CA '12: The Cousins Meet

We moved into our current house six years ago.  At the time Andy's sister, Kristina, lived about 20 minutes north of us, where her husband was stationed with the navy.  Several months later, the navy moved them to Belgium with our two handsome nephews and our beautiful niece.  We were so lucky to have had several years to get to know these kids when they were young.  In many ways, it helped me to cope with the fact that I was unable to have a family of my own.

As luck would have it, Andy and I became parents just one year later when Charlie and his sister moved in with us.  Then Ephram was born, Charlie adopted, and finally Macie Drew arrived... and still we had not been able to see our "Belgium family" (as our kids came to know them.)

Fate brought all of the Kovar clan to California in October.  It was one of those moments when everything aligned.  Kristina and Todd moved back to California when he retired from the navy this summer along with Martin, Gillian and Evan - now much, much bigger than when we'd last seen them. Even Andy's brother Kris happened to be in Riverside when we arrived.

I honestly don't remember the last time the whole Kovar family was together.  I think it was Christmas 2004 or 2005.  So this reunion was a long time coming... and three people had to meet the "Belgium family".

It was a special afternoon when we finally got together.  We all went to Andy's Dad's house.  It was a beautiful day, so we spent some time outside.  Uncle Kris even took almost all of the boys for a hike in the ravine behind the house.

I will let the pictures do the talking...

CA '12: Visit with Grandma Hayman

As usual, we took a day to drive down to my Grandma's house in Vista, which is in North San Diego County.  This is one of the only areas of California that we would happily move to.  It is beautiful, the weather is amazing, and we have good memories associated with the area.

It was nice to visit with my Grandma.  It was hard to keep my two year old tornado in check, but all things considered, he and Charlie both did very well.  Ephram was really excited to spend time with my Grandma's dog, Aimee.  But I'm not sure Aimee appreciated his handling.  (Boone is very tolerant!)  Macie got to meet her Great Grandma Hayman and her Uncle Jordan for the first time.

Grandma has been a very important part of my life since as long as I can remember.  In fact, everyone likes to tell the story of how she tried to "fix" my sleeping habits as a baby.  (Ephram gets his wonderful sleeping traits from me, I'm sure.)  I treasure these little annual visits with my Grandma.

CA '12: Fun with Grandpa Boyce

My kids love my Dad.  He engages with them, they actually seem to understand his humor - or at least think it's funny if they don't, and he does fun things like let them ride on his shoulders.  He's a good Grandpa!

One morning Charlie wrote a letter in his "curly writing".  My Dad took the time to ask him about curly writing - what it is, how you do it, what his letter meant.  Charlie explained that adults write in curly.  To write in curly, you just have to put lots and lots of curls all around the letters and make it really big.  Here he is explaining it to my dad, and then showing both his curly version and the plain version he wrote to translate it for us.

Ephram does not let me do "This Little Piggy" with him.  He always pulls his feet away and yells "no!"  But if Grandpa does it, it's a whole different story!

I love this series of my Dad and Ephram.  Enough that I've thought of framing it.  I just love their expressions, the colors, and the candid nature of it all.

CA '12: Fun with the Harris'

We go to California in October because we like to travel off-season and we love Disneyland at Halloween time.  Since we have to pull Charlie out of school anyway, we coordinate our trip with their cousins' school break.  This year my sister and her family stayed the entire week, even going to Disneyland the same days as us.  Charlie was ecstatic.  He idolizes Evin and loves playing with Quinlan, who is just a couple weeks younger than him.  Ephram was very excited to see Dustin.  Dustin is 9 months older than Ephram.  Ephram practiced what he was going to do with Dustin and they sent videos to each other during September to be silly.

Our family gets along well with the Harris'.  We wish that we could spend more time with them.  I think we'd all be happy to live closer!

CA '12: Grand Californian Fun

We debated quite a bit about where we were going to stay for our Disney vacation this year.  We finally settled on staying at the Disneyland Resort in one of the Disney hotels, and decided that we wanted to try out the Grand Californian.  It did not disappoint.  We had an excellent stay there, the staff was very helpful, the room comfortable, and it was nice having an entrance right into California Adventure.

