Kindergarten Celebration

Brooklyn's last day of Kindergarten was Friday, May 25th. I can't believe she is already done with Kindergarten! They had a little celebration to celebrate all of their accomplishments. The invitation stated that the parents were invited, but did not mentioned extended family. However, when we showed up there were certain families with lots of extended family. Sorry grandparents who didn't get to come. :( I guess I should have clarified with Brooklyn's teacher.

They sang 4 different songs. I included a video of one of them at the end because it was so cute.

 Brooklyn got really into each song. Our camera was still dead so we had to borrow a camera for this event.

They also had a "fashion show" where each kid was able to wear whatever outfit they wanted to school and their teacher talked about each kid's accomplishments as they came out. Of course, the parents wrote what the teacher said so it was a little biased. :) It was cute to see the boys mostly dressed in sport uniforms. One boy even came as Hiccup from How to train a dragon. Then there were the girls, all dressed up in their dresses! Brooklyn really wanted me to make her look fancy so we curled her hair and even let her wear makeup.
This is what we wrote about Brooklyn:

Brooklyn loves going to school! She loves to be with all of her friends as well as learning new things! She has really loved learning to read this year and has done so well. It's fun to watch her reading books now. Her favorite part of Kindergarten was Recess and Math.

Brooklyn loves to dance and recently finished her second year of dance class. She also loves having play dates with her friends. She would have a play date daily if her parents would allow it! She enjoys playing pretend with her younger sister. They like to play dress up together and dance around. They also enjoy watching movies together. Brooklyn loves to ride her new bike that she won through the Bee-A-Reader program. She is looking forward to attending 1st grade next year along with the chance to learn Spanish!

Then we watched a DVD that Brooklyn's teacher made of the school year. Fortunately, since I volunteered in the classroom each week (before I started to get prego sick), I received a copy of the DVD as a thank you. I was so excited because I really learned to love all the kids in Brooklyn's class!

Her teacher then thanked all the parents that had either volunteered or contributed to the class. The kids were all able to sit with their families.

 Brooklyn wanted the grandpa that goes to her dollhouse set so that was part of her "graduation" gift.

 We are extremely proud of all that Brooklyn has accomplished this year! She's learned so much in a year that it really amazes me. Her teacher showed me the difference in all of her accomplishments from the beginning of the year until now. Incredible!

 Brooklyn with her teacher, Mrs. Bickmore. We love her!

 Brooklyn was in room 108 as you can plainly see!

 

Brooklyn really enjoyed Beehive Elementary and so have we! It's been fun to get involved with the PTA. I will forever be grateful to those ladies in my ward who helped me with the transition of sending my oldest to elementary school. They walked me through every step of the way and helped me get to know people and get involved. I'm sad that we won't be attending Beehive next year. Brooklyn was accepted into the Spanish  Dual Immersion/Gifted program at West Kearns Elementary and will begin 1st grade there. Now I get to start all over at a new school and get to know new people. I'm excited for the opportunity this gives Brooklyn, but a little nervous too. This will be the first time she will be gone all day at school. I hope she learns to love it there as much as she has loved Beehive. In fact, she keeps telling me she will come back to Beehive once she's done learning Spanish, but she doesn't quite get that she is now committed to this other program until she's done with 6th grade. Yikes! Sure hope we like it!

And the video if you feel like watching goofy Kindergartners!

California Vacation: Days 4-7

 

Day 4 (May 15th) of our vacation brought us to Disneyland! My girls were just a bit excited! Riding the tram from the parking lot to the park was exciting!

 First we rode a few rides in Fantasyland, but then we were off to explore the rest of Disneyland.

Brooklyn enjoyed driving her Grandma around!

The girls loved exploring Tarzan's tree house.

These three embraced the chance to cool off as they rode Splash Mountain. Brooklyn was our brave girl! She rode everything she was allowed to ride. The only ride she couldn't ride was California Screamin' in California Adventures and she was mad when her Dad rode without her. She was a little nervous on Splash Mountain, but once you are on there is only one way off! Notice in this picture, Marty's head is somewhat disappearing. Our camera started acting up. It's been dropped far too many times by our children.

As we were walking around, Brooklyn spotted Jasmine! She kept telling us she could see Jasmine and we thought it was just a picture of her. Finally she got enough of our attention to show us Jasmine was in fact there in person. We barely made it in line in time to see her. Brooklyn was excited to get her first autograph from a Princess!

We brought in lunch every day, but dinner was enjoyed at the park. Tonight was corn dogs!

 

Greasy and oh so yummy! Thanks for the recommendation, Heidi! I'm hungry just looking at this picture.

 

While eating dinner, the parade crowd gathered. The music and action caught our attention that we made our way to the back of the crowd to watch.  Love the girl's faces. Priceless!

