Sept 2009 - Disneyland for my Mom's 72nd Birthday!

So, September 23rd marked my Mom's 72nd birthday and it was her idea to go to Disneyland for her birthday! Being as this year you get in for free on your birthday to Disneyland, she really liked that idea! So my mom, Cheryl, Bennett and I made a fun day of it at Mickey Mouse's house! Mom had fun and Bennett had a great time running our legs off! I was exhausted when we got home. :o)

Mickey and Minnie getting ready for Pumpkin season.

My pretty mom in front of the Matterhorn .

Mom, Bennett and Cheryl on the tram ride from the parking lot (best ride of the day for Bennett!)

Mom and B on the tram.

Bennett on the Winnie the Pooh ride.

Mom giving some love to the Carousel horses. :o)

Bennett riding the Carousel.

Mom and Bennett at Tarzan's Treehouse....hmmm...pondering what is in the water below?? :o)

Bennett and I on the tea cups...B LOVES this ride! He says "spin more!"

Bennett on the Autopia cars.

Mom and Bennett on the Autopia.

Cheryl drawing on her past racing experience from Quarter Midget days to drive on the Autopia raceway. Just kidding. :o)

Bennett feeding his very expensive Disneyland lunch to the ducks at Tom Sawyer's Island. He did eat most of it, but would have fed all of it to the ducks if he could have!

We rode the fire engine truck up Main Street, and Bennett rang that fire bell the ENTIRE trip. I'm pretty sure that the people riding with us just thought it was oh so cute and not annoying at all. :o)

Bennett trying with all of his might to push that giant ball in the opposite direction of where every other kid wanted it to go!

Just a fun postcard of Disneyland that I saw at the end of It's a Small World.

Bennett goes Mini Golfing

So I decided to take Bennett mini golfing on our Tuesday Field Trip day last week. (I have deemed it field trip day to motivate myself to get my buns out and doing some fun stuff with him this fall. :o) Bennett goes to preschool on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, so Tuesdays are a great day to hang out at museums, etc here. He LOVED mini golf. I loved that on a weekday morning, there is virtually no one at the mini golf place so if Bennett decided to spend 30 minutes at the same hole we weren't bugging anyone! He only hit the ball in the hole with the golf club the first three holes, then it was way more fun to run up and roll the ball in the hole by hand! I coaxed my mom to come with us (which is NEVER a hard thing to do...she loves it!) I was actually surprised having not been to Sherman Oaks Castle Mini golf in years that they have really kept the whole place up beautifully. It was such a fun day. We got to play some of the arcade games inside too....aww..just like the old days for me. :o)

Bennett arranging our golf balls for us....

Waiting and watching for the golf ball to come out of the hole from the little house up above...he loved this!

Hmm...let's see...which ball do I place in the hole first...do I go by color?? Notice that Bennett chose the golf balls in the colors of a stoplight...Green , Yellow, and Red. :o)

It is soooo much easier to make a hole in one when you are looking right in the hole!

Had to get a picture of somebody in front of the pirate ship....mom was more willing to pose for me than Bennett was! :o)

Bennett Starts Preschool

My little guy has officially started preschool. He absolutely loves it! He got to go to a summer session for 5 weeks and was so excited to be back this fall. They changed his room to the room with the red door instead of the room with the blue door and I think that took a bit of adjustment for him, but now he is owning the red room as "his room". :o) Bennett loves being around the other kids and also his teachers. The other day when I picked him up he didn't want to leave, he wanted to stay and play. :o)

First day of Preschool...Lightning McQueen lunchbox in hand!

Bennett showing off his artwork from the summer session of preschool. I put up a ribbon in the kitchen and we hang his artwork from it with clothespins. I will have to start rotating the artwork out soon, but for now, he loves to tell us every few days about what he made and what he learned from each piece of artwork. I love that!

San Francisco Trip - September 2009

Dan went to his annual VMWorld conference this year and it was held in San Francisco. I decided to tag along at the end of it and make a mini vacation out of it! We had such a great time exploring the city. I hadn't been there in over 10 years, and Dan was there about 2 years ago. I love the sound of the cable car bells ringing...it is a soothing sound amidst the sounds of the city.

Standing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Cable car on the corner near our hotel.

Dan and I by the lake in Golden Gate Park....good framing on Dan's part to get the Egret in the background I think. :o)

Golden Gate Bridge....couldn't believe our luck to have such a sunny day and be able to see the whole bridge without any fog!

Windmill in Golden Gate Park

Botanical Gardens - Golden Gate Park...it has been a long time since I have seen grass this green...especially in Southern California since we got so many water restrictions!

Waterfall in Golden Gate Park.

Just some neat gnarly wood that I found in the park.

Eating at the Rainforest Cafe down by the Wharf.

View from Fisherman's Wharf.

That's a whole lot of super stinky seal lions!

Dan in front of the Camera Obscura or the Giant Camera.

Believe it or not, it really wasn't that hard to get Dan to pose like the Playland Cowboy! Silly day.

View from Point Lobos down the coastline.

We went to the Musee Mechanique on Fisherman's Wharf...such a cool place...every old mechanical game or boardwalk game you can think of here. We laughed when we saw the one above with the old man and the sign below which said "Drop 25 cents in slot to buy Dan a drink." Some way to get free drinks!! :o)

We found an old Star Wars Atari arcade game ...just like the one that I probably spent all my quarters in growing up. I used to spend whole days in the summer at the Malibu Castle Golf in Sherman Oaks playing lots of Star Wars. Loved playing it again! Dan even got to post a high score and he only played it once!

Max's 2nd Birthday!

Our nephew Max turned 2 in August, and they just had a small birthday party for him to celebrate. We broke out the water slide and the kids had a good time slip sliding away. I got to make the birthday cake this year...Scooby Doo is Max's absolute favorite. Happy Birthday Mr. Max!!

The Ferrulli's watching Max blow out his candles.

Scooby Dooby Doo, Where Are You??

Grandpa Nick being silly.