Unfortunately, I didn't take many pictures of the hotel itself.  It's a lot more difficult to do things like that when you have a baby and a toddler!  The lobby was huge and had a large sitting area full of comfortable arm chairs and couches.  We spent a significant amount of time there each day.  The kids really liked choosing where they were going to sit.  The only picture that I have to share from that is a picture of my cute baby girl sitting on one of the chairs.  (Even she liked it!)

The room was perfect for us.  It had a queen sized bed for Andy and I, and a bunk bed with a trundle pull out for the kids.  (We had a reclined chair for Macie to sleep in, since she still struggled with sleeping flat due to her reflux.)

The boys had a lot of fun playing on those bunk beds.  Ephram thought it was funny to get onto the bottom bunk by climbing through the ladder.  Then he realized he could climb the ladder itself.  They spent hours going up and down, playing on the various beds and turning the wall mounted lights on and off.  In fact, this was so much fun for them that we only actually turned on the TV once in four days.

We had a balcony with a little table and chairs too.  It looked out on Downtown Disney.  We were right in the middle of the strip and it was a great people watching spot, day and night.

Even Macie loved the room.  She was all smiles and giggles almost all of the time that we were in it.

We will definitely stay in the Grand Californian again!

CA '12: Disney Day 3

I had mixed feelings as I woke up on October 11th, our last planned day at Disneyland.  I was tired, felt a little dehydrated, my feet were swollen and I had a slight twinge of a headache.  But I was also excited, for me and for my kids', to have another day of fun.  We had planned to enter the park an hour before it opened, but the kids were doing this:

They were absolutely wiped out from the days we'd already spent there.  It took us about an extra hour to convince all of them to wake up and get dressed.  And I decided that was okay, so we got into the park about a half an hour before it opened to the public.  And that was enough time for us to explore the rides in TomorrowLand.  Star Tours has been one of my favorites since it first opened.

We met with the cousins in TomorrowLand, and all of the boys that met the height requirement went on the Matterhorn.  Ephram, Macie and I did some shopping and some eating at TomorrowLand Terrace.  He sure is a cute kid.

Eventually we were joined by everyone else.  Charlie was thirsty.  He is also very cute.  What a ham.

We spent time running from one ride to the next, and then hopped over to California Adventure around lunch time.  We were all excited to go back to Radiator Springs.  Ephram was in heaven.

The boys waited to ride Mater's Junkyard Jamboree, and I wandered the strip to see what else they might want to do when they were done.  Macie was sleeping so peacefully, and although it was very crowded, it was a nice calm moment for me.  But nothing was as fun as watching these three boys spin around right in front of me.  They started out with skeptical faces, and all three had broad smiles about halfway through.

Then we stopped at the Petting Zoo to take some pictures with Mater.

And we ran into Red too.  It was hard for Andy to pry Ephram's hands off of Red.

Later we wandered back over to the Cozy Cone, which we'd visited on Day 1.  Ephram was so excited to see Mater again that he actually tried to hop the fence.  And I think he could have done it if he had been given a couple more minutes!

But once it was our turn with Mater, he was pretty shy!

We also saw Goofy and got some treats.  My favorite part of that afternoon was the production of Aladdin that we stopped to see.  I expected a fun little production, but it was a full on musical.  Very impressive.  I feel like I took my kids to their very first show... too bad both Ephram and Macie slept through the entire thing.  And we were in the front row with fog covering us, camels reaching down to talk to us and a giant snake right in front of us.  But those two were quite tired!

Eventually we went back to Disneyland.  We rode the carousel again.  And again.  And again.  Ephram really likes the carousel, still.

While Andy took the boys on Peter Pan, I took Macie on a walk and got her her first ears.  She is such a cute little girl.

My favorite part with the boys that evening was as we waited in the short line for Small World.  We were there right at 5pm, and when the clock stroke and came to life, they were mesmerized.  It was magic for both of them.  Then I told Ephram that we were about to go inside the clock, and now he thinks that clocks have water and lots of different kinds of people that sing inside of them.  And I'm okay with that.

We always let our kids buy one souvenir from the park.  Charlie chose his Indiana Jones map.  Ephram chose a new Donald Duck.  And I chose a Minnie Mouse for Macie.  But I was surprised when we got back to my parents' house that night and realized that Minnie was almost as big as my baby!  She loved her new toy.

We had a great time at Disneyland, and I hope to be back in 2013!