Did you know we went to Disneyland at Halloween time?
By Tara Zandra | October 9, 2011
I did not sew new outfits this year for Halloween (or for anything really). We recycled old outfits for our day of pictures. For the first time, Daisy wore something I had originally sewn for Tabitha. I had to take the waist in a little bit because Tabi was 8 when I made this. We put Tabitha in her evil fairy costume from last year minus the wings and knee high shoes. Turns out both outfits are made from the same fabric so the girls matched which is highly unusual and in fact, discouraged.
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We had a good day taking pics all around Disneyland and were pleased to see Jack and Sally together.
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We went into the Big Thunder Ranch area where they have the petting zoo and found out the spider fabric was very popular.
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I just love getting thier pics every year even if they are the same. I know someday it’ll be fun to compare how they changed through the years even though the decorations mainly stay the same.
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food trucks
By Tara Zandra | October 8, 2011
Today we headed out to the Inland Empire for a food truck festival. Good grief there were a lot of trucks! Tabs and I lucked out and found a truck with vegetarian sushi and more than one option at that! The family had cake pops, waffles, ice cream, tofu sandwiches, tacos, I don’t even remember everything. We shared most things so we wouldn’t overeat. The one downside was none of the places took credit cards even if they normally did so we had to pay a fee to use an ATM. But I would go back again, I felt there was a large variety and it was a very low admission cost.
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Lanie
By Tara Zandra | October 7, 2011
Tabitha had a slumber party to attend this evening and was told to bring her American Girl dolls. In the end she only wanted to bring one of them but she wasn’t happy about her decision. So I told her we’d all take care of Lanie and make sure she had a good time. In all seriousness, the child did make me promise to dress her in the morning and do her hair, lol. Tabi goes through phases where she takes care of the dolls and sets them up in a scene on a daily basis but then ignores them for 3 months before spending a week setting them up again.
Anyway, we thought it would be funny to show Tabitha what a good time Lane had at home with us.
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Mickey’s Halloween Treat
By Tara Zandra | October 3, 2011
Time for the Halloween party at Disneyland! First we have the history loving child going as Cleopatra.
Next we have a little unicorn. This costume was sewn for my sister by my mom around 1992. Thank goodness my mom saves sentimental stuff! It’s such a cute costume. I did have to remake the hooves because it poured horribly that year, but again, my mom had the pattern still so no big deal. I even made the hooves extremely sturdy so if my sister someday has a little girl and wants her to wear this costume, it’ll be good to go.
We spent the evening visiting characters and getting more candy than any family should have. Seriously, we have 4 grocery bags full. They insisted on giving candy to Chris and myself, not just the kids. We’re going to stil have it come next Halloween.
We also watched the Halloween fireworks and watched the parade which I thought was pretty fun. Of course, I took many, many pictures throughout the night, so I’ll just share a few.
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Start the halloween celebration!
By Tara Zandra | September 30, 2011
Disneyland was all decked out and ready for Halloween so we decided to just go with it. No matter that it’s still September. Truth be told, we actually decorated last weekend anyway.
We got up nice and early this morning to get into the park at opening. The girls begged for Splash Mountain so we let them go by themselves twice. I know the laws of physics will hold Daisy in, but I was still nervous not holding onto her. Obviously they did fine. We were pleased to see characters that only come out for Halloween and we made a visit to Mickey in his house in Toontown because we hadn’t seen him in a while and felt we needed some good hugs.
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Paradise Pier
By Tara Zandra | September 29, 2011
Chris was on another mini-vacation from work so we decided very spur of the moment to stay the night at Disneyland’s Paradise Pier Hotel. First stop after checking in was the pool! They have a water slide which really upped the wow factor as far as the kids were concerned. We then had a nice meal of Mickey sourdough bread, cheese from my cheese of the month shipment (a very cool gift from my mom and sister), as well as crackers and grapes. I then took Tabitha to ballet while Chris and Daisy went into Calfornia Adventure to get soaked on Grizzly River Run.
