ITZ versus Chuck E. Cheese's

Okay - to prelude this post, I have to explain something. Chuck E. Cheese's is very effective at advertising. Too effective. They have several commercials that seem to come on every time we watch TV. As a 5 year old, you can only conclude that it is in fact the greatest place on earth and you MUST go there as soon as possible. Unfortunately, we live in southeastern Idaho. A place that brags of many wonderful things - Chuck E. Cheese's not being one of them. So, our little Bria has been waiting all year to try Chuck E. Cheese's while we visited Grandma's house.

When we got to Albuquerque, the great debate started. ITZ versus Chuck E. Cheese's. ITZ is a place similar to Chuck E. Cheese's, but at the same time quite different. Grandpa likes ITZ better, but Grandma thinks the food at Chuck E. Cheese's is better. So, since our kids have such a fun Grandpa, he thought our kids had better try both - just so they could decide for themselves.

ITZ is quite a lot bigger than Chuck E. Cheese's. The food is served kid buffet style - so hot dogs, pizza, pasta and baked potatoes. Something like that. The food part is completely separated from the game part, so it's really easy to get the kids to eat before wanting to play. They had quite a few different dining rooms - a cartoon room, a sports room, a drive-in movie room. It was fun to pick the place to eat. Of course, the kids picked the cartoon room where they had cartoons playing on huge screens for the kiddos to watch while eating.The play area is HUGE and all the games are targeted to both the young and old. I could have spent plenty of time playing myself, but of course, we were really there for the kids.

Max, Orion and Bria eating in the "Cartoon" room. It was hard to get any of them to look since they were so enthralled with the huge TVs. This is pretty much the only picture we took. I made the kids use some of their tickets in the photo booth. They had SOOOO much fun!

Chuck E. Cheese on the other hand really serves much superior pizza. It is smaller, and so are the games. But, for a little 3-year old boy, the rides were perfect. By the time we went to Chuck E. Cheese's, Bria had caught on the the whole "ticket" idea and was disappointed that most of the games were just to ride and didn't spit out tickets.

Bria found out that the Sponge Bob game gave the most tickets, so she pretty much spent her whole time trying to win more tickets.

Max LOVED the Bob the Builder ride, and took several turns until the line got so long behind him, I finally had to turn his attention somewhere else!

All in all, I think the kids got pretty spoiled going to both. It was so fun to watch their little eyes light up at all the fun going on around them. Thanks, grandpa, for being such a trooper and letting our kids have so much fun!

10 Reasons we LOVE Grandma & Grandpa Martin's House

Albuquerque is fun to visit for a lot of reasons. But, our favorite reason is visiting Grandma and Grandpa. So, here are our favorite things about visiting Grandma and Grandpa's house (in no particular order):

1. The Bouncy House

Max was so fun to watch with the bouncy house. He couldn't decide if it was safe to get in or not, so he spent a good hour running around the outside, teasing the kids on the inside. No matter how hard we tried to get him to go in, he wanted nothing to do with it. Then, after an hour of investigation, he finally decided that it was safe, got in, and we couldn't get him out until it was time to go in for the day. It was SO CUTE!!

2. Feeding the Turtles

Grandma and Grandpa have 3 small turtles that live in their backyard. Every day, the turtles come to the back door looking for something to eat. The kids LOVE giving them bites of bread. I didn't get any pictures this year, but this is Max feeding one of the turtles last year. Bria loves the turtles so much, she talks about them at home all year long!

3. The Slip-n-slide

Yet another fun thing to do at Grandma & Grandpa's. The kids LOVE it!! They played for hours one afternoon with Bion and Orion. Thank you Grandpa for all the work putting up the bouncy house and the slip-n-slide!!

I didn't take any pictures!! DARN! Dave took our camera to Colorado thinking that he would want to take a million pictures, but in the end he only ended up with 13 total. Meanwhile, I was borrowing my mom's camera and ended up with over 200!! Maybe we should have re-thought the camera situation. But, really, I think we got plenty of pictures....just missed a few things like the kids playing on the slip-n-slide.

4. Sleeping Over

Bria, Max and I shared a room. But, I didn't particularly want to share a bed with TWO wiggly sleepers, so I had Max sleep on the floor. The only problem is that he's such a mover, he kept getting caught under the bed in the middle of the night. So, Grandpa got out a cot and we set it up next to the bed. Max thought he had the COOLEST bed EVER!! He was just about ready to take the thing home!

Bria, on the other hand, thought that sharing a bed with mom was an extra special treat. She had been looking forward for months to having a sleepover with mom. She sleeps a lot more still, but likes to cuddle, so often ends up in the middle of the bed.

Probably my favorite part of sharing a room with Bria and Max is discovering that Max talks in his sleep. I don't normally spend a lot of time around him in the middle of the night, but he apparently has very vivid dreams and talks about them while he's sleeping. My favorite was hearing him shout "Nemo!! NO! NEMO!!"

5. Visiting the family

Nothing gets better than spending time visiting everyone we haven't seen in such a long time. We had an extra special treat this time because my sister is living there with her twins. Addison(but everyone calls her Addibelle) and Payson are 3 months old - and they are DARLING! It was so much fun to watch Bria and Max around the babies. It'll be fun to see how they are with our new baby in a couple of months.

Chamron holding Addibelle and me holding Payson. Grandpa's taking a break from grilling some burgers.

Grandpa with Payson. You can see just a little bit of Addibelle in the background with me. I couldn't get enough of holding those cute, cute babies!!

6. The backyard playground

7. Orion's toys

Orion has probably every book and toy you can imagine. He is also very generous and doesn't mind sharing his toys with our kids. I can't even remember the number of hours the three of them spent playing in his bedroom. Thanks, Orion!!

