Smiles

I have a lot of things to be thankful for. A lot of things make me smile every single day. Here are just a few things that made me smile this week:

My family

Friends

The gospel

Playing Clara Barton in a Social Studies lesson plan one of my peers presented. Haha!

WALL-E

Waking up to Landon saying "Emmmm-eeeee!"

Leaving "my" room to find Lexie sitting in the hall, staring at my door, waiting for me to come out and then hearing her say, "Yay! Emily's awake! I didn't even have to pester you!"

Subbing at the preschool and seeing many of my former kiddos.

Grant telling me that I can still come to his birthday party, even though I'm a girl. (Grant is 4. His birthday is not until April)

Knowing that my cute little brother is going to be fed on Thanksgiving.

The Office

Marcus (the "island boy" in my intern classroom... I'll have to explain what "island boy" means I guess. :) ) calling me over to help him, then explaining that he really didn't need any help, he "just wanted attention." (Okay, so one of my professors always talked about "island boy/girl" and he explained it like this: "You know when you walk in a classroom and everyone is sitting in these cute little pods or tables or three or four desks or maybe even long rows? And then there's that one kid who's sitting all by himself in some forsaken corner? Most teachers call him the trouble student, but I like to call him island boy." I found it humorous and use it all the time now.)

Institute

Text messages

Really good jazz music

Pandora (Thanks, Sage! I'm totally hooked now!)

Finishing The Grim Grotto, Book the 11th of A Series of Unfortunate Events

Cheesy forwarded emails

Playing mom for the weekend

And so much more!

Finally

Wow, so my blog is finally up! It still needs work... lots of work... but it is at least up, right? So in the spirit of all things Disney, here are some pictures of my most recent Disneyland trip.

So, Disneyland in October rocks. I LOVE Halloweentime at Disneyland. We drove up early Thursday morning. Morgan and I went to the park on Thursday afternoon at about 3. California Adventure closed at 5 that night because of something to do with High School Musical 3, so we hit that first. It wasn't crowded and we had a blast. Then we headed over to Disneyland until it closed at 8. (Curse you, High School Musical 3: The One Where the Actors Are Way Too Old to be High School Students) But for only 5 hours at the parks, we got quite a bit done. It was fun!

On Friday, Morgan, Britt, Tanner, and I went to Disneyland. We got there about twenty minutes before the park opened. Usually, there is a line halfway to California Adventure by this time. So we were pretty shocked when NObody was there. We thought we got the time wrong and were there an hour and twenty minutes before the park opened. But I guess we were just lucky! We were the FIRST people in line, which has never happened to me before and probably never will again. It was awesome. Tanner had NEVER been to Disneyland, so it was a great first experience for him! Friday was probably the best Disneyland day I've had in ages. The park was totally dead and by noon, we had gone on just about everything. Including Peter Pan. It was a Disneyland miracle. AND we still had about 6 fastpasses to use for later. So we headed over to California Adventure. It was a very, very productive Disney day. We hit all the big rides at least twice pretty much. It was great.

Saturday, Whitney and Jesse joined the group. It was much more crowded, but still fun.

The pictures below are not in order and I'll have to add more later, but for now... enjoy!

Oh Disneyland, you never fail to make me laugh. You don't merely provide me with a hilarious outfit to make fun of. You give me TWO hilarious outfits to make fun of.

Whitney's favorite ride! (I thought I was the only one crazy enough to think this ride is entertaining!)

Billy Hill!

Jesse was not too happy to be a subject in this one.

Ew. I HATE teacups. But Jess and Morgan had fun. :)

Don't they look excited?

Ok. So don't buy Walmart brand Ziplocks. Just don't. Trust me on this one. This is what they will look like after sitting in your backpack all day.

And this is what your backpack will look like. Oh joy.

We love to bring bubbles to Disneyland. It makes the lines much more enjoyable and the little kids LOVE it.

Antonio waiting for the train. I hadn't rode the train for YEARS. It was pretty entertaining.

Tanner getting ready to go on Grizzly.

I love this ride so much! Doesn't Morgan look stylish in her cool glasses?

Mission accomplished.

Woohoo, I win! (Barely)

The guys all love Morgan's attractive new smile!

Aw, precious.

Tanner showing off his new style.

Nice....

Morgan and Tanner sharing a special moment.... haha. Just kidding.

Playing cards on Splash Mountain.

Continuing our card game on Tower of Terror. We're such cheaters!

Tanner's first ToT experience. We thought we'd share the love.

Tanner's first REAL rollercoaster. Ever. You can't really see it, but Jesse is playing with a Rubix Cube, I'm reading, and Morgan is... well Morgan is a very nice person. Hehe.