Disneyland

I know you've all been on the edge of your seats waiting for me to update my blog with vacation photos. I can't seem to ever find the time. Even when I think I do, I'm constantly interrupted by emergencies like she's touching me and I can't get Barbie's clothes back on. Now that I've successfully redressed Ken for the 50th time today I may have a spare 5 minutes.
We had a really great time in California. We scheduled our flights so we'd get in early the first day and leave late the last day so we'd have the most time possible. We got to go to Disneyland for 2 days with my parents and Aunt Tish, Uncle Joe, and my cousin Christopher. We had a great time there. Hailey was beaming practically every second of the day. She seemed to love everything. Greggers was horrified by most of the rides except curiously for Pirates of the Carribean. Seeing Lightening McQueen and Mater at the Pixar parade was probably the highlight of his little life. Kenzie seemed to have fun, but she seems to have entered the teenage years early and spent and fair amount of time complaining and sulking about tragedies like its too hot, too cold, hungry, full, thirsty, tired you name it. I felt like that cruise commercial where the mom is trying to get a picture of the girl's elusive smile. All in all it was very fun and worth every penny.
Our family at a waterfall in California Adventure Park. Note Dave's ultracool wheelchair thanks to a recent work injury.
Greggers in his Mickey Mouse hat waiting for the electrical parade.

Tim and Jackie (and my cousins head), cutting the cake. They had a really beautiful ceremony at a vineyard outside of San Luis Obispo. Tim seemed so happy, it was so sweet.

Look Paulitz's do dance! (alcohol helps)

The kids at Redondo Beach

The girls in front of Sleeping Beauty's castle during our afternoon girls time. Every afternoon the boys would go nap in our hotel across the street and the girls would go play for a few hours. A lot of this time was spent stalking princesses, and getting every penny sucked out of me in special "princess" stores. They have this neat Princess Fantasy Faire in Fantasyland that is really cool but the store is designed for suckers with a high credit limit. I watched many parents spend 3 tanks of gas on princess outfits and hairdressers that will fix your daughters hair like a princess for $30 and up. I'm either really cheap or really smart, notice my girls are still wearing their walmart specials not $200 worth of Cinderella costumes. We succumbed to the temptation only slightly.

Connor loves his Mickey Mouse ears!

I think this was the single best moment of Greg's life. The Pixar Play Parade started with Lightening McQueen and ended with Mater. I wasn't fast enough to get a picture of his face when Mater first came out, it was like shock and awe and the second coming all in one. I thought he was going to spring tears of joy.

Hailey loved the parade. The had a lot of great floats from the Pixar movies that the kids really loved.

My family, uncle Joe, and Christopher with "Mickey Mouse Club House" as Greg calls him

Outside the Winnie the Pooh ride, also apparantly scary

I guess Gregs not the chosen one today

The girls on the Go Go Coaster in Toontown. Its not that big but they were so proud to go on a rollercoaster. Hailey especially was so excited and wanted Maddie to see her on the big roller coaster.

Greg at Manhattan Beach. He has an interesting strategy for attacking the ocean. He takes big handfuls of sand and clenches them in his little fists. Then he stands in warrior pose (like yoga) and waits for the wave to get to him. Then he furiously throws the sand at the ocean and turns and runs screaming so it can't touch him. Eventually he gave up his assault on the sea and tried to get as dirty as possible.

The girls with Ariel.



This is the bathtub water after the kids played in the mud one afternoon. Obviously it took a couple of cycles to get them clean.

Kenzie finally learned to ride her bike without training wheels. Way to go Kenzie!

Greggers showing off his stitches. You can't really see them but he got 3 stitches after he took a bad fall at the park last week. He thought it was a spider on his head and kept trying to get it off.

I'm guessing somewhere along the way here you've gotten to thinking geez there's a lot of pictures here, who does Liz think she has pictures of, Brad Pitt? Obviously I think my kids are adorable and took hundreds, these are just the select highlights. Hope you enjoyed.

Do you know who this guy is?

We didn't. Here's our random actor sighting from California. Jon Lovitz. I was leaving after checking out the local tourist attraction the men's bathroom (not a guy)at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo and in walks this guy. After having the "hey isn't that guy on something" conversation he came back out and asked us if Connor was a doll. He was sitting in his car seat motionless with those gigantic wide eyes of his. In a moment of stunning genius I asked "hey aren't you on something or something." He took a moment to reply (probably to make sure I hadn't with a field trip from a special school) and said he's on SNL, A League of Their Own, and the Benchwarmers. To ensure him of our amazing intelligence I replied "Ohhh...yeah" That's all I could come up with. But then hey we continued on having a conversation about is my son a doll or a baby, so maybe he needs a special group too. I'm sure our hey are you on something was a huge ego boost to an actor and all. But hey he probably makes a bazillion dollars a year, so he can go home and hug his many, many dollars for reassurance. While the rest of us check out free tourist attractions we once saw on the Travel Channel (the men's urinal is a waterfall!!). Thanks to Mandy for telling us who the heck this guy is. I'll post vacation pics soon.

White trash or hillbillys?

