Our very own Groundhog Day

Remember the movie 'Groundhog Day,' starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell? If not, here's the premise...Self-centered and sour TV meteorologist Phil Connor (Bill Murray) and his producer Rita (Andie MacDowell) from the fictional Pittsburgh television station WPBH-TV9 travel to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to cover the annual Groundhog Day festivities. Having grown tired of this assignment, the small town and his crew members, Phil grudgingly gives his report and attempts to return back to Pittsburgh when a blizzard (which he predicted would miss the area) shuts down the main roads. Phil and his team are forced to stay in town an extra day. Phil wakes up to find that he is reliving February 2 again. The day plays out exactly as it did previously, day after day.

The reason I am sharing this movie flashback with you is because I feel like my family is caught in our own little version of Groundhog Day. Since I have been absent from the blogging world, let me update you all a bit. As you know, we have been on vacation in Florida this past week. Our vacation was suppose to come to an end last night {Sunday.} But, due to dense fog back at home, our flight was canceled. But not until we returned our rental van, checked in through airport security, with all four kids and our tons of luggage, and then boarded the plane. Why they couldn't have canceled it a bit sooner, I don't know. So, we were forced to make the best of it, and we did. We rented another vehicle, and drove about 30 mintues away to Daytona Beach, where we stayed at a beachfront hotel suite. We ordered pizza, played hide and go seek in our little hotel room, woke up to a beautiful ocean view, ate pancakes in the hotel restaurant, and swam in the pool before our late check-out of 1 p.m. Then, back to the airport this afternoon, for our scheduled flight of 5 p.m. Knowing it was still foggy at home, we waited for as long as we could to return our rental van, and check in to airport security with our four young kids and tons of luggage. But just as we got settled in to wait for our flight at the gate, it was announced...canceled yet again!

This time we took a local hotel shuttle back to yet another hotel suite, and are praying for a happy ending to our own Groundhog Day movie tomorrow. Please don't let us wake up, repack our luggage, cart our four young children and tons of luggage through the airport, only to find out about our flight being canceled once again! We are tired of sleeping in hotels, of unpacking and repacking our luggage, of transporting our four children to and from the airport, and through airport security. We are just plain tired. The kids are hanging in there well. There have been minimal meltdowns, and little complaints about being shuffled to and fro. But we are all longing for our own beds, and a sense of normalcy again. And poor little Gavin is needing a regular schedule again!

So if you could all say a little prayer for us, it would be appreciated. We are still waiting to find out what time our rescheduled flight is for tomorrow, but hopefully it's our flight home for real this time!

Princess Dreams

Yesterday our family, along with my best friend Julie, went to Universal Studios. I could do a whole long post about our day. No, wait. I could do several posts about our day at Universal. There was the Dr. Seuss themed section of the park. And the Jurassic Park themed section. There was the Dueling Dragons and The Incredible Hulk roller coasters. And there was The Marvel Heros section of Universal...a boy's dream come true. Gabe & Cooper's dream anyway, because they had this...




It was a 3-D Spiderman ride. And it truly was amazing.
As I said, I could write several posts about Universal alone, and will post more photos from our day at Universal Studios later.

But for now, I want to focus on what's to come. Tomorrow we visit Disney World's Magic Kingdom. We went to Downtown Disney two nights ago where they had statues of the various Disney Princesses. And when Chloe saw them, she squealed quite loudly with excitement and ran to them. She wanted to hug them, and talk to them, and pose like them. It was simply adorable.

Here she is admiring the larger than life princesses at Downtown Disney...









I absolutely can not wait until she sees 'the real thing' tomorrow. Yes, I know the princesses we see at The Magic Kingdom won't really be the real thing. It's all just make believe. But to Chloe, it's real. It's a dream come true! It's 'her princesses,' as she calls them, in real life. Oh to be a child again :-) Seeing life through their eyes really is magical.

Up, Up and Away

The Sanders Family is currently in Orlando, Florida. Yes, I am blogging from vacation. But really, if you're an avid follower of this blog, then you shouldn't be surprised about this fact. I have, after all, blogged from vacation before. I've blogged from Minnesota. I've blogged from Myrtle Beach. And I've blogged from Branson. Addicted to blogging? Perhaps.

