Kameni Lost Another Tooth

Kameni is so funny.  One of her front teeth was super loose on Thursday.  She worked on that poor tooth all day and night to get it to come out.  When it was still stuck in her mouth Thursday night she began crying saying that she really needs money and the toothfairy is the only way she is going to get it.  I finally got her settled into bed telling her that once the tooth comes out she will be able to get some money.  I even told her that it would be really exciting for her to loose her tooth at school.  In Kindergarten, Kaymin lost her first tooth at school and she still remembers it.  I mainly told her to get her excited and to GO TO BED!  I went to pick up the Kindergarten kids on Friday and sure enough...Kameni pulled her tooth out at school that day.  She was so happy that the toothfairy was finally going to come and bring her that money she wanted so badly.

Basketball is Over

On March 12th basketball ended.  Blake was thrilled, but Deilen was very sad.  He loves playing and doesn't like the idea of waiting for another year before he is on a team again.  He has been outside practicing everyday.  It is SO cute.  Soccer starts back up again just around the corner.  He isn't as excited for that.  I am still trying to decide if I am going to sign him up for t-ball.  He was begging me to play and now he said he will just wait to play basketball.  The only thing I know for sure is that Blake will NOT be his coach.  Poor Blake needs a break.  He is such a great dad!

Sewing

So I decided to finally be a little "crafty" and sew that Jedi cloak that I promised Deilen.  I found a pattern online, but I wish I would have just made my own.  Oh well, it turned out okay and he loves it. 

 Kameni was throwing a fit because I made Deilen something, so I decided to make her this princess dress up dress that I originally bought for Kaymin.  Since I got a serger for my birthday, I decided I could finally sew this right up.  She wanted it really long and I didn't do it form fitting because I want her to be able to wear it for a while and she usually wears clothes under her dresses, so this one is large, but she loves it too.  Since all of my sewing stuff was out I went a little overboard.  I finally finished my skirt that I started in the summer and had enough material to make Kaymin one, and then I sewed Kameni's skirt also.  Except that isn't all.  Then I sewed all of us girls matching pajama pants out of flannel.  They are nice and snugly.  It was a lot of fun to finally sew again.  I kind of went crazy and even bought us more fabric to sew more things.

More Bunnies

 So since the mommy and daddy were together after the birth of their last litter, we were pretty sure that our bunny was going to have more babies on the 14th.  In fact, she was quite fat and hardly moved (I remember feeling that way too!).  Anyway, I decided that it would be a lot of fun to take baby bunnies to my mom's house and Blake's mom's house for Easter to show the nieces and nephews.  So I put the daddy bunny back in the cage with the mom since our other babies had all been claimed and moved onto their new families. 

 Sure enough when we woke up on the morning of the 15th we had 10 baby bunnies.  Holy crap...me and my bright ideas.  I just assumed that we would have 5 babies again since the last two batches had 5...but nope.  This time I guess I got what I deserved.  Although the next batch of bunnies expected to come on April 13th will be the only ones that have been planned for.  Heaven help me if she has 10 more.  So far I have 12 of the 10 spoken for.  So I am hoping that at least 10 of them go through with it.  I wish I would have been smart enough to take pictures of them when they were first born because they were half of the size of our other ones.  They are 1 week old in this picture.  No wonder the mom was SO miserable.  I would have been to if it were me.  So we should have one more batch of bunnies and then we are DONE.  Our plan is to keep two of the babies and then get rid of our mom and dad bunny and start over.  I really wouldn't mind keeping a boy and a girl, but you are unable to tell the gender of a bunny until they are around 3 months old.  So I guess we will leave it to chance.

Gerrit Went Potty on the Toilet...Sort Of

Also on Tuesday I just wanted to soak in the tub.  So I ran me a really hot bath and started to put away some laundry.  When I went to get in, there Gerrit was naked as could be in my bath trying to pick up a couple of poop balls that he managed to do when he got in.  Oh man was I ticked.  Now I couldn't get in and enjoy my tub and I used all of the hot water for it too!  So I put Gerrit on the toilet and told him he needed to push the rest out.  Now Gerrit really hasn't had any desire to go potty yet.  I am in no mood to try to make him and will wait until he starts showing an interest.  He wanted me to go away so I went downstairs to put away more laundry and he actually went and was wiping his little bum.  I was so happy and was hugging and kissing him and really trying to make a big deal out of it.  I even gave him a little candy bar as his "treat" for being a big boy.  I hope this is a start of something new.  I would love to not have to buy anymore diapers.  At least he got a taste of what is what like to be a "big boy".

