Our Disney World Trip

To celebrate the end of Medical School last year we wanted to go to Disney World. Angela was so sad to realize when she was pregnant that we couldn't go anymore. This summer we finally took our dream vacation.

Here we are getting ready to make the drive to Houston to drop off the kids at my parents' house. Christine insisted that Tangy bear and her baby dolls had to wear their own seat belt. Best of all Cinderella doll didn't even complain that she had Tangy bear's butt in her face for the 4 hour drive. Angela missed the kids like crazy the whole trip, but it was very nice to have a break from them.

We left Friday after I got off work. Luckily, I was on call the night before and had to stay up all night, so they sent me home early. So we got a few hours head start. We took a pit stop at the Blue Bell ice cream factory (one of our favorite places to let the kids run and around and get ice cream), but sadly, they were already closed. So we just walked around outside. We stopped a second time at Buccee's our new favorite pit stop.  It's a huge gas station/convenient store famous for their clean bathrooms.  We got a delicious slushy to keep me awake.

Here we are at our resort: Port Orleans, Riverside. We were very impressed by the resort grounds, it was beautiful. It had a very secluded feel, beautiful water ways and bridges.

 The main lodge has a huge water wheel and a nice eating area.

 And you could take a boat to Downtown Disney.

Our first day we arrived we checked into the resort and went to Downtown Disney (via riverboat), got delicious sandwiches at The Earl of Sandwich and ice cream sundays at Geradelli Ice Cream. I was blown away by my classic Rueben sandwich from the Earl of Sandwich. It was amazing! Angela had done a lot of research into what was the best food at Disney World because we really wanted to splurge on good food on our vacation.

For dinner that night we road the monorail to the Contempory Resort, where we ate on the roof top restaurant called the California Grill. It was definitely the nicest restaurant I have ever eaten at. We had the "Oak-fired File of Beef" it was outstanding steak!

This picture was taken with our phones from the monorail so it's blurry, but its the contemporary resort. One of the reasons why we wanted to eat at the California Grill was to watch the Magic Kingdom fire works show from the roof top balcony (they even pipe in the music of the show). After eating, we stepped out to the balcony and watched the show. It was a great start to our vacation.

 It was hard to get a good picture. But that's the castle in the distance.

The next day we went to Epcot. We really didn't have to wait in any lines the whole time we were there. We hit the off season just right.

Epcot is pretty magical. It's amazing how in 50 yards, they can transport you to different countries all around the world. I loved China.

They have this replica Chinese temple which I thought was beautiful. Surprising to me Angela's favorite shop was Japan. They also harvest fresh water pearls in the shop which was really fun to watch.  Angela's favorite rides at Epcot were the Mexico and Norway rides. She loved the World Showcase. I liked test track, soaring over california, and sum of all fears. We ate french pastries during the afternoon and returned to the French Patisserie that night for french sandwiches to eat while we watched the Illumination firework show- which was amazing!

The next day we went to Animal Kingdom. It was really fun. The safari is really cool. I've never been so closed to uncaged animals. Angela got so wet on the river rapids ride that she had to buy new socks and let her shoes dry out during the exotic bird show.

This rhinoceros made me a little nervous.

Our favorite things at animal kingdom were the Finding Nemo show and The Lion King Show.  They were in my opinion Broadway quality theatre. Really amazing! We took this picture of the giraffe because Christine requested a giraffe picture- Angela was texting pictures to kids throughout the trip.

After Animal Kingdom, was the Magic Kingdom, our favorite of the parks. It did make us miss the kids a bit. We will just have to take them back when they are bigger.

I make a pretty good good captain Jack Sparrow, don't I? Pirates of the Caribbean is always a classic ride.We had fun riding our favorite  nostalgic rides like Small World and The Jungle Cruise. Angela loved shopping for the kids, and just looking through all the gift shops.

I love Gaston. We had Lafu's brew at Gaston's Tavern, which was interesting and delicious. We rode the new seven drawfs mine train.

