Happy Birthday to Me!

Maybe it's self-serving to wish myself a happy birthday, but let me break it down.  My birthday is on August 3.  Because of all the stuff going on with fooling the kids about the trip to Disneyland, I kept telling Cassi not to worry about my birthday until after the trip.  I've celebrated a handful of times not on my actual day, so it's no big deal.  Plus, I'm not 8, I don't expect a big hullaballoo for my birthday anyway.

So we had early entry today and that meant call time was at the big fireplace at something like 6:30.  It's amazing sometimes how little sleep and how tired I end up on our vacations to Disneyland.  I think about those old commercials where everyone is too excited to sleep before they get there.  Once you're there, you don't want to stop long enough to sleep either, you're just too excited!  Anyway, at the fireplace we were by 6:30 for family prayer and marching orders.  We've gotten into the habit of having a certain colored shirt for each day we're at the park.  It's fun, and lot easier to spot everyone, or catch up in line to the group.  It has to be a bright color though.  My mom usually drives herself about crazy as she scours the countryside to find all the coordinating shirts in the right sizes leading up to the trip.  (I don't know if Mom ever hears about it, but we get comments all the time, in line and such, that the t-shirt idea is a great idea.)  This time was no different, but the color they picked was orange, my favorite color.

Break out the Orange, it's my birthday (kinda)!

At the fireplace, during marching orders, I learned that the reason I couldn't get Cassi to destress about my birthday before the trip was because we were celebrating my birthday on the trip!  It wasn't just Orange Day, it was "Everyone pay homage to me" Day.  FUN!  They made it Phineas and Ferb -themed, and I was a secret agent who had to stop Doof from doing something nefarious.  I had to solve Disneyland trivia puzzles during the day to get my presents.  It was a lot of fun, and I came away with a new Wii game, iTunes card, a new shirt, and other fun stuff.

We started out in Disneyland and hit the favorites of Autopia and Astro Blasters in Tomorrowland (we're all getting pretty good at Astro Blasters by the way, Ryan made it to #3 on the leader board one day, and Dad whooped us all with somewhere around a 1 million point score).  After Tomorrowland, we hiked over to California Adventure to get FastPasses for the new night show World of Color (crazy awesome show, more later).

Cute girls cruisin' in Cali

This was my high score for the day, though not my highest rank (made it to #5)

We trekked through California Adventure, hitting all the rides the kids wanted to, and even convinced my Mom to try out Soarin' Over California.  It's definitely a favorite ride.  My mom usually sticks to the Teacups and Small World, but she branched out this trip.  Maybe we built it up too much, but I'm afraid she wasn't as impressed as I am with it.  Either way, it was fun that she went on it with us.

We always appreciate Uncle Chase's shoulders on these adventures!

The girls were excited to spot Minnie after our Soarin' good time

One thing I love, now as a parent, is to find the rides that the kids love, and introduce them (height-permitting of course) to some of the rides I love.  Megan found a new favorite called Jumping Jellyfish.  It's Tower of Terror for the little kids.  Katelyn decided she's not afraid of anything, and actually chose Tower of Terror to go on with me.  I kept my hand on her leg the whole time so she could sense me there, but she did great, and loved it enough to ask for more!  As for Adam, he has so far spent almost all of his waking time in this wonderful land in a stroller, so I tried to find a few times when he could just (safely) wander and explore.  It's fun to see him investigate and think and figure things out.  I had to make sure he didn't stick his head through the fence bars, but other than that, he got to be a somewhat free spirit, and I think he liked it.

Jumpin' Jehosephat! No, it's Jumpin' Jellyfish!

Brave face now, just try to keep that smile in the elevator!

This is probably my favorite picture of the whole trip.  It's 100% pure joy.

We of course went on Toy Story Mania, and even brought Adam.  He sat with me, and had a lot of fun.  Megan learned that she can hang upside down on almost any set of bars with her feet and swing around (until we catch her, that is).  For the first time, we did the Animation Workshop, which was a lot of fun for me, and I think the kids liked it too.  We drew Dale, of Chip 'n Dale fame.  I've always wanted to learn to draw better (even took Drawing 101 at BYU), but am just not that good.  I can do some OK imitation stuff, but nothing that would make it beyond the fridge.  So this activity was particularly fun for me.

One size fits all most

You can see Katelyn getting ready to join in the monkey fun

Last activity for the day was World of Color.  I've seen the fountains at Bellagio, and the Dancing Waters at the Disneyland Hotel, and other water shows here and there and liked them, and I've always loved Fantasmic.  Well, World of Colors takes all the others and just tells them to go hide under a rock, because this was AMAZING!  They would shoot the big tall fountains (the following are all heights as I guess, absolutely not scientific) say 80 feet in the air and that looked impressive.  Then another section would come and they'd double that height.  And it wasn't just two or three big guns, it was like 40 that could do that.  From a techno-geek perspective, I think I shed a tear.  From a Disney-lover perspective, you're just about in heaven.

