It's been so hot that Katelyn got to get some water play of her own in our own backyard. Best part - trying out some of her new swimsuits! She absolutely loves going outside, and luckily she gets lots of park trips when Cheyenne is here.
Playing with her stacking cups in the kiddie pool.
And she's in! Here are just a few more of her in the water. She had a great time. Cheyenne said that Katelyn would get out, run around the yard, get in her car for a bit, ring the doorbell, bring her some pine needles, etc, ... and then climb back in. What a nice life Katelyn has. :)
Snacking as well while playing...
She dried off pretty quick in the sun and then played around in her swimsuit. She is so cute!
This week we also had Tyler's end-of-the-year Pre-2 party at his school. Since Will was out of town (last week) and my nanny couldn't stay late enough, I had to suck it up and bring Katelyn with me. Will and I usually try to go to these school events together, especially if we have to bring Katelyn, since she is quite a handful and we want to be able to give Tyler attention as well. Anyway, I dressed Katelyn up cute for her "night out".
Check me out!
The kids on the playground. Tyler was very helpful when it came to steering Katelyn away from the sand and climbers. They really are so sweet together (except when Katelyn pinches Tyler. NOT cool. Poor Tyler).
Katelyn and my friend Jen.
The party was cowboy themed, so there were bandanas for the kids to wear. I swear I didn't put it on him like that, haha. Tyler is just silly like that.
Katelyn barely sat down the whole time. I kept her in her stroller while we ate as long as I could, but all she wanted to do was run run run around. I got quite a workout chasing her around the sand and on the climber. She is fearless. She did enjoy some watermelon though on her downtime.
Here's Tyler and his friend Elijah. I was taking pictures and Tyler ran up and jumped on the back of Elijah's bike. I don't think Elijah was too happy about it (although this child does seem more concerned about things in general).
This picture started out with just Tyler and Karissa (in the purple next to him) but quickly got larger as more and more friends popped in. That's one thing I love about ICDC, the camaraderie between the families and kids. The third girl from the left, Catherine, I remember when she first started and she couldn't walk yet and every day she would just sit there and cry. Now they play all the time together!
I gave Tyler a bag of gummies and all of a sudden he became Mr. Popular!
Here's Tyler and 2 of his teachers Sheri and Deena.
We were very happy to have Will back from his business trip. At least this time it was only Tue-late Thursday. I was fine though, sucked it up and made it through. Last time Will was out of town was March - Sunday to Friday - and Katelyn was horribly sick! That was a horrrrrrible week.
Video of Katelyn dancing to Glee on TV. We were preparing for our upcoming Glee Live! show. Katelyn loves music, loves to sway and dance and clap her hands.
Saturday morning we also started a Mommy and Me Chinese class. It's just 45 minutes every week and we sing songs and speak Chinese. I am not too hopeful of Tyler's Chinese improvement from the class, but anything will help. It's given through the city of Irvine and it's interesting the other moms and kids that are there. There was this one lady who's son was older than Tyler and she spoke to him like he was a baby. Tyler learned the Chinese words for 4 different shapes that morning.
Our friends the Garners had extra tickets to the Glee Live! show at the Staples Center and were kind enough to invite us to join them. E X C I T E D !! The show as at 3pm so we had Katelyn take her second nap in the car when we left around 1:30pm. Tyler was actually about an hour into his nap at that point, but we woke him, changed him, and he fell back asleep in the car. Wonderful! They both slept until we got off the freeway at downtown LA.
Video of Katelyn playing with 'ding' toy. Clever lady.
The tickets came with parking permits for the nearest garage to the Staples Center. SCORE! And coincidentally, we pulled into a spot directly in front of our friends, even though they had gotten there an hour earlier and were in their car waiting for their kids to wake up. Sweet! Tyler and Kaden were REALLY excited to see each other.
Overly excited.
We headed inside and got a little lost trying to find our seats. Apparently the seats are for a suite, but because of the stage setup, you can't see anything from the suite's view. Darn! I was worried that the kids would need room to run, but we just crossed our fingers and made our way to our seats. Got the kids some garlic parmesan fries (yum!) and a tub of popcorn and everyone was good to go.
Ready for the show!
So fair skinned my little girl.
Katelyn was happy sitting in Will's lap watching the show. We had nice seats, and enough for even Katelyn to have her own. Apparently we were on the suite level, where you can only access if you have a suite ticket. I think it definitely cut down on the amount of time we waited in line for concessions.
Video of Katelyn watching Glee Live:
Video of Katelyn liking Puck at Glee Live:
We must be getting old because I really thought the music was too loud. Tyler even had his hands covering his ears for a bit, and then had my hands covering his ears with his hands over mine. Yikes. I had Will take Katelyn into the lobby area whenever the volume level started getting excessive. Next time I'll bring some big noise cancelling earmuffs or something.
Tyler and Kaden!
Heehee, this picture of Katelyn is pretty hilarious.
The show is starting! Very exciting. We would never in a million years have actively sought out Glee tickets, especially since it'd include getting a babysitter and everything. The fans are so energetic!
My favorite part - the Warblers! Ahhhh!
Videos of the Warblers at Glee Live. Not sure if these next couple videos still work - I got cited for copyright infringement on YouTube!
Video of Glee's version of Jason Mraz's Lucky. FAVORITE song of the night! :)
These pictures were all taken with Will's DSLR with his 50mm lens. The venue allows DSLRs as long as the lens length is less than 3 inches. Can you imagine how awesome the pictures would have been if we snuck in our zoom lens? Every picture I tried taking on my point and shoot Canon s90 came out horrible and blurry.
Finale!
Katelyn was really happy and interested for most of the performance. By the end of the show though, she just wanted to eat popcorn.
They really get you to spend a lot of money at the concession stands!
Family picture!