We didn't have the best view, but the girls were excited to see everyone, but especially the Disney Princesses!

After it got dark, we caught a few more rides. Eliza and I weren't able to ride a ton of rides at Disneyland so we were little buddies as we waited for the other three. We had bought Princess dresses from Target for the girls to wear. Eliza wanted to put hers on randomly this night. This is the first and last time she will ever wear this Cinderella dress. More to come on that later.

Eliza eventually crashed and was cold. I hadn't thought to bring jackets at night because it was hot during the day, but Disneyland really cools down once the sun drops. Marty was holding her because she was cold. Poor guy had to carry a sleeping girl home each night.

Grandma wanted the girls to have some mouse ears. They each got these princess mouse ears. Too cute!

We visited Fantasyland again the first night to try to catch some kiddie rides without all the long lines. Eliza was sleeping though so she missed most of them. I made sure to ride some since I was actually able to ride the rides.

Day 5 (May 16th) took us to California Adventures. We spent the whole day there and still missed some of the rides. The girls enjoyed the bumper cars.

They spent the whole ride trying to catch each other and never were able to.

We had fun posing for pictures.

Enjoying the wilderness walk from the movie UP.

Too cute!

Grandma and Brooklyn got too hot so they went to ride Grizzly Rapids again. The rest of us caught up with Phineas and Ferb.

Marty wanted in on some of the mouse ear action.

We had fun riding the rides.

Eliza is once again not my bravest child when it comes to motion rides so Marty had to ride the carousel with her.  

The Nemo ride was pretty fun.

Eliza enjoyed the Winnie the Pooh ride, which I think is actually in the Disneyland Park. I guess this picture got out of order.

One ride we all enjoyed was the Toy Story ride in California Adventures. Eliza wanted desperately to keep the cool 3D glasses. Sadly, you couldn't buy them anywhere.

Brooklyn's top teeth were super super loose so we told her it would be cool to say she lost them at Disneyland. She has some issues with losing teeth. So she tried to take them out, but a bunch of people were staring at her so she just couldn't do it.

We loved the Color Wonder show!

And once again, Eliza crashed right in the middle of the show. I guess Grandma's cheek was pretty comfortable.

Day 6 (May 17th), we went back into Disneyland. We had missed lots of this park. We meant to come early, but couldn't get any of us out of the door that early in the morning. Our camera wouldn't even take pictures at all this day. Fortunately, my mom had just bought a new camera a few days before so we could use hers.

Brooklyn had one thing she wanted to do at Disneyland and that was to meet Rapunzel. Today was the day to make sure that goal was realized. She dressed up in her Snow White dress. Eliza did not want to wear her Cinderella dress. We went straight to the line to meet Rapunzel to make sure we didn't miss her. The girls drew in their autograph books while they waited in line.

Yep, we waited in that line. I was afraid it would only get longer, but the truth is it probably would have gotten shorter because these were all the people who were waiting for her to show up. She didn't come until 11 am.

Finally we met her though! They bonded over the fact that they both like to draw. Rapunzel enjoyed looking at all the pictures Brooklyn had drawn in her book.

I had to post two pictures since we waited so long. Eliza was a little nervous to meet her so we all got in the picture.

We rode a few more rides in Fantasyland. The girls loved Small World. Eliza would point at something for us to see, but she would already be looking somewhere else. She loved having so much to see. I loved when we got home and she would sing "It's a Small World Astronaut".

We spent a good part of the day waiting in line to meet more princesses. The girls didn't care to meet anyone else, but the princesses. Marty would have rather been riding rides, but he was a good sport.

We met Ariel,

Tiana, and

Belle all at the same time. I wish they would have done that with Rapunzel.

Next we headed into ToonTown. My mom found Pluto with a short line.

My girls are terrified of mascots. Eliza started warming up to the idea of meeting them as long as we were with her. Brooklyn saw that Grandma survived meeting Pluto so she decided to try it out too. You can see from the picture that she is no where near Pluto though.

What could make a little girl smile like this?

While Minnie Mouse of course! We weren't going to wait in any more lines, but once Eliza saw her standing in front of her house, she dragged me to the line. She even wore her mouse ears, which she hadn't worn up to this point. She wore them so she could match Minnie.

Marty and Brooklyn rode a ride while we were in line, but got back just in time for the picture.

The girls loved exploring Minnie's house.

It was a piece of magic to see her dishwasher.

Next door was Mickey Mouse's house. It said the line to meet Mickey was 30 minutes. My girls really didn't care if they met Mickey or not, but wanted to see what his house was like since they loved Minne's house.

They had a blast!

