Califonria/Disneyland

We went with our good friends to Disneyland last week. It was hot but still a lot of fun. We love Disneyland! Alyssa was brave and went on all the rides she was tall enough for even splash mountain! She loved Space mountain and the new Radiator Springs racers in California Adventure. I think her favorite ride of all was the Ariel ride in California Adventure. The lines weren't bad, the longest we had to wait was 30 min. But in the heat that was hard. Kate did surprisingly well since we missed most of her naps and she went to bed late. She was actually the most well behaved child. My favorite ride is splash mountain. We did 2 days at Disneyland and 1 days at California adventure. We rode most the rides at Disneyland except Matterhorn because it was broken. We missed a few at California Adventure, like Tower of Terror. Kate cried on every ride when we got on but after 5 seconds she was fine. She LOVED its a Small world. She was laughing, singing and dancing. I am sad we didn't get a chance to go on it a second time with her. We loved the shows. World of Color, Fantasmic and the Fireworks. We wanted to see more shows but we were also trying to ride all the rides and ran out of time. We saw 2 cute little plays Tangled and Beauty and the Beast. I guess we will have to go back again to see the things we missed =)

We then spent one day at the beach with our friends. Then they headed home and we went to San Diego for 3 days. We went to the zoo (it was miserable because it was so hot). then we played on Coronodo, which I loved. It had a perfect beach for the kids with small waves. Kate is a beach baby and loved it. Alyssa liked it but was being particular about the sand getting all over her. Kate even had her first boogie boarding experience. She really liked it and kept asking for more until she tipped over =(

Alyssa and Mylie. I made them into Mermaids but its hard to see the tails

Riding a Suri on Coronado

Chasing seagulls with a stuffed dog

My beach baby!

Play

Russ was out of town last week and my mom and I took the girls to the pool and to liberty park.  Liberty park is really fun, I wish it were a little closer. We were wanting to take the girls on the rides, we forgot how old the rides are. Kate wasn't big enough to ride any of the rides so we skipped that part. We went to the aviary and the park. 

We also went to the Lindon pool. It is our favorite pool. Alyssa also tried swimming by her self. She swam half way across the deep end. I am so proud of her. At the beginning of the summer I took her to swim lessons and it was terrible, she cried the entire time. So this was a huge improvement. She earned an ice cream cone for doing it as well.

Kate loves playing with Grandma at the pool

Steel Days

American Fork's summer carnival is called Steel Days. They have a regular carnival and then a kids carnival. The kids carnival is free. They have bouncy houses, cow train rides and small carnival games. Because it is free there are very long lines for everything. The kids still loved it. Kate wanted to go on everything but she is too small. She was able to ride the cow train and loved it.

Timp Hike

Russ and I hiked Timpanogos mountain today. We started at 5 am. It was still dark but there was enough light from the moon that we could start hiking. We made fast progress up the mountain until we got to Emerald Lake. From there we have to climb over rock fields and boulders and then go straight up hill to get to the saddle. Once we got to the saddle we could see a all of Utah county. We had to make it to the very top because we were so close although we were tired. We thought we were close but it was still another 1.5 miles over the ledge. At that point we were about 11000 feet so very 20 feet we were out of breath. We made it to the top though and there were people signaling other mountain tops with mirrors. We could see reflections from the mountain across from Utah lake. It was pretty cool. We hiked down pretty quickly but it really hurt my knees. It was so beautiful. My favorite part was at Emerald Lake. The wild flowers were in full bloom.

Wild flowers at Emerald Lake

Emerald Lake

boulder field

The rock ledge we had to climb to get to the top