Taking the Bunnies to School

On Tuesday, I brought the bunnies to school for Kameni and Deilen's class.  Kaymin begged me to take them to her class too and her teacher approved.  Kaymin got very excited about me taking them to school and by the time I actually went, I was taking them to four different classes.  When I went to check in at the office, the secretary asked me what was in the box and if it would gross her out.  Apparently they are used to parents bringing in baby animals in boxes, but earlier that day a boy brought in parts of a butchered cow.  He brought in the heart, brains, and tongue.  Everyone in the office had to hold the bunnies and I could hardly make it down the hall without being stopped to see what was in the box.  The kids loved seeing the bunnies and Deilen and Kameni were so happy to show them off.  They were lucky enough to come with me to the rest of the classes since I brought them 15 minutes before they got out of school.  Kameni enjoyed telling everyone that we used to have more bunnies until I killed them.  The poor kids had a total look of disgust on their faces.  Everyone loved the bunnies.  Since then we have had four people already say that if we have more then they want one.  We are pretty sure our rabbit will have more bunnies on March 14th.  I am really considering putting the daddy rabbit back in the cage and try to have one more batch after this one.  If she immediately gets pregnant, then the babies will be about 11 days old at Easter.  It would be SO much fun to take them to my parents and Blake's and have our own little baby animals day celebration.  Besides, I know it is mean...but I really wouldn't be heart broken if some didn't make it.  I know that isn't nice.

Favorite Book Characters

The other day at school the kids got to dress up as their favorite character from a book.  Kaymin did a wonderful job on her costume.  She dressed up as Hermione and did her costume by herself (very impressive).  She used my graduation gown and made a Griffendorf badge for it.  Deilen just wanted to dress up as Spiderman.  I think any opportunity to dress up in his Spiderman costume he takes advantage of.  The thing is SO thread bare and is constantly getting holes in it.  I think I have restitched that thing at least three times.  Kameni wanted to be Snow White.  But Snow White doesn't have blonde hair she has black.  Therefore Kameni threw a big stink fit and wanted her hair dyed black.  I tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn't hear it.  She seriously threw a tantrum the night before.  So I caved and sprayed her hair black.  Once it was done, she cried because she hated it.  Her hair was showing through the paint and we ran out of paint (all of what I tried to explain before doing it).  So I sent her to school crying because I didn't have time to wash her hair and redo it.  As soon as she came home from school she wanted it washed.  I washed her poor hair 4 times and still not all of the black would come out.  Oh well, the warning is on the box and I warned her.  It will come out over time.  In the mean time, I bet Kameni will think twice about throwing a stink fit to dye her hair.

Disneyland

Two years ago Blake's family decided to take a trip to Oregon this year.  Everyone was suppose to start saving their money.  Well, I am a freak that way so I began saving money.  Deep down we had a feeling that we wouldn't be going and told our kids that if we didn't go then we would take them to Disneyland.  Around the first of February we found out that Oregon wasn't happening so we immediately began planning for Disneyland.  Our kids were SO excited. 

I found some great deals on tickets and a hotel.  Because there are 6 members in our family we had to get a suite.  Radisson had a 48 hour sale on their suites and I got a room with 2 queen beds and a sofa bed for $81/night.  Our room had a fridge and a microwave, a free shuttle to Disneyland, and a free cook-to-order breakfast.  Then I found a guy from Kaysville to split 6-day park hopper passes so we only paid $95.50 for adults and $85.50 for the kids tickets.  We decided to go Monday, February 21-26th.  We drove there and decided to make the long drive in one day.  On Monday we went to leave at 6 am.  However, when Blake went to start the van, it wouldn't start.  The battery was dead.  Our garage is SO jam packed with stuff that we had to move a bunch of stuff to get the truck out so the jumper cables would work.  We jumped the van and went on our way.  In Provo/Orem we stopped at Autozone to have our battery checked and it was good.  I left the DVD players plugged in all night and so we are guessing that is what drained our battery. 