I wanted to start this vacation blog series from the beginning, so this first post will be about our flight to Florida. We arrived at our small local airport Sunday night. Both sets of grandparents also came to the airport to help with the kids and bid us farewell. Sweet, I know! We packed extremely light, and booked a non-stop flight, all to minimize our airport hassles with four small children. Each child had a backpack and a rolling carryon suitcase that they were able to take care of themselves...


{Note...all of these photos are SOTC - Straight out of the camera. No editing, due to not having Photoshop on my laptop. And yes, no editing of the photos is killing me, in case you were wondering ;-)That will change as soon as we get home!}

We were good to go. Until, that is, the airport employees were running our checked car seat through the x-ray machine. They actually got it stuck. Yes, stuck! You'd think we were the first people to ever check a car seat before, and I know that's not true. The security people were laughing, noticing that they had drawn a crowd of onlookers intrigued with the fact that they had actually gotten a car seat stuck in the security check point. It really was quite humorous...

.


Thankfully, after a few minutes and a security man crawling in through the machine to tug on the car seat, it dislodged. So, we were able to take Gavin with us ;-)

Although I'm sure my mom would have gladly kept Gavin at home with her. Here she is helping to keep him content and getting some last minute baby time in...

{My mom with Gavin}


And Jason's mom was helping to keep Gabe and Cooper content too, with walks around the airport to take in the sights...



It was then time to go through our final security check before boarding the plane. The kids did so well! Chloe in particular, was so funny. She had to do everything herself, with no help, being the fiercely independent girl that she is. But she couldn't quite lift her heavy backpack up onto the conveyor belt all by herself. Instead of asking for help, she unzipped her bag, took her doll out and set it up on the conveyor belt, and then lifted the backpack up. It was quite adorable really.

The kids then had the chance to look out the window at our plane waiting for us outside...



And then humored mom with a quick smile for the camera...



...before we all got on the plane.

But let me back up for a minute. We did attract a lot of attention at the airport. Our three young children, all fitted with their own backpacks and with rolling luggage in tow, followed by us two parents, me carrying Gavin and Jason pushing the stroller with the rest of our luggage, must have been quite the scene. I overheard several sweet comments, such as "Awww...what cute kids" and "What a beautiful family!" And then there were the ever-popular "Wow! Are all those kids yours?" and "You've certainly got your hands full!" I sure am glad that we can provide entertainment for our fellow travelers ;-)

Once on the plane it was smooth sailing, or shall I say smooth flying! I sat with Chloe and Gavin, while Jason, Gabe and Cooper sat across the isle from us. It worked out perfectly...





Chloe did this most of the flight...



Watching her favorites, Wall-e and The Little Mermaid. To tell you the truth, I'm not quite sure she realized we were flying up in the air. Since it was dark, I don't think she actually understood that we were in a plane that was up in the sky. But she had a good time, regardless.

And Gabe and Cooper also did this...



{Thanks Damon, for lending us borrow your brand new DVD player so that we could have two!!! What a generous friend Gabe has!}

Once in Orlando, we picked up our rental mini-van, drove to Orlando's larger airport to pick-up my friend Julie who is vacationing with us for the first part of the week from Colorado, and headed to our resort, which is BEAUTIFUL by the way!

But I will continue on later. For now, it's time to get back to vacation! Stay tuned...

Disney Here We Come

For those of you who don't know, we are going to the place 'Where Dreams Come True'...



That's right! We're packing up our four kiddos and heading to Disney World.
I'm not banking on our dreams coming true as the slogan claims. But I can say for sure that our kids are extremely excited for this trip!

And I'm excited too! Perhaps most excited because we're flying, for our original plan was to drive.

For those of you who don't know, my husband really likes to drive. Not that he doesn't like to fly per-say, but he just really, really enjoys driving. And I really don't mind road trips either, when they don't involve 22.5 hours, one-way, straight-through, with four kids, and two in diapers. Yes, can you imagine how much fun that road trip would have been? We would need to extend our vacation another week just to recover from the traveling!

So again, I can't say enough how incredibly thankful I am that we're flying!

And the kids are excited for the flight too! This is only the second time Gabe and Cooper have flown. Their first airplane ride was when Gabe was 2 1/2 years old, and Cooper was just one month old. We flew to Maine for an extended-family vacation. Again, thankful that we flew for that trip, and didn't drive!

