Best Sisters

Mylie and Mariah are "best sisters", which is a good thing since they only have each other.  They love doing just about everything together.  They play house, school, orphanage, track meet, barbies, crafts, fashion show, beauty shop, and so much more!  I love watching them use their imaginations to entertain themselves for hours on end.

This spring was fun for them because Mariah was finally old enough for tumbling.  Although they didn't go to class together since Mariah was in level 1 and Mylie in level 4, they loved having this in common and practiced their tumbling together at home a lot.

A couple weeks ago, Mylie's school earned a reward and got to have crazy mismatch day at school.  Mylie came up with her own crazy outfit, and so, of course, Mariah had to dress up crazy that day as well.

I know how special it is to have sisters, and I'm so grateful that these two have each other.

Brady-Boy

Brady is already almost 10 months old, and I feel like I haven't done a very good job at recording all the ways he is growing and changing.  So here's the latest scoop on Brady:

1--Finally decided that drinking from a bottle isn't all that bad.  In fact, he seems to quite enjoy the bottle, which makes me pretty happy.

2--My little chubster is getting to be not-so-chubby anymore.  At his 9-month check-up, he weighed 19 lb. 15 oz., which is just the 50th percentile. He was also 50th percentile for height.  The constant motion of the last couple months is burning up the calories apparently!

(Horrible, blurry picture, I know. But I love when he makes this face!)

3--He is really starting to show us what he loves.  He has started snuggling a little big, which I love! He definitely loves his mama best, but loves to play rough and wrestle with his dad.  He has discovered his voice, and uses it often, babbling or even yelling at us.  He also loves the swings at the park, which is a good thing since we'll be spending a lot of time there for baseball games in the next month.

4--How can I not mention the HAIR?!?  The first thing anybody comments on when they see him is the hair. It has grown a lot lately, and it stands straight up.  Some people have asked me when we're going to cut it, but I'm in no hurry.  I kinda like it.

5--He's a mini-Connor.  Looking at pictures of Connor at the same age, I can hardly see any differences, aside from the fact that Connor's hair laid down and he was a little fatter.  Brady even seems to have that same beautiful skin that tans very easily without burning.  He's been out in the sun a little the past couple weeks and is browning right up.  Look at these two handsome devils.

 6--The poor guy looks like somebody has been beating him.  He is constantly pulling up onto things, then falling and banging his head and face.  I suppose we'll be in the bruised head phase for at least the next year, so I might as well get used to it although I hate seeing my little guy with "owies" all over him. :(

7--One thing that hasn't changed over the past 10 months is the number of people in this house that are absolutely crazy about him!  We can't get enough of this adorable little guy.

DIY

Earlier this month, I did a little DIY project, with the help of my sister, Violet.  I'm redecorating my living room, and hopefully in the next couple months I'll get it all finished up, but for now, this little project has made a HUGE difference.

My piano bench BEFORE:

This thing had definitely taken a beating over the years.  This is a really old bench, and it wasn't in great shape when we bought it over 7 years ago.  And then my kids have only added to the damage.

But, a little cushioning, fabric, and staples later, viola!  The finished product.  I love how this turned out!

This Spring

All winter, during Tony's basketball season, I just knew that once basketball was over, life would slow down a little.  Boy was I wrong!  This spring has been busy, full, and wonderful.  Here's a quick run-down of what the Micheli clan has been up to lately:

Brady--learning to crawl, cutting some new teeth, pulling up on things, discovering fun stuff like tupperware cupboards and toilet paper rolls, eating more foods, and nursing less often

Mariah--Tumbling, two different preschools, playing with cousins, helping mom with house cleaning and yard work, dressing herself in FABULOUS outfits for preschool, and being a great big sister

Mylie--Tumbling, piano, lots of reading, playing with Mariah after school every day, helping with Brady, and just starting baseball (first year in pitching-machine league)

Connor--Basketball league, baseball (first year in majors), pole vault practice with Dad, field trips for school, meat judging (he took 8th at state competition for his age group), raising his steer, scouts, and piano

Taffy--Reading (rejoined book club), running (preparing to run a PR in the half marathon), teaching preschool to Mariah and friends, coaching volleyball with middle school spring league and open gyms, redecorating our living room (oh, so many decisions :/ ), driving, driving, driving some more (see kids' activities above), digital scrapbooking, eating healthier, and doing some early yard work, and not blogging

Tony--Coaching pole vault, getting things ready for business at our cabin (already almost 40 nights booked for the summer!), planning his off-season basketball camps, being a fabulous husband and father, and of course, teaching and ranching

Life is good.

Connor's Basketball

This spring Connor was finally old enough for our local basketball league.  They run it a little bit differently now, and I really love the set up.  He was with all the MV 3rd graders.  They had skills practices for the first 3 weeks or so, then divided up the kids and did 4 nights of controlled scrimmaging against each other.  The kids all learned a lot and improved a ton!  It was so fun to watch.

I feel I need to put a disclaimer on this video.  First of all, I was holding a very squirmy baby so the filming is not the greatest.  Secondly, this is not a real game, just a scrimmage. So there are some semi-dead balls where nobody is quite sure if we're still playing or not.  Anyway, if you still care to watch (we're probably down to family members at this point), it's kinda fun.  Connor loves basketball and did a great job this season.

And for those who can't tell, Connor is on the black team, gray and yellow shorts.

