know some of the other preschool parents better. It's quite the thing to have a birthday party this year, I think. Colby's party was one of four so far this semester!

More updates are coming soon (hopefully tomorrow). We still have Disneyland to cover after all!