{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. 

A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

:Disneyland:

We took the plunge and decided we would make our first family trip to "the happiest place on earth".

John and I have been 2 other times together, both with the Hitchcocks, meaning nieces and nephews.

We had a lot of fun with them, but there is nothing like experiencing it with your own kids.

We decided this would be Chase's birthday gift (even though she is still free til 3).

But it is an expensive endeavor! The day before, Chase happened to mention to one of her teachers that we were going the next day and she so kindly offered us a ticket that was to expire this weekend!!  I was blown away...an $80 savings!

The costs are just astounding.  I can't imagine taking a large family there.  We calculated on our drive home and we hardly spent any money...a couple of snacky treats, lunch (food no drinks), parking, a small souvenir...

guess how much we spent????

We made it to the park just a bit after it opened and got parked and in pretty smoothly.

We had advice from some friends that are pros that have season passes about what to do and not do.

We headed straight to Fantasyland and rode Peter Pan first...

Chase hated it and cried/screamed/shook in terror!

FABULOUS!!!

Needless to say, that changed our day.  

I decided I needed to relax and not worry about doing everything or even close to that.

She enjoyed the carousel.

She LOVED the teacups (we did that twice).

She would not go on Dumbo...

** I remembered this picture being similar to one with Ellie from 2004...and found it.  Isn't it eerily similar?**

SO SWEET!  Even the same teacup!!!

She didn't even really love Toon town all that much...did not like meeting the characters who's faces you could not see, ie: Minnie, Woody, Jessie...trembled in fear any time we came near one.

But the saving grace of the day was the PRINCESSES!!!

The ladies saved the day and made the whole trip worth it.

Chase is way into princesses and loves anything pretty, dressed up, sparkley...

We bought her an autograph book as soon as we entered the park and that pretty much became our mission.

The first one we spotted was Aurora, Sleeping Beauty.

She was lovely!

You must see the progression of meeting a real life Princess...

Then we saw Ariel...she was Chase's favorite.

Next we saw some fairies including TinkerBell.

Snow White...

Then, since we were saving time by not riding rides, we spotted a long line to see Rapunzel from Tangled.

Chase loves this movie, so we decided to wait the 45 minutes.

I guess it was worth it?!?

And we ran into the Fairy Godmother...and Woody (Chase was terrified of him so my dreams came true!)

The park is a lot smaller than Disney World, or at least seemed like it to us, so it is really manageable.

There were great fall and Halloween decorations up which were fun to see.

Chase asked for a big lollipop at one point and we bought it for her, she loved every lick.  Then she asked for popcorn later and we bought her that, and as we were walking away from the popcorn stand, she said something like, "this is the best day ever"!

That made every penny worth it!!

We stayed all the way to the very end...watching the parade at about 7.  We all enjoyed this.  We saw the last of the princesses that we hadn't seen around the park, Tiana, Cinderella, Belle.  It was a great show.

Then we got bussed back to our car and were on the highway in about 15 minutes.  Chase was asleep in no time at all and we were able to stop at Chickfila for dinner.  

It was a great day.  We won't be hurrying back up there.  We want it to stay a special occasion.  I think a year from now maybe she will be able to handle it a bit better.  It was really a fun family day though, a rare treat to steal John away from work.  And I loved being just the three of us...or four...or 3 1/2!

Chase's "big" treat was picking out a birthday gift from Uncle Zach, so at the end of the day she was able to do that and she got a baby Tiana doll.  She is darling and loves being her mommy.

We all slept like rocks and struggled to make it to work/school on time this morning.

But it was well worth it to see that little girl's face light up all day long!!

::This week::

It's the first day of Fall!

Pumpkin spice lattes are back...football...pumpkin pancakes and bread...pumpkin patches, lots of orange!

My sister in law and I always talked about how Fall is the hardest season in Southern California because it can often be the hottest and driest season of all. This is when we get our fabulous Santa Ana winds and our infamous October wildfires.  But now she is in Washington, experiencing Fall for more than one season a year!!

