Tuesday March 30th - I picked the kids up in Las Vegas at 3:40pm and we drove back home arriving about 7:45pm. The kids spent a little time with the pets who were excited to see them as always, and then we ate some pizza for dinner. After dinner, Lizi and Judi started building their lego right away and Trey and Shelby came to the Disney room with me and looked at all the new things I had added. Trey and Shelby decided they were pretty tired so they went to bed. I tucked Trey in and then went in to tuck Shelby in and we ended up talking for about an hour. It was such a great conversation. It is really fun for me as a Dad to see how similar Shelby and I are in our thought process even though we don't have the normal father/daughter relationship since she lives in Texas. It's just a really neat, unspoken bond knowing that we think similarly. I tucked Judi into bed and then Liz, Shelby, and I talked about ideas for a Disney historical website. It was really neat to hear their good, creative ideas. After talking for about 30 minutes, we decided we better get some sleep!
Wednesday March 31st - I woke up early to get Judi ready for school but Lizi and then Trey also woke up as we were getting ready to eat breakfast so they ate with us. Shelby woke up just after we finished eating. Trey and I went outside and looked at all the blossoms on the trees and the yard in general and Lizi started setting up Disneyland with her lego. Liz and I drove to Ballard's Nursery to grab some plants for the garden and then Shelby, Trey, Lizi, and I all planted them. We planted cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, tomatoes, pepper, squash, and zucchini plants and seeds. I loved working in the garden with them even though I know they're probably sick of it since they have had to spend a lot of time gardening in Texas lately. After we worked in the garden, we had sandwiches for lunch and watched 2 episodes of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney Plus. Lizi really has taken a liking to Marvel movies and the Winter Soldier is her favorite character. After our shows, Lizi went back to working on her Lego while Shelby, Trey, and I shot some baskets. Shelby and I played the ukulele for a little while and then went to pick up Judi from school while Trey took a nap and Lizi kept playing with Lego. When Judi came home, She and Lizi played in the sand box and started building some really cool animal homes with sticks and branches. Shelby, Trey and I played Frisbee and then Trey and I cut down a couple of big green branches off of the neighbors tree. Trey and I then rode bikes in the pit and Shelby helped the girls build more animal habitats in the sand box. Shelby, Trey, and I rode our bikes to check the mail. When we got back, I started making dinner for the kids and we ate while we watched Camp Rock 2. After the movie, Lizi and Judi played Lego, Shelby took a shower, and Trey, Liz, and I played Clue which Trey won. Then Shelby, Trey, Liz, and I played Play 9 which Trey won again. By this time it was pretty late so we went to bed.
Thursday April 1st - Judi, Trey, and I woke up first and had breakfast. As we were eating, Lizi woke up and ate with us. We then went outside to pet the animals and check out the garden. Once Shelby got up and ate, we went on our "hike down to the river" (the Virgin River) and went to the spot I took them to when they were really young. We then went to our new spot and went a little past it. The kids had a fun time trying to figure out how to cross the river without getting their feet wet. Shelby and Lizi ended up taking their shoes off and Trey carefully stepped on a wobbly log to make it across. It reminded me of a video my Grandpa took of me by Mosquito Flatts when I was about 13 years old doing the same thing. After our hike we came home and had lunch. While we ate we watched Thor: Ragnarock. After the movie, Shelby and I went to pick up Judi at School. When we got home, Judi and Lizi played in the clubhouse, weaving "grass" together (which actually ended up being Liz's Iris')...ooops! Haha. Trey, Shelby, and I put up a large 8'x4' Cheshire cat mural in the living room as an April 1st joke for hen Liz got home. We then tried to come up with ideas for a Disney website I'm working on. Shelby did such a good job of sketching a home page! Then Trey and I went outside to play catch with the football. We then went out front and played Horse. Shelby stayed in and kept working on the website. I started making dinner and once dinner was ready we watched American Idol while we ate. Judi and Lizi then played wild animals in Shelby and Lizi's room, making cool dens out of blankets. Shelby, Trey, Liz, and I played Play 9 which Liz won. After our game we talked in Shelby and Lizi's room for a bit and then got ready for bed. I tucked Trey and Judi in and then talked for a few minutes with Shelby and Lizi. I love chatting with them at night before bed.