Before we take off to California for Tim's wedding, let me leave you all with this little tidbit. Tonight we decided to go to Pizza Hut rather than cook since we are leaving early tomorrow. It was fairly crowded and as usual we were attracting a fair amount of attention because our kids were the noisiest there. So I look over and there's Hailey, with her shoes off, feet up, chewing on her toenails! In a restaurant! While she's eating! I tell Dave to look at his daughter and he yells Hailey what are you doing? Like its no biggie she says "I broke a toenail." And goes right back to chewing! Augh that is just so gross!
This makes me wonder, are we white trash or hillbilly's? I never notice other peoples kids chewing away on their broken toenails during a meal...or ever.

Busted

So I just checked Nik's blog and apparantly I've been caught giving away valuable memorabilia. Sorry to say but I live in a 1200 square foot apartment with 6 people. Some things have to go. I got merciless on the last move what can I say? Honestly (sorry Nik) but I haven't worn it since your wedding. Its a bit nicer than my usual skirt and whatever shirt sort of matches ensemble. And if you recall I had just had a baby and was fat. Thankfully it has been too big ever since. Too bad for me that they stuck it in the front window. I thought it would just randomly go away and Nik would never be the wiser. I guess I should have waited until we moved then gave it away to a thrift store on in Hillyard where Nik will never go. I still love you Nik.

Hannah Montana

Hailey and McKenzie are suddenly very into Hannah Montana and High School Musical. The other day Hailey put on short skirts, high heeled sandals, and a belt around her shirt and ask if she looks like the mean girl on High School Musical. Suddenly its all teeny boppers and not princesses. This video came about when we checked out this fantastic cd from the library the other day. Its some day of Barbie music cd. Which means its basically someone else singing top 40 songs from 4 years ago with a lot of pictures of Barbie in "rocker" clothes. Lucky for me Hailey has decided that this is the greatest cd EVER! She put on this show the other day for the entire cd. Hard to believe someone this uninhibited is my kid.

Eat your heart out Jane Fonda

Hailey likes to do my workout videos with me in the afternoon. The other day we topped off our workout outfits with a coat of hot pink lipstick and took some pictures (sound familar Nik?). Hailey's so funny. She gets out a little stool and a toy that looks a little like a weight and flails her arms and legs along with me. I'd love to say that she really looked so ridiculous next to a super coordinated sports star like myself, but I imagine we look about the same. Our limbs flailing wildly, quite obvious we can't keep up with the chirpy blond marching through the steps without difficulty. This embarrasses McKenzie to no end. See we have this big picture window in our living room that faces the parking lot and street. Which means that every person coming and going, and stopping to get their mail, can see the two of us jumping around like idiots. The other day she says to me "mom you know all the neighbors can see you, right." I replied that I don't really care. She was quite appalled by this and went and hid somewhere else. Once some kids from school came by and looked up into the window, I was expected her to post a sign proclaiming she was adopted.
Hailey showing off her moves.

Me and my girl

Speaking of cheesy smiles, these two are Hailey's runners up

I'm not sure what this face is about

Hailey and her friend Lily on a school fieldtrip to the Jump and Bounce

The kids and their cool new shades

My boys having a tickle fest at the park


Here are some pictures from Hailey's preschool graduation in Spokane. They had caps and gowns and played the graduation song. I thought it was pretty cute, but judging from Dave's snickering I think he thought it was a bit over the top. Hailey seemed so pleased that her new school teacher had something special to say about her. They just loved Hailey. They say she is, and I quote "such a good listener and so well behaved, she's so good with the other kids she shares really well" Um are we talking about the same kid? I'd swear she needs a hearing aid.

They might be brats

I've long suspected that there is a distinct possiblity that might children might be turning out to be spoiled brats, despite the fact that we are far from rich. They have often given good reason to suspect but tonight they clinched the deal. Dave and I decided that we would take the kids out to Baskin Robbins for a treat tonight. We had buy one get one free coupons for sundaes and a slew of gift certificates so we thought it would be a fun surprise. Well it was a surprise all right, how badly our kids acted. It started when we informed the girls that we weren't going to be letting them pick out a flavor each but that we were going to get two "cups of shame" to share and a kid cone for Greg since no one likes to share with him. For those of you who don't know, in my family the "cup of shame" is that giant Reeses peanut butter cup sundae at Baskin Robbins, its plenty big enough to share. McKenzie and Hailey carried on, sometimes together, sometimes on individually, the entire time we were there about how unfair, mean, and horrible it all was that we were sharing. And also we are liars because we said they could each get their own sundae. Which we did not, I think our pulling in there implied that to them. As if my children carrying that their treat wasn't big enough was enough, we sat next to a table of little old ladies who I swear were snickering in their ice cream at my poor parenting skills and what brats my kids were being. I'm quite sure they were secretly chanting underneath their permed little heads for me to drag those girls out and spank them.
Lately my girls have been acting like entitled little princesses. They whine about every little chore, Kenzie's new favorite thing is to yell at me for making her do all the housework and telling me I'm lazy. I've had the you don't talk to your parents that way talk several times by the way. A month or two ago Hailey informed me that she was going to call the police because I was a mean mom and mean people go to jail. And the kids were all going to live with Grandma. She pulls that one back out regularly whenever things aren't working out for her, and I think she means it. I think in her mind I sometimes rank up there with the criminals.
I realize that things are a lot different than when we were all kids and I'd bet my life savings (ha, ha, ha) that we would have been very sorry if we acted this way. I'm doing the best I can, but I'm running out of answers. So if anybody has some advice, tips, or amazing new punishment or motivator please let me know. Because I think I've got the future Paris Hilton of the low rent apartments on my hands here.