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puppy free
By Tara Zandra | September 25, 2011
As of today we are free of puppies. We found a close home for one of them and a faraway home for the other. As in, he took a plane ride. I know the kids may be a smidgen sad, but I’m good. This whole experience has made me realize I will never have a puppy on purpose. Especially not 2. We don’t know the circumstances our Biscuit came from, but we know she’s over a year and wasn’t spayed which should not happen. I’m glad we took her in and she didn’t end up having the puppies on the street, but I am more glad that the puppies both have homes that are not here 
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Aquarium
By Tara Zandra | September 22, 2011
Thursday was homeschool day at the Aquarium. I love that they do this. One of the problems with visiting museums and such during the school year is we often feel pushed out of areas to make way for a school group. The Aquarium hosts 2 homeschool days in September every year. Not only do they give us a great deal on tickets, but they don’t book any school groups. It’s still crowded because there are a lot of homeschoolers who take advantage, but at least it’s not giant groups. We go very early and head to the back of the Aquarium first because they crowds come later and start at the front. Then we work our way forward and go home when we get hungry. We do it every year and have the plan down now
This year we were very happy to see the lorikeet area open as it was closed last year. It may have been open, but those birds were not hungry. We must have spent 20-minutes in there with nary a nibble. Nobody was having any luck and frankly, they should have stopped selling the nectar. Eventually, some of us taller people were able to entice birds down from perches. It still was nowhere near what we’ve experienced in the past but I did hear a few workers saying something was spooking the birds and hawks could have been flying over head.
Pictures from the day:
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One more time! Disneyland!
By Tara Zandra | September 21, 2011
Today we attended a birthday party at Disneyland. Before we left I asked Daisy to check if all our passes were where they belonged. As we pulled into the Disneyland parking lot, I reached for the passes and they weren’t there. Turns out she checked if they were in their pouch (they were), then proceeded to take them out of the pouch and put them all on the table. *sigh* So I had to pay the $15 parking fee and then stand in line at guest relations to get one day passes. Turns out they would have refunded the parking fee if I hadn’t left the ticket in the car but I didn’t know that. It really wasn’t that big of a deal other than it almost made us late.
While we were at guest relations, one of my friends who was also attending the party walked up to renew her and her son’s passes. He was done first but her’s was still processing so she had me take him in so I could hopefully get all the kids to the party on time. I put Tabi in charge as “leader” and told the 2 younger ones to follow her. She did an excellent job and practically had those kids running- though not, because that’s not allowed at Disneyland 
We did make it, thankfully.
First up was Jedi training then Autopia, followed by Astro Oribiter, the train, Casey Jr. and Tea Cups. Somewhere in there was lunch at Redd Rocket’s and we ended with cupcakes at the birthday celebration thing at Plaza Inn. Apparently Daisy really enjoyed that part and told Tabitha that’s exactly what she was going to do when she turned 7 because it’s what Tabitha did at 7. Precedence, you know. Thankfully Tabitha told me that Daisy expects it so we’ll make the reservation when it’s time.
As soon as the cupcake party was done, we raced home, packed the kids’ dinner, dropped Tabitha off at tap, dropped Daisy off with my in-laws and then headed to the Staples Center for a preseason Kings game. It’s always nice to go out just the two of us and I didn’t get to a single hockey game last season so it was doubly nice.
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Disneyland followed by, Disneyland
By Tara Zandra | September 11, 2011
Chris and Tabitha went to the Kings Hockey Fan Fest today so Daisy and I spent our time at Disneyland. When it’s just the two of us I let her dictate anything she wants and I follow. Today this meant 30-minutes of taking pictures in Mickey’s house followed by 45-minutes of goat petting. Seriously, 45-minutes of goats. I felt the crowds were rather light, so once all of us were home again, I cooked dinner and then we all went back to Disneyland to wait for Fantasmic. We hadn’t seen it in a while so the girls were happily surprised. We had to wait quite a while but we made the best of it and thoroughly enjoyed the show.
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Someone got bigger
By Tara Zandra | September 6, 2011
5 weeks, 3 days
Other puppy could not be coerced into photo.
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Three Bears
By Tara Zandra | September 2, 2011
Today we had another meeting of Daisy’s play group. Today they put on Goldilocks and the 3 Bears for us. They were very good with getting into their roles and doing more than just reading. Too cute! We have to put them on hold for a few months though as our regular book club starts back up again next week.