I have actually been on some really rough road trips. There was the time when I was pregnant with Gabe and we drove to Mexico for a youth group mission trip {my husband is a youth pastor, in case you all forgot.}And yes, you read that right, we DROVE to Mexico. In an old, beaten-down, 15-passenger van that we actually rented from a place called 'Rent-a-Wreck.' The name was fitting, believe me! And Jason had to pull over several times all the way home so that I could stop and, well, vomit! Yuck. While a van full of thirteen youth watched. Bad road trip memories for sure!

Then there was the time that Gabe was 18 months old and I was pregnant with Cooper. We drove 24 hours straight to Nevada, where we stopped and spent the night at a motel before driving the rest of the way to Yosemite National Park in California. Now that was a LONG trip. Jason jokes that both Gabe and Mom were crying at various times along the way. I was again suffering from morning sickness, or shall I say, 'All Day' sickness. Again, bad road trip memories.

And just so that you don't think I'm completely crazy, both of the above mentioned trips were booked and planned long before I knew I was pregnant!

But I digress...back to our pending vacation. I've been busy getting things ready at home so that we're prepared for our trip. With four kids, there's a lot to prepare. Our plans are to fly there Sunday night, and arrive at our resort at Disney. Then we will stay there for seven days, and go to Disney and Universal Studios, and of course enjoy all that our resort has to offer! It's like a mini water park there, and our kids LOVE to swim, so our resort will be a vacation in itself! To top it off, my best friend Julie is flying in from Colorado to spend three days with us in Orlando! We're set to have a great vacation!

I will, of course, keep you updated on our trip along the way, so stay tuned! For now, I'd better go and continue to get ready!

Let is snow, Let it snow, Let it snow

Are you singing it? I love that song, partially because I love the snow. Partially because I love Christmas. So it's a winner in my book.

We have definitely gotten our fair share of snow where I live, and that made for a beautiful white Christmas. It also made for a wonderful setting for some photos of the kids yesterday.

Enjoy! {And remember to click on any of the photos you'd like to view larger!}









Just the girls...

Christmas 2009

We had a wonderful and very blessed Christmas this year. Of course, it's always a fun Christmas with little ones. The excitement they have at Christmastime is contagious! And since we have four little ones in our house, our Christmas is an extra fun one!

Here's three of the four on Christmas morning...



And our fourth, Gavin, experiencing his first Christmas...



Here's Dad with Gavin...



And Mom {aka Me} with Gavin...



And the presents...there were oh so many! When you have four kids, that just seems to happen!

I think the highlights of the boys' presents were their Leapster, Nintendo DSI and Nintendo Wii video games. Gabe and Cooper are video game addicts, yikes!

Chloe got a Pottery Barn Kids doll named Chloe! How cute!



And Jason got an interesting present from his parents...



Yes, I know. Attractive, isn't it?!?
They found this Shriners hat at a tag sale and thought Jason would appreciate the humor of it. Notice it says, "snacks." If you know Jason, you'd find this very appropriate, because food is a passion of his. If he was in fact a member of the Shriners, he would surely be on snack detail.

And I got many presents as well, but the sweetest gift was flowers from my wonderful husband. He knows how much I love daisies...



Merry Christmas to you and yours! I hope it was as fun as ours, and I hope you were able to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas, God's gift to us, Jesus Christ! We are truly blessed!

Chloe the Christmas Ornament Caper

Chloe is a two-year-old through and through.

She looks innocent, doesn't she {notice the pile of pillows on the floor behind her}...



The clasped hands. The huge smile. Sweet, right?

Yes, sweet.

And, sneaky.

Take our Christmas tree for example. Here it is fully decorated...



But if you look closely, you can see some ornament hooks missing their ornaments, like this...



And this...



And then you can see pillows strategically placed on the floor behind the girl sitting sweetly on the ottoman...



And when you pull back those pillows, you can see the missing ornaments...



And you can see this girl 'discovering' the ornaments under the pillows you just pulled back, trying to look shocked and surprised, and saying, "How did that happen mom?"



Sweet, and sneaky. That's our two-year-old Chloe.

Cooper & Gavin

Remember when I wrote about Cooper's love of being a big brother? You can read about it here.

That was four months ago, yet time has not faded that bond Cooper has with Gavin. Cooper just loves him. He loves to talk to Gavin, hold Gavin, feed Gavin his bottle, get things mom needs for Gavin. He really just loves babies, especially his little brother.





