Sweet Soy Chicken and Rice

Yum! Another winning dinner tonight as Suzanna tried out a recipe from a new recipe book: Sweet Soy Chicken and Rice.

Doesn't that look tasty? It sure was!

msh

Dad's 70th birthday!

Even though it's a day full of emotions, I love September 25th.

And of course, September 25th means pumpkin pie!

Doesn't that look good?

This was Emmelise's first September 25th. She was a pretty happy seven-month old. It didn't escape me, though, that Dad passed away the day Luke turned seven months old. Thinking about who Luke and Logan are now in comparison to Emmelise, the seven-month old, it blows my mind. They've turned into fun little boys with very distinct personalities. I wish Dad could be here to play with them and see them. And of course, I wish they knew him, too.

Happy Birthday Papa Rich!

All smiles from the baby

msh

ALDP Graduation

Today I went up to Seattle again for my final ALDP session, which was technically 'graduation' and included presentations by each of the participants on the books/topics covered in the course. I got to present on Topgrading, a book which details a methodology of hiring, coaching, and retaining 'A' players (top 10% of people available for a given position). It's an interesting topic, and we had a lot of thought provoking questions after our presentation ended, but I think everything went pretty well and I got good feedback when all was said and done.

The lunch that they served after the session ended was really good too! We had some sort of Asian fusion cuisine, including yakisoba chicken and noodles, rice and a vegetable stirfry. Of course there was an oriental salad and fortune cookies (at my request).

I should have taken a picture of the tasty spread!

Suzanna went to scouts for the first time today as part of her new calling as a Webelos den leader. I haven't heard too much from her about it yet, but I think she said that it went pretty well. I hope she enjoys her new calling!

msh

Tomboy Emmie?

Tell me truthfully, does Emmie look like a tomboy with Luke's hat on her head?

Emmie, wearing Luke's hat

I almost think she could pass as a boy with that hat on. She has such a cute smile and a very pleasant and happy disposition all the time. We sure do love her!

msh

Qdoba, round two!

Did I mention in last Monday's post that Qdoba has a great Monday night special? I'm pretty sure I did. Well, when Suzanna told me that we had quesadillas on the menu for dinner tonight and I reminded her about Qdoba's deal, she suggested we just go there instead!

So for the second Monday night in a row, we ate dinner at Qdoba. And we also played hide and seek, this time with Logan, in that area between the two restaurants again. But tonight we sat outside for dinner until a pesky wasp wouldn't leave us alone and eventually made us retreat back inside the restaurant.

What a nice bunch of people! All with their mouths full, too!

Luke and Logan got a little comfy too, both putting their feet up on the table and asking me to take their pictures! What silly boys!

In other news, check out this cool barricade/fortress that Luke made this morning out of Jenga blocks for his new soldiers from California Adventure.

Superhero Luke, hard at work!

The boys wore their capes again almost all day!

msh

Innocence of Childhood

So Suzanna brought home a really neat surprise for Luke from Utah. Mormor made a couple of capes for the boys in red and blue with big "L"s on the back. Logan had already seen his in Utah, but Luke didn't know about it until Suzanna surprised him this afternoon after church. He was really excited when he saw it, and for the rest of the evening, it seems, the boys were playing "super hero" and zooming around the house.

Here are a few pictures (posed and not) of them playing. There was one point when they were both sitting on the same chair across the room from me, and unfortunately I didn't have my phone because it would have been a perfect picture! I realized at that moment, as I watched them playing together so nicely, pretending to be super heroes without a thought or other care in the world, that this season of life will probably be really brief, and I'm glad that I'm around to see it and be a part of the boys' childhood. I sometimes wish I could push a big PAUSE button and be able to come back at any point in the future to this moment to re-live what I'm experiencing now because sometime down the road, I will want to go back and remember exactly what it was like when the boys were young.

Superhero Luke, with a red cape

Superhero Logan, with a blue cape

On a totally different topic, I got to enjoy some Dominos tonight. A Domino is a little chocolate and vanilla sandwich cookie, not unlike an Oreo, from Finland. These became a weekly P-day-eve treat on my mission. It seems that on most Tuesday nights I would buy a little sleeve of these guys and enjoy 10 quiet minutes, dunking my Dominos in milk just before going to bed. So it was fun tonight to enjoy them with a little milk and ice cream. Shhh, don't tell anyone, but I think I may just prefer them to Oreos. Well, sometimes.