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Rest of August
By Tara Zandra | August 31, 2011
Back to work for Chris and back to full day of lessons for the girls and I. Nothing parcticularly interesting or out of the ordinary. I do enjoy having uninterrupted lesson time. It’s taken me a year, but I think I finally have a rhythm of working with both girls. Tabitha does a lot of work on her own so we try to make some kind of schedule so I’m working with Daisy while Tabs is on her own and then I can be done with Daisy while Tabitha needs me. I only do math and spelling with Tabitha and everything else I’m there for guidance and correcting her work. Whereas for Daisy, I have to do everything with her except her reading time. That’s something new too. I never implemented reading time with Tabitha because it simply wasn’t necessary. Once she read her first Magic Treehouse book and her first Ramona Quimby book, she was hooked. But Daisy doesn’t like novels, she reads short stories in Disney princess anthology books. Over and over again. Or the stories in Sesame Street books. Not that there isn’t value in short stories, but reading novels is needed as well. So she has a half hour reading time per day where she has to read a novel. We’ve gone to the store and chosen books with her approval like mysteries or a series about dogs. The first dog book she read in one sitting in about half an hour. Said she really liked it so I bought the others then she would only read for 5 minutes or so before switching back to her Disney books. Thankfully the child does love to read and in fact, is constantly reading, so it’s not a struggle to tell her she has to read for half an hour. She likes all the novels she reads, so not sure why they are never her first choice.
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Sea World
By Tara Zandra | August 21, 2011
Last year, Tabitha’s Girl Scout troop stayed overnight at Sea World. They were able to sleep on the floor in front of the sea turtle tanks and Tabitha loved it. Not just that part, but all of Sea World. So we finally made it back as a family and went ahead and got passes to use for the next year. We had a good day and I was happy to be able to use the fish mode on my camera.
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butterflies
By Tara Zandra | August 20, 2011
Every summer I love visiting the butterfly pavillion. Some years when we’ve waited until the end, it felt like a lot of the butterflies had died off, but this year there were pockets of tons of them flying around you. One or two did land on me but I wasn’t able to snap a picture. Breaks my heart though that all Daisy wants is for one to land on her and that rarely happens. One touched her head but immediately flew off. I think it was enough to make her happy though.
This outing did hammer home how much I dislike my camera. It refuses to focus on the right thing and I don’t have the control I had in my old camera. I lost it a year ago and still mourn. Definitely time to start looking for something else.
After the butterflies, we went inside the Natural History Museum to see their new dinosaur exhibit. We had to have timed tickets because of the crowds. Cannot say we expected that. It was a very well done exhibit and can’t wait to explore it again.
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play time
By Tara Zandra | August 19, 2011
Today was another meeting with the little kids to work on their next play. The one we’re doing now is Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Daisy ended up being Baby Bear. First I read the story to them, then I had the kids do a couple of crafts. I had cut out the shape of a house on the fold of a large piece of construction paper. They decorated the front like the outside of a house. Then they opened it up and I had drawn lines to be rooms and they had some cutouts of things from the story like the 3 chairs, and 3 bowls, and 3 beds. They colored the inside of the house and glued down the little cutouts. Lastly, they created popsicle stick puppets of the characters from the story. After they were done with all that I had the kids read through the play for practice and then we were done.
The rest of the day was normal as it was park and violin, but we still had Chris home with us so it was a bit better than normal
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Oh! Eau!
By Tara Zandra | August 18, 2011
Vacation time, yay! Originally we were heading up north, but the puppies foiled that plan so a *ahem* staycation it was (gad I hate that word). First day was slated for our annual water play day at Disneyland. We started off with riding Splash Mountain twice then going to California Adventure for their water play areas. Afterwards we hit Grizzly River Run for Daisy’s first time. She loved it, even if it did break down at the end. But hey, they gave us a fastpass for Toy Story so I’m not complaining (anymore)!
Here are my 1,001 pictures that I love taking of my two goofballs in the water.
This next one I’m framing. I love how natural it is and how they’re in motion.
And this one I love because it’s a lovely posed picture of one who has no idea her sister ruined it.
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gratuitous cute puppies pic
By Tara Zandra | August 16, 2011
2 weeks, 2 days old
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Travel Town
By Tara Zandra | August 15, 2011
As happens many Mondays, today I woke up wanting to take the girls to someplace like a museum. I find I usually feel this way the day after we go to Disneyland, which strikes me as a little odd. However, a lot of museums are closed on Mondays which limits my choices. Today I finally decided to give Travel Town a try. It’s located in Griffith Park near the LA Zoo and though I’ve lived here my whole life, I don’t know that I’ve ever been there.
