Too long without a post

Yes, I said that. According to Bill, and he is right, Twittering does not take the place of blogging. So, I'll pull myself away from Packrat for a bit to give you some snippets of what we've been up to the last month.

The first week of May we traveled to Disneyland for the girls 4th birthday. That's right, 4th. I can't believe that much time has passed. Wasn't it just yesterday that my beautiful little bundles came home from the hospital?

Anyway, we had a full week of adventure and birthday celebrations. Hopefully I'll be able to post some pictures this week. We also did something we never had before. We stayed at the Disneyland Hotel and the Grand Californian. I liked both for different reasons, and we'll probably end up staying there again. The Disneyland Hotel upgraded us to a suite that had me saying, "Swwweeeettt." The living room alone could have encompassed our living room, dining room, and family room at home. Also, it has a tub with a shower AND a seperate shower, and two bathrooms. I could move in. At the Grand Californian we splurged and stayed on the concierge level - TOTALLY WORTH IT. I wish we could afford to do that all the time. They fed us all day long, had wine at night, and story hour for the kids where they could enjoy the time in their jammies, on the floor with blankets and pillows. All in all, a good Disney week (is there any other kind?)

The girls are taking a little break from their science classes, dance classes, etc until the fall (with the exception of a couple of camps. They're just finishing up their clay class where they had fun making a variety of projects, but with more help from Mom than I would like. I think the classes need to be stretched out for the little ones so they could have more hands on.

In the middle of the month we also celebrated Valerie's 2nd birthday with her. I made a cake which I was very proud of since I created it start to finish by hand including carving and decorating.

Along with the happiness of the month, there must be some sadness I suppose, and this was totally brought on by me. I haven't written about it previously, and I'm not sure how far I'll get here as it's still emotional to me. With Valerie's 2nd birthday came the last day that I officially watched her. She's now a big preschooler. As I said, this was brought on by me. Earlier in the year I told Liz and Andrea that I could no longer watch her as I'm planning to go back to school with the end goal of getting my masters degree in nursing. As a result I will also be putting the girls in preschool (yep, no home schooling for us.) Though I still think it was the right decision it makes me sad. My house seems a little emptier during the week, and when she has a bad day at school like she did this last week, it makes me cry and kick myself for not watching her. To say I'm still torn up over this decision would be an understatement. That's as much as I can say now as I've got myself crying at work, and that's no good.

On to some funnier stuff:
Riley (after checking out preschools with me): I'm too little to go to preschool. I only get to go for a little while then I have to come home.
Sam (while watching videos of her birth and first few days of life): Why is he crying? (We repeatedly told her that was her, and he seemed to get it, but every time the crying started the baby became a he.) She also noted, "I'm cute."

Later this month we will celebrate Bill's birthday as well as a belated party for the girls.

What's in Your Nose, Part Deux

For their birthday we had dinner at Goofy's Kitchen in the Disneyland
Hotel. This is one of those meals where the characters come around to
each table to play with the kids and take pictures.

As it turns out, Alice (of Alice in Wonderland fame) came to our table
for an extended visit. During the visit Sam asked her what was in her
nose. She said mostly nothing, but when pushed by Sam she replied,
"Maybe some little boogies sometimes." I was very surprised that Sam
replied, "I have nothing in my nose" instead of the previous snot
reply.

In addition, they also found out that Wonderland is just below Oxford
(where Alice is from), and that you get to Oxford on the monorail.