Friday April 2nd - I woke up and started to work on my Disney blog while I waited for the kids to wake up. Trey got up and ate some breakfast. Shortly after, Lizi and Shelby got up and Liz made pancakes for breakfast - Trey even came back inside and ate breakfast again. After breakfast, Lizi and Judi went outside and played in the sand box with their plastic animals in the really cool new nature scene they created. Shelby, Trey, Liz, and I played a few games of knockout. Trey won 10 games, I won 4 and Shelby won 2. Trey played really good! It was fun to watch! We then came in and I worked on putting my pins back on my pin board while Shelby picked Mary Poppins to watch. While watching Mary Poppins, I made some lunch for everyone. We then went to play pickleball. Shelby and Trey played doubles against me while Lizi and Judi played with plastic animals at the court. Trey and Shelby beat me in one of the games and although I wasn't playing my absolute hardest, I wasn't taking it too easy on them either. When we got back, Lizi and Judi went into Lizi's room and played wild animals, Shelby and I played the Ukulele and Trey went to take a nap. Lizi and Judi then went outside to play wild animals in the pit and also weaved baskets with Liz's Iris leaves in the clubhouse. Shelby and I threw the football around and then decided to ride our bikes to the mail. When we went inside to put the football away, we noticed Trey was up and asked if he wanted to come with us but he decided to create a Captain America "float" for Lizi's Disneyland parade. Trey, Shelby and I then emptied and refilled our water bottles that I have for water storage and hung my Cheshire Cat mural in the Laundry Room. Trey and I then went outside to play Bocce ball and Shelby and Lizi worked on the Rubix cubes along with Judi. We then ate dinner and watched Coco and then Goofy's "How to Play Baseball" and went to bed.
Saturday April 3rd - Trey, Judi, and I ate breakfast and determined that almond milk must make people sleep in. Our "study" was based on the fact that the 4 people that use almond milk - Liz, Jenna, Shelby, and Lizi all sleep in longer than the 3 people that use regular milk (Me, Judi, and Trey). Haha. After breakfast we went outside for a little bit and shot a few baskets. The whether is so nice right now. We were planning on going on a hike as soon as everyone was up so Trey was anxious to go wake up Shelby so we could get going. Once everyone was up, dressed, and fed, we went to the Red Cliffs Monument and explored some canyons with pools of water in them. Shelby, Trey, and Lizi were really adventurous and climbed up a steep sandstone cliff only with the aide of footholds carved into the rock in the beginning and the use of a rope at the end. I would have loved to have gone with them, but I needed to stay with Judi because it was a little too extreme for her. We then explored a cave/arch that we imagined would have been a great place for some of the early Indians of the area to camp in. Once we came home, we had lunch outside on the porch. After lunch, Shelby drew some really neat pictures and Judi and Lizi played outside. Trey and I tried to fix some sprinklers but didn't have any luck. We all went in to watch a little bit of General Conference and then Shelby, Trey, Lizi, and I rode bikes in the pit while Judi watched. Lizi and Judi then played in the sand box with their animals, Shelby tried learning some new songs on the Ukulele, and Trey and I went to the Priesthood session of Conference. It was the first time we were able to go together. I'm really proud of Trey. I know it's not the most interesting thing for him but he went without complaining and listened intently the whole time. When we got home we ate dinner and then watched The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It's pretty good but has a lot of unnecessary swearing in it. I wish Disney hadn't gone that direction. After the movie we watched Goofy's The Art of Skiing and then went to bed. While going in to tell Lizi and Shelby goodnight, I ended up talking with them for about an hour. I love talking with them at night because I fee like it helps us get to really know each other better. I've got such good kids!