I'm always anxious to pull out my Fall decorations just so I can feel like I'm experiencing the season.  Well, this week Chase was sick and we were homebound pretty much the whole week, so, not even being October I pulled everything out!  I even purchased some pretty new glittery pumpkins at Target in their dollar section.  Those were a real find!  

We even baked Halloween cookies this week....I've decided this is becoming my favorite time of year...I'm loving all things Fall and Halloween-ish!

Also this week, while home, I baked homemade artisan bread for the first time!  I was inspired by my niece Ellie when we visited her in WA as she has become the official bread baker in their household.

Another highlight of the week was all of our fave tv shows are back!!  The Middle, Modern Family (why isn't everyone in America watching these shows, they are hilarious!!) Gray's Anatomy, The Mentalist...with these back in our lives, life just seems to be back on track!  K, we're only slightly addicted to tv...

That brings you up to date with our week...

What did you do this week?

{{Our Visit to Washington: Lynnwood}}

Since I've slowly been posting about our vacation, the days just keep ticking by and it's almost October!

After our time in Oregon, my sis-in-law Rachel drove us north to meet up with Anna.  It's great having those two families in the same vicinity!  It was a 2 hour drive for Rach and about 1 1/2 for Anna.  We met up at a McDonalds and the kids each had a sundae.  She'd brought the 3 littles with her, so they were all excited to see sweet Chasey and vice versa!  I think Chase was in shock and trying to pinch herself to see if they were for real :)

We lounged around the house a LOT while we were there.  It was just so nice to be a family, that nothing else really seemed so important. The Seattle sites will always be there, right?  The kids had so much fun being together.  And Uncle John was in his glory playing with Toby and Drew nerf gun wars!  I do believe if there was a vote/prize, Uncle John would win "best uncle award".  It makes me sad that we don't have that regular contact with those kiddos anymore for exactly that reason.  And him even sadder.

But one day we emerged and took a ferry ride from Edmonds over to Kingston.  About a 30 minute ferry ride...we got to experience the true WA life that way.  Kingston is just a SMALL one block downtown area, but they had an open field right on the harbor, so we picnicked there and played good old fashioned races for a while (another Uncle John fave)

We ended our stroll with ice cream, followed by running very quickly to make the ferry ride back over!  We were all a little out of breath when we got there, with ice cream melting down our hands.  We actually saw the tiniest bit of Mt. Rainier this day.  But I mean tiny, shrouded in clouds.

One night we walked over to the local park at a school.  We all had fun running around there and Uncle John got to play ball tag with the kids in a spread out area.  Afterwards we walked home and had a birthday celebration with the 3 summer Hitchcock kids (Toby, Drew, Whit) and Chase's fall birthday.  Abby had made a yummy cake and the kids had fun opening gifts.  Before the park we had a traditional "Hatch-cock" dinner of fun-due!  This time the fundue was made from scratch and Ellie had made homemade bread.  Probably the best rendition EVER!

This was the night that we announced that I am pregnant!  That was so fun to do in person!  Better than we'd hoped.  Everyone was very excited.  Ellie had even asked me on our walk home from the park if I was ever going to have any more children.  Can I bluff or what???

One beautiful sunny afternoon we headed over to a little harbor town called Mulkiteo.  Chase and I had been here before.  There is a great playground and a "beach" and a lighthouse.  The kids had fun skipping stones and they even found a crab that they tortured  played with for a while.

Whitney and Chase were forever playing dress up and dancing and making things up.  One afternoon they did a show for us...

Chase has a way to go to catch up to Whit's talent, but she is coming right along.

Oh what a joy this time was!  It will be remembered and cherished for a long time.  Who knows when our next trip up there will be...I do believe that they will come down and visit a cute new little niece or nephew in the spring.  Boy!  Some people have to go to great lengths to get a visit!!  Just kidding.  It will be a joyous time for them to come...and maybe we'll even be able to have a baptismal by the Pastor.

Anna has several great posts with pictures on her blog to check out as well.