My Birthday Wish

I know you aren't suppose to tell what you wish for, but I'm going to tell anyway, because it involves ALL of you!!!

My wish for my 29th birthday this year (which is on Wednesday) would be that everyone celebrates with me!!!

Here's what you have to do (and you have to do one of these if you want to help me have a fabulous birthday!):

1.Dance a little dance sometime during the day, and do I mean just wiggle your hips a little?? NO! I mean turn UP the music and DANCE!!!!

2.Sing out loud in the car on the way to work, even if you get strange looks from others, then you know you are doing it right. :)

3.Help someone out. Plan on holding the door open for anyone ahead or behind during the day whenever you walk through a door. If someone drops something pick it up for them. Just be on the lookout for things you can help them with.

4.GIVE! Give out hugs, give out money, give someone a listening ear, do something where you aren't thinking of yourself.

5.LAUGH!!!!!! Tell funny jokes, or have someone tell you their funniest joke.

That's it! Pick one or more of the 5 things I put up here, and that can be your way of saying HAPPY BIRTHDAY BECCA!!

Comment and let me know what you did! :) REMEMBER: WEDNESDAY!

First Animal Park - Imiri

We were invited to go along with some friends of ours to an animal park on Halloween. We decided to go, since there weren't any Halloween festivities that day, and we had a fabulous time! The pictures will show you how close the animals were to the trailer we were on, which pretty much they were almost right in there with us.

This animal park is only an hour and a half away so we left at 8am and got there for the 10am ride. It was a tractor pulling this long trailer with rows of seats on it. I joked with my friend that we were actually doing a hay ride on Halloween just like we would do in the States! When we got into the park they let us know that we would see 4 of the BIG 5 (elephant, lion, water buffalo, rhino and leopard), there were no leopards on this trip.

The first stop were the lions and hyneas. It was incredible the size of the lions, up close you could see how massive their paws were, and also when they fed them how powerful their jaws were. They are magnificent creatures, and could become my favorite very soon. When they brought the food out for them to eat we did get to hear a little growl from the lion and a little laugh fromt he hyneas, which was funny.

Next we saw some rhinos. No not this rhino....

This rhino!!

Grant it at this park there were not very many animals just a few of each so they had some guides (guys with guns who yelled at them) to bring them to us wherever we were driving. Which is kinda sad, but if they didn't do that I doubt we would have seen anything, because it was on 4500 acres. So back to the rhinos, they were great. A baby one came up to the trailer and our friend was getting a picture of Spencer with it when the baby rhino went to the front of the trailer, so he would be in the background. And then while I'm watching her tell him to "lean out farther" I see the other rhino coming right at Spencer's head!!! I should've taken a picture, Tyler says, but I was trying to save my baby!! :) The rhino got about 3-5 feet from Spencer's head before I pulled him back in. It was kinda funny.
Next we saw some elephants and a little baby one, all I could keep thinking of was Dumbo. Baby elephants are just TOO CUTE!

Then we kept going and saw some impala, a huge python, warthogs, giraffes, crocodiles, huge lizards and zebras. The zebras were gorgeous too.




Can you spot the giraffe?

Can you see the three impala?

When we stopped for lunch they had the rhinos come eat in front of us too, and then the elephants walked right through camp and sat in front of us while we finished. Then we got to FEED THE ELEPHANTS!!! YES!!!! Actually put food into their trunks or mouths. Of course, the one I went to go and feed wanted it placed right on their tongue, I wasn't too happy to do that so I just threw it in and continued taking pictures of Spencer and Tyler. Whom both LOVED this!
Last thing we did was go see some water buffalo, and as we start seeing some coming over this hill, we see something else with them. An elephant?

Our guide told us that this elephant since the age of 2 months or 2 years has thought she was a water buffalo. She has hung out with them and has become the leader. Since in elephant herds the matriarch is the leader she thought she should be, but with buffalos it's the patriarch who is the leader. Well, to fix that she killed off any dominant males who were trying to get that position! Crazy, huh? She has changed the way she communicates so then not to attract other elephants, because she doesn't like them, she really believes she's a water buffalo! And she understands what the buffalo moo and they understand what she grunts. It was amazing.

End of the day we got back to the lodge and started home. We haven't had much rain yet, but we saw this bad boy on it's way. Beautiful!

Oh and right outside of Harare there are these rock formations. Now how do you suppose that happened???

Spencer and school

I just received the BEST note from Spencer's teacher, but it needs a little back story to really show you how great this note means to me.

