There is a reason it's called "Jump ROPE"

So, we were at Young Women's the other day (I'm the new secretary and Eric teaches Wed nights...so the kids come with me!) and I was helping the Laurels sew aprons for their pioneer trek dresses. The kids were all in the nursery making a HUGE mess with all of the toys (there were my 4 plus 5 other kids) but at least they were quiet! After cleaning up, we took some girls home and went home ourselves. The kids went and got in their pjs and came downstairs for prayer. That's when I noticed it...Cayson's cheek was bleeding (how did I miss it? I don't know). It wasn't bleeding bad, just a little cut. I asked him what happened to his cheek and he just rolled his eyes and started shaking his head as he said, "Mom...it was so stupid!" Great! You never want to hear those words coming from a bleeding 7 year old...."Tell me what happened while I clean it up". He chuckles a little bit and says, "well, I was in the nursery showing off for the girls and tried to jump rope with a baby stroller and I forgot to bend my knees." Oh, brother! After processing this in my head for a minute...I just simply said, "Cayson, I am proud of you for recognizing that as probably not the smartest choice...what can you learn from this?" "Well, I think next time I will remember to bend my knees!!!" BOYS!!!! Until next time..........

LIlly Belle

So, Walt Disney loved trains! It was said that after Disneyland closed for the night, Walt could be found driving the train around the park...His wife's name was Lilly, and he named a train car after her. Not just any train car, mind you...his own personal train car. It is filled with antiques and personal photos. We were lucky enough to have been able to ride in this beautiful train car on a trip around the Magic Kingdom. Thomas was the name of our escort (there are expensive and irreplaceable things on the train car so whenever someone rides on it, so does an escort). Thomas gave us lots of interesting facts about Mr Disney and the park...such a great experience! If/when you get to visit Disneyland, make sure to go by City Hall and ask to ride on the Lilly Belle...they will even give you souvenir tickets...One of my favorite things in the car was a picture of Walt and Lilly (a rare picture of her, even more rare of them together). An experience my kids can't stop talking about! Thank you Mr Disney for sharing your dream with the world....Until next time...............

Breafast with the Characters...its a long one, bear with me!

So, the first day @ Disneyland...we decided to have breakfast with Minnie & Friends...we met a lot of characters and the food was scrum-delish! Cayson liked Captain Hook the best, I think...he took a picture with him and CH put his hook around Cayson's throat...he thought that was cool! The Fairy Godmother (i have been to DL lots of times and this was the first time I have met her...)she came and tied the kids' balloons on their wrists for them. Winnie the Pooh came by and gave the kids some honey. We got pictures and autographs of the characters and went about our business. The next day we noticed that our autograph book was missing! Aaaggghhh! Not that we had a huge amount of autographs...but we had quite a bit...so we went to lost and found to see if they had our book...the lady was gone for quite a while and she said that she went through about 100 books and couldn't find ours...bummer! So the third day, I decided to go to the breakfast and ask them if they would just take the new autograph book around and have the characters sign it again. One lady was not very nice (very un-Disneyland attitude, she had!) so I asked another lady who was walking around with the characters and she was very nice about it. She took our book and went around to the characters and had them each sign it (which was nice because there were characters there that we hadn't had a chance to meet before). I took the book and went to City Hall to give Tammy (the nice lady) a compliment...they get special things when they go above and beyond for the guests...she did something for me...I was gonna do something nice for her...so I was filling out the compliment sheet and the lady that was helping me asked me if she could take my book and have each of the kids' favorite character autograph it...SURE! She told me to come back in a couple of hours and she would give it back to us. So we went over to CA Adventures to the Aladdin show (which is great!) and then came back to City Hall...I picked up the book and ran outside (the kids were in line to meet Cruella DeVil and Mary Poppins and Bert). After we met them, we were sitting down contemplating our next move and I picked up the autograph book...Holy Cow! They had added about 30 or so more names in the book...now, I know that when you are hired to be a character, you have to learn all of the signatures so you can play any given character so I know that one or two people sat down and filled up our book...now that is Disneyland attitude! Anyways, I went back to City Hall to thank them and the lady said that the man that was "in charge" of the project had remembered my kids from breakfast and wanted to do something special...we got autographs of characters that have not nor will they probably ever be out doing autographs...that is something special! More to post later...until next time!




P.S....Grandpa really likes his picture taken with the characters!