Bear Mountain

Brandon had his last summer break, so even though we wanted to spend some of it in Manhattan, we thought we would take a couple days to escape to the mountains. Our trip to Palmyra made us very hungry for the outdoors. Tori has been asking to go camping but with all our stuff in storage, that wasn't entirely an option (like not an option at all obviously). Brandon, as always, found us the perfect two day retreat to meet all our needs just a 45-minute drive north of Manhattan called...you guessed it, Bear Mountain. 

It was everything we wanted. Fun amenities, rustic lodge accommodations, our own rental car, forest, oh and we could see the sky...in it's entirety...without having to crane our necks at the right angle from our windows. Also, we definitely told the kids it was camping.

Driving toward Bear Mountain...loved the drive.

Freedom!!! 

"Try to be in love together." - Tori

A boy and some water.

They had a carousel just across the lawn from the lodge and it was, literally, the most perfect carousel. I'm determined to find the best, and so far, by my book...this one is the dreamiest.

Tori had to ride in the "princess carriage" pulled by a swan. She fits the part, I will say.

This bear had his work cut out for him haha, Brandon seriously is such a great Dad to hop on with Brighton.

Hugs for her swan.

Okay, right?! Dreamiest!

And if you weren't convinced yet, it comes with a fireplace. All I could picture was coming here in the winter while it was snowing, with my hot cocoa in one hand and my babe in the other, riding the carousel then snuggling up to the fireplace. Dreamiest!

They even provided rocking chairs. Jennie written all over this!

But wait...it does get better. First carousel -that I've seen at least- with a wild turkey.

A view of our lodge...we were roughing it big time.

If you can picture this, having seen the above picture now, upon arrival we let Brighton out and he literally ran across this field. I was calling for him to come back but he just couldn't. So much open space!! Going inside the lodge, things just got better. It was a very tasteful, fancy cabin feel with so many great little details, like oars for handles on the cabinets, lamps with iron compasses, even the linoleum in the bathroom was perfect. Beatiful establishment.

Our room featured these two hallways to little windows.  The selling point for the kids!

One of their dining halls! Someday I will have my NYC penthouse/luxury cabin! Not tacky, no.

Up until now, the Boise Zoo had been my favorite. Perfect size, exciting animals, BUT this one stole my heart. Maybe because I was already in a mood of euphoria, but, seriously, Brandon and I actually enjoyed it too. And with swimming in the near future, I was surprised Tori was as excited and interested...at all, let alone genuinely so. It was great!

Tori loves eagles. 

And finally swimming. I thought this was a pretty cool pool. But then, I'm not sure there was anything I disliked about this place.

That evening things would continue to get even more amazing! Stop it Bear Mountain!! How will we ever go back to Manhattan? They had a car show on the lawn of our hotel complete with oldies music and BBQ. Seriously, if I wasn't homesick before, this sent me over the edge. So much nostalgia. 

Tori picked her favorite car...the batgirl mobile.

And I picked mine

And then I had my first peppers and sausage. Oh and about went into cardiac arrest from all it's goodness. 

An actual ladybug. 

And these balloon animals cost us a pretty penny, but seriously, these are balloon animals.

Clearly, Brighton loved his.

Tori could have had a queen sized bed all to herself, but she opted for this. She really wanted to go camping. 

The trailhead to the Appalachian trail was right outside our door, so our second day there we planned a little hike up the hill. Which turned out to be even more little given Tori's disdain for the great outdoors. Apparently, she can talk the talk.

Overlooking the lake.

Poor Brighton, wasn't until after that we realized how awful this must have been for him...and Brandon for that matter.

The very start of the trip...soon after, it was tears and "Ew, ah, a bug, Mom a real life bug. I'm scared." Such a priss.

Our check out was early so with a day left with our car rental we decided to cash in on some of our fav places from back west that we don't have much access to in the city. First stop, Taco Bell (pretty much all I ate during Brighton's pregnancy). 

The GPS brought us here...to this dead end. It was pretty convinced we were at our destination. 

After the let down of no Taco Bell, we thought we would hit up a Walmart and get some groceries that we could transport right to our doorstep. We ended up in this extremely Jewish town, which I'm not even going to sugar coat this, it was creepy. And it wasn't a super Walmart. 0-2. So, our final stop would take us back onto the island, to a restaurant we had been wanting to try in Harlem called Dinosaur BBQ. It wasn't that great, but a gem in the otherwise disparaging froths of Harlem.

And that was family vacay part 1. It was seriously, so perfect. Exactly what we needed to keep morale high and adventurous spirits satisfied. We hope to visit again soon!

Off with the old, on with the new

As some of you may have noticed on facebook, Brandon recently got to visit Michigan on his way to Ohio for his 3rd interview for PA school, which, for those that don't know, is where he served his mission. I didn't get to go : ( Instead I got two super fun days with my BFF Brie (THANKS AGAIN BRIE!). I wanted to blog his visit though just as update on the amazing opportunity my family has had to come back to school with Brandon and see him attend these interviews. What a blessing, seriously!! It's been such a tough year for me personally, but in retrospect, I've been so blessed to watch my husband get involved with something he truly loves, and these interviews have been such an exciting thing for us. Brandon has had 3 interviews out of 6 schools applied for: Cornell, ISU, and University of Toledo. Most students end up applying twice or more for PA school, some without even getting one interview the first year, so 3 interviews....I have to brag, is pretty dang awesome! We're on an alternate list for Cornell, and will find out in March about our status with ISU and U of O. Brandon did say upon his return from Ohio, that it's been the most impressive program out of the 3 he's seen, and a beautiful campus. Fingers crossed!

On the home front, Brighton is on solid foods now. He's a great little eater, with a tongue that goes a mile a minute. It's pretty hilarious! Today's specialty: Squash!

