4th of July, 2011

 

We started the day with a trip on the MAX out to Hillsboro. We ended up riding the same train as the Bancrofts, who we intended to meet there. We staked out a shady spot on the sidewalk and settled in. The kids colored with chalk until the parade took off. Then they got busy collecting candy. They did pretty well. Except Becca was too shy to go after the candy and the other kids in the area got all hers. She got better at it by the end and had enough candy to satisfy her.

 

For the evening entertainment, we purchased a box of fireworks from Costco. Josh and Rachel bought a random assortment from a fireworks tent. We brought them all to the end of the court and joined the Youngs, the Irish family (I can only remember their first names), Garrett from next door to Youngs, and Josie Seid. We enjoyed rootbeer floats and watermelon, then set off the fireworks. It was a lot of fun. I'm thinking we should do some sort of court party sometime...It was a happy 4th of July!

 

William Turns 8! May 29, 2011

William turned 8 this year. It's a big year for him. We had a little family party on his birthday and he got to open presents.


The next day was Labor Day, so we had Istooks over for a combo BBQ/Bday part. Unfortunatetly, Kip wasn't feeling well, so it didn't end up lasting as long and involving as many games as we had hoped, but it was good to see the Istooks again!


William got baptized on June 4th into the Five Oaks Ward, Cedar Mill Stake, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He's official! He felt really good at his baptism and was excited to make the decision to do it. We're thrilled at how good a person he is. He really wants to do what's right and always thinks of other people's feelings. OK, not his sisters' feelings, but sisters don't really count, do they...Anyway, he really tries to follow the rules wherever he is. That's a nice thing!

Rainforest Cafe, May 3, 2011

 

We ate dinner on the 3rd at the Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney. We spent our wait time until we could be seated buying souvenirs. I took Anna and Becca and they each chose a polly pocket set. Anna's was Mulan and Becca got Minnie Mouse. I didn't even know there was a Polly-style Minnie Mouse! Very cute!

The kids were really cute at dinner. They had a great time being together through the vacation. I'm glad they were able to get to know each other better!

 

Anna and Preston like to be together.

 

Anna and Abby are both excellent face-makers.

Disney's Animal Kingdom, May 3, 2011

Our last day at the Disney parks was spent at Disney's Animal Kingdom. There were a lot of neat things to see - lots of animals especially.

 

Our first ride was the Triceratop spin. The kids like it because it wasn't scary at all. And the first time around the love bugs weren't too dense. We rode again later and they were swarming the ride. I guess they really like green dinosaurs.

After the first spin on the Triceratops, the kids checked into the Boneyard play area. They climbed things, did slides, and dug dinosaur bones in a shaded digging pit rigged with plenty of fans. They were quite comfortable. The adults who felt inclined when for a spin, or 5, on Expedition Everest. I learned there that I do actually enjoy roller coasters as long as I'm on them with other people who enjoy them instead of terrified children.

 

After watching the Nemo show, we ate our lunch together as a family in one of the eating areas. There was a mom and her babies ducks wandering under the tables and other larger birds walking around. They have no fear of Disney patrons.

 

After taking a stroll through the Jungle Walk, we headed en masse to the Kali River Rapids. We had fastpasses and broke into a few groups to go through. I sat with Anna in our raft and the two of us got completely soaked. William went twice because it didn't soak him.


We saw the afternoon parade. There were tons of cool floats. And when Becca saw Mickey or Minnie she said, "Look, it's my friend!" She was very excited.

The highlight of the day was the Lion King show. The kids LOVED it. It was very neat with the acrobats and dancers.

Epcot, May 2, 2011

 

We arrived at Epcot just in time to head to Italy for lunch with the family. We ate at a nice restaurant and lunch was pretty good. Becca especially loved having her Grandma close by.

 

After lunch, we hit the Test Track. Kip joined Jenny, Tyler and their older boys to do the car-ride. I took Preston, our kids, and Max and Abby so Angie, Chad, Grandma and Tasha could do Soarin'. We went to the fairy park and enjoyed the play structure.

 

Next, we handed off the kids young kids to Chad and Angie and Kip and I took William, Preston, Anna, and Abby on Soarin'. We followed by meeting back with Chad and co to do their 3rd round of Nemo in a row. Wahoo!

 

 

We cooled off in the afternoon with a nice boat ride in Mexico and then ate dinner there.

 

Before the fireworks, Kip took William on a secret Kim Possible mission while I took the kids around to color their bears in the different countries. William thought the Kim Possible mission was the best thing all day. The girls were thrilled to get to color with markers. It was all good. And the fireworks were pretty amazing. I decided Epcot was my favorite park. It doesn't have the thrill rides and kid rides of Magic Kingdom, but the things to see are really neat and the little acitivities like Kip Possible and country treasure hunts are really fun. We hardly touched the options available to us. I'd like to have done another day there.

