Pinewood Derby

So I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but our Disneyland trip made us miss the Pinewood Derby. I was so sad! A little boy has three shots at the Derby, and our vacation made my boys miss one of these shots, including Tyler's last year in cub scouts. Mind you, they were okay with it, especially since we could still enter cars to be run.

So they designed their cars. Tyler got some tips from his friend Jackson, who has a whole book about tips and tricks to winning the Pinewood Derby. Paul was crazy, crazy busy with school right before we left, so he spent probably about 15 minutes total on each car. (Fortunately we found weights that you just stick on the bottom and already have adhesive. Where has this been?! Every year Paul drills to add weight, and this was about a zillion times easier. Phew!) The boys finished off the painting designs and this is what we ended up with:

 

Since we weren't going to be there we asked a family in our ward if they would help with the cars. We asked their daughter to run Tyler's car, and their son to run Zachary's car. We knew that Tyler would win the fastest car in the Webelos den, so we were happy about that. (There is only one other boy in Webelos, and since his brother got married that day he didn't even enter a car.) As we were driving home from California, we got a text saying our boys' cars had done great:

Tyler won fastest car in the Webelos den, the second-fastest car in the whole pack, and Best Silver Speedster.

Zachary win Best Blue and Gold Scout Racer:

They were thrilled, even though they hadn't been there to see them race. Look at these happy faces!

 

Senior Pictures

We had fun taking senior pictures of Becca and Caleb. They were almost instant friends when we moved to Utah more than five years ago. What fun for the cousins to be in school together and to graduate the same year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The best part was that any time Becca's smile started to sag (it happens when you're taking so many pictures!), all I had to do was say, "Give me your Kyle smile." She'd immediately get a HUGE grin. See what I mean:

Smile starts to fade ...

Kyle smile!

 Good luck, Caleb and Becca!!!

Last of our Disney pictures

Ha! I guess I titled this post the last of our Disney pictures, but that's not true. We've got hundreds more where these came from ... but I'll refrain from posting them all.

First are some of the good ol' classical pictures you have to take:

 

This was a cool place in CA. Can you tell that it's a painting behind them? So cool!

One of the things our kids love (I guess now that we've done it twice it's tradition) is that when we're in California we get the kids a Slurpee every night. They LOVE it!

I mentioned Austin's monkey leash (I hope, anyway), and how he hated it at the beginning. However, by the second day this was what he thought of it:

My sweet Shayla dressed herself one day and was a little annoyed I wouldn't let her wear these socks with capris:

And the kids LOVE the beach! We totally got lost trying to find the coast. Yes, we found Newport Beach city just fine. So why couldn't we find the coast? It was sooooo frustrating! (I thought we were going to have to sedate Paul. :) Anyway, once we finally found the beach the kids had a blast! The water was a little cold, so Austin ran away once it touched his feet. But the kids loved playing in the sand. Fun, fun!

 

 

 

Light sabers, Mickey ears and shirts -- oh, my!

Last time we went to Disneyland I got shirts from the clearance of the Disney store online to take with us on the trip. As long as you give the shirts to the kids in California they think they're Disneyland shirts. :) However, this time I didn't prepare far enough ahead and figured we'd just skip shirts this year. The boys had their Star Wars shirts, and Shayla had several princess shirts in her stash. Then I went to Walmart and found all of these for $7 ($8 for Paul's) and couldn't resist:

Of course, they didn't have my size, but that's just fine. My family looked great in their matching Mickey attire. :)


One of the best things we've ever done with our trip to Disneyland was to prepare our kids about souvenirs. We let them know that we would buy them one pair of Mickey ears, and that was it. The end. Nothing else. Don't even ask. And remarkably they didn't!! I was amazed both times we've gone to find that they really got it, because there's a lot of cool stuff there that a kid could ask for! :)

So, the kids worked hard to each earn $10 before we left. Then they were pleasantly surprised that Grandma Palmer came through and gave them each another $10 to spend on vacation. They were thrilled! The boys knew before we even left that they were going to spend their money on building their own light sabers.

 

Zachary had planned to build a dual light saber (like Darth Maul's), but then only one side of it would light up. I happen to agree that's pretty dumb. So he settled on a single light saber, as you can see.

Shayla perused around for a very short time before settling on this case -- it has pens, paper, a ruler, colored pencils and markers. For $20 you'd think they'd sharpen the colored pencils for you! But she diligently sharpened them one by one (which took her two full nights and a little help from Zachary!). But she loves it, and that's what counts, right?

Zachary got some cute cars with the Toy Story characters (one with Buzz, one with Woody and one with the green aliens), and Becca got a cute Minnie mug and an indestructible water bottle.

And here are the ears we each got. I was sad to find out that you now have to pay for your name to be embroidered. Sigh.

Pretend my face is clean. :)

 

I had to show you the back of her hat AND her shirt! :)

 

 

We're trying to convince Becca to wear this to graduation;
I don't think she's brave enough.

This time Paul couldn't find a pair of ears he liked, so he skipped them. We were all bummed that they were out of the R2-D2 Mickey ears. Maybe next time ...

Jedi Training

My boys were sooo excited to go to Jedi Training. (That's why we made the Star Wars shirts.) They hoped to do it two or three times. I figured with five days there we'd probably have the chance. Turns out the shirts I made worked a little two well -- Tyler did training; then Zachary did training; then both of them did it a second time along with Shayla. And this was on our first three attempts before they'd even worn a couple of the shirts, so they kept wanting to go back and see if the other shirts would get a response as well. I guess that's a great problem to have, especially since I talked to one mom who had tried three times before being chosen.

On our first attempt, Tyler was chosen:

So happy to be a padawan in training

Tyler loved that he got to fight Darth Maul. Last time we were there he fought Darth Vader, so he was happy when they steered him toward Darth Maul. There was no fear:

Obviously Zachary was a little sad he hadn't been chosen, so the next attempt I told Tyler he needed to try to help Zachary be chosen. I was worried Zachary didn't look excited enough (even though he was popping inside), so Tyler and Becca tried to give him a hand by pointing desperately at him to be chosen:

Turns out they recognize family unity/desperation and chose Zachary:

Zachary also got to fight Darth Maul, which he hadn't yet done, either. Again, he was brave (even though Darth Maul made quite a face at him in this picture) and loved it:

So on our next attempt Shayla decided to be brave and try to get chosen. I wasn't sure whether or not she'd actually go through with it. Both boys got chosen right away. Then I started pointing at Shayla hoping the Master Jedi would choose the sweet little red-headed girl who might chicken out. And he did. All three kids got to be on the stage for the training portion, which they thought was cool. Here's Shayla:

I think as a general rule they put the older kids with Darth Maul because he looks so much scarier. The boys said they wanted to fight Darth Vader, so I told them ahead of time they'd have to tell the people if they wanted that. They were both put in the line for Darth Maul, and Shayla was put in line for Darth Vader. Next thing I knew Zachary was in the line for Darth Vader -- he had asked to switch, and they obliged. I was so happy! I am so grateful every time my children stick up for themselves. Obviously if they told him no he would have been happy with Darth Maul, but I was so glad he had the guts to ask. I want my kids to have backbones! :) Tyler decided at that point that he was just fine fighting Darth Maul again, so he didn't worry about it and neither did I.

Anyway, here are the fighting pictures ... and by the way, Shayla didn't chicken out, but she got totally into fighting Vader. (You've got to click on the second picture to see her intense face!):

 

 

 

I'm not sure we'll get back to Disneyland before my boys are 12 when they can no longer do Jedi training, so I'm glad they had the chance to do it. It was definitely a highlight of our trip. :)