California Trip: Disneyland and California Adventure

From San Diego, we headed to Anaheim, where we rented a condo close to Disneyland.  We were a little tight in the 3-bedroom, 1.5 bath condo since we had 8 adults, 8 kids, and 2 babies in the group, but the location was fabulous, and we made it work.  We were just a 20 minute walk from the gates.  We didn't have to pay parking, and we were able to prepare all our own food, which saved a ton of money.  Each day, we got up early and got to the parks right when they opened.  We just packed snacks in to keep kids happy.  Then in the afternoon, we walked back to the condo for our big meal of the day and naps.  Once we were rested, we headed back for the rest of the day.  It worked really well.  We got the 3-day Park Hopper passes, so we could go back and forth between Disneyland and California Adventure as much as we wanted for the next three days.  On the first day, we all stuck together in a big group, enjoying all the rides we could all do together.  Then on the next two days, we split up into different groupings so the kids were able to do the types of things they loved the best.  Both Tony and I were able to spend time with Connor and our girls, but they didn't have to spend any time waiting around for each other to ride rides they didn't want to do.  Everybody had so much fun, and I loved having fun with them!  I also loved the variety of entertainment with theme rides, thrill rides, shows, and parades.  It was a wonderful three days.

We only got one family pic the entire vacation, and this is it.  Not too bad, but not fabulous either.

The only thing Mariah knew about Disneyland was that there was a teacup ride.  She saw it on an ad or something.  So the first morning, we hit the teacups for some crazy spinning.

Mickey was the only character we met.  The kids just really didn't care about meeting the characters.  Seeing them was good enough, and they sure didn't want to use up any ride time waiting in line to meet them.  (That was totally fine with me.)

This was as close we got to the big celebrity, Lightening McQueen.

The kids did think Cars Land was pretty cool, and we had a blast riding the Radiator Springs Racers.  Thank heavens we got a fast pass for it, because the wait was always over 2 hours, and we would have just skipped it.

 We walked through Downtown Disney many times between the parks and the condo.  The kids' favorite part of the walk was the lego store.  We never went in, but they were just amazed at these huge things built out of legos!! (I have my doubts about them truly being built out of legos, but I couldn't shake the kids' belief.)

It was so fun to do this trip with cousins.  Here are 7 of the 10. Only one kid and the two babies are missing. I never did get a pic with all of them together.

The three toothless cousins hanging out at the condo.  --Mylie, Tyler, Jaxon

Mylie, Mariah, and Addelyn--the only girl cousins in the group--on our fun girls' morning.

Brady and cousin Gavin (only 2 weeks apart in age) getting into trouble at the condo.  These two were amazingly good!

Now for the favorites:

Tony--toss-up between California Screamin' and California Soarin'

Me--California Soarin'  I LOVED this ride!

Connor--No question.  California Screamin'  He's my thrill seeker, and he rode this coaster 11 times!

It's hard to see with the glare and reflection, but here are Tony and Connor with their "cool" pose during the ride.

Mylie--California Soarin' and Gadget's Go Coaster

Here she is with Mariah and Grandpa getting in line for the Go Coaster.

Mariah--She says the same rides as Mylie.  But she also loved the princess shows and the parades.  I love this picture of her getting excited about whatever is coming next in the parade.

 Brady--Well, he didn't answer when I asked.  But he seemed to like everything, except getting buckled back into the stroller after riding a ride.  He didn't get very good naps, but he was a fabulous baby and oh so cute!

He loved the carousel.

Taking a rest with Mylie

 Just being his cute, happy self

Although this vacation took a lot of planning (and a lot of money), I am so glad we did it!  And I hope we can go again someday when our youngest child is old enough to remember it.  So totally worth it. :)

California Trip: San Diego

For spring break this year, we did the biggie: a trip to California!!!  Two of Tony's sisters, Angela and Haley, and their families, as well as Tony's parents, also came on the trip, so the kids were able to have all this fun with their cousins, too!  It was an amazing family vacation, and there is way too much to tell and way too many pictures to show.  I will try to condense it into just two posts, one for our San Diego fun, and then another for Disneyland/California Adventure.

We arrived in San Diego Monday afternoon around 3:00, which gave us some time to play at the beach.  After two days of travel, the kids were ready to have some fun.  We stayed at a hotel right on Pacific Beach, which was so nice.  It was kind of chilly that day, low 60s with a cool breeze.  I didn't even get into my swimsuit (I'm such a wuss), but the kids were excited enough to be tough about it.

These smiles say it all.  We LOVE the beach!

 Connor spent most of his time working on this fun project.  He started out all alone, but as it went on, more and more kids got involved.  In the end, Connor and Caden got to be buried.  That night, even after his shower, I noticed one of Connor's ears still full of sand.

The next morning, we headed off to Sea World.  I didn't take many pictures there, but we loved it!  Since we knew we were going to ride plenty of rides in the next few days, our priority at Sea World was the shows.  We watched the dolphin show (my fave!), a whale show (amazing animals), a pet show (cute and fun), and a sea lion show (hilarious!).  The dolphin show was our first of the day, and we sat right up front to get a good view.  We were warned that we were sitting in the soak zone, but we thought we might just get some incidental splashing or something.  Not so.  The dolphins actually swim around and splash you on purpose!  Rude!  Luckily Brady was sitting up higher with Grandma and Grandpa.  We got completely soaked!  I didn't have a dry spot on me by the time it was done.   Everybody still loved it though.

Mylie showing off how wet she got. So much for doing hair that morning.

We also rode some rides and saw a lot of animals there.  We saw sharks, manta rays, sea turtles, dolphins, whales, sea otters, seals, sea lions, tons of fish, puffins, and penguins.  They also had a baby crocodile that the kids could touch.  They thought that was pretty cool, and the girls were even brave enough to touch it.

 Connor and Jaxon

Before we left, I told Connor I would ride a rollercoaster with him, so he chose the Manta.  It was such an exciting ride, but as I stood up at the end, I realized my phone was no longer in my pocket.  Dang.  That was probably the only bummer of the week, though.  We had a great time in San Diego and would love to go back sometime and spend more time there.