Magic Kingdom, 2011

 

I spent the night before our Magic Kingdom visit planning what things I wanted to do with the kids. When we arrived, we headed straight for Fantasyland and started the fun. Kip took William and cousin Preston to do their first rides and I took the girls on Small World. They both enjoyed it, in spite of Becca's nervousness in the line.

 

After Tea Cups and the Carousel (a major hit), we watched Mickey's Philharmagic. Yet again, it was too scary for Becca. Why do they have to make everything scary? If they kept these shows simple and didn't throw in all the drama and bad-guys my kids would like them a lot more.

 

We finished Fantasyland with a final round of Tea Cups. I did the super-spinny cup with William, Anna, and Preston (whom we adopted for the day), while Kip did the slower, gentler cup with Becca. We met the cousins and did a kid trade-off for Space Mountain and I realized that I actually do kind of like rollercoasters.

 

After lunch in Tomorrowland and a ride on the magic carpets, we headed to the Buzz Lightyear ride with the rest of the family. While Kip and I rode Splash Mountain on our fastpasses later that day, Uncle Tyler talked William into riding Thunder Mountain Railroad for a dollar. He almost enjoyed it--he said it got scary in the middle when it was dark.

 

The girls loved all the princessy things to see and were especially cute at this little sitting spot outside the castle.


We ended up leaving at 8:30, just before the night's parade. The kids were tired and I was satisfied that I had done all the things I really wanted to do.

April 30th, part 2

 

Back at the hotel that afternoon, we all put on swimsuits and headed down to the pool.

 

Becca loved the water and had a blast going up and down the "stair-steps" as she called them and splashing around with whoever would drag her through the "cool" - her word for "pool."

 

Anna enjoyed an opportunity to relax in the sun - something we haven't seen much of this year in Oregon.

After our swim we all fell alseep for a couple of hours and then headed back to Disney's Hollywood Studios to meet the family for dinner and then watch the fireworks show Fantasmic, which again proved too scarey for little Becca who just wasn't having a great time yet with these Disney creations.

Hollywood Studios, April 30th, 2011

 

On the 1st day of our 4-day pass, we all went to Hollywood Studios. We headed to the reputed best ride there first, Toy Story Mania. The wait was about 40 minutes and Becca for some reason was not at all happy about being in line. She must have had some bad memories from our visits to theme parks in previous years because she just didn't want to do the ride.

 

Abby and Anna weren't at all worried about it.

 

And even Max held up OK. But Becca hated the line and hated the ride. The rest of us thought it was pretty fun. We enjoyed shooting up the targets and spinning to the next area. Becca wanted nothing to do with any other rides after that. So we dragged her into the Little Mermaid show. She hated that too. Too dark and too much time spent on the Sea Witch. She wasn't very impressed with the whole theme park idea. All our kids voted to just head back to the hotel at that point and we finally gave in and did it.

Florida, April 29th, 2011

The Killpack family reunion for 2011 was a trip to Disney World in Orlando. We decided to try out the option of taking a red-eye and getting there with time to settle in before our first day of hitting the park. We put the kids to bed at 8pm then went in and woke them up at 11 to head to the airport for our 1am flight. The goal was for them to stay drowsy on the way and to fall back asleep in flight. It didn't happen. All three kids were too wired on the first flight to sleep much. And Kip and I couldn't get comfortable. The second flight, the kids may have slept a little. I was too tired to stay awake, so I'm not sure. In any case, by the time we reached Orlando, got in a line for a bus to the hotel, waited for our room to be ready and finally got inside, we were all exhausted.

 

We all took about 2 hours of a nap piled on top of the covers because it was just too much work to even pull them down.

 

When we woke up Chad, Angie, Abby, and Max had arrived from Ft Lauderdale and Grandma and Tasha had gotten there from Utah. We all got on another Disney bus and headed to Downtown Disney, ready for the fun to begin.

 

The kids begged me to let them ride the carousel. At $2 a piece, I didn't want to do it, but I folded. So they got one ride. But no more!

 

Pneumonia

When I hear the word pneumonia I always think of someone who is absolutely miserably sick. They would lie in bed too miserable to get up with no desire to move. They would cough and sound like they were near death. That's how I imagined pneumonia and I was fearful of any of my children ever coming down with such a terrible condition.

On Sunday, the 27th of March, Anna came down with a cough and a fever. She was pretty sick and I was frustrated because she had already spent a ton of time in January being miserable. I thought it was time for her to be healthy again. Plus, I had my foot surgery scheduled for Tuesday and I couldn't ask one of my friends to babysit her and expose her kids to it. We managed to work it out with a ward-member with older kids who very kindly took her in spite of the cough and snot and fever. Anna missed school from Monday through Thursday. Friday her fever was gone although the cough was still bad, so we sent her to school. The weekend was fine. I had my foot up and we all watched conference and took things easy. On Monday after school she was pretty down again. But she begged to go to dance class and seemed just fine while there. I sent her to school again today but she came home pasty white and lethargic again. Her fever was back. I've heard that if the fever goes and comes back that can be a sign of secondary infection, so I called her doctor's office and spoke with the advice nurse. They said to bring her on it.