8. Playing with cousins

Bria hasn't ever played baseball before, but she did AWESOME!! She didn't hit the ball every time, but quite a few considering she hasn't ever played before. Orion is a pro! He hit the ball into the neighbor's yard several times. It was so fun to watch them play!

9. The hot tub

To our kids, the hot tub is just like a kid-size swimming pool. Bria probably would have gotten in every day if we would have let her. Max on the other hand was a little more reserved. He didn't ever actually get in, but we did convince him to soak his feet. So much for all the $$ on Little Swimmers! Hopefully he'll get over his water anxiety by the time swimming lessons start in a couple of weeks!

Max, Orion and Bria.

Max and Bion.

10. Of course, because Grandma and Grandpa are there!!!

Christmas Carol Train Tour

Disney is coming out with a new A Christmas Carol movie this fall. It stars Jim Carrey (as Scrooge). It is supposed to be in 3-D and comes out November 6th, which is perfect because that's Bria's birthday. The movie is going to have the same type of animation as Polar Express.

To promote the movie, Disney has a Christmas Carol Train Tour traveling the country. It just happened to be in Albuquerque while we were there, so of course we wanted to go. Although, we just about turned around when we realized that there was a 1 1/2 hour wait just to get on the train. They kids did INCREDIBLE waiting in the heat and were SO excited by the time we got on the train.

Bion, Orion, Max and Bria waiting in line. We were standing right next to the train. It was SOOO hot!! Poor Orion only had a sweatshirt until Pa (grandpa) went and got him a t-shirt. The kids had a really hard waiting for so long!! Disney was really accommodating and gave all the kids in line activity worksheets to keep them busy. Every once in a while in line they had fake snow and a fan blowing cool water onto the waiting people. It was so strange thinking so much about Christmas on such a hot day! (In all fairness, though...it was a cooler day for Albuquerque, but for us northerners, it was pretty darn hot!)

Once we finally got on the train, it was amazing!! They had tons of concept art and costumes they used for the movie. I think a lot of the cool technical stuff went way over the kids heads, but it was fun to find out how they make movies like this.

The interactive computers were a hit! You could touch your finger anywhere on the map (like Tiny Tim's house) and the computer would fly you through the air and take you inside what it will look like in the movie. The kids could have probable stayed there all day!

When they make these new kind of animated movies, they build models of pretty much everything, but leave them white. Then, they film every possible angle to upload into the computer. Once it's on the computer, they add all the color. They had several of the actual models that were used to make the movie. It was cool!!

Getting Ready is A LOT of work!!

We did a lot on our trip to Albuquerque, so I'm going back through and doing the posts in order. It might take a little bit of time - there are literally over 200 pictures!! But, it was loads of fun! We've been so tired in the week we've gotten back that it seems like nothings gotten done! So, here is the beginning of our trip:



Today was the day we were supposed to leave for our trip. Dave had to go to Colorado. He is working on his Master's degree online, but this summer (and last) he has had to go to the campus to do a week of intensives. Basically, he goes to school all day for a week. Instead of staying home and sitting around all week by ourselves, me and the kids have gone down to Albuquerque to visit grandma and grandpa.


This year, it was soooo much work to get ready - I'm sure in part due to my extremely slow and ever growing body. Dave had to work the day we were leaving and my plan was to have everything ready before but the packing. Instead, I had loads of housework, 2 loads of laundry, all the packing and a very busy little boy!

Max is generally very well mannered and fairly mellow. He definitely doesn't just sit around, but he stays out of trouble. Until.....mom needs to pay to spend the day frantically running around getting ready for our almost 2 week trip. The morning started out with quite the fiasco. We have a little resin figurine of 2 bears holding 2 dolls. Max calls it our "happily family". He regularly carries it around the house as a prized possession. But, for some strange reason, he decided it would be a great idea to throw it as high up as he could and try to catch it. Unfortunately, instead of catching it back in his hands, it landed smack in the middle of his forehead. He got a pretty good little cut that of course was gushing blood. This little figurine is quite hard, and I'm honestly surprised it didn't leave him with a concussion. But, he did have quite the bout of tears and mom had to spend quite a bit of time calming him down.



Poor Max with his gusher all bandaged up!

So, I'm thinking....crisis solved. I had the kids sit down to watch a movie so I could continue with the days list of "to-do's". I should have known my kids better. They don't ever sit down and just watch TV, so why would they start on a day filled with so much anticipation?!?

Enter crisis number 2:

Max is a pretty lucky kid with this one. As I was packing, I realized that I forgot to get Bria some clean underwear. 2 weeks with the same pair is a little much, so instead of dragging my tired and fat body down the stairs myself, I asked Bria to run down and grab all the clean underwear in her dresser. She has an armoir dresser, so there are drawers on the bottom and shelves with doors on the top. Since Max is such a helpful and good boy, he decided he would just go take care of the task himself. Before I could even convince Bria to go down the stairs, we heard Max scream. He apparently pulled her drawers out and climbed on them to reach the shelves in the top of her dresser. Since there was so much weight in the front, the dresser fell forward, right on Max. Luckily - no VERY luckily - Bria has a little princess tea table that the dresser fell onto. So instead of crushing (and badly injuring or even killing) Max, there was a nice little crawl space that he would get out. It scared him, but other than that, he didn't even have a scratch. I, on the other hand, was completely distressed. There was a little boy at Dave's school last year who lost a 4 year old sister because she pulled a TV stand down on herself. So, needless to say, I had Max pretty close to my side for the rest of the day.

After a long day of packing and we started the first leg of our 14 hour drive at 6:00 p.m.