Boise, along with the rest of the Northwest, got our first spatterings of snow for the winter...better late than never I suppose. And without fail, Dad of the Year went out and built an awesome igloo for Tori, who without fail lasted about 5 minutes outside until she was too cold. Fun fact: the igloo was totally sound proof.

Awwww, a little love note in the snow.

Tori testing out the taste quality. It was really yummy snow.

All bundled up for our 5 minutes of outside play : ) Totally, worth it!

And speaking of snow, I got a chance to return to my own stomping grounds while visiting Salmon, with a day trip to Lost Trail Powder Mountain. I seriously love snowboarding...couple that with great friends, and it was easily the best day this year, which hopefully means 2012 is shaping up to be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than 2011.

This is going to be a really long blog entry....

There is just too much to mention that I can't figure out how to leave anything out...so here goes! For Christmas my parents got all of us kids and our families a trip to Disneyland, and we cashed in on it February 5th-14th. We got to extend the stay by two days, thanks to some car trouble and bad weather...the only time those two things work to your advantage. We did so many fun things while we were there and I'm just so grateful to my parents for making this happen.

Tori did amazingly well driving for so long. She got to sample way too much fast food, dairy, and sweet stuff, but hey, we're on vacation right?! Along with that fun, we had saved up all our extra coins for the trip and managed to earn $45 for Tori's spending money down there so she walked away with some fun loot including, a new Shamu puzzle, a Tinkerbell wand that lights up, a new star floaty for swimming, and a bucket and shovel for the beach (if we ever get to go again).

Sea World:

My nephews Andrew and Nicolas LOVE Shamu, so our first day in California we went to Sea World. Tori was completely uninterested in the Shamu show, but she liked the baluga whales, the polar bears, and the killer whale-esque dolphins at the Atlantis ride. We also got to feed the sea lions and Brandon got to pet the dolphins with Tori (which I have some fun video of, but still haven't figured out how to upload it on this computer).

Heading to Sea World...check out her new kicks we got from the Converse outlet!

With the dolphins of Atlantis!

One highlight moment of the trip for me was this arcade at Sea World. Everyone was getting so into it. We got the kids lined up to play a game, and Brandon spent a pretty penny or two or three trying to win an IPod touch from one of their grab-it machines.

DisneyLand:

We got a 3 day pass to DisneyLand and California Adventure. We went there Monday, Tuesday, and then Thursday. Monday was a full busy day. We stayed there from open to close. We spent the morning in Fantasy Land, which Tori was kind of grumpy through most of it. We then took her on the scariest rides possible for a 10 month old...The Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Carribbean. Needless to say, she was somewhat apprehensive of the rides at first.

The whole family!

With our favorite Mickey Mouse! He actually played with her for a little bit, and I missed out on a pic of it!!

Riding the carousell! She was ready for a nap at this point, so toward the end of the ride she was ready to be done. Brandon took her on another ride in California adventure and she waved to everyone and genuinely enjoyed it quite a bit!

We decided to dress Tori up one day as Tinkerbell...my favorite character.

We were lucky enough to actually see Tinkerbell and after waiting in line for 30 minutes to get a picture with her, my little Tori cried in Tinkerbell's face. Disappointed as I was, Tinkerbell helped things out by playing peek-a-boo with Tori. So, that was tons of fun!

We got to spend a little time in California Adventure, but there's not a ton of kid rides there, so we tried to hussle through all the fun rides like Tower of Terror, California Screamer, and Soaring. I was sad because I decided to skip out on a show they had at the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (which is Tori's favorite show) and they had Handy Manny there and Little Einsteins, which my mom said Tori just loved. But it was the one time we got to go ona ride with our friends the Bodily's so I wasn't too disappointed!

Our final day moments at DisneyLand were actually my favorite. Tori was wide awake and happy, so we decided to go try out the Small World ride before we left with out cousins Nicolas and Mylie and our Aunt Amber. The line had a huge wait time, but thanks to the parade we followed through Fantasy Land, we actually got to walk right on, and Tori loved it!

Midieval Times and Pirate Adventure:

Two nights we got to go out to dinner at some themed restaurants...not gonna lie, I don't normally get into this kind of thing, but I loved both shows. I liked the food better at Midieval times, but the Pirate show was fun because it was more interactive. I think we all had a part in it. I was one of the treasure hunters and I might add, because we won our challenge our pirate was named first mate. My nephew Nicolas and niece Aimee got to go on the ship and Nicolas made friends with the BAD captain. I have video of Nicolas telling the captain that he was the "skeleton ghost pirate." So funny! Then all our men folk got recruited to load the ship. Also another must see video.

Go Jack...the red pirate!

All the boys suited up for a life of servitude!

At Midieval times our Knight pretty much rocked at every challenge until the hand-to-hand combat...he lost in the second round. I had to wonder if they were all just acting...whaaa?

The Beaches:

Our first night in California we stayed in Carlsbad, just north of San Diego. We got ourselves all suited up for the beach only to find this:

Rocks as far as the eye could see....no sand castles today, and it was freezing cold.

So, we didn't stick around too long. Instead, we filled our time with outlet stores and the hotel pool.

Our second venture to the beach was still a bit chilly. While waiting for one of the van's to get fixed on Friday, we decided to try out a sandy beach in Huntington. It's a lot windier in California than I remember, but we got some more beautiful pictures, built some sand castles, even dipped our toes in. Brandon, Jacob, and Jonathan were brave enough to actually go for a swim.

Grandpa and Tori...love this picture!

Tori all bundled up playing with her sea shell! My friend Becca made those booties for her while we were down there and they're amazing!!

Brandon in the middle there, getting clobbered by a wave!

Oh California!!! McCall may have fallen to second best place in the world.