Has it really been 4 years?

How did my baby go from this.....



to this.....

I can't believe that Brooklyn is 4. This boggles my mind to think that my baby is getting so big. Of course, I've been around to witness it, but I think I must have been in denial that she's really growing up.

To celebrate her birthday, last Friday we rode the train down to Salt Lake and had dinner at California Pizza Kitchen and then got some candy at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and wandered around Gateway for a little while. On Saturday, we had a birthday party for her and she got lots of fun presents. A few of her favorites were a Barbie and Ken doll, a fairy princess costume, and a Tinkerbell scooter.

A few of Brooklyn's favorites right now are dancing, singing, playing games (she's really good at Memory), watching Dora the Explorer on TV, and the color pink.

Brooklyn is such a sweetheart and we love her very much!!! Happy Birthday Brooklyn!

What we've been up to.

My new goal for the blog is to be more consistent in updating it, we'll see how it goes. I'm going to attempt to update once a week, which is way more often than I have been, so wish me luck.

Since our trip to Disneyland, our lives have gotten back to normal and we're just as busy as ever. In March, Kenzie had a dance competition at Weber High. Their team did really well and got quite a few trophies. A few days later she danced during half-time at a Utah Jazz game. She's done this quite a few times now and she really enjoys it. We rode the Front Runner train down to Salt Lake and Les met us down there. We had to be there early for dress rehearsal and then we went to dinner before the game. We got back to the Energy Solutions Arena quite early and were able to watch the Jazz players warm up and then watched the cheerleaders and jazz comp team from Kenzie's dance school perform the pre-game show. We just missed the opportunity to get pictures with President Monson because we took too long to follow after the other dancers, but we were able to wave at him as he left. During the game, Kaden and Brooklyn were more interested in trying to find the Jazz Bear than actually watching the game, so as soon as Kenzie was done dancing we left to go get ice cream. She did a great job and we're really proud of her.


In early April, of course we celebrated Easter. We had my brothers and their families come over for dinner and an Easter egg hunt. The kids had a great time trying to find all of their eggs. My mom gave each of them their own color so everybody ended up with the same amount of eggs in the end. We ended up hiding a few of the eggs a bit too hard and the hunt took longer than we thought it would, but it was a lot of fun.


We also celebrated my mom's birthday on Easter and had cake and ice cream for her. She even got to blow out some candles. Hope you had a happy birthday mom!!!


Brooklyn and I were also able to go on a field trip with Kaden to a dairy farm. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera because I had taken the SD card out of it for a lesson I was teaching in Young Women's about temples and had filled it up with temple pictures for my digital frame. The kids had a great time and they even got to pet some calves.

Hopefully I can come up with enough stuff to write about on a weekly basis. I'll keep my camera with me in hopes of capturing some really cute stuff! Until next time......

Disneyland!

As promised, I am actually blogging about our trip to Disneyland.

For anyone that had talked to me in the planning phase of our trip, you know that Disneyland was not my first choice of a family vacation. My kind of vacation is Yellowstone or Oregon, more nature-like. Of course, I would have felt like a horrible mother if we had never taken our kids there, so the planning began.

We decided to leave for our trip on Friday night, the 19th, at midnight so the kids would sleep the majority of the way there. We planned on stopping in Las Vegas for breakfast. So, Les came home from work early and went straight to bed while I packed the car and got everything ready to go. I kept the kids up until we left by watching Disney movies. Everyone was super excited to get on the road and we headed out the door just after midnight. Unfortunately, a few of the kids and I had picked up colds before we left, so sleeping on the road wasn't working out very well for us. Also, just outside of Filmore we ran into some horrible snow and the plows hadn't made it out yet. We were traveling about 25-30 mph along the freeway and trucks were pulling off left and right to put on chains. We made the decision to pull over in Filmore and get a hotel for a few hours so we could get some much needed rest and let the plows get a chance to clear the roads a bit. We slept for about three hours and were on the road again by about 8AM. We grabbed breakfast at Burger King and were on our way. The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful and the kids tolerated it quite well. Let's just say that the idea to leave at midnight seemed good at the time, but in hindsight was probably a really bad one, but live and learn right?!

We arrived in Anaheim at about 5 and checked into our hotel. We stayed at the Homewood Suites and were very impressed. The rooms were great and the service we received was wonderful. I would highly recommend this hotel to anybody going to Disneyland! There was an L-shaped couch in the room that folded out into a bed and Kaden found that once the bed was pulled out he could stand the cushions up next to it and make kind of a fort out of the rest of the couch. He chose to sleep there the entire trip, it was pretty funny. Cody loved it because he got the whole sofa bed to himself. We tried to research different restaurants before heading to California to get an idea of where to eat. We ended up eating at a local Italian restaurant called Carolina's that was just down the street from our hotel. We were able to walk, which was a nice break after being in the car so long. The food was pretty good, but our service was horrible. I'm not sure that I would really recommend it to anybody, but it was a fun experience.