If you don’t want to click the link, basically it’s a place that is dedicated to train history preservation. There are some really old trains and trolleys and even a room with old milk cars and such that were pulled by horses. Anyway, I don’t know that it was the best “museum” type place we’ve ever been, but it kept our interest for an hour and got us out of the house and somewhere new. I know they are constantly working to improve it and I think a weekend trip might have more going on so we may try it again sometime.
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Mystery of the Missing Week- duh, duh, duuuuuh
By Tara Zandra | August 14, 2011
So I’m typing this up in October and just changing the date to when these events actually happened. I’m relying on my photos to help me out. Not a single picture was taken from August 8th through August 14th. I got nothing. Summer camps were done for Tabitha, but both girls were still taking one dance class. I’m pretty sure we just stayed home the whole week and relaxed and did lessons. I guess we’ll never know for sure.
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Look who grew!
By Tara Zandra | August 7, 2011
Daisy’s finally tall enough for Indiana Jones! It was the first ride for each girl and as neither was especially thrilled, we bribed them. Daisy chose a giant rubber snake (of course she did) and Tabitha chose an Indiana Jones fedora (again, of course she did). Despite their reservations, they both really enjoyed the ride and have no problem riding again.
Oh, and the puppies are 1 week and 1 day old.
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sniff
By Tara Zandra | August 1, 2011
Today my baby left for camp. That would be the older one. Still my baby though. Even knowing she will have a Fan-Tas-Tic time does not console me. Countdown to Friday starting………NOW!
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*sigh* I’m not really a dog person
By Tara Zandra | July 30, 2011
So the stray dog we adopted in June? Pregnant. Totally pregnant. Today we went out on errands and came home to this.
Today’s birth date puts Biscuit at 2 weeks pregnant when she was found, so who knows how long she was wandering the streets alone. Well, I guess not totally alone.
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Showtime!
By Tara Zandra | July 29, 2011
When both my girls were learning to read, I used the Now I’m Reading set of books by Nora Gaydos. Loved them. Recently they came out with a line of plays so I thought it would be fun for some of the younger kids to get together and put on these plays. Today was their first performance of The Three Little Pigs.
They were so cute
Tonight Miss Tabitha also had a performance, of the stage variety. It was the culmination of her week at theater camp. This year’s performance was Cinderella. The 2 step sisters totally stole the show. Tabitha loves participating in this program every year. They get to sing and dance in the actual performance which is always a thrill. This year the kids were townsfolks.
Afterwards, Daisy was able to take a picture with Cinderella and the Prince.
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diez y cinco
By Tara Zandra | July 27, 2011
Fifteen Years.
A decade in a half.
41% of my life.
We didn’t get to do anything at all for our anniversary today, but that doesn’t matter. It’s been a good time so far, let’s keep the ball rolling, Sweetie
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Blast to the Past
By Tara Zandra | July 25, 2011
Today is my brother-in-law’s birthday. Traditionally we go out to dinner when it’s someone’s birthday. This time we went to dinner and a show- meaning Medieval Times!
I haven’t been since I think my sister turned 9 or 10, so it’s been awhile. Same show. Knights aren’t as good looking as I remembered, but now they have a fantastic vegetarian meal. I think we ate better than the carnivores. We all had a good time, but one person had an extraordinary time:
Even in this horrible picture you can’t mistake that grin. She was beside herself with excitement and very much wants to go back. Perhaps we’ll take her there for her birthday.
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Selena Gomez
By Tara Zandra | July 24, 2011
Someone’s ready for a concert!
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black
By Tara Zandra | July 23, 2011
Was quite sorry to hear of Amy Winehouse this morning. I hope she has finally found peace.
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so lonely
By Tara Zandra | July 22, 2011
So the girls and I went to park this morning and were practically alone. We had one family for half an hour. Then someone else for half an hour, then the last family for the remainder of our time. Tabitha was alone for most of that but never asked to leave so she basically sat in a tree and daydreamed. Apparently a homeschool conference was this weekend. Next year I’ll pay attention to the date so I’ll know when park might be empty again.
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samurai
By Tara Zandra | July 21, 2011
This is a samurai hat interpreted with wrapping paper.
And this is the Little Mermaid ride on a hot and crowded night at Disney.
The samurai hat was more fun.
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