And I'd say that judging by the smile on Gavin's face, the feeling is mutual...

Wrestling 2009

The 2009-2010 wrestling season is well underway for Gabe. Practices every Monday & Tuesday, meets the last three weekends.

As you may recall, I wrote about his success in his first season last year, and his success has continued this year. We've gotten a lot of comments about how he's just built for wrestling, or that he 'looks' like a wrestler. He's a little bull for sure, with his strength constantly amazing me. He uses that strength to win a game they play at practice called, "King of the Mat." Here is how the game works, at least the way I understand how it works...They line the kids up from smallest to biggest, and start with the two littlest. The first person to get a take down wins, and gets to stay on the mat, then challenging the next biggest guy, and so on. Our first grader, Gabe, is often the winner, going up against 'the big kids' as he calls them. But his brute strength is perfect for a challenge like that...he's built just like dad! {And I know that Dad is thinking this will really come in handy for football someday!}

Gabe definitely has natural talent for the sport. He is starting to really develop his 'mat presence' and is working on learning technique in practice. But he definitely lacks the experience that some kids have whose parents drive them to meets every single weekend, all over the state and beyond. We've taken Gabe to a few meets close to home, but that's it. He just competed in his third meet of the season. So you can imagine that when there is a wrestler that has wrestled 30 meets versus Gabe's 3, Gabe is going to be at a little disadvantage that comes from all that live wrestling experience.

But, he makes up for it in determination. I am so proud of how hard he works. He has gone out there every single match this year and given it his all, every time. He hasn't won them all, but he has tried his best for them all, and that is to be commended.

So when Gabe placed second today out of four wrestlers in his bracket, he asked Jason and I, "Are you proud of me, even though I didn't win?" And our response, of course, was a resounding, "Yes!" Gabe is hard working and a good sport. And yes, he's talented, but we are most proud of his character, because that's what is hard to come by. There's lots of talented wrestlers out there, but what's talent good for if you don't have sportsmanship to back it up? Not much in our book.

We're definitely proud of our little wrestler!





Here's Gabe with his friend Damon at today's meet...



They're cute...



And goofy...



And good buddies, having both requested to be brothers.
Awww....



And here's Damon's little sister, Bree, with Cooper. I think someone has a little crush...



Don't they look like perfect angels...



Let me tell you, looks can be deceiving. These two can both be a little bit ornery ;-)

With the season not even half over, I look forward to seeing Gabe continue to thrive and develop the kind of character that will take him far, and not just in wrestling.

What do you do when a snowstorm hits?

So, what do you do when a snowstorm hits?

If you're The Sanders Family, you bundle the kiddos up, load up in the family SUV and head out to pick out a farm fresh Christmas tree!

It may sound crazy to some, but it was fun to be out in the snowy weather getting our tree.

And the kids loved it too!

We are blessed to have Jason's parents living close by with a small Christmas tree lot. So Grandpa & Grandma helped us with our tree.

Grandma kept Chloe company...



And Grandpa helped Jason cut down the tree...



And then the boys thought they could drag the tree to our vehicle...





But when Chloe saw that wasn't working out too well, she thought she'd jump in and lend a hand...



Ultimately, it takes more than three Sanders children to load up a Christmas tree.
It takes Dad...



And there is our tree on the top of the Yukon...



Where it stayed until we got home...

Well, no, not really.

We actually lost the tree while driving down the highway. Jason said one of the bungees was faulty ;-) Thankfully, we were only driving about 30 mph due to the blizzard! But it did bring back memories of me as a sixteen-year-old, driving on the same highway, when my Ford Tempo's hood blew up, and then completely off of my car while I was on my way out to Jason's house for a study date. I remember having to drive into Jason's driveway, hoodless, and explain what had happened.

Embarrassing? Yes! But the memories are priceless.

But I digress.

Our snowy farm adventure didn't end there. Let me back up a bit.

After choosing our perfect Christmas tree, we then got to help put the farm animals away in their respective buildings that provide shelter from the storm.

We herded goats...



And pot belly pigs...




And spotted a frozen Ostrich name Big Bird...





Who watched as the pot belly pigs were herded...



And then retreated inside for warmth and Grandma's cookies...



So there was our snow day in a nutshell.
How else would one spend a snow day after all.