On Sunday, we spent our day at Huntington Beach. It was kind of chilly and it looked like it was going to rain, but the weather held out for us and we had a great time. We built sandcastles, flew kites, and just ran around and had fun. It was definitely nice to get away from the Utah snow and have a fun day in the sun. We decided that a burger sounded good for dinner, so we researched good burger joints in Anaheim and ended up at a place called Paul's. Well...it was pretty much just Crown Burger with a few extra things on the menu, so nothing really special, but it was good.


Monday was our first day in Disneyland. We decided to drive instead of using a shuttle bus since for our family it was the same price and we liked the idea of having our car to come and go as we pleased. Disney parking is awful!!! They have people directing you to the spot they want you in and we ended up in the furthest spot from the little tram that takes you to the main entrance as possible. We were only able to make it through Tomorrowland and Fantasyland that first day as there ended up being a lot more people there than I thought there would be in February. We had a great time and the kids absolutely loved it. We took a break midday for lunch at the hotel, we had bought the stuff for sandwiches and chips. We ended up staying at Disneyland until almost close and went in search of a place to eat. We had wanted to go to PF Chang's, but the wait time there was about an hour, which just wasn't going to cut it with a bunch of tired and hungry kids. We walked down the street and ended up at Bubba Gump's. Any fan of Forrest Gump should definitely hit up Bubba Gump's sometime, it was a pretty fun atmosphere. The food was pretty good, but nothing spectacular. It was freezing cold in the restaurant though. Our table was the closest one to the door and they kept the doors wide open the entire time with a cold breeze coming through. We headed back to the hotel exhausted and ready for bed, and also looking forward to another fun day ahead.

On Tuesday we decided to take our hotel shuttle bus to Disney. This was a slightly better option than driving, but again we were dropped off at the furthest point from the main entrance and our driver was awful. We spent most of our day in California Adventure. We had watched the news that morning and found out that Captain EO was reopening and there were people that had camped out overnight just to see it. We wanted to avoid that mess as much as possible, so California Adventure it was! There's a lot of construction going on at California Adventure right now and really there aren't a lot of rides over there. We were able to get through all of it in one day with time to spare. Kaden and Brooklyn really enjoyed Playhouse Disney Live and Cody and Kenzie really liked the faster rides they had over there. Kenzie's favorite was Tower of Terror and Cody's favorite was California Screamin'. We made the mistake of taking Kaden on Tower of Terror and the name fit his reaction, he was terrified! I felt so bad. He ended up questioning every ride that Brooklyn wasn't allowed to go on after that just to make sure it wasn't too scary. Brooklyn didn't feel good most of the day and I don't think she remembers much about it at all. For dinner, we ended up at the Rainforest Cafe. I wanted to have one night that we went to a themed restaurant for the kids. This was the perfect place to keep them happy. The food was pretty good, nothing too special, but the atmosphere was a lot of fun.


On Wednesday, we decided to take Anaheim Resort Transit to get to Disneyland. This was such a better way to go. The route is #1 which meant you were dropped at the closest possible stop near the main gate and it also ran every 20 minutes. We finished the rest of Disneyland that day. The crowds were gone and we were able to get on every ride almost immediately. We had been trying to get Brooklyn over to see the Princesses since we got there, but the line was always at least an hour wait, so first thing Les grabbed her and ran over to get in line while I took the other three kids to do the rest of the rides. Brooklyn was able to meet three of the princesses and on their way back to meet up with us they ran into Jesse and Woody too! She was a very happy girl that day. The kids and I went on Big Thunder Mountain, Haunted Mansion, and Pirates of the Caribbean while we waited for them to finish. It was a lot of fun. We ended up back at California Adventure for a little bit catching a few more rides and watching the Pixar parade and then decided to call it a day a little earlier than we had been. For dinner, we ended up driving a bit north to catch a BBQ place we had read about online called Lucille's. We had thought it was a local restaurant, but apparently it is a chain restaurant that we just don't have here in Utah. The food was great!!! Unfortunately our service was awful. I'm glad we tried it out, but it would have been nice if our server remembered we were there!


