Disney World - Islands of Adventure

We had our first family vacation where we all flew on a plane together at the end of April. We started early on Monday morning (4 am) and flew to Orlando FL. We got to spend time with Candices family and take some great family pictures.

We spent all day Tuesday and Wednesday at Disney Worlds Magic Kingdom which was great fun.

Michael loved the car driving ride, where we ended up going on it about 5 times.

I was trying to take pictures from the car infront of him by holding the camera behind my head and just pressing the button. Some actually came out.

Rachel was excited because she got to drive the car all by herself.

Megan still loves cats. This is the first time she's ever worn a hat ever, and she actually wore it most of the day.


The Buzz Lightyear ride was also a favorite. Michael loved anything with guns on it, and it was like a real live video game.

The kids finally got their crocs they've "always wanted" and then learned that the pins fall out if they run all over the park with them.


The roller coasters were really popular. Megan actually enjoyed riding on them. This was my favorite picture of the day. Megans look of pure worry as we are going down splash mountain.



The picture of the Vacation goes to the Jurassic park ride at Islands of Adventure though. I had been prepping Michael for this ride for over a month, telling him about the real dinosaurs and how one comes right by his face. Instead of preparing him for it, it actually ended up scaring him more. Michael was totally terrified by the end of the ride, and we caught it on film!!

Saddly, he didn't want to go on it again though... We got to spend alot of time in the Marvel Super Hero land visiting some of the X-men also.

Dinosaurs aren't so scary now!

Megan got to visit with the Cat in the Hat.

After the Cat in the Hat, they visited the Grinch, who stole Megans Cat in the Hat doll, so didn't want anything to do with Thing 1 and Thing 2 after that.

After 3 days in the parks we ended up staying at the hotel pool on the last day, where the kids all got sun burns and were ready to go home at that point. All in all it was one of our best vacations yet and hope to do it again soon.

Even more teeth

So, we were setting up another room in our house for the tooth fairy as teeth are falling out left and right. Of his front eight Michael has 4 of them showing righ now. Makes a great smile though.

Easter Snow

Well, we thought we were through it all. Last week was mid 30s-40s, which felt great. Yesterday almost all of the snow had melted, and then today, this is the shot out our patio window - March 21.

Toothless

Michael has lost about 3 teeth this month with one more about to come out. I went on his 1st grade field trip yesterday and it was funny to see how many kids in his class are walking around with half of their teeth missing. It's almost a daily "sharing time" event - who lost a tooth this week?

Rare Sighting!!!

Had to post this one, as it was an extremely rare sighting of Megan with "open eyes" and "smilling mouth". Occasionaly we can catch one at a time, but the smiles are accompanied with a closed eyes, or the open eyes come with a nice frown. As you can tell it was caught on camera quickly with some blur and low light levels, since it was really hard to catch.

Megan March happenings

When Megan finds something she likes she goes 100% in. Over the last few years she has gone through phases of Powerpuff Girls, Pink Panther, Dora and Diego, Billy and Mandy, Ben 10, and now the latest is STAR WARS Lego.

What's great about this is that it's the first non TV show. The others were her watching the show and then playing afterwards. This is her playing the video game, which is the first game she's ever played, and then builds with Lego afterwards. This is a picture of the kitchen floor last weekend. It's great that alot of my 20 year old Lego sets I kept are really getting used again now.

She can name all of the characters in Star Wars Lego now, and she's never seen the movies yet. My favorite is MP3PO (C3PO) and IndyDingy Jones (Indiana Jones - below) which is he new favorite. The kids are saving up their allowances so they can buy it when it comes out.

Nieuwveld's visit

Candice's long time best friend and family visited us during the extremely cold month of February. It was great to see them and new little "Hannah" having fun in the cold. Matthis had some funky European flu most of the time he was here, that decided to stay behind and pass through Rachel. Candice and Lisa were able to go cross country skiing one day, which Candice found out she loves now. Lisa also feel in love with the Wii and tried to find one before heading back to the Netherlands.