Needless to say, after that high, we floated down and made our way back to the hotel to enjoy some rest, in time for the next day of celebrations.  I'm so glad Cassi and everyone else put in all the work to make my 31st birthday one I'll never forget.  Really, it was way better than those in Kanab! :)

Surprise! We're in California!

So Ryan and Jennifer decided to have a "couples vacation" and farmed out their kids to us in the AZ, all pre-arranged and approved.  For their time away, they chose Disneyland.  Well, why should they get to go and not us?  Mom and Dad figured out that they could still have time without the kids and we could all be in Disneyland and probably not even cross paths!  Ok, so the FUN plan was pre-arranged and approved also, but it was mum's the word to the kids.  As far as Ryan's kids knew, they were playing in AZ for a week.  And as far as my kids knew, Benjamin was sleeping at our house for 3-4 nights.  Oh how twisted we can be, all in good fun!

Ryan and Jennifer headed for the Big-D on Sunday afternoon, and Operation Trick-Or-Treat went into action.  Benjamin stayed with us two nights and then Tuesday morning Mom and Dad picked up Benjamin and "went for a drive."  We told our kids that Ryan's kids were going to spend the day/night with Grandma and Grandpa and we would see them later.  On Wednesday, we told the kids that Grandma and Grandpa had invited us all to a party that night.  So after work, we got in the car with our "directions" to the party.  Amazingly the kids only asked a few times when we would get to the party, but didn't realize that we were in the car for 6 hours.

I need to pause here and say that I generally have a pretty good sense of direction.  And inside Disneyland, I might rival the cast members.  However, Anaheim is like a dead zone for me.  We had directions from Google Maps, and our GPS (which weren't exactly the same), plus we've been there before, but for some reason we just had a brain cloud as we rolled into the greater Disneyland area and ended up making about 3 U-turns to actually get to the hotel.  I look forward to future trips to the Happiest Place so I can further hone my skills and drop this dead zone. :)

So after we arrived at the Grand Californian, and got the luggage, and walked inside, and asked the girls a few times if they knew where we were (we had told them that the "party" was in California), they still didn't quite figure it out.  Katelyn said a couple times, "I hope we're in Disneyland" but couldn't find the visual cues to confirm her desire.  Finally we told them we were at Disneyland, and went to my parents' room and saw Nathan and Benjamin and Joshua, and they were very happily surprised.  Almost enough that asking them to go to bed (because we had an early start the next day) could be considered cruel and unusual punishment.  The excitement wore out and fatigue finally set in and they enjoyed peaceful sleep in the shadows of Sleeping Beauty's castle.

Vegas trip

I love my Vegas trips. It's not like it sounds. I haven't been on the Vegas Strip in many many years. Vegas to me means my family, relaxed times, playing card games, and just taking a deep breath from real life. I love that when I visit my house we can spend a whole day in the house and just enjoy each others company and not feel like we have to run around. I've decided we need to make the trek to Vegas every summer so the kids can see their grandparents there and my brothers' family which of course includes cousins. This year, we decided that Chris should stay back and work. Plus I picked a week to go when Chris was going to be gone for part of it anyway with the Young Men in our ward on a Super Activity. Lucky us the time that worked in the schedule was my mom's birthday week! We had so much fun. I have to admit that my downfall of not blogging consistently means that I've forgotten much of what we did while I was there. Here's some highlights of what I remember (after all I'm really blogging this in November when we went in July!). We had homemade ice cream....yum....a favorite birthday tradition. We ate fish! If I remember right we went to Red Lobster one day where I got Megan to admit she liked crab. (Chris hates fish and my kids seem to follow suit.) Then we went out to Long John Silvers later in the week with my mom and grandma. Katelyn was playing with her cousin Eli for the day so I only had Megan and Adam. Of course they didn't try the fish, but I tried to tell them it was great! Adam however did try to drink the tartar sauce. He's my dunking kid. He'll dunk pretty much any food in anything. He was not too impressed with the hamburger but the tarter sauce was a hit! And the most important thing I remember is just enjoying my family. I love you and can't wait to come back again!

Swim, swim, swim

This has been our summer of swimming. Katelyn had a very eventful swimming summer, but Megan and Adam also took lessons and they did very well. Our big accomplishments: Megan is now not afraid of putting her face in the water. Yeah Megan! Adam and I took the mom tot class. At the beginning of the summer, he would not let me work with him on the skills they wanted us to work on. He just wanted to play and do what HE wanted to do. Who wouldn't? So our big accomplishment was that by the end of the summer he didn't scream at me when I wanted to work with him on floats and bubbles. He really does love the water, so I think next year we'll have to watch out. He's going to be a little fish!

Go Katelyn! Go!

I already posted about Katelyn's first swim meet, back on June 10 (and quite timely too), but now that the rest of the meets are done, I'll recap the whole summer swimming season of Katelyn's first year on swim team.

