Vala's 2013

Our annual picture with Mickey!

This year's trip to Vala's came courtesy of Cubby's work!  Free food and fun?  You bet we'll be there!

Every year Vala's gets bigger and it's quite the attraction site for us locals (and many non-locals!).  But, in all the years we've gone, this was the first time we'd gone in the afternoon/evening.  It was great!

Here are just some of the highlights!  I didn't take pictures of EVERYTHING we did...I'm not that good!

Anyone??  J/K, wouldn't sell them for the world!

Christian insisted upon this close up.

Juliana LOVED watching the goats.

The kids all really like "Storybook Village"...pretty sure there's some serious copyright infringement going on though. For instance, on one of the displays they had a Snow White set up with the music from the movie and everything.  I mean, the kids loved it, but not sure what Disney would have to say about it all :-).

There was an old lady who lived in a shoe...alas, sometimes it is how it feels!  (But not the OLD part...)

We caught a few tricks of a magic show (Emily was thoroughly unimpressed.  Shocker.)

Juliana, doing her happy dance, about the sheep

Christian, honing his cattle roping skills

One of my favorite drinks is back in season!!

 The biggest hit of the night, by far, was this slide!  It was getting dark so the pictures aren't so great, but ALL of the kids really enjoyed it.  Even Juliana!  I went down it once, but ever since I started having children, I get motion sick really easily!

Can you see Juliana's happy smile??

We also came home with a pumpkin that weighed more than Juliana.
She enjoyed having a "buddy" in the stroller with her :-)

We did all this and more at Vala's!  Such a beautiful evening and, despite how cheesy some of the stuff at Vala's is, we LOVE making these fun memories with our children!

New Friend

Juliana made a new friend while watching soccer practice.  (Actually, she's known Conway as his family are friends of ours.)  But, Juliana likes Conway b/c he's a big boy who likes to play soccer with her and Conway likes Juliana b/c she's someone who's younger than him :-).  Isn't this picture so cute?

Trip to Lincoln!

 A couple of weeks ago Cubby took a Friday off of work and we took the kids down to the Lincoln Children's museum!  The kids had a wonderful time playing...I'll let the pictures do the talking!

Juliana LOVED the "veterinarian office"--for obvious reasons

Can we take him home??

 Shopping in "the store" area...

Emily and Kari made me some delicious pizza!

Christian liked being "on TV"

And the big kids look pretty tough on this Harley

We did endure some whining though (par for the course, right?)--This is Emily's whining face :-)

Juliana may have a future in medicine...

Emily enjoyed channeling Grandpa Vic, playing "radiologist"

 Then, as a surprise to the kids, Miss Caitlin met up with us!  Her class for the day had gotten canceled and she came over after work to play!

Juliana enjoyed playing in the water (no surprise there!)

 We also did some face painting!  I did Christian's "tiger" face and I'm pretty sure he had the coolest face in the museum that day!

 Christian and Daddy also set up for a major game of chess!

The kids also played "astronauts in space" and climbed in the rocket ship, pretended to sleep in anti-gravity, and even drive a moon vehicle!          

Here are the kiddos and Miss Caitlin

And, a failed attempt at a family shot!

 Such a fun day!

Please Draw On the Wall!

A couple of months ago, I decided that it would be a great idea to paint an entire wall in black chalkboard paint.  Now, I've had a lot of "big" ideas, but more often than not, I end up changing my mind for something else.  Our kitchen, for instance.  I've gone from wanting to tear down a wall (the one that's now a chalkboard), to wanting to tear half of the wall down and add a breakfast bar, to now, wanting to tear it all down again...after we get sick of the chalkboard.  But, I digress.  Back to the chalkboard wall!  I bought the paint and had good intentions of painting it sooner, but, life happens and I got busy with other things!  Well, about mid week last week, I got the paint out to do a smaller chalkboard that I had for the kitchen, and then decided that while the little girls were napping...and since the paint was already out...I'd might as well just do the whole wall! I was brave, yes indeed.  

Soooo...The big kids came home from school and immediately, knew I'd done something.  (Perhaps the paint smell tipped them off?)  They were thrilled, even though I'd only got two coats done.  (It needed three, which I finished up a day or two later.)  Cubby came home, went about his normal routine of opening the mail, saying hi to the kids and, 10 minutes later, walked about the corner to the dining room and said, "Whoa...what did you do?"  My mom's reaction?  "Wow, that is a really black wall!"  Hmmm....not the most encouraging words.  But, once it was all done, Cubby said that the wall looks really cool (and, it does).  And, the kids LOVE it.  I mean, how often do you get to hear your mom say, "Kids, why don't you go draw on the walls for a while?" 

 I still need to get a big, overall picture of the wall(s).  (It goes over a doorway so it's on both sides, encompassing the whole south wall in our dining room.)  But, it's been a really fun thing to have in our house!  I mean, kids naturally make messes, why not encourage one once and a while?

Donuts with Grandpa Harvey

Last week Harvey got to visit Kari's preschool!  It was "Dads and Donuts" day and since Cubby was stuck in a meeting at work, Harvey was excited that he got to go!

After the donuts (which, shocker, Kari didn't eat), the kids treated their guests to some songs they'd learned and they read books and played some games in the gym.  I brought the camera along when I came to pick her up and snapped a few pictures to capture the cuteness, of course.

Juliana was super excited to see Harvey and was pretty thrilled that she got to play around a bit too.

 Here are a few action shots of our big three yr old.  The little jumper she's in was actually one of mine that I wore when I was little!  Thank-you, Mom, for saving it so that Kari can wear it now and look soooo darling in it!  (Oh, and thanks for making Juliana's little dress too!  Lingering warm weather was nice so she got one more use out of it!)

Thank-you, Grandpa, for coming and sharing a fun time with our fancy little Kari!

Apples and {Orange} Pumpkins

 Last week was Kari's preschool class's field trip to Vala's Pumpkin Patch.  (You know it's a popular destination when there's an official sign for your field trip!)

The kids were all very well behaved and were good sports about all of the requisite pictures that were forced upon them.

Now, even though we were at a pumpkin patch, this time the trip was all about apples (oh yes, the infamous Vala's also has an apple orchard--complete with dwarf apple trees perfect for little pickers!).

Each child was given a bag and told they could pick 3 apples.  Kari was happy b/c "3" is her favorite number.  And, I was rewarded with one gloriously cute apple-picking picture.  After that, all bets were off and she was back to her stubborn little self.

Juliana also got to come along and she took quite a shine to one of Kari's teachers, Mrs. Marshall.  It was very cute and Mrs. Marshall was kind enough to indulge her a bit and hug and hold her...until Juliana decided that she'd had enough and wanted to explore a bit.

 And...here are a couple of cute shots of Ju-Ju-Bee :-).

 We also got to ride on TWO trains.  One small one and the bigger one.  Obviously, the bigger one was the favorite (but I didn't get any pictures of us on it.)

 After the train rides, we also got to feed some of the goats and the llama!  Kari's favorite book right now is, "Llama llama red pajama" so she got a kick out of feeding a REAL llama!

 The kids also got a little time to play around on one of the playgrounds there.

Both girls also liked the various sites (musical puppets and stuff that's pretty cheesy).  The picture above is what they looked like after we'd been bouncing on the big inflatable bouncy pillows...and the side picture is what they both insisted upon watching.

Yup, it was definitely time to head home.  We are planning on heading back as a family with Cubby's work in a couple of weeks so I didn't feel too badly about not doing EVERYTHING that morning.  It was special though b/c it was Kari's first field trip :-).