Spencer just turned 5 the end of August, so he BARELY made the cut off date for going to Kindergarten. Also, here school started the first week of August, and we didn't get here until the end of September. Since Spencer never had any schooling at all and since he wasn't used to being around kids all the time. I was quite nervous to let him go to school, plus I would miss him oh so much!

First day of school for him went okay. It was all new, but soon he jumped right in. And for the first three weeks we kept getting notes home saying "Spencer hit this girl because she said something." "Spencer did not use his words today." "Spencer hit one kid and bit anyone today. Please remind him to use his words." Can I tell you how worried I was that Spencer was going to be the bully at school (he is taller than most of the kids in his class, and they are all a year older than him!).

So we kept reminding him to use your words, and not hit. He did better, we were thrilled then the next day he would hit again. But finally things seemed to calm down a bit. Which is great! Oh, and another one of my worries was that I often heard that if you put a boy into school too early it's SO NOT good for them. Because they mature slower than girls do, it would just be hard on them. Well, great! I have my little boy who hasn't been around kids often, and has no prior schooling, going to school in which he would be too immature to handle the social aspect of it all, and might just not get the hang of the academic side of it either!!! AAHHH!!! That's pretty much what I did while decided if he should go to Kindergarten or not.

Back to the story, so he was doing better, which is great, and then today I get this awesome note from the teacher:

"Spencer's doing so well in all areas- socially, academically! He has a lot of fun and is getting along well."

WHAT?!?! MY BOY!!! I gave him HUGE hugs and was so proud of him. I have to say Spencer is one of my MOST favorite people ever. I love him so much, and am so proud to be his mom.

Impressions of Zimbabwe…Harare to be exact.

*** I wrote this blog out a few days after we got here, these were my first impressions, and I did make little edits where they were needed***

It was an incredibly long flight, but not too bad while sitting in first class. Spencer was able to sleep 8 hours of the 15 hour flight we had (which was our longest leg, yep we had one short flight before that and one after). When we got to the Jo-burg airport, I was quite worried that it would be a repeat of Kinshasa, which to say the least wasn’t appealing at all. Smelly, chaotic and people EVERYWHERE! Jo-burg was very nice, orderly and easy to maneuver in. When we got to Harare, then I thought, okay this is it, this is where the bad airport is…HAHA NOT SO!!! It was beautiful! We found out that it is only about 4-5 years old, and it was great. Didn’t have lots of people, smelled nice, and it was VERY orderly. We got all 9 of our bags and were able to get going very quickly. A bonus to this was that we live only 15-20 minutes away from the airport!!! The roads were paved and nice, and there wasn’t a ton of people milling around outside. I was impressed!

Getting to our house was amazing. I have to say amazing because it’s beautiful! I feel like we are rich somehow with this house.

We have a fire pit, with tables and chairs outside, along with our pool which does have a rock formation around part of it and a slide that comes out of the rocks…but that is not in use.

If you look right at the back of the pool you will see a light part on the rock, that is the slide, where the blue paint goes up on the side of the pool.

We have two Master Bedrooms…along with two Master Baths!!! They are upscale too, no little tub for me to soak in. It’s like a jetted tub, without the jets. Spencer took a bath in ours and looked around when he sat down and said, “Don’t fill the tub with too much water or it’ll come up to my shoulders!” Are we loving it here…YES!!!

Are there not so great stuff going on..sure. Our car doesn’t work, the phones aren’t the best here, and we could definitely run out of water at any time. Also the truck which brought some of our stuff cut our home phone line, so we don’t have that, so all we have is Tyler’s cell phone. Luckily today I did get one.(Edit as of today 11/25: we all have phones and a landline and the car is working fine...just waiting on the HHE, which has all of our stuff.)

Are there awesome things going on…YES. We got part of our things the day after we got here?!!??! AMAZING!!! The weather is GORGEOUS!! I mean really, paradise gorgeous! We went to a friends’ house Sat. night and sat outside the entire time. Didn’t get too hot or too cold. And we were even able to use their fire pit to roast marshmallows!!! It was great! The yards are big and it’s just great.

Bugs..I’ve only seen two cockroaches here so far, but lots of spiders. Which they just run away or I call for Tyler to kill them. They are the weird looking spiders too, I’ll have to try to find a picture of them. Other than that it has been great. The Zimbabwean people are nice, happy, smiling people. Our maid and gardener are wonderful people too. They live on the property with us, and I feel like we are a big happy family already!!

