Disneyland

Travis and I decided late last year that we wanted to surprise Merrick with a trip to Disneyland for his 6th birthday.  After lots of research and planning, we got a trip booked in early January.  Lucky for us, the Handasyde family wanted to join us, which made the trip planning that much more fun!  Darryl and Rebecca told Dakota that she was going to Disneyland about a month before the trip.  Merrick took the news like a champ and was even excited for Dakota when he found out that she was going to get to stay the night with us before the trip and that we would take them to the airport in the morning. 

We had a 6:50 am flight, which meant an early rise time for all of us.  Merrick wasn't quite awake when we told him the news that he was going to Disneyland and it took a few minutes for the news to sink in.  He quickly ran and told Dakota that he was going with her.  The first excitement of the day was finding out that we were going to ride in a taxi to the airport.  I honestly think Merrick might have been just as excited about the taxi as he was about going to Disneyland.

Merrick & Dakota at the Orange County Airport sporting their "I'm with Goofy T-shirts" and custom Mickey and Minnie bags

The nice thing about an early morning flight was that we got to our hotel and dropped off our bags by 10:00 in the morning, which meant we had a full day at the park.  The first small hiccup in the trip was that the computer system at Disney was down.  Not a big deal if you have your confirmation paperwork with you to show that you have purchased tickets (unfortunately we did not).  Fortunately, they took our word for it and gave us tickets to the park.  How's that for customer service?  Travis was our navigator for the trip and had his handy phone and disneyland app that told him what the wait time was on all the rides.  We decided to ease into things and hit the Jungle Cruise first.  The only problem was our little boat ride turned into a short version of Gilligan's Island.  What was supposed to be about a 7 minute tour, turned into a 20+ minute tour as they had some malfunctions on the ride.  When we finally made it back to the dock, they gave us extra fast passes (for those of you who don't know what a fast pass is, it's like a golden ticket that gets you to the front of the ride line).  Again, Disney came through on the customer service front. 

The crew on the tea cups

I could bore all of you with the play by play details of our trip, but I'll save both you and I the time. I will bore you with lots of pictures, which as they say... are worth a thousand words. If you really want details, the next time I see you, be sure to ask.  What I will say is that we had a wonderful time.  I would say it was probably the best family trip we've been on and we created lots of memories. 

On the Mickey Ferris Wheel at California Adventure

Playing at the water park at our hotel

Tower of Terror - One of my favorite rides

Screamin' California was one of our favorite rides.

We surprised the kids with breakfast with the characters on our last day.

After our last day at Disneyland and California Adventure

Mr. M. turns 6!

It's hard to believe that Mr. M. is already 6 years old!  I know they say that time flies when you're having fun, but I had no idea it went this fast.  Merrick truly is the light of our lives, he is smart, sweet, funny, compassionate, inquisitive, and I could go on and on.  One of the things that I love about M is that he still loves to snuggle and get kisses and hugs from his mom & dad.  Since he's my only one, I savor these moments because I know they won't last forever.  I know the day is coming when he won't want a kiss when I drop him off at school and will be okay with a hug and then it will be no kiss and no hug and just a "bye mom" as he runs to his friends.  So until that time comes, we will cherish these moments with him.

Since M is our only one, he does tend to get SPOILED.  We've been planning a surprise trip to Disneyland to celebrate his birthday since January.  Originally we weren't going to have a party with his friends and keep the big celebration for "The Happiest Place on Earth", but once we knew for certain that we were moving, we decided to give him one last party here in Portland with all his friends.  We let him pick the location, and he chose Pump it Up.  So Friday, May 4, 20 of Merrick's closest friends (and their parents) headed to Pump it Up for a fun evening of jumping, sliding and cake. 

 The whole crew (let's see you try to get 20+ kids cooperate for a picture!)

M and his best buddy Zachary.  These boys are only 4 months apart in age and have known each other since M was born.

Megan and M.  Megan and M have known each other since the day M was brought home from the hospital.  Her mom and I walked many, many miles pushing the kids in strollers when M was an infant trying to keep him happy and to stop the CRYING! They both lost their first tooth this past week.  So fun that they reached that milestone together.

I lost my tof!

Merrick got his first "wiggly" tooth about a month ago.  We've been waiting and waiting for it to finally fall out.  Yesterday while we were at the park he told me that he was ready for me to pull his tooth out.  Knowing that pulling teeth can sometimes be messy (and the fact that just the thought makes my stomach turn) I told him we needed to wait until we got home and got Daddy to help us.

Daddy stepped up to the challenge and once he realized that his fingers were a bit too big to fit in little M's mouth, he got the bright idea to use floss.  Not knowing what the outcome would be, I excused myself and left the boys to handle the business of extracting the tooth.  Thankfully there were was no crying or screaming and after just a few short minutes, Merrick exited his bedroom with a small little tooth in his mouth and a gap in his smile.  I am so proud of him for being so brave and he wrote a note to the Tooth Fairy to make sure she brought him just what he wanted.

For those of you who can't read his letter, here is what it says

I lost my tof

Dear tofarei

Dear tofarei

I wot mune

Fum Merrick Yates

and yes, the Tofarei has tucked away this sweet note.

Change is in the air...

Okay, okay... I know it's been a LONG time since we last posted on our blog.  Since we are going to be moving, I figured now would be a good time to revisit our family blog and recommit to keeping it current.  I've been bad about resorting to facebook posts and face to face conversations to keep everyone up to date on what we're doing, but now that we're moving, I know that will be harder to do.

So here's the nitty gritty on what we've been up to... Travis' company approached him almost two months ago about possibly taking on a new position with them in their Bellevue office.  He expressed interest, but there was no way we were going to move if I didn't have a job.  So... I did what any smart person who works for an amazing company (who also by chance has an office in Seattle) would do.  I asked if I could transfer.  Knowing that there wouldn't be full-time HR work and knowing that I was (let's be honest here) a little burnt out on HR, I asked if they would consider me for a part-time Business Development position.  Once we got all the details discussed and worked out, the end result was we were moving to Seattle. So part 1 of the process was done - jobs - check! 

Now to figure out what to do with our house.  We've only been in it two years and when we bought it we really did envision raising Merrick in this house.  It's in a great neighborhood, close to parks, walking/bike riding distance to the library, shopping, etc.  We were considering renting it, the rental market in Portland is in high demand right now, but then I ran into an acquaintance at the park and we started talking about how quickly houses in the neighborhood were selling.  Trav and I talked about it and decided maybe we would take the plunge and put the house up for sale.  That was almost a month ago.  We spent three weeks getting the house ready to sell and it officially went on the market on Friday, April 27 and by Sunday, April 29 we had three offers to consider.  We've worked out the details and now we're headed to home inspection and a closing date of June 15 (only 6 short weeks away). So part 2 of the process - sell house - check!

Now we'll spend the next several weeks packing and apartment hunting in Seattle.  We decided that for the first year we want to live in an apartment or condo and not have to worry about maintaining a house, plus it will give us a chance to really check out Seattle and figure out where we want to live long term.

We are super excited about this new adventure and we knew that 2012 would bring change, we just didn't realize how much!