Then surprising after we walked through his whole house, we found ourselves meeting Mickey! No wait at all! Crazy!!!

Eliza especially loved all the cars in Toontown and had to try them all! After Toontown, we had heard that the princesses change every 30 minutes. Brooklyn really wanted to meet Snow White and Eliza really wanted to meet Mulan (her absolute favorite princess!). We got in line to wait again and heard that Mulan was just leaving. We were so sad, but then we found out she would be back in 30 minutes so we stayed in line in hopes she would be back before we got through the line. When we finally got to the front, the same exact princesses we had met earlier were inside. I asked the lady if we could just wait to the side until they switched again. She said it wasn't allowed. I explained this was our last day and my little girl just wanted to meet Mulan. She eventually winked at me and asked if the rest of my party was in the bathroom. It took me a minute to catch on, but then agreed. She was so nice to let us step to the side for about 10 minutes. We were the first ones in after the princess change.

First we met Cinderella!

And then Mulan! Seeing Eliza's reaction was worth every penny we paid to enter the park. We didn't catch in on camera, but it was seriously priceless. Mulan even tickled her tummy, which Eliza still talks about.

And last Aurora. Sadly, Snow White was not scheduled to be back. Brooklyn was a little disappointed. However, we told her we could go see the parade again and we could at least see Snow White.

 

My mom managed to get us some great front row seats for the parade so that we could indeed see Snow White. Snow White even blew Brooklyn a kiss (though of course we didn't catch it on camera). The girls had fun watching the parade all over again!

It was an almost too perfect day so of course something bad had to happen, right? The random picture above is just showing my backpack. After a fun time at the parade, we set off to enjoy a few last rides before our Disneyland time was over. First I requested we stop at the Tiki Bar to get a Dole Whip (or whatever they are called). Let me just say Yum! I was carrying a backpack, but I honestly had no idea which one it was at the time because we had two different backpacks. I guess while I stepped into the Tiki Lounge area to enjoy my slice of heaven, Marty went to park the stroller and left one of the backpacks inside the stroller. We had left our backpacks several different times over the last 5 days of amusement parks and nothing ever happened. We didn't realized there was an actual show in the Tiki Lounge area so we stepped inside once the doors opened. We enjoyed our treat and the show. Once we came out though, Marty went to grab our stroller. I then got a call from him asking if I had two backpacks. I told him I had one. He then told me the other was gone. Immediate panic mode set it. I checked to see what backpack I had and of course, I was carrying Marty's backpack. The one with our broken camera and food. I then thought about everything that was in the other backpack. I was immediately sick to my stomach. It contained 2 IPOD Touchs (why oh why did I put both of them in my backpack?), Brooklyn's autograph book, Eliza's Cinderella dress, both mouse ears for the girls, my sunglasses and a bunch of odds and ends of things. Crap! Marty asked around and no one had seen it. We were told that if a backpack falls off of a stroller then security has to take it to the lost and found area. We prayed and searched and prayed and searched. We spent the last hour of our final day in Disneyland walking around, talking to the lost and found, and watching the exit for our backpack. No such luck! Finally the park closed and we had to leave. We felt so violated. How could someone steal at the Happiest Place on Earth? We realize it was a dumb move on our part. I spent the next 24 hours or more replaying everything I should have done differently. I didn't sleep at all that night. I had finally gotten over the loss of the IPODs. I could replace those. I could replace a dress and even the mouse ears. The thing that made me the most sick was the fact that I could not replace Brooklyn's autograph book. I had no more days to spend at the park getting new signatures. Though I was about willing to buy another ticket the next day and do just that! Brooklyn was worried about how sad I was over the whole thing and eventually told me her autograph book wasn't a big deal. She even told me she could have her friends at school who know cursive write in a book for her. :) Love that kid! I do realize that the book is just a book and it wouldn't probably be looked at after a few weeks, but it was the whole principle of it all. We had spent a good portion of the day getting those autographs. At least we still had the pictures!

We were sad to leave Disneyland with a sour taste in our mouth. Apparently the crime rate increases at night. This would be the only night that we left our backpack unattended of course.
We spent our last day (Day 7) at the beach for a bit and then back over at Disneyland to check the Lost and Found. We did buy Brooklyn more mouse ears. Eliza wasn't sad about the loss of hers. Eliza is honestly the most sad about the IPODs. She loved playing on those things. Brooklyn told Marty on the way home that she wanted to buy me one more Mother's Day present when we got home. She wanted to buy me another IPOD. How sweet is that?!
We have called Disneyland several times since we've been back, but our backpack has never been returned. We hoped they would take the IPODs and leave the rest, but we weren't even fortunate to have that. We are however grateful that we are all safe and well and alive! Overall, it was a great trip! We wish we could go back!