Spencer did start his first day of school today.
I was so nervous for him so I didn’t get much sleep last night, and he was nervous about making friends. I told him he would have lots of friends quickly. The people at HIS (Harare International School) are wonderful too, so kind and ready to help us. I’m worried about him and the car/bus that takes him and picks him up from school. But after this first week he should be able to get the hang of it. I hope, and he has. He doesn't like the weekends, because he would rather be at school.

That’s all for now. Maybe I’ll have Spencer get on here and tell me what to write about what he thinks about Zimbabwe so far.
There will be another post with all of our house pictures on it as well. :)

FINALLY...Disneyland

(9th Update)

Prepare for a Disneyland picture crazy blog! I tried to narrow down, but there are too many GREAT pictures. :) so...enjoy!!

Walking into Disneyland, our hotel was right across the street (thanks Seth and Jess for the recommendation). 

Spencer's first look into Disneyland.

AND...here it is!!!!!! Dannon's crazy Disneyland, down to business, goofy hat wearin', fanny pack totin' self. Tyler and I thought he looked crazy, so I had to take a picture. :) 

Can't go to Disneyland without a picture with Mickey Mouse!

And Minnie of course! This was at Minnie's breakfast which was my favorite!

Spencer with Eeyore, who I believe Spencer felt so bad for because he kept trying to give him hugs to make him happy. :) 

I caught that wicked witch watching us!

Ready to ride the Peter Pan ride.

Spencer amazed by Small World. :) This is why we went to get these kind of looks out of him. 

In wonderment.

So we are walking into California Adventure, and I hear something in the distance. Wait...could it be?? REALLY!?!?! High School Musical!!! I love the songs they sing on there, and just the fact it's a musical. So we had to stop and watch, it was SO HOT (yeah while we were there it was 107 and 104 degrees outside!). 

While watching them, they picked Ally out to dance with them. 

THEN...they picked Spencer to be one of the SUPERSTARS!!!!! It was great. Although when they said his name was Spencer and he was from Apple Valley, I'm pretty sure they didn't believe he was saying Africa. :) 

We went to the Aladdin show, which I wouldn't have put in here, except it was a hilarious show!!! SO GREAT! That genie is funny, and does jokes about the times now. He did one about Jon and Kate, and then one about "tweeting my peeps". 

In some of the teacups in The Bug's Life. We love spinning round and round. 

Watching fireworks.

One of the fireworks....a heart. 

Another parade we saw, the Celebrate parade. 

Us in front of Mickey Mouse's note to us, thanking us for celebrating with him. He's so sweet. 

My strong muscle man!

Making a movie Spencer??

Then we decide to catch the Jedi training show. Hoping that Ally and Spencer would be chosen. 

AND....YEP they were both picked!! Here's Spencer all ready to get trained.

Training, he's on the left with the blue hat. 

Uh-OH!!! Darth Vader decided to crash the training, luckily at the end. 

Then, Darth Maul decided to stop by too?!?!

So Spencer fought Darth Vader....and....he totally whooped him!

They left and Spencer got his certificate of being Jedi Trained and ready to fight! 

Tyler and Spencer with Buzz. Spencer was all about Buzz and Woody during Disneyland, since he loved those rides the best. 

The next parade we saw was the Pixar parade which was LOVED! Our family was the only ones to go and see it, but it was great, especially since they would spray us with water. 

Yeah, those people on the poles were swinging all the way around those poles, up and over. CRAZY!

My favorite ride??? SCREAMIN'!!!!! This is me and Ally at the beginning of the ride. See you get on the roller coaster and then it takes you around this corner and you stop. Next there is a countdown and then it goes from 0 to 55 mph in like 5 seconds!!! It's crazy fun! 

Happy Birthday Spencer!!! Opening presents in our hotel room. 

Dancing with Goofy at Goofy's Kitchen (which we ate at that morning for his birthday). 

Chip 'n' Dale making Spencer crazy by messing with his stuff, luckily he didn't get too frustrated by them and laughed. :) 

Posing with Princess Aurora (or Sleeping Beauty), she asked him to pose like that because that's what her Prince Charming does. He thought all the princesses were so "beautiful". Notice the birthday ears we got him too. :) 

I have to say that this was my first time at any Disneyland (or world) and Spencer's first time. It was a great place, and we had a ton of fun!!! Thanks everyone who went with us. I know why everyone says Dreams Come True here. Magical for sure. 

Thanks Walt Disney!!!