Thanks to Suzanna's parents for bringing these back from their recent trip to Finland!

msh

Conclusion of Our California Adventure

Wow! Is it really over already? That was a fast week-long adventure with Luke and an even faster three-day trip to California! But we made so many memories and had a great time together!

Suzanna posted this photo to Facebook before leaving Provo to head to the airport. It got me a little more excited about our trip being over. Cute kids!

Emmelise and Logan before their flight home from Utah

Luke and I took a Super Shuttle to the Long Beach airport from our hotel and were early enough to have an hour or two to kick around and play before boarding. It was a very low-stress couple of hours, as we had all our stuff in hand and there wasn't anywhere to go. We sat out on the boardwalk underneath some palm trees between the north and south terminals, watching planes take off and land through the big glass window panes. I snapped a few photos for fun.

Luke with his spiky ball and me

Palm tree

Cool contrast of wood, rock, and shrubs

I bought Luke one last souvenir for the trip: a little metal jetBlue airplane replica. That little guy could keep himself pretty well entertained for a long time with the right toys. Our flight was delayed about a half hour, but no sweat off our backs, as Luke continued flying his miniature airplane around our seats.

"Blue Skies Ahead"

We made it back safely to Oregon and quickly reunited with Suzanna, Logan, and Emmelise (their flight had landed just minutes before ours at a nearby gate in the same terminal). It's great to be back together, but it's hard to believe the week is over already!

msh

Back to the Best! Day 3 in SoCal

Day Three of Disneyland/California Adventure:

After a pretty good night of sleep (though admittedly, not enough!), we started the morning out going straight to California Adventure where we got as close to the front of the crowd waiting for the park to open as possible. They actually let you in the park before it opens, but only up to a certain point where they have employees manning a rope barrier.

Took this picture over the top of my own head. Folks waiting patiently to 'rush' to Radiator Springs Racers

Once the park officially opened, they removed the rope from its stationary position but didn't let anybody past the employees who acted like a pace car, walking in the direction of Radiator Springs Racers, by far the most popular attraction. I imagine they do this to stop people from stampeding to the ride. Because of this, and not being able to nimbly dodge through traffic with Luke on my back, we walked "in line" to Radiator Springs Racers along with hundreds of others and finally boarded the ride at 9:45. A great way to start the day for sure! I decided this time to take a few more pics of the cool scenery in Radiator Springs.

Welcome to Radiator Springs Racers!

Luke waiting patiently again

Finally on the ride, ready to start our last day the right way! In a RED car!

New tires from Luigi, again. Ramone must have been on vacation.

"Pit stop!"

After disembarking, we headed to check out Mater's Junkyard Jamboree, a surprisingly fun ride which is perfect if you like playing the "corners!" game in the backseat of a car. These little tractors drive around with you in the back and make these wildly sharp turns left and then right and then left again, all the while being serenaded by Mater in the background.

Giving Luke a better look over the fence.

Getting ready to spin our brains out!

After Mater's Junkyard Jamboree, we went over to Luigi's Flying Tires, but it was closed temporarily, so we did Tuck 'n' Roll's Drive 'em Buggies for a third time (three times in three days!). When we finished that, we headed back over to Luigi's and found that they had reopened, so we got in line and were soon floating across the big air-hockey type table on a giant tire. The ride was a little slower and less thrilling than I was expecting, but not a bad ride if you don't have a long wait. Plus, the atmosphere while waiting in line is really cool, making up for the slightly underwhelming ride.

In Luigi's Casa Della Tires. This place made me hungry for pasta for some reason.

Squinting cause of the bright sun!

We got a park employee to take one of the few photos we have of the two of us where I'm not the one holding the camera. The scenery to the west of Cars Land (on the east side of Grizzly River Run) is pretty cool where they've got this big waterfall and lookout area.

