Wordy Wednesday

So Sydney is at a stage in life where she says (or attempts to say) a new word just about every day.  Just this week she learned to say umbrella and not because we have been using them but rather she loves her book called The Umbrella by Jan Brett. She has also learned to say Rachael (ee-all) and Kyle (i-ill).  In fact just the other day I went in to get her from her nap and she was pointing furiously to a picture of her cousins and demanding to see Kyle. It was pretty cute. And now every time I get her from a nap she says Kyle. She has not seen him (her cousin) in 3 weeks!

Her new obsession is riding on the back of our bike. She LOVES it. She CRIES when we take her off. She calls her helmet 'hat-y' and wakes up from every nap these days requesting it followed by 'bye-bye'. Haty, byebye, hatty byebye.  And now when she sees a bike she says "bop, bop" excitedly. Apparently that is bike in Sydney language. 

And just because she is so darn cute....

my little pumpkin pie.

wheels on the bus..it's a duet didn't you know?

My in-laws might not appreciate it but I had to. This video is priceless.
Melt my heart.

Good Stuff.

One of my favorite places to go is here:

These little bungalows are located in San Clemente close to the pier and perched on the cliffs directly above the beach. I remember the first time I visited. I thought "WOW" what an amazing place (this coming from a girl who spent 3 years cruising in the South Pacific). One the best things to do here is watch the sunset. As the photo above demonstrates. 

How happy does it make me that my daughter loves the ocean? Very. Happy.  Even when the water temperature is 61 degrees! We could hardly pull her away, but in the end she was very happy to be snuggled up in her towel too.

Yes it takes two. Two grandpa's. Not one. Two. What a lucky girl to have both. Very lucky.

And don't even get me started on her cousins. She loves them. In fact Sydney will not stop saying Kyle's name (but that is another blog post...coming soon). 

I think this last picture is too funny. This is life with kids this age. You are on the go or you are left behind. In fact I am surprised we got them to sit still long enough to take the pictures above.

.

one for each hand

One at a time is not enough for this little book worm. I found her like this one morning:

Sometimes I forget how good she is. How she can find her own ways to entertain herself.  Without my help at all. I guess when it is eerily quiet for too long she is not always doing something she shouldn't :)

And when I discovered her doing this one day (for like 10 minutes) I just about cracked up.

Our health insurance company should seriously consider giving me a reimbursement for this!!

an apple obsession.

My daughter has an obsession with fruit actually.  She calls most round fruit "apples".  I don't think I have ever witnessed S turning down any kind of fruit (actually she has refused to eat red bell peppers which are technically a fruit but you get the idea).  So at the end of my mom's birthday trip in September we went apple picking in Solvang. Here are some pics.

I think she thought that these too were "apples".  How disappointing that these are for look and not filled with sugary sweet goodness on the inside!

More.

The Year of BIG birthdays continues....

with a trip to celebrate my mom's 75th birthday to Disneyland.

Here are pictures of Sydney's FIRST trip to the happiest place (on earth that is).
DAY 1

Q: Adventure Island...who does this attraction? 

A. People with toddlers :)

I certainly don't remember doing this on my last 15 trips to Disneyland 

One of Sydneys favorite rides (a close second to Dumbo actually) was King Arthur's Carousel

It doesn't look like she is loving but you should have seen her face when we tried to take her off!

The parade had her captivated...so sweet.

 The whole gang:

 

Sydney loved the teacups, even this one that didn't move (I actually thinked she liked it more!)

Oh yes please! 

DAY 2

We ventured over to California Adventure after spending the morning in Fantasyland on the second day.
It's a small world...4 1/2 stars according to Sydney.

(I swear she looks kind of miserable in these pictures....but she had so much fun...honest!)

Okay so the characters didn't go over that great. When she saw them from a distance she was motioning excitedly for us to take her over to them.  But when we got close she quickly changed her tune. I think unlce Troy gets credit for the smile here.

Happy with her Troy and her Minnie.  

I wish that instead of this picture we had one of us all crammed into the Alice in Wonderland ride, we were all packed in so tight I could barely breathe...and then I was laughing so hard because our caterpillar barely made it up the slight incline with all the weight it was towing. Hilarious!

DAY 3

This picture captures Sydney's opinion dead on. Too bad because there isn't a more adorable character than Pluto...really there isn't.

I guess we were too busy chill'n on our last day in the park to take more pics.
 Fun was had by all on this trip.

Ahhhh so pretty!

Here are the dinner shots of everyone on our cruise:

AND....I managed to get one group shot but unfortunately Pat and Charlene had already disembarked. Sometimes you have to compromise, right?

Looking at this picture reminds me that at the end of vacationing with your extended family for one week you can still come out with a happy ending :)

(I mean clearly from the picture we didn't kill each other....see we are all still standing...and some smiling even!)

SURPRISE!

I premise this post by saying that usually the Allinghams never get around to planning anything in advance and we have NEVER all been away on vacation together for a week.

Well this year for my Dad's 80th birthday (doesn't he look great?) we all decided to surprise him with a week long cruise to Mexico. He thought he was going with my oldest sister, Cynthia, and her husband Paul.  There ended up being 17 of us all together.  He had NO idea that we were on the ship with him until the first night at dinner. This video was taken right after my sister Cheryl and her husband entered the dining area to surprise him.
(We had walked up to the table and he didn't even notice we were there so I left Sidney next to my sister and hid off to the side and you can hear her crying in the video long before he even notices us!)

So then a little while later my sister Lianne came in with her family. I got so distracted  that I forgot to video tape their entrance from the start but you can still see the surprise on his face.

And the grand finale: H &P (James parents) followed by Pat &Char and Linda (my Dad's good friends). What a great idea (Cheryl) it was to stagger it like this so that we could have so much fun watching him enjoy each entrance!! 

Dad:  "Dad were you suspious at all?"

Eating Machine

These pics were taken at Ama's house during our August visit.

in her heart.

I have fallen so behind in my blogging. I have a ton of pictures and videos to share but first what I started composing in August:

I recently started reading through the gospels (love the chronological bible) and I am enjoying the Christmas story in August :) In Luke after the angels appeared telling of how someone special had been born and the Shepherds had rejoiced over her son it says Mary "quietly treasured these things in her heart and thought about them often". And then later in Luke Mary "stored all these things in her heart" in reference to how "Jesus grew both in height and in wisdom".  She enjoyed being a mom! She loved her son! She purposefully tucked away those moments and cherished them. And she did it quietly. If anyone had reason to brag about their kid it was Mary, right? I mean it does say right there how Jesus "was obedient" to them.

For me this summer has been a season of quietly treasuring in my heart life with Sydney.  I have gotten terrible about recording the memories on paper and when people ask me what she is doing lately sometimes I draw a big blank. She is living life! She is a toddler and everything that comes along with it. She loves to play and run and eat and play some more!

Some things she is doing now that make me joyful.

-swinging her left arm wildly when she runs or even walks

-making animal noises with corresponding hand motions

-saying her own name or saying "mama, dada, sydney, yaaaaa!) it is sort of her mantra and our family chant at the moment (everyone has a family chant right?)

-always greeting her grandpas and grandmas (all 4) with a great big hug and smile...whether it was 2 days or 2 months since she had seen them...she does this with Rachael too but no one else so consistently.

-almost every single morning wanting to feed Arlen first thing (James says it is her first chore)

- all the new words she says almost daily, but her most recent newbies are: mango, nose, and mouth

- the awesome hugs and snuggles she gives us.
-fist pounds (knuckles) and high fives she loves to dish out

There is so much more...alas she has already given me a lifetimes worth to treasure.