On Thursday, we rode a few of the favorites at California Adventure and finally road Soarin' Over California. It was pretty busy the other days, so we got in line first thing to be able to do it. Kaden was convinced that it was going to be scary and cried the entire time we were in line. It took a lot of convincing to even get him buckled in, but he finally gave up and ended up enjoying it. We also made it over to catch Captain EO at Disneyland. We were going to avoid it like the plague thinking it would always be really busy and they weren't offering Fast Passes for it, but we tried it out and we actually only had to wait about 15 minutes, not too bad. Once we saw it, I asked the kids if they would have been willing to camp out overnight to see it and they said absolutely not!! I'm sure we must have thought it was the coolest thing back in the 80s, but really it was so dumb! We wrapped up early again and decided to head out to the beach again to catch a sunset. There is a restaurant at the end of the pier at Huntington Beach called Ruby's. It has the coolest views and we were able to catch the sunset right from our booth. The food and service were excellent! We all got shakes to end the meal and they were fantastic. This experience was definitely worth every penny (which was quite a bit). One of the pictures below is Les's cherry Coke, which he said was the absolute best he had ever tasted!


On Friday, we spent time in both parks trying to finish up things we hadn't done and riding on a few favorites. We were able to catch the street party at Disneyland and the Aladdin Musical Spectacular at California Adventure. We were hoping to catch the fireworks that night as it was the only night they were going to show them on our trip, but they were canceled due to weather, what a bummer! We did get to see Nicolas Cage at the exit of Indiana Jones, but we didn't have our camera with us and decided we didn't want to be all weird and go bug him for a picture with our phones.


We had a lot of fun trying to track down the characters while we were there. We ended up having better luck at California Adventure than at Disneyland because of the crowds. Every character had a line just to be able to get a picture, but the lines at California Adventure were much shorter.



Here are a few of the fun photo ops we just had to take advantage of. We are such tourists!



We ended our trip with a night in Vegas. That was such a bad idea. Kids on the strip at night is just not good at all. I had this great idea to take the kids to a bunch of the free stuff to see on the strip and then eat at a buffet. Unfortunately, the atmosphere in Vegas is much different now than what I remember when we visited a few years ago. We did end up seeing the lions at MGM, M&M World, the fountains at Bellagio, and the statues at Caesar's. We ate at the Planet Hollywood buffet. The food was mediocre at best and there were just too many people to feel comfortable with the older kids getting their own food. Of course they loved the dessert bar, so I guess all wasn't lost. We decided to forgo the breakfast buffet we had been looking forward to because we really never want to step foot on the strip again, it was just nasty! We ate breakfast at our hotel on Sunday morning and then we were on our way home. We stopped in Salt Lake for dinner at Roman's Macaroni Grill and had to laugh when we got our bill as it was half of what we spent on dinners in California, and we even got dessert! Crazy!!!

I would say our trip was a great success! We all had a lot of fun. Even I enjoyed it despite all the crowds. I miss the warmer weather and wish spring would hurry up and get here.

Another marathon post

Once again I have gotten several months behind on my blogging, so here is another very long post to get you up to date. I wanted to do this now because we are leaving for Disneyland next week and I wanted to be able to blog about that as soon as we got home, so here we go!


First up we have Black Island Farms. Kaden's preschool class went there for a field trip again this year. Brooklyn got to tag along and they had a great time. We went on a hay ride where they learned about different vegetables and each got to pick a pumpkin. Then they played in the courtyard where there was a train, bounce house, slides, and animals. It was a lot of fun.


Up next we have Halloween. Les and Kaden dressed up as Mario and Luigi, which was super cool! Les won a prize for his costume at work. Kenzie was a hippie. We tie-dyed her shirt and Grandma Garr made a vest and turned some old jeans into bell-bottoms for her, she was way cute! Cody was a zombie. We didn't ever take the time to really work out his costume, but I think it turned out pretty good for a last minute attempt. Brooklyn was a 50s girl and looked super cute in her poodle skirt that Grandma Garr made for her. I was a gypsy, but most people thought I was a pirate, but that's okay, at least I dressed up! We had a quick party at my parents house and then came home to go trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. The kids got a ton of candy which disappeared very quickly!



It was that time again to get a new family picture taken, but unfortunately we waited too long and didn't get a chance to do outdoor pictures again like I had wanted to, so we decided to have my cousin take our picture in front of my parents fireplace. It didn't turn out too badly, but I think we will give it a go again in the spring.


Next up, pictures with Santa! At our annual Peterson Family Party Santa comes each year and brings a bunch of yummy candy, but you have to sit on his lap in order to get some. Brooklyn and Kenzie went right up and were pretty close to the front of the line. Kaden wanted absolutely nothing to do with Santa and wouldn't go near him. Cody waited patiently until close to the end of the line, but it was worth the wait!