I really wanted to get a Radiator Springs Racers fast pass with a return time after dark because I had heard that the ride is really cool at dark. It's really cool in the daytime, so I could only imagine how much more fun it would be at night when they have the neon lights in the city and you're racing through the canyon in the dark. So we hung around for a bit until the return time was after 6:30 or so.

We then decided to go back to another favorite ride: Goofy's Sky School. Because the line wasn't too long at all, we did it FIVE times in a row! It was AWESOME! It's a short ride, but it's really thrilling, and for a nearly-five-year old, it was glorious. We laughed our heads off over and over and even requested to wait around for red cars (airplanes?) a few times.

After making ourselves a little ill by doing the coaster FIVE times in 30 minutes, we wandered over to the World of Color fast pass line and picked up passes for the 9:00 show. The weather was warming right up and it was nearly noon, so we took another TWO trips on Grizzly River Run (our fourth and fifth overall). Another EXCELLENT ride in my book!

Preparing to get soaked! Notice I brought a plastic bag along for the ride to keep my phone dry. Excellent tip to remember!

We sat next to some pretty funny people a couple different times.The foreigners were the best. They would chatter away in Italian or French and the mom would squeal when the raft would rotate and she'd end up under a stream of water squirting from overhead or the dad would start shouting something in the foreign language with a couple of English curse words interspersed as we'd bounce and roll through the rapids, water bounding over the sides of the raft, soaking our legs and feet. Haha, good times!

Nothing like a couple of river runs to make you hungry for another tasty lunch at Taste Pilots' Grill, our second visit there in three days. Who can argue with onion rings? Seriously.

We wandered back over to Disneyland after lunch and jumped on the double-decker Omnibus on Main Street which took us from the entrance back to the castle. It was way slower than walking, but nice to sit in some shade and people watch for a few minutes.

Since the goal of today was to revisit the best rides of the previous two days and forget trying to experience "all the rides," we meandered over to Autopia to try our luck at getting a red car. The wait time, again, was surprisingly short, especially because the crowds seemed much bigger today than on the other two days (it was Friday, anyway).

Birdbath car wash. Not sure what it is about this sign that reminds me of Dad, but I love it!

So on attempts one and two, we had no luck with getting a red car, but we did get some cool shots of other parts of the park, like Matterhorn Mountain.

So the third time in line, we asked one of the employees if we could wait til a red car came up. They were really nice and obliged. We had to wait an extra 5 minutes or so, but it was worth it to see the huge smile on Luke's face as he got to finally drive a RED car! This trip was for him (mostly), so I didn't mind giving it to this type of request. Frankly, I was a little surprised that luck and the law of large numbers hadn't delivered us a red car yet (okay, okay, it was only our FIFTH time in line; not exactly enough to appeal to the long-run averages of statistics). Anyway, check him out below, on our fifth, and final, time on Autopia.

Happy kid, happy dad.

The lack of sleep from the previous three nights was catching up to us again, so we sat down in the shade again and had ice cream sandwiches again. Then we did the teacups again at Luke's request before walking back to Toontown for another round on Donald's Ship and a spin on Gadget's Go Coaster.

Gadget's Go Coaster

We were going to do another couple rounds on Gadget's Go Coaster, but Brian said they had a family fast pass to Space Mountain, so we should meet them over there. We headed that direction, but unfortunately, they were still across the park waiting in line for Splash Mountain and wouldn't be getting to Space Mountain for a while. Luke wasn't willing to do Space Mountain, so it would have required meeting Brian and co. so somebody could hang with Luke and the other little ones while the rest of us rode. At that point, though, when we knew it would be quite a while longer, we just opted to head back to the hotel for a little break. I figured we'd enjoy some time out of the crowds to rest and swim before coming back for our final night at the park.

A view looking toward the castle along Main Street, with a Halloween pumpkin in the foreground.

I almost wondered if Luke would have been sufficiently happy to have just gone to a hotel with a pool for three days. He was so excited every time go to swimming and wanted to hang there for long periods of time. I eventually convinced him to get back out of the pool and go inside to get washed up before heading back to the park. We walked over to IHOP, directly across the street from the park entrance and were about to go inside when we saw Brian and his family drive past us in their minivan. He called and asked if we wanted to join them for dinner at Mimi's, a tempting offer for sure. But, knowing that he was in a BIG party of people and knowing that big parties typically take a ridiculous amount of time to serve, we opted to stick to our plan and eat at IHOP. Good news, kids eat free at IHOP with an adult entree purchase, which was a good thing cause the food was overpriced and not all that fantastic anyway. But the service was quick and the food was edible and filled our bellies.

