Cheerleading

Naomi has been doing cheerleading at school with kindergarteners through 5th graders. They had their first performance a few weeks ago at a high school football game. The theme was circus since the song they were from the newest Madagascar movie (Afro circus). They did a great job and performed at both pre-game and halftime. Their team will be performing aging next month.

A Month with Korina, the Elf on the Shelf

Our Elf on the Shelf, Korina (formerly known as Trinity) was with us for about 23 days this year. Here is what she was up to during her stay:

She arrived at Nana's house with her book on December 1st.

 

Here she is drawing a picture of herself or Santa, we aren't sure.

Climbing Rapunzel's hair.

Relaxing in a cotton ball bath with a sock to keep her hat dry.

Making a powdered sugar snow angel.  A cat helped her with this activity, probably Milo...

She wrote on the mirror!

Cuddling baby Jesus.

This morning we were in a hotel in Vacaville, CA.  Korina set up a game of Old Maid with most of the other toys that traveled with us, although she left out Ralph.

Dressing up as Snow White (Winters, CA).

Ralph got his revenge for being left out of the card game (Winters, CA).

Korina brought a note from Santa (Winters, CA).

A snowball fight with paper snowballs (Winters, CA)!

 

I guess this is how she came home from California, it must have been a long trip in that little car!

Traveling via sled and Zuzu's this time.

Repelling in the pantry in search of hot chocolate.

Putting together a puzzle.

She drew a moustache on Naomi and little hats on the picture with Naomi and her cousin!

Delivering candy canes for the tree.

Tea party!

Having some maple syrup for breakfast.

She opened the gift Naomi wrapped for her (a pretend sunflower) and decided to go for a ride on a horse.

She trapped Naomi, this really freaked Naomi out at first, but then she really liked it and wanted to keep it up.

Before returning to the North Pole she read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas to some of the toys and then left a nice note for Naomi saying how much she had enjoyed her time at our house.

State Fair 2012

You may notice that Naomi is wearing three different outfits in one post about the State Fair. Yep, over a period of just twelve dats we went to the fair three times!
We ate lots if yummy fair food and rode on rides (well, Naomi did anyway), and we saw lots of exhibits! I think the best thing about the fair is all the animals :-). There were guinea pigs at the fair this year, competing! They were cute of course, but I never thought of them as competition fair animals. Naomi loved the Pygmy goats and the pig races. She also loved all the chances to do some roping!

Oceanside Beach

One of the days on our vacation was dedicated to the beach.  It wasn't too crowded, but there were lots of people.  In the picture above you can see Micheal on the left hand side with his hands on his head.  I think he was trying to get the water off his head.  Naomi is one of the little heads in the water to the left of him.

Here's another picture of them, again, they are super small since they were quite a ways out.  Michael is standing with his brother-in-law and sister with the kids around them.

Naomi decided to come up onto the sand for a while, she was a little freaked out by the seaweed.  In the background is the pier we had dinner on later that day.

Naomi loved the waves, but she also enjoyed rolling in the sand.  Because once you're covered in sand you must go back into the water to rinse off right?

This is from the end of the pier after dinner.  We were all eating dinner and suddenly I saw something jumping in the water.  Luckily is was at the end of our meal and we had already paid the bill because the 'something' was dolphins!  We all rushed out of the restaurant so we could have a better look.  I'm not sure if it was one large pod or several pods, but we were able to watch the dolphins for a good 30-45 minutes.  My camera couldn't zoom in enough to get a decent shot of them, but I think one of the darker blobs in front of the boat is one.  There was also a bunch of pelicans following the dolphins and swooping up any fish that managed to escape them.  It was just a fluke that we even got to see this since we had planned on taking an earlier train back to Anaheim, thank goodness we missed that train!

I don't have pictures of this, but as we were walking back down the pier towards the station we stopped a couple of times to check out what the people fishing off the pier were catching.  One person had caught a small shark while another caught a sting ray! Happily both men were nice enough to return these little creatures back to the water.

Legoland 2012

At legoland they have a whole section called Mini World (or something like that...).  They have built a farming community, the Las Vegas Strip, New York, New Orleans, Washington D.C, San Fransisco, and  new Star Wars section.  Naomi's standing in front of part of the New York area.

Aahhh!  I'm being eaten by a shark!

They have two driving schools, last year Naomi did the one that is for 3-5 year olds, but this year she was able to do the one for 6-13 year olds.  They have multiple roads, stop signs, and traffic lights.  There was a few accidents but Naomi wasn't involved in any of them.  She did however end up spending about a quarter of her time going the wrong way in the lanes, I guess we still have some work to do ;-)

At some of the rides with longer waits they offer a play area for the kids so they don't just have to stand in line.  At this play area the kids could build cars out of legos or duplos and then test them on the tracks.  This kept Naomi and her cousin occupied for almost an hour while the adults waited in line!

She loved this lego fisherman, I'm not really sure why.  But she insisted I take a picture while she hugged him!

On every trip there are some sad times....

The second day into our trip was a sad one.  Naomi did NOT want to go on this ride.  It wasn't scary or fast, she just didn't want to.  She did end up enjoying it as the ride was coming to an end.

She was also sick and tired of characters.  Naomi is a lot like Michael, if you can't see someones face, they are not to be trusted.  Pluto was untrustworthy and SCARY! 

This is her 'No more pictures!' pose.  Her cousins were standing in front of the Cars Land sign having their picture taken, but she wasn't going to do it for anything.

This is a different day, but another sad moment.  Not really because she was unhappy but because she was hungry, or as Aunt Jennifer has coined it 'Hangry'!  She was a much nicer person after lunch.

More California

Naomi is not about the big, fast, impressive rides.  Here she is waiting to go on Dumbo and she's super excited she got a feather (it means we'll be on next!).

She rode Dumbo a cupple times while we were there, so Daddy and I each got a turn.

Naomi loved having control over our up and down movement. She found that if you move Dumbo up just a little bit, then all the way back down he bounces!

Here we are in front of the castel.

Cruella was hilarious!  She yelled at a couple of people who walked in front of us while we were trying to take a picture, and told Naomi she looked marvelous in stripes.  Stayed in character the whole time, she was a treat!

California 2012

We're off to see the Wizard....or maybe some Princesses!  We took Amtrak from Albuquerque to Anaheim, about a 16 hour trip.  Luckily it was overnight, so a lot of the time was spent sleeping.

The first characters we encountered were Alice and the Mad Hatter.  Naomi happened to be wearing a Chesire cat shirt that says 'We're all a little mad here' on the back, Alice and the Hatter were quite impressed!

Next character was Merida from Brave.  Naomi was really excited to see her since it is the most recent Disney movie to come out.

After saying 'Hi' to Merida, she learned some Archery skills.

In the Princess Fantasy Fair we firt meet Ariel, in her human form.

Then we found Belle.

And finally Tiana!

Naomi is defeinitly starting to question whether or not the Princesses are real, so this may be our last time meeting them.  It'll be nice to not have to wait in line (luckily it was on about 30 minutes this time, unlike our 2 hour wait a few years ago!), but it will be sad to lose some of the magic she has experianced while meeting them.