Guess she was ready for a nap...

Camryn has been such an easy going baby. With Sydney I had a nice consistent nap schedule that I could easily work around. She was my only baby and nearly my entire day revolved around her. With the twins I sort of had to get them on a schedule to avoid going crazy. They shared a room so it was always a mistake if I let one fall asleep for their nap without putting the other one down. Then I'd either have to put one down while the other was still napping (and the awake one would usually wake up the napping one at that point) or I'd have to wait until the napping one woke up and they would have an alternating schedule and I would be stuck at home all day. Being my fourth child, I really don't have the option of putting Camryn on a nap schedule. We can't work around her, she has to work around the rest of us. And she's handled it like a little angel! If she's tired she just falls asleep. She takes a nap at the gym almost every time I take her. She fell asleep in her booster chair today while I was writing my grocery list. And later when I actually went grocery shopping she fell asleep there too. It's awesome. None of my other kids did that so well (due to their being used to a schedule and their beds.) I suppose this could be a problem later on in life though. Now that I look at this picture it looks kinda like a teenager falling asleep on their desk at school. Hhhhmmm...

Newport

We ended up extending our vacation a couple extra days. We originally planned to head home Saturday, but just before leaving on our trip we found out Josh's brother Nate had a week in his condo in Newport that he would not be able to use any longer and it started the Friday we were going to be leaving. So we stayed there Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night and made the whole journey home in one day on Monday. Our kids did surprising well on the drive home. We've never done the whole drive in one day and I'm so pleased to find out that we can! So on Friday we headed we checked out of our hotel in Anaheim and went to the Aquarium of the Pacific for something a little different from the Disney scene. It was a lot of fun. We got to see a shark feeding, a seal show, a scuba dive, and pet the sting rays.

They also had this lorikeet forest where you could buy a teeny little cup of nectar for $3 and feed the lorikeets. I think feeding the birds was our favorite part of the whole aquarium!

Maybe not Tanner's favorite part. We couldn't get him to touch a stingray either.

Camryn really wanted to hold one!

This is my brother Nate in his classic picture pose. We thought was funny that the birds were doing a similar pose.

After we'd have our fill of the aquarium we headed to the Newport condo but it wasn't really for us yet. My parents and brother decided to go do a session at the Newport temple so we headed over there to walk around the temple grounds a bit. It was fun visiting a couple different temples on this trip!

My parents and Nate took off Saturday morning to head home. So we just spent the rest of the weekend relaxing and swimming and hanging out at the beach a couple times. I highly recommend this way of vacationing. A couple days of relaxing in Vegas, a few busy days in Anaheim, and end it with a few more days of relaxing by the ocean. It makes for a long vacation but we got so much in, but didn't feel so tired that we needed another vacation after our vacation.

I have to brag a little. I took this picture at the beach and the next day I submitted it in a Pioneer Woman assignment. Out of 177,000 pictures submitted it was one of the 96 that were featured on her blog! I didn't win or make it as a finalist but it made me pretty darn happy anyways. :)

Disneyland

Ah, we felt much more at home here! Somehow we didn't quite fit in at Las Vegas. Here we stayed at the Desert Inn and Suites which I would also highly recommend. It's a no-frill hotel but the rooms are a good size and it's as close as you can get to Disneyland. It was so nice being able to just walk across the street to the parks. We were able to come back to our room for breaks a couple of times and grab jackets for the evening. The location was fabulous. My parents and brother Nate were able to join us on this trip and we got a suite that had 2 bedrooms and a small living room and slept all of us comfortably. We got to our hotel Monday at about 2:00 but couldn't get into our room until 3:00 so we headed over to Downtown Disney for a bit.

One of the best-value souvenirs we found was at the lego store. You can fill a large cup with whatever legos you want for $15. We filled up a cup and tried to be strategic, filling in gaps with the teeny tiny legos. I was worried about those with a baby who puts everything in her mouth, but my dad said not to worry "they'll go right through her then you can wash them off and play with them again!" It gave the kids something fun to play with in the hotel.

Tanner loved this Woody made out of legos.

While on the subject of souvenirs, another good value toy is the Build Your Own Mr. Potato Head package at Enginears in California Adventure. You can fill a box with all the Mr. Potato Head parts you want for $20 or a large plastic Potato Head container for $50. My mom and I split one and got almost 2 of every part the had available. We only got one head so the kids could play with it in the hotel. You can get heads for cheap at wal-mart. They had really cute parts that were Disneyland themed.

The crowds and weather couldn't have been more perfect. We didn't wait for than 30 minutes in line for anything (except Toy Story Mania when it broke down) and most rides didn't have more than a 5 minute wait. We met tons of characters. The only ones we wanted to see and didn't get to were Jasmine and Aladdin.