In December, Kenzie, Kaden, and Brooklyn had dance and tumbling demonstrations. This is Brooklyn and Kaden's first year doing dance and tumbling and they have been having a blast. Brooklyn was kind of nervous up on the stage, but she did pretty good once she got going. Kaden had fun showing off for us. Kenzie is doing really well with both dance and tumbling. I wish I would have gotten better pictures, but it's hard when they're constantly moving.


The next pictures were taken at Grandma and Grandpa Peterson's Christmas Eve party. Brooklyn got this cute purse with all kinds of fun stuff in it from Aunt Ruth and she decided to share with Grandpa Garr. He's such a good sport!



And then it was Christmas! Everyone got a lot of really fun presents this year. Cody and Kenzie's favorites were their phones, Kaden's was his robotic dinosaur, and Brooklyn's was her Three Musketeers Barbie. My mom got us all Laser Tag guns. We're looking forward to the warmer weather so we can really try them out, but we've had fun chasing each other around the house and hiding behind furniture. Les got me a Quickutz Silhouette SD, which for those of you who don't know is a really cool digital cutter that I can use for my scrapbooking. I've had a ton of fun with it already and I can't wait to learn more about it so I can make all sorts of fun stuff!


Les took Kenzie, Kaden, and Brooklyn sledding with our neighbors. He said they had a lot of fun, which they must have because they were gone for a really long time! I was able to catch up on my reading and relax on the couch since I wasn't feeling well. I'm bummed that I missed out on the fun, but I'm not a big fan of snow so they probably had more fun without me!

And there you have it...four months worth of fun with the Buchanan family. Of course we have done many other things in the past four months, but these are the things we actually took pictures of. I know I'm not the greatest of bloggers, but I hope those of you who read this enjoy the quick catch-ups every now and then.

Coming soon.....Disneyland!!!!

Are you ready for it?

All right...so it's been a while since I've updated. I'm really not the best blogger out there, but I'm going to try to be better. Hopefully this is the last marathon post I'll have to do. So, by popular demand....here is what's been happening with us for the last three months.


In July, we went camping at Willard Bay with one of Les's friends from way back and his family. They have four kids as well. The kids had a great time playing Hide-and-Seek in the bushes and trees that were right by our campsites. We played games, went swimming (even though it was freezing), fished, and relaxed. We all had a great time and hopefully we'll set up another camping trip with them in the future.

Brooklyn finally started dance class. She had been begging for months, so once she turned 3 and the new summer session started, we put her in. She does a little tap and a little ballet and she absolutely loves it! At the end of every class they do a dance called Freeze Dance where you dance any way you want, but when the music stops you have to freeze. Of course, this is Brooklyn's favorite thing because she loves to strike a pose!

In August, Kenzie turned 10 and had a birthday party with her friends. They played Twister, roasted hot dogs, played a karaoke game on the Wii, and watched Coraline. They all had a great time. Kenzie has some really great friends.

In September we had another Cousin Party!!! We had a great turnout and lots of food! Everyone enjoyed playing games and catching up. We have another party planned in two weeks which we're really looking forward to.

Cody started junior high this year. This caused a bit of anxiety on my part. I remember junior high and was nervous to have him be there already. He was pretty excited to be done with elementary, but I don't think he likes the extra work that goes with it!

Kenzie is in the 5th grade this year. She has a great teacher and is loving every minute of it. Kaden also started another year of preschool, but for some reason I didn't take a picture of him...bad mom!

My neighbor invited me and the kids to go to the zoo with her and her kids. They had a great time together. We went to see the animals, but this water globe thing was their favorite part, go figure!

At the end of September we took another camping trip to Yellowstone. The weather was gorgeous. We went with Les's parents and his brother and brother's girlfriend. My parents also came up for a couple nights, but stayed in a hotel. We didn't take many pictures this year since we've been there so many times, but a nice lady by the waterfall offered to take this picture of our family. The kids weren't being too cooperative, but I think it turned out pretty good. I love Yellowstone and I don't think I'll ever get bored of going there, it's just too pretty!

For Activity Days, we had a Daddy-Daughter Hoe Down. It was so much fun! We had dinner and line dancing. It was so fun to see the girls dancing with their dads. The dads were all great sports! Les was the chef for the night, staying home most of the activity cooking our dinner and dessert since you can't cook in the church. He was a lifesaver!

It is official, I am now the parent of a teenager! Does this mean I'm getting old? The only thing he wanted for his birthday was money because he's saving up to buy an X-Box 360. Just what we need, another video game system. :)

Kaden also had his birthday and he wanted a new video game. He sure is starting young with his love of video games, but what can you expect with a dad and brother that love to play. He got a lot of other fun presents and had a great birthday!

