Getting Excited For DISNEYLAND!

Well, we are about 3 months away from our trip to Disneyland and it is really hard to tell who is more excited about going... me or the kids. It's been a long time since I have been there. The last time I went was for my Senior Trip back in 1996 and they were just building California Adventure... so I've never been to that! It was a memorable experience to be able to go for my senior trip! I remember having so much fun, even though I was a teenager! You know, Disneyland is for people of all ages, if you don't like Disneyland you're CRAZY! This will of course be my kids' first time going! We've been meaning to go for 3 years now. But something always happened. The first time we didn't go was because of health concerns for me, 2nd the same and we didn't go last year because they had closed down Small World ride for repairs.... HELLO! You CANNOT go to Disneyland without experiencing Small World! It's just IMPOSSIBLE! lol! Here is a list of what I am excited for and in NO particular order....

Electric Light Parade
Splash Mountain
Space Mountain
Thunder Mountain
Pirates of the Carribean
Haunted Mansion
Tower of Terror
Grizzly River Run Rapids (did I get that wrong?) lol
You know I'm pretty much excited for it all!!!! We leave home the morning of December 6 (early) and drive straight up to Anaheim where we will check into our hotel. Spend monday, tuesday and wednesday at Disneyland and California Adventure. Thursday and Friday we will be in San Diego visiting Sea World (I've been once when I was 11). We in a hotel right on the Marina which the boys are so excited about!!! and we will also go and see the San Diego Temple at David's request! And then we will leave to come home on Saturday. We were told by my cousin that the best time to visit Disneyland is the first 2 weeks of December. Not as crowded and the weather will be great!!!! I'm hoping to get down 2 sizes by the time we go. I've been working hard at it! Sometime in that week we will also take the kids to the beach. I know david would freak out about swimming in it anyway so we will just go and let them build sand castles and let them collect sea shells and of course take pictures. I hate swimming at the beach because you bring the sand in your swimming suit and it gets into the shower. I haven't been to an actual beach since 1991 that is a LONG LONG time! The last time I went to a beach was when we went to Florida. My dad had a business trip up there and it just so happened that my Uncle Gerald did too so we made a vacation out of it and it was My dad, Gerald, my Aunt Judy, my Mom, my cousin Angie and myself. We had SO much fun! We went to Disneyworld, Universal Studios Orlando and I'm thinking we went somewhere else too.... one of our hotels was on the beach and it was soooo awesome!

Is it November 20th yet??????

Oh my gosh! You all know how deeply in love with the Twilight saga that I am. I am so looking forward to the newest movie to come out. I was looking at a blog that I've been following and she has this video on it!!!! holy crap! I am soooooo excited for the movie to come out you don't even understand! :) I have posted this to my blog! Anyone want to go watch it with me when it first comes out??????? I have a cousin who is going to the Midnight showing of it!!!!

First Day Of School

Well the boys survived their first day of school! Danny's teacher is really nice. Her name is Mrs. Reece. She taught 1st grade last year and was a teacher in St. David for a few years before that. They have had to add another 3rd grade classroom this year. Danny's class has always been HUGE. When he graduates he will probably have graduated from Benson's largest class ever!!!!

They've always had to adjust and add teachers for his class, they did that in Kindergarten and I'm assuming they did it for first and second even though we werent there, we were in Pomerene.

And The Final Answer Is NOT Pomerene

Well after a whole Summer of worrying where my kids were going to go to school at this year we got our answer this morning. It is Benson. I am not happy with it but everything happens for a reason. Maybe it'll be a great thing and I may just be reverting to my terrible time at Benson Middle School. Even walking down the paths with David yesterday brought back some not so fond memories for me. To clear up some confusion this may cause my kids were going to Benson until David was in 2nd grade and there was a big mess, their dad tried to take em from school... it was not pretty.... and I took them out and homeschooled them (well mostly my mom did), then we put the boys into Pomerene and they were wonderful for my boys. David is just convinced Pomerene School is "evil" because kids teased him and the teacher well just don't get me started on her.... but what he doesn't realize is how much the school actually did for him especially the principal. I really admire Dan Bailey a lot. Not that Shad Housley will be a bad principal because I'm not saying that at all... he's married to my cousin and I think he's a great guy..... My mom seems to think that maybe someone will be there to help David. I hope so because the school therapist we dealt with was not one of my most favorite people in the world. Before we knew David's diagnosis hetried to give david a diagnosis of his own without doing the tests and "labeled" him with Mild Mental Retardation. Well as you could probably see what happened next I went rip roaring on him and told him I knew without a doubt that he was wrong and that I knew David had Autism. He asked me how I knew and I told him "Well because I've done research on it and because my nephew is Autistic and he is a lot like him in many ways". Needless to say I was not happy with him (putting it very lightly). And then there is also the issue of the kids being cruel. Some of the kids in Pomerene were very cruel to him because of the fact that he's different. Now I know that David starts a lot of it, it's his defense mechanism.... he tries to stop people from doing something even if they didn't do it. So anyway..... there's some of my venting of the day. I really hope and pray that there is a good reason for this decision. It just so happened that 8 kids moved into pomerene school during Summer Vacation and we are not in district. So..... Here we are back in Benson School.

Where Did The Summer Go????

Holy Cow! There are only 11 days of Summer left for my kids! They start school on August 13th this year! I'm so ready to be sending them back but then again I am kind of having a hard time with the fact that I now have a middle schooler! Yes you read it right! My oldest, David will be in 5TH GRADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He is getting so big! He comes up to my shoulders! Where did the time go??? So not fair! But then again I'm tall and so was my biological father so it doesn't surprise me that they are both going to be big ol buffalo squad members. If any of you went to High School with me you'll know what the Buffalo Squad means. It was all the big huge guys that were on the Football team that took us all the way to the last game of State Champions and we lost that game to I believe St. John's. Who knows? it was way too long ago! I'm trying hard to grasp onto the fact that my 20th year High School reunion will be coming up here in a few years time!

Apline Continued

We had a lot of fun on our trip. We stayed in this motel called the Sportman's Lodge. We stayed in one of the rooms that had the Kitchenette in which was really awesome because instead of spending a gargantuan amount of money on restaurant food, we were able to cook our own meals. We went out to the Bear Wallow Restaurant one time. My mom took us to Arby's a couple of times in Springerville, but for the most part of the trip we cooked our own meals. We ate at the campsite as well. Danny had a good time fishing with my dad. We also went to the Archery Shoot out at Sunrise Ski Resort. We had a very very busy week and we did not want to come home. It was so beautiful up there. It smelled and felt so good. I learned how to drive a 4-Wheeled atv (quad) and had so much fun except for our last ride was kinda scarey. My mom took us to terrain I'd never been on and it was rough. I lost control of the steering and went into this embankment and thought the quad was gonna flip over and fall on David. I kinda got shaken up by the whole thing.

Alpine Trip July 2009

So for the 2nd year in a row, instead of sitting like a sweathog waiting for the parade to start in Benson which usually turns out to be a parade of firetrucks and tractors, we sat comfortably in Springerville, AZ. We stayed in a motel in Alpine and drove daily to Springerville where the action was and went to my mom and dad's campsite that was just above Crescent lake and about 2 miles from Big Lake.