Since the kids got up earlier than normal (except for Gerrit) most of them fell asleep for at least a little bit on the way down.  We decided to stop for lunch in Vegas at Circus Circus.  We have stopped there a ton for their yummy, cheap buffet when I was growing up.  However, when we got there the lunch buffet was $14/person.  I couldn't believe it.  I remember when it was $5.  I guess even the casinos have felt the impact of this economy.  The slot machines looked quite busy, but we weren't not going to spend over $60 for lunch.  The casino had a McDonalds in it and we decided to eat there instead.  Once we left Vegas we got caught in horrible traffic that was headed back to California.  According to our GPS (so glad we had it.  I have no idea how we would have made it there otherwise) it should have taken us a little over 11 hours.  With the bumper stop and go traffic it took us a little over 14.  We should have arrived at our hotel at 5pm, but we got there but we ended up getting there at 8pm.  Our room was really nice.  We were so excited to finally reach our destination, but we were exhausted.  Besides we had a busy week ahead of us. 

The next 3 days we went to Disneyland. We made Kameni ride all of the rides even though we knew she would be freaked out, but I wanted her to try anyway.  Deilen loved all of the rides especially the scary ones.  Gerrit had a ball riding the rides and I think he will be like Deilen as he grows up. 

Kaymin's favorite ride was Pirates of the Caribbean.  Deilen's was California Screamin', Kameni's was Soarin' Over California, and Gerrit's was the Buzz Lightyear ride.  As a parent it is so fun to see the magic in your kids' eyes. 

The parks (Disneyland and California Adventure) were packed.  I am talking about 45 minute wait in line or more.  You even had to wait in line pretty much to walk down the sidewalk.  Come to find out, California's education department had a budget cut and so the kids had the week of school out.  The state of Washington had the week of school as well.  So everyone we met was from California or Washington.  Here we pulled our kids out of school thinking, hoping that it will be slow and it was crazy busy.  The weather held out for us.  It was high 50's to low 60's.  We needed jackets during the day, but had to put on another jacket at night.  We still had a blast.  We would get there when the park would open around 9 and return back to the hotel at 9:3opm.  I packed sandwiches and snacks into the park and then we would eat when we got back to our hotel. 

On Friday, we took the kids to the beach.  It was cold and windy, but that didn't stop our kids getting in the ocean.  We had lunch and collected sea shells.  We lasted about 1 1/2 hours and that is all that we could take.  Our poor kids were ice cubes. 

Every night we got in the hot tub and pool.  The pool was heated and comfortable to swim in.  Friday night we were debating on going home early.  A big snow storm was coming on Saturday and should hit while we were driving home.  We decided to take our chances and stay one more night.  I made the mistake of trying out the sleep number beds and that was a huge mistake.  All they are is a big air mattress.  I felt like I was camping all week.  Our backs hurt so bad by the end of the week I could hardly wait for my own bed.  On Saturday we left right after breakfast about 9am.  We were meeting the guy from Kaysville in Saint George.  He told us the roads were fine, wet from running but no snow so far.  Well, we all know how fast the weather can change in Utah. 

It began snowing once we hit Cedar City.  By the time we get just before Beaver the roads were terrible.  The plows hadn't been out and there was about 6-8 inches of snow on the roads and the bottom 2-3 inches were ice.  It was snowing so hard we were only going around 20 miles/hour and it was easier to have our lights off to see than to have them on.  The snow was covering all of the signs so we couldn't see how much further to the next city.  Finally we decided to get off at the last Beaver exit and spend the night.  It was so scary being 14 degrees and all of the ice and snow on the roads. 

We found a cheap room for $40/night and the kids were so excited to "still" be on vacation.  I cried.  All I wanted was my own bed.  Lucky for us, our room had a fridge and a microwave and I still had more food.  After breakfast the next morning, we headed home around 9am.  The temperature was 19 degrees, but the plows had been out.  They scraped the roads the best they could but there was still ice on them.  We had to pull over every so often and scrape the ice off of the windshield wipers so we could see.  It was a long ride home, but once we hit Nephi the roads were finally cleared and the temperatures increased. 

Once we got home the kids ran outside to see the bunnies.  They had doubled in size and are big furballs now.  We had so much fun and I can't wait to do it again.  I just can't believe it took us 7 years before we went back.  I don't want to wait that long for next time.  I think our kids will always remember this trip, especially since we had to stay over another night.  It was a blast!