Freestyle Individual - 35.8s - 2nd place
Freestyle Relay - 37.1s - 2nd place

Backstroke Individual - 49s - 4th place
Backstroke Relay - 51s - 3rd place

Butterfly Individual - 43.6 - 3rd place

Red Division Qualifying Meet
Freestyle -30.89s - 2nd place in heat, 14th place overall
Backstoke - 47.21s - 1st place in heat, 16th place overall

City Semi-Championship Meet
Freestyle - 30.99s
Backstroke - 43.69s

The swim meets were a lot of fun to go to, although words can't express how much I wanted to be on the team with her!  (Not just because temperatures at the meets ranged from low 90's (a happy fluke I think) and 115s.)  It was fun to see some old friends that I used to swim with cheering on their own kids.  We did our best to keep the spectator crowd cool, and celebrated the end of each meet with a visit to Jamba Juice - sometimes that became dinner.  I'm really proud with how much Katelyn has improved during this year.  She also met Coach Dad during some private workouts.  She worked really hard, and is learning a few things about what hard work means too!  I think she likes just Dad better - he just lets her play in the pool. :)  It was a good season.  Here are a few pics of us spectatin' and also Katelyn doing the Freestyle.  Enjoy!

Happy Birthday America, Let's Party!

In true character for the past I don't know how many years, the Partridge's made the journey to Utah for the 4th of July celebrations. Now that we live in Arizona and we get to make the trek up North, I see the wisdom in this tradition. It's a little relief from the hot summer in AZ! We flew to Utah on Friday, July 2nd and got settled in. Then Saturday we got to relax in the morning and then had our famous BBQ at Bicentennial Park. Yummm...the kids played at the playground while the burgers and dogs cooked.

Adam loved helping push Megan on the swings. He would just laugh and laugh when we would push her.

Here's the traditional family shot at the BBQ. We were sadly missing Brett and Stephanie's family, but they were at a different family reunion.
After the BBQ we went to the Stadium of Fire to see the show and fireworks. It was wisely decided this year to not invite the smallest kids because it's just too long to sit and be stuck at something that they don't understand. Chris was very kind to let me go and he stayed back at the hotel with Adam. Katelyn, Megan, and I went on this fun adventure! This year is the Centennial Celebration for the Boy Scouts of America, so as part of the pre-show we got to be a part of the largest Eagle Scout Court of Honor ever. This was one of my favorite parts because we got to see all the Eagle Scouts in the audience stand. What an accomplishment for all those men out there. The main show was Carrie Underwood. I'm not really a country music fan, so I didn't know most of her songs. I'm not opposed to country music, I just don't get much beyond the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse credits these days. But, she puts on a really great show and the music was amazing. Megan was sitting next to me, and for a lot of it, on top of my lap. She is very fun to have at a concert! She was dancing on my lap through most of the show. Then to top it all off, the fireworks were spectacular. When the concert was done, we walked back to the shuttle stop for the hotel. Megan had fallen asleep in Uncle Chase's arms during the walk. She was tired after the wild dance party! When we got to the shuttle stop, one shuttle was full and about to pull out; they told us the next one was on the way. Well, after waiting for 10 minutes, we noticed that the shuttle that had just loaded up to leave had still not made it out of the parking lot! We then took a vote and decided we could just walk to the hotel faster than waiting for the next shuttle. It was so fun! For those who know Provo, we walked from the Stadium to Provo High School, where the shuttle was. Then we walked from Provo High School to the Marriott hotel on 1st North. It turned out being quite the walk, and the kids were all great sports even though it was so late, and a long walk for their short legs. We don't know the end result, but we like to think that we made it back before we would have if we had waited. :)

Sunday, we enjoyed church at Ryan and Jennifer's ward. Then after sacrament meeting, we went up to visit Chris' Grandma Partridge in Layton. It's always good to see her. Then we traveled back down to Provo for dinner at Ryan and Jennifer's house. It was of course amazing food and Jennifer even had everything "4th of July" themed. Everything was decked out in All-American Red, White and Blue. There was pasta with 2 choices for sauce: one red and one white. Then on the side we had a strawberry and blueberry fruit salad, watermelon, and blue jello in a star mold. But, if you thought it just couldn't get any better, we had the dessert. A full sized flag cake. Words cannot even describe it. It was layer and layers of yummy gooy-ness. Wow!

Then Monday, the "working crew" (Chris, Scott Grover, Kaley, and Chase) all flew back to AZ. Amy's oldest, Bradley, got to be in soccer camp at BYU for the week. Since they were staying longer I decided to stay too, and I took the opportunity to spend time with my family in SLC. We had a great week. We spent most of our days in SLC and the evenings back in Provo. I have no pictures of these days. I'm not great at remembering to take pictures! I spent one day with Missy and her kids, one day with my Grandma McFarlane and one day with Grandma Basta. All of the days were great, but in the end kinda felt mushed into one really long day! The week went really fast. I was a little worried staying without Chris, but his parents stayed and helped pick up the slack! Thank you! I feel so blessed for all the family around me, both Chris' and mine. It had been a while since I had been able to visit with just my sister and it was so nice to just be together with our kids. Then I feel any time I get to spend with Grandma McFarlane is a blessing because her health is not great these days. And of course, I can't go long without my special Grandma Basta. What wonderful people!

Rockband!

I just love this picture of the kids playing Rockband together. We don't play the Wii everyday, so when the kids want to get it out and rock...We Rock!