My very favorite part of the whole trip was when Tanner met Buzz. On our 2nd day we headed to Tomorrowland around 10 because we'd heard he appears there around that time. We hung out around that area for about an hour Josh waited for him while we went on autopia quickly and we missed him!! He came out for a few minutes, didn't really attract a crowd, and left. We were so disappointed. So we waited some more. Josh told us all to go on and he'd wait with Tanner. He asked an employee if she knew when he might be out again. She pulled some strings and worked with a few other employees to arrange Buzz to come out again just for Tanner. Buzz knew right where Tanner would be and walked straight to him and pointed at him. I've never seen Tanner so happy. Buzz took his hand and walked with him the photo spot while a huge parade of people formed behind us. I went and thanked the employees who arranged it afterwards and they were all teared up. This is what make Disneyland magical.

After that Josh and Tanner rode Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters 13 times in a row.

While Josh and Tanner fought the Evil Emperor Zurg, my mom and I took the girls to Ariel's Grotto for their lunch with the princesses.

Last time we went we took Sydney and she was pretty much like Tanner when he met Buzz. I was a little disappointed with my girls' reactions this time around. They didn't seem to care that much. Maybe it was because we'd already met a few princesses the day. Camryn, however, was quite taken with Princess Aurora. She just got so excited about her for some reason.

There were no parades at either park this time, which was sad because I love the parades. They are being re-choreographed. We did see the World of Color show though which was amazing. We bought the picnics that came with fastpasses which was nice and I'm glad we did that. Even with priority seating though it can still be difficult to see the show. We had just one family in front of us and it was a bit hard to see and it's a long time to stand, but it's totally worth it. The next night we were in California Adventure during the time of the show and realized you can see it great from the sides as well. You can't see the images projected onto the water so well but we got a better view of the fountains than we had the previous night.

No I did not take this picture.

Another one of my favorite things that we did was the Talking with Crush in the Hollywood Backlot. I'd never even heard of this before but it was so fun! Crush would be on a screen and the audience would ask questions and he would answer and be funny and make up nicknames for people. I'm still not sure how they did it! I can't imagine they have preprogrammed responses for every possibly question or comment. We spent quite a bit of time in that area in the Animation Academy and Sorcerer's Workshop. It's a great place to have a little downtime and get inside for a bit.

I just love Disneyland. I'm so happy my parents and brother could come. At least one adult per kid is the best way to do Disney I think!

Camryn was a little angel, by the way. I call her my portable baby. She's even travel-size for added convenience. She fell asleep whenever and wherever she felt like it and was just happy as could be the whole time.

You know it's been a good day when they fall asleep in the stroller before you even get home.

Vegas Baby

We just got back from a nice long family vacation. This has been the best vacation as a family so far. The kids were great on the drive to Disneyland and back and we really didn't have any major meltdowns the whole time. I'm breaking up the trip into a few separate posts so it's not so gigantic. We decided to spend a couple nights in Vegas on the way down so we could get in lots of sun and swimming and relax a bit before Disney. While planning the trip I decided I wanted a kid-friendly hotel with a separate bedroom, a full kitchen so we didn't have to eat out on Sunday, an awesome pool, no casino, and for it to be off the strip. This may seem like a tall order to fill but I found one! The Tahiti Village Resort. We highly recommend it. We stayed there Saturday and Sunday night.

We had hoped to make it to Vegas early in the afternoon so we could take the kids to walk around the strip and to M&M World before the night crowds got there. We didn't quite make it and ended up on the strip around 6. It was super crowded and people gave us weird looks with our double stroller and kids holding both hands.

We made it to M&M World though! We let the kids pick out their own little bags of super over-priced m&m's in whatever color they wanted. I wished we'd been able to head over to the Bellagio to watch the fountains but we were tired and frustrated after our short little excursion to see the m&m's. So we headed back the hotel.

Here is a picture of me with some guy that's apparently on Halo. I've never played Halo.

On Sunday we went to church and then went to see the Las Vegas temple. That was fun and it was nice to see people just like us at church.

We spent the rest of the day at the hotel and the pool. The hotel had a really nice pool and lazy river that the kids loved. It was a little colder than we thought it would be so Camryn didn't last in the pool for very long. It was a fun weekend and great way to start off our trip.

Lots of pictures in this post!

I had so much fun today. I've really been working hard to get good at shooting in manual mode. I am getting better and I basically know how to shoot in manual now, I just need to get faster at adjusting my settings. So...practice, practice, practice. I decided to do a mentoring session photographer Emilie Decker. She was very good and gave me some great info for improving my photos. We spent an hour in her home going over equipment, manual settings, and lighting. Then we went over the Wheeler Farm with my kiddos to use as my little subjects. It was fun to try out some new poses with my kids. I definitely need to branch out in that department. They had fun with that.

I got a lot of shots with the 3 older kids. Camryn wasn't really cooperating so well. She's completely off on any kind of nap schedule she might have had before our trip so she was very sleepy and ornery.

My mom held her for a bit and she was out.

Oh well, I did get this little gem before she got too tired.

Here are the rest. I know I love them, but I may be a little partial. :)