At IHOP, sans hats.

We cruised back into California Adventure as the afternoon sun cast shadows all around.

Another picture of the two of us, this time outside the entrance to Cars Land.

We took one more ride on Mater's Junkyard Jamboree. I was sure to snap a few more photos of the really interesting things the park planners put in place for you to look at while waiting in lines all day.

The time was nearing to use our fast pass at Radiator Springs Racers, but we continued to explore the shops. I bought Luke a replica of the car we ride in on RSR as a souvenir. I almost considered buying the following Piston Cup trophy for myself for planning and carrying out a three-day Dad-and-Luke trip to Disneyland, but I didn't. I was really hoping to find a "Best Dad" one instead of just "Best Husband." I guess I could have bought the "Best Parents" one for Suzanna and me since it wasn't without her help and support that this was able to happen. Love you Suzanna!

As the sun finally set, the neon turned on around Radiator Springs. It was so cool! Definitely worth the wait!

A

Radiator Springs Racers at night lived up to the hype! It was great!

One more spin on Luigi's Flying Tires (again, cooler at night with the special lighting effects) and then we bid farewell to Cars Land.

Paradise Pier was pretty well lit up as well, and with a limited amount of time remaining before World of Color was to begin, we opted to do the Toy Story ride (Midway Mania) just one more time.

Sporting our slick 3D glasses.

We then headed over and watched the first 10 minutes or so of World of Color before we kind of lost interest. I was tired of holding Luke up in the air to get a good view, and he was getting tired of watching. So we did the logical thing; we headed over to Goofy's Sky School while the lines were short and took another three rides before closing time! I had asked him if we should just go back to the hotel (we were both wiped out) or if he wanted to any more rides one more time cause we were running out of time. So he said, "Goofy's Sky School," and that was it. Also an excellent ride at night!

I took a few more shots of some of the pictures and other fun decorations/theme things as we waited in line. In our three days, we did this ride 11 times and loved it every time!

Oh Goofy...

On our way out of the park we stopped by the Wilderness Explorer Camp, where we had just enough time before 10:00 for Luke to do a tire swing zip line once. It was a pretty fun ride, and I would have liked to spend a bit more time there where he could have explored and wandered freely.

We left the park and got another picture in front of California Adventure, similar to the picture we took when we got here just a short two and a half days before. I can't believe how fast the time went, but it was an excellent trip and one that I (and hopefully Luke) will remember forever!

 

Recap of Day Three:
9:45 Radiator Springs Racers, round 3
10:00 Mater's Junkyard Jamboree
10:20 Tuck 'n' Roll Drive 'em Buggies, round 3
10:40 Luigi's Flying Tires
10:55 Radiator Springs Racers fast pass line
11:05 Goofy's Sky School, round 4
11:15 Goofy's Sky School, round 5
11:25 Goofy's Sky School, round 6
11:30 Goofy's Sky School, round 7
11:35 Goofy's Sky School, round 8
11:45 World of Color fast pass line
11:55 Grizzly River Run, round 4
12:05 Grizzly River Run, round 5
12:25 Lunch at Taste Pilots' Grill

1:15 Double-decker Omnibus
1:35 Autopia, round 3
1:50 Autopia, round 4
2:05 Autopia, round 5
2:15 Ice cream sandwiches
2:40 Mad Tea Party (teacups), round 2
2:45 Donald's ship, round 2
3:05 Gadget's Go Coaster, round 6

Break for swimming
Dinner at IHOP

6:50 Mater's Junkyard Jamboree, round 2
7:25 Radiator Springs Racers, round 4 (fast pass)
7:50 Luigi's Flying Tires, round 2
8:45 Midway Mania, round 3
9:00 World of Color
9:30 Goofy's Sky School, round 9
9:40 Goofy's Sky School, round 10
9:45 Goofy's Sky School, round 11
9:55 Wilderness Explorer Camp