Sunday April 4th - Today is Easter! Everyone slept in a little but around 8:00, Judi came in to our bedroom and hopped in bed with us. Trey was up next just before 9:00. Lizi and Shelby woke up around 9:30. Liz and I went outside to hide our Easter Eggs for the Easter Egg hunt in between sessions of conference. At 10:00 we watched the first session in which there were speakers from all over the world. After the session, we did the Easter Egg hunt which was a lot of fun! After the kids found all the eggs (there were 7 eggs each) Liz and I brought all the candy in to the kitchen table for the second part of the hunt - the candy draft! Every egg had a number in them - the gold eggs were numbered 1-5, blue 6-10, purple, 11-15, etc. The person with number 1 picked first, #2 picked second and so forth. Since each person had one of each color egg, no one got stuck picking last every time. Trey seemed to be the luckiest picking first 3 times, I think. Anyway, the kids had fun and I had a lot of fun watching them. We had a really good mashed potato and roast lunch and Liz made cinnamon rolls as well. We then watched the second session of conference and afterward just sat and chatted a little while Shelby drew and Trey fiddled with the Rubix Cube. We then went outside and played kickball. We ended up playing about 3 or 4 games. I really enjoyed playing with the kids. It is always fun but I think this time it was especially fun because I remembered all the times we used to play when the kids were little and knew that we didn't have very many of these kickball games left before they were all grown up. After kickball, Lizi and Judi played wild animals outside together. It is fun to watch them get all dressed up - Lizi has a tail she wears and they have mittens on and some headband ears. This will probably be the last year they will play together like that before Lizi is too old for it. Shelby, Trey, Liz, Jenna, and I played play 9 which was a lot of fun. We then watched Old Yeller which was a movie I remember watching with Grandma Judi. After the movie, Trey, Judi, and I went into the Disney room and talked. This was really one of the neatest experiences for me as Trey asked question after question about some of the Disney items we have and repeated memories he had. It was so cool to see him take a sincere interest in one of my passions. Lizi, Trey, Judi, and I then looked at and traded Disney pins. We also looked up a bunch of the pins on Pinpics - a Disney pin website. It was really a lot of fun. While we were doing that, Shelby was writing down a bunch of her memories from when she was younger - I recommended that she do this a couple of days ago because if she didn't, as she got older, she would forget some of the memories. We then went to bed.
Monday April 5th - We woke up and ate a late breakfast. After breakfast, We walked around the back yard looking at the garden area and noticed that we had some lettuce, beets, and onions growing. Also our cherry tree and apple tree had their first blossoms of the year today. Then Trey, Shelby, Liz, and I played knock out which is always s much fun. Trey won 10 games and I won 5, Shelby 2, and Liz 0. Trey is really getting good! Lizi and Judi played outside in the sandbox. We came in and everyone except Trey, who had organized his already, organized their pins on their pin boards. Trey took the batteries out of the Monorails in the Disney Room so the battery compartments wouldn't get corroded. We ate lunch and watched The Journey of Natty Gann. After lunch, Trey, Judi, and I played Sequence while Shelby painted her nails and Lizi organized her things and played in her room. We then all went outside to play kickball which was so much fun as always! We played 3 games. It is funny how much bigger the kids are now than they were when we played years ago - to see the same big bodies running around the bases that small kids used to run around years ago. After kickball we came in and had a light dinner and watched Alice in Wonderland. The kids then got packed and Trey decided he was pretty tired so he went to bed. I tucked the other kids in too and then chatted with Shelby and Lizi for about an hour an a half. It was so fun sharing life experiences and stories with them. Then we decided we better get to bed before it got any later.
Tuesday April 6th - The kids slept in longer than they had planned because we stayed up so late last night. We knew we had to leave at 11:00am for the airport and so mornings like that are always so difficult because you don't want to do something that will last a long time because then time will be up and we'll have to leave. So we ended up just sort of hanging out, hoping time would go by slowly. We went outside to spend time with the pets and finished packing as well. At 11:15 we left for the airport - Judi, Lizi, Shelby, and Trey. Everyone was pretty quiet on the ride at first, still tired and also sad that our time was over. Eventually, Lizi and Judi started playing with their stuffed animals and Shelby and I chatted a lot as well. We got to the airport, checked our bags, and went through security. Our gate was C22. There was no room to sit at our gate so we sat at the one next to it. I sat next to Lizi and we talked about our favorite rides and least favorite rides at Disneyland and CA Adventure. Shelby and Trey participated a little as well. Finally the time came for them to board and I got pictures of them going to the ticket taker and down the tarmac. It was a very fun visit!
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