so the second half of our disney day started with… princesses!  both girls brought along a dress to wear.  lauren chose this ratty old tinkerbell number complete with a rip in the shoulder. allie couldn’t help but admiringly touch tiana’s lovely dress. lauren couldn’t help it either, but she uses the back of her hand to feel things. i asked lauren if she wanted to go together with allie or after her to meet the princesses by herself.  she chose to go after so she could have her own conversations with them. jasmine was next. she did a wonderful job admiring lauren’s ratty old tinkerbell dress that was two sizes…

so birthday season is upon us and we just survived an intense birthday weekend.  i’m still recovering. but before i get to that, gotta get through disneyland first. so backing up a month, phil had his annual work conference at disneyland the weekend immediately following our trip up to big bear.  after a brief stop at home to switch out snow gear for swim gear, we headed back out to hang with the mouse. one thing about tsai kids is that they loooove staying in hotels.  cabins, trailers, grandpa’s…  pretty much anywhere that resembles any type of vacation and they are totally all over it.  the littlest one was no…

two years ago, i wrote about going to the snow with my brother’s family.  it was great fun.  we couldn’t go last year because someone (read: jonah) was ready to pop out any minute.  and this year, try as we might, we couldn’t find a good weekend that would work for both families.  we figured we wouldn’t be able to go at all again this year. but, because mikey kept asking when we’d get to see snow again (that kid has the memory of an elephant.  actually, the selective memory of an elephant) and because phil had a random few days off mid-week and because we were already planning to…

yep, another one!  this one was back at the end of january.  i’m glad we made the most of those random days phil had off while moonlighting since they’re long gone now.  🙁 anyway, this trip was to the california science center.  can’t beat free fun! playing around in the fog machine.  (ps- she dressed herself that day.  just to clarify.) it’s blurry (kicking myself) but i still love it. he loved this thing. LOVED. IT. actually, she did too. daddy convinced them all to go in the wind machine.  78.7 mph winds.  while i stood outside with jonah and laughed at them.  best two bucks we spent! actually four…

my son went to public school kindergarten last year.  and in that public school kindergarten, they did a bang-up job celebrating the heck out of each and every holiday, special occasion, and birthday.  with whole-day long parties and games and prizes and happiness.  he probably ingested more cupcakes in that one school year than in the rest of his six years of life combined.  it really did make for fun memories for him, and for that i am thankful. one such extravaganza was thrown in honor of their 100th day of school.  i remember having to count out ten jelly beans into ten sandwich baggies and stapling them to a…