Grandma's Big Birthday Weekend

When Grandma's birthday rolled around, It certainly was a big weekend - not because of a milestone birthday (which it was) but because we had a full schedule on the books. Thursday was Grandma's birthday so we had to go to Disneyland to celebrate. We still couldn't convince the girls to go on Pirates "even for Grandma's birthday, pretty pleeeease?" But Grampa went with her and we all savored carved sandwiches at the River Belle Terrace, and enjoyed the Tiki Room and a few other attractions before the evening was out.

Saturday was the day for the family to share their birthday wishes and enjoy a delicious dinner at a cute retro table courtesy of Uncle Mike and Aunt Charlotte. It was especially nice to see how Kaitlyn had grown since we had seen her last. We think Grandma enjoyed having her grandkids around her just a little bit.

Sunday morning, we picked up Grandma for a fun morning in Hollywood. We had theatre tickets to see the newly remastered "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" at the El Capitan. Our VIP experience allowed us to enjoy popcorn and drinks in reserved seats in the orchestra section. Often, the previews are almost as good as the feature and in this case we were given 3D glasses just to watch one preview. (Apparently we were supposed to deposit them in some receptacle on the way out but Mom missed that part - so we have a few nice pairs at home)

The movie itself was amazing! Of course we knew how it was going to turn out, but on the big screen it was pretty powerful stuff. One anecdote from a Walt Disney biography has an eyewitness account of seeing Clark Gable weeping at the premiere when the dwarfs were keeping watch over a poisoned Snow White. After seeing it in this format, it's easy to believe. As always, the audience applauded and cheered at the end of the film.

We carefully made our way over and past the children scrambling to gather the confetti that had been released at the beginning of the movie, to the Soda Fountain for lunch and ice cream. We even surprised Grandma with a souvenir Snow White photo from the printing kiosk in the store. While everyone was eating, Mom hopped over to the kiosk with camera's memory card, added a border, pressed print and voila! one perfectly captured memory. You know, when we suggested the stack of plans to Grandma, we expected her to be tired of seeing us but it doesn't seem to have been the case.

My First.....

Scrapbookers are crazy people. Mom is hereby including herself in that category though she hasn't officially become one with the collective. She's ready though - learning to record our little lives by taking pictures of everything. When each girl needed an inhaler for bad colds, we joked about the missing entry in the baby books - "My first steroid". Well, Hallie had an experience that created the need for a new entry. My first broken bone. Or, shall we say, bones.

Good timing, too-about a week before the start of school. Chalk up another statistic with an accident in the home. She tripped and fell, landing on her foot as if she was going en pointe. Within a millisecond of her foot realizing it was not the foot of a prima ballerina, her toes crumpled beneath her, and all her weight. It was obvious it hurt, though she recovered quickly enough with the frozen corn on her foot. She also tolerated Mom poking around to isolate the area of injury, asking her to curl her toes, etc.

Thanks to Dad's horrible hand break of 1991, Mom had that much more to consider in terms of the gazillion tarsals that could be damaged. So, a call to the peds office allowed her to be squeezed in, a call from the ped to radiology to stay open for her and an x-ray confirmed 3 broken toes. This resulted (though 2 days later) in a visit to the traveling children's orthopedist for a cast. We're quite sure that, at this point, Hallie was proud of her wound and excited about a cast (Something along the lines of her pride in being toothless for picture day last year.) Ah yes, a cast that would be on for four weeks, followed by four weeks of taking it easy. Oh, did we forget to mention that soccer was starting and 2nd grade meant 2nd story classroom? So, her teacher, and a few others, learned how to use the elevator and Hallie read a LOT. As far as soccer was concerned she couldn't play for at least half the season. Consequently, people were stunned that we weren't trying to get our money back. Apparently, having her dress, hand out snacks and cheer on (oh, and be part of) the team was a waste of some kind? Don't get us started. She was a great sport from the get go and never once complained about having to wake up and go to a game she couldn't play.

Well, the cast has come off just in time for her to walk around Disneyland for Grandma's free birthday and she looks and gets around just fine. It's going to be very hard for her to take it easy without that weighted reminder but she likes to read during recess and sit and chat with the PE teachers. 4 more weeks til soccer!!!

(By the way, Dad actually took all these shots for posterity)