I hadn't planned on going anywhere today. I just got permission to walk on my foot yesterday and it was a little sore after walking the house doing chores that have been covered by Kip for a week. I was still in jammies. I ran upstairs (I mean, hobbled slowly) got decent clothes on, found shoes for the girls, and loaded us into the car. I hadn't had lunch yet, but grabbed a granola bar for the drive.

We got to the appointment with plenty of time for a potty run with both girls. We hardly had to wait after checking in to go back to the exam room with the nurse. As usual she asked all sorts of questions about Anna's symptoms. I could list when she had started coughing (the 27th) and that she hadn't ever really stopped and when she had the fever and it went away and when it came back. But I really couldn't describe her cough. I hear it every night and off and on every day, but I couldn't really think how to describe it. Was it productive? Dry? I don't know--it's just a cough!!!

So the doctor came in. I gave him a similar update and prepared myself to hear him say that she was fine, just got hit with a new bug after the old one. But he didn't say that. He listened and listened to her breathing in and out. Then he said it sounded like pneumonia. What? I thought. Pneumonia is awful. Was my baby on her death-bed? Apparently one of her lungs is infected according to what the doctor could hear. He faxed a prescription to the pharmacy, described how to use it and said she should be feeling much better within 48-72 hours.

We headed from the doctor's office to Costco to get the prescription. While we were there, of course I thought I'd pick up just a few things. But at Costco, the few things you need are spread over like half a mile of walking. And I had surgery a week ago on what my podiatrist described as the largest neuroma he's ever seen (after 30+ years of surgeries). My foot felt awful by the time we got the prescription in our hand. We had just gotten in line to check out with just enough time to get to the car and rush to William's school to get him when Becca announced she had to pee right then. Why do we want our kids potty trained? It just means they have to go at all the worst possible times! We parked our cart and hobbled to the potty and back.

We made it to the school just as William came out the side gate (thank goodness he's finally learned to walk out there if I'm not waiting at the entrance!). We dropped off the foods that needed chilling at home and got to piano lessons on time.

By the time we got home, my foot felt like it was going to explode. Of course, it didn't help that I had hefted Anna out of the Costco cart at the end of the trip and landed her on the top of the surgeried foot. Yeah, the pain level was pretty high, but the meds are starting to help and I'm going to stay home all day tomorrow.

Anna meanwhile has seemingly made a full recovery. As soon as her ibuprophen kicked in during the doctor appointment she became cheerful and silly. During the piano lesson I forced her to down her first dose of antibiotic. All evening she's been acting just fine. So what was I so scared about pneumonia for? Maybe she's just got a really mild case. I guess I'm lucky. Or maybe it's never as scary as I though it would be.

William's Recital - March 19th

 

William had a piano recital on the 19th of March. He practiced a ton and really liked his songs. He played pieces called Springtime 1 and Springtime 2. They used both hands! He got up and performed them without getting nervous at all. It was really a great performance.

 

We all enjoyed the performance, and the girls especially liked the cookies afterwards.

St Patrick's Day 2011

 

 

I decided to celebrate St Patrick's Day this year with some green food items. After William got home from school, the kids got to eat green frosted cupcakes (store bought - I mean, I'm only willing to do so much!) for snack. Then, for dinner we had Green French Toast. I thought it was pretty cute. I was afraid the kids wouldn't go for it, but they actually had fun with it.

Anna in Princess Dance Class

Anna's last Princess Dance class was on the 15th. She really enjoyed the class and did great following the teacher's instructions. I was very proud of her. Becca enjoyed coloring out in the hall during her class and trying to get me to stop filming during the last day...

Kip's Birthday 2011

 

Somehow this is the only picture from Kip's birthday. I made the cake. Kip frosted it. It was devil's food with chocolate chips added and chocolate frosting. He said it was good, but I couldn't eat it because of the fact that it was made almost entirely of ingredients I'm allergic to. I made myself something else to eat - I can't remember what at the moment...

Kip had a good birthday. He got Dominion Prosperity, which we haven't been able to play yet because he's working like a maniac every night and weekend and on Sundays church is later so we don't have our lazy afternoons anymore. He also got a rocket and the kids can't wait for nice weather (and Dad not to be working weekends) so they can go launch it in the field by the school. Grandma got the bishop to give him the Grilled Cheese Sandwich at his Sunday morning meeting. It was really nice. (wink, wink)

So, I think he had a good birthday. I feel bad about the state of that cake, but as long as it tasted good, that's what matters, right?