Of course, we have done a lot of other stuff in the last three months, but these are the only things I have pictures of to remind me. :) Until next time....happy reading!

We've been busy!!!

Once again it has taken me forever to update our blog. Hopefully after this post, you will see why I've been too busy to do so!!!
















Kenzie has been very busy with dance the last couple of months. She had a performance at the Kaysville Sportsplex and also performed during half-time at the Jazz game. She had competitions at Roy High, University of Utah, and Lagoon. She also had her end of year recital at Weber State for two nights in June. She had a great time and they did very well in competition, taking a few first and second place trophies.















Brooklyn had her birthday in May. The only thing she asked for was a Barbie, so of course she got a few. We had a party with all the family and we had a great time.















Kaden had a field trip for preschool at Discovery Gateway in Salt Lake. Kaden, Brooklyn, and I took the train down to Salt Lake and met Les there and then went with Kaden's class to the museum. Me and Les each took turns following a kid and we had a lot of fun.















For Memorial Day weekend, we went camping up to Clark Canyon Reservoir near Dillon, Montana with my parents. My dad brought his boat and Les and the kids enjoyed fishing while my mom and I had a Scrabble tournament. I was having great luck that weekend and won the majority of the games.















Kaden had his Preschool graduation at the end of May. They had a really cute program and sang some songs for the parents. Teacher Britney told everyone a little bit about each kid. One of the questions asked was what they wanted to be when they grew up and Kaden said he wanted to be a pirate, crazy kid!! He really loved Teacher Britney and had a lot of fun in her class this year.















A couple weeks ago Syracuse had their Heritage Days celebration and we went to the parade that runs very near to our house. The kids got a ton of candy and Kenzie even ended up joining the parade with the PTA float to be with her friend. She was supposed to be in the parade anyway with her dance group, but we didn't get up early enough to get her there.















Last week I was able to take my group of Activity Day girls to Temple Square. We had nine girls and three leaders, so it was perfect. We had each of the girls bring a sack dinner so we could stay a while. We went on a tour of the conference center where each of the girls were obsessed with the water, they just couldn't keep their hands out of it. Then we went across the street to eat our dinners right outside the temple grounds. We took a picture of each of the girls in front of the temple to use in a later activity and then went inside the north visiting center to see the Christus and then it was time to head home.















And last, but not least, we took the kids out to Antelope Island last night for a hike. Cody is trying to get caught up on his scouting and one of the requirements was to take a hike with a first aid kit, so that's what we did. We went to the Fielding Garr Ranch first, which unfortunately was closing about 15 minutes after we got there, so we didn't have much time to see anything. We'll have to go out there again so we can spend more time there. We did our hike at Buffalo Point and it was gorgeous. The kids enjoyed climbing all over the rocks and posing for pictures. We had a great time. The extra kid in the picture is my newphew Bill who is staying with us for the week.

So, as you can see, we have been extremely busy and have had a ton of fun. Hopefully it won't take me so long to update next time.

Easter Camping

For Easter weekend we went camping at Otter Creek with my parents, which for those of you who don't know is down south about an hour north of Bryce Canyon. My thoughts were that since we were heading south, it would be warm. Well....I was wrong!! It was so cold down there, we were freezing! Thank goodness we have a trailer. Even though it was cold, we still had a great time. We spent a lot of time inside my parents trailer playing games, Scrabble being my favorite, but we also got outdoors. Here is a sampling of the things we did.


The kids each got an early present from the Easter Bunny once we got down there on Thursday afternoon. Kenzie, Kaden, and Brooklyn each got fishing poles and Cody got a tackle box since he already had a pole. They immediately had to test them out and had a great time.

On Saturday we ventured down to Bryce Canyon. I had never been there before and it was nothing like what I had pictured. Again, because it's down south, I expected it to be warmer, but I was wrong! They still had snow. It was gorgeous and I'm very glad we went. I would like to go back some day when it's warmer and check out all the hiking trails.

Saturday night we let the kids color Easter eggs. I forgot to check the directions before we went and apparently you're supposed to use vinegar in the coloring, but the eggs turned out fine and the kids had a lot of fun!

Easter morning we told the kids they had to search the trailer for their Easter baskets that the Easter bunny had left for them. Considering the relatively small size of the trailer, there really were not many places they needed to look, but they were still baffled for a while. They each got new outfits and lots of candy.

We had a great time! I hope our next camping trip is a bit warmer, but I'm really glad we went!