May 2010

According to the memory stick in my camera, nothing happened in the month of May. Not a single picture was taken. Inexcusable, I know! Thankfully, I was able to pull a few shots off of Ernie's phone. As it turns out, quite a bit happened in the month of May. Most notably, Vita's Grandma Victoria moved up to Santa Cruz from southern California, and is living right in the neighborhood! Yay! We planted a little vegetable patch. Vita loved getting her hands dirty... digging in the dirt and putting the tiny plants into the holes in the ground. And then, well... somehow, Ernie came into the possession of this hot little number. It's a miniature hot rod / go cart with some parts dating back to the 1930's, and Vita has been helping Ernie to restore it. She's having a blast. Perhaps you noticed the tattoos all over Vita's arms? Last weekend we decided to start potty training, and we've been giving out temporary tattoos for successes in this effort. It has proven to be a very effective incentive, and as you can see Vita is doing really well.

Disneyland!

Yesterday Vita had her very first trip to the happiest place on earth... and it was everything we hoped it would be. We went on about 10 or 12 rides, which was more than we expected. Most of the lines were very short (5-10 minutes) and some of the rides that we thought Vita might be too little for she was able to ride. Here's Vita on It's a Small World. We got the front row of the boat, and Vita couldn't keep still. She kept standing up and pointing at everything. The merry go round is always a favorite. She loved the rides, including the rocket ship ride in Tomorrowland that I thought might be too fast for her. There were just two rides that ended up being a little too scary - Mr. Toads Wild Ride and Pirates of the Caribbean. However, Vita kept her composure the whole time, held on to her mama very tightly, and simply informed us afterwards that she was a little scared. No tears at all. She was very brave. When it was time to meet some of the characters, I expected Vita would probably be a little shy and might even be intimidated, but that wasn't the case at all. In every instance, Vita went right up and hugged EVERY character, spoke with them, gave them kisses and high fives, and finally said goodbye when it was time to move on. Here we all are with Mickey. Here's Vita with Minnie Mouse. Minnie was Vita's favorite, and she just kept hugging Minnie for so long that we had to let Vita know it was someone else's turn with Minnie.

Here's Vita and mom having a tea party at Minnie's house. (Did you see Vita's cute hat?)

We also met Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore and Tigger and Vita was walking on clouds the whole time, grinning and laughing and clapping. The picture with Eeyore is my favorite picture from the whole day.

On the way out, after shopping for some toys and some candy on Main Street, Vita had a chance to meet up with Goofy.

Vita did great all day, despite hot weather, lack of sleep (and no nap at Disneyland)... she just kept going and going and going. We got there at 10am when the park opened, and we figured Vita would crash around 2pm, but she kept going strong until about 6pm when finally started to get sleepy. We carried our happy little girl out of the park and headed back home to Santa Cruz directly from Disneyland. As you might expect, Vita was sound asleep before we even made our way out of the parking lot.

April 2010

April was a really fun and really busy month. It started with a visit from the Easter bunny, and a basket of treats! Easter turned out to be a rainy day (so no egg hunt) but we made the best of it and had fun anyway. Here's Vita taking her first bite of sour candy. She made a funny face, but she said she liked it and she wanted more. These pictures may seem like repeats, but we just keep going back for more and more fun at Gilroy Gardens and Vita loves it every time. We went on a cloudy day with a few sprinkles and there were hardly any lines at all, it was great!

Vita did her best to keep up with her dad's popcorn consumption.

And we found new rides at Gilroy Gardens that we hadn't been on before.

Vita's favorite was this miniature version of a merry go round. The horses were small enough that she could ride all by herself with no parents holding on to her. She really loved the "tiny horses".

We finally started to get some good weather, and we headed outdoors for some fun splashing in the water.

We also got back into painting, and that has become a favorite activity again.

We had some fun visits as well, but I didn't do a very good job taking pictures. Vita's Grandma Victoria came up for a weekend visit (no pictures) and we ended the month of April down in Los Angeles visiting Grandma Marianne, Grandpa Vito and Uncle Pat (just one picture, below). All in all, a WONDERFUL month of April, with lots more fun to come in May... including a visit to Disneyland (post coming soon) and Grandma Victoria will be moving to Santa Cruz!