After the show ended, it was still early (maybe 6ish?) and we headed outside to figure out what we were going to do next. Note for next time (if there is one): PLAN AHEAD! We ended up walking in large circles around the whole area, having trouble deciding where we wanted to eat dinner, and then realizing that everything was booked solid by the time we finally tried to make some decisions. It was horrible and exhausting. Good thing I had enough sense to grab the stroller so that we wouldn't be carrying Katelyn the whole way.
We finally gave up on finding anything nearby so we got into our cars and drove to a Chick Fil-A close by. Hah! It was kind of strange being in Los Angeles. The vibe is totally different and I even felt a little unsafe! Yes, I have become too accustomed to living in my Irvine bubble! Katelyn had no fear though, she was saying and waving Hi to everybody in that restaurant, regardless of how dangerous they looked. Hah! Good thing she's so cute and no one could resist her! Here she is giving Kylee a hug before we left. It's so cute that they're getting old enough to play together!
We're still trying (relatively) strictly to keep Katelyn on a gluten, dairy, wheat, egg and soy, almond, sesame, shellfish-free diet. It is not easy. We go to Whole Foods quite often and it adds up pretty quick price-wise. Sigh. Katelyn liked pushing her little shopping cart though.
Strawberry Farm picking at Tanaka Farms! We've been trying to do this for a while with some of our friends but were having a hard time finding a date that worked for everyone. We finally just decided to go on our own since it was so close and we had a free morning. We took Tyler once when he was younger and were looking forward to Katelyn's first time as well.
Look at the strawberries mama!
The strawberry picking is pretty pricey ($15 a person, including Tyler since he's 3+), but it includes a wagon ride through the farms and a plastic container to fill with strawberries and take home. Throughout the wagon ride they'll stop and let us sample their different vegetables. We had wax beans, onions, celery, carrots, etc. Katelyn seemed to like the wax beans. I couldn't get Tyler to try any of these though!
Mmmm wax bean.
Katelyn even tried some onions, but wasn't feeling it too much.
Video of Katelyn on Tanaka Farms tour ride:
Time to pick the strawberries!
Umm.. that's quite a large strawberry you've got there Katelyn...
Tyler didn't waste any time either.
Which strawberry do I want...
YUM!!
Scoping out her next strawberry...
What kid doesn't love strawberries? These were exceptionally sweet too!
Bye-bye strawberries...
Good thing we had 3 baskets full to continue eating!
Video of Katelyn eating strawberries at Tanaka Farms. So excited she loved it!
Here's Tyler and Katelyn with their baskets full of strawberries!
Family picture!
One of Tyler and Katelyn's favorite treats - the berry smoothie at Costco!
Tyler's drawing of a rocket! It kind of looks like its crashing down into earth, with the sun shining in the background..but.. he's 3!
Sunday we decided to head to Wild Rivers. I haven't been here since I was in Junior High I think. It's super close to use as well, just 5-10 minutes down the 5 freeway in Irvine. Supposedly this is their last Summer before they close forever, and I'm excited that Tyler is somewhat old enough to enjoy the park. Katelyn not so much.
All sunblocked up and ready to go! We decided to get season passes for the 3 of us that are good for the whole summer. Mine came with parking and lockers unlimited.
Tyler was ready to get into the water quick!
Checking out the lazy river.
Alright! Everybody is sunblocked and ready to go!
We don't have a waterproof camera anymore so we didn't get to take too many photos at Wild Rivers. Tyler really liked the lazy river though. It reminded him of the pools at Atlantis (except those were definitely not lazy!)
It took a lot of coaxing to get Tyler to go on this tube ride. It's only for kids under a certain height. Can you see him waiting in line?
He almost backed out at the top until I pointed out the little girl who was going before him. Tyler got on cautiously and held on tight. Here he goes!
He still looks a bit nervous here, not sure how it's going to end...except that he ended up LOVING it!! The ride drops off into a pool that's like a foot deep or so, and there's a lifeguard there to help them out. As soon as he got to the bottom he was running and yelling to go on it again!
Video of Tyler on the water tubing ride:
We couldn't find any water shoes for Katelyn at all. We searched high and low for anything old of Tyler's that might work... and found these little slip ons. It worked! New water shoes came in the mail today, she'll be ready when we're playing in the water parks in Houston!
Loved this swing for Katelyn. Her feet would swish the water as she swung back and forth.
Katelyn loves swings! Tyler never did (and still doesn't really...)
Videos of Katelyn on water swing (notice Tyler trying to help push her and making her angry):
Tyler loved it! We'll have to go lots and lots of times this Summer.
Video of Tyler on the elephant slide. Another one of those things that took a lot of persuading but then he loved it afterward.
Yay water fun!
Katelyn was perfectly content to just sit on Will's lap as we made our way around the Lazy river. Every once in a while she'd crawl onto her tummy and splash the water over the edge. She would also wave at anyone nearby on tubes to try to get them to say hi. Tyler hung out with me and we just all stayed connected floating lazily. Considering it was Memorial Day, the place wasn't too crowded! (Although, we only stayed in one section of the park - the kids section...)
Tyler found an old pair of my goggles and thought it was hilarious. I've since gotten him his own pair that will fit better.
We are working on training Katelyn's hair to go the right direction. Slow progress. Love hairbands on her though! She'll look at herself in the mirror, take it off, and then try to put it back on again. She loves putting things in her hair and trying stuff on, she's going to be such a girly-girl!
And my mommy-time of the week - watching Bridesmaids on a Wednesday night with my friend Jen, and then late night happy hour at Yard House afterward! A much needed break from the business that is my life.
1 comment:
such a fun week! the glee show looks like it was fun!
for your mommy and me chinese class, is the teacher just playing chau hu videos?? lol. brandon loves those dvds
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