One of the highlights of the trip was eating lunch at Belle's Castle. Angela did sooo much planning and preparing for the trip, which made it turn out great. She had to reserve spots at Belle's castle way in advance. It was an amazing meal, and for lunch it was very reasonably priced.

You get to seat yourself. We chose to sit in the ballroom which was magical.  Amazingly after sitting down, someone magically appears with your pre-ordered food.  I was absolutely baffled by how they could know where we sat. Turns out, that the bracelets you wear for your tickets, have a tracking device on it! It was really cool.

Here's a cupcake with "The Grey Stuff". It was delicious! definitely worth singing about Lumiere.

Two of the mornings we took a romantic boat ride to the Polynesian resort and had Tongan Toast (Deep fried Cinnamon Sugar sour dough bread stuffed with bananas). It was so good we have already attempted to reproduce it at home.

The second to last day, went to Hollywood Studios. Our favorite ride was the toy story one. I beat Angela at the games. It was really fun. And of course the firework show was amazing. Here is an amazing Carrot Cake cupcake we got at Pizza Planet. Hollywood Studios was hosting a "Frozen summer of fun" even while we were there.

Our favorite ride at Magic Kingdom was Splash Mountain. We loved this picture of us!

We ended our trip with one more day at Magic Kingdom, where we got a front row seat at the electrical light parade and the firework show (again thanks to Angela's great planning). It was the perfect ending to a perfect trip.

 When we arrived back in Texas we celebrated Christine's birthday. When Angela asked Christine about having a birthday party with her friends Christine insisted that she just wanted to have a party at GiGi's house, so that's what we did.

 Christine is wearing a cheerleader dress-up outfit with princess jasmine necklace and headpiece. While she was at Gigi's she watch Aladin daily and it has become one of her new favorites.

Angela had post-vacation depression for a week after being home. She's already planning our next trip- this time the kids will get to come too.

Funny Moments

Angela told me that she had a terrible dream last night. In the dream I had abandoned her and she was left with the kids. I told her that that wasn't a dream, that was just Tuesday.

Jacob wants to do everything Christine does.  Yesterday, we went to HEB (Texas grocery store). When you shop at HEB they give your kids Buddy Bucks, and they get to play this spinning machine and collect points that they can trade in for cheap pencils and stuff. Christine loves it! We've never let Jacob do it because we thought he wasn't old enough. Well, yesterday Christine got an instant win, so we were waiting in line to get our free pen and pencil, so Angela took Jacob over the machine.  He took the Buddy Buck from and Angela and without hesitation put it in the machine and pushed the button. He was sooo excited!  I guess he has been paying closer attention than we realized.

Jacob also likes to help cook just like Christine. Christine will set up her chair, and Jacob will climb up and weasel his way right in front of her.

Yesterday when we were cooking, both Jacob and Christine were sitting at the table in the same chair giggling excitedly. Whenever this happens I get a little suspicious. I went over and they had found a snack container with goldfish and were excitedly snarfing down as many as they could before I caught them.

Jacob is not nearly as verbal as Christine was.  He does loving saying "hello" and "bye". His favorite animal sound is "Ba" for sheep. He loves our books with sheep in them so he can make that sound.  He also loves to make "ruff" for a dog.  He's learning how to kiss. He makes a kissing noise and then nuzzles you with his head.

Most of all Jacob is a crazy wiggle worm. Except when other people watch him, then he just snuggles on them until Mommy comes back.  Go figure.

3 months in a Flash

As you can see from our lack of posts, we have been pretty busy the last 3 months. So we'll just do a quick summer wrap-up.  Summer here in Central Texas can be summed up in 1 word: "hot".  This summer was not nearly as hot and dry as last summer, but it was plenty hot to dream of a cooler climate.

Here we are trying to get a good photo shoot for Angela's Spruce Suspender Shorts, which she began selling this summer! Christine is in the background wanting to participate in the photo shoot as well. She has her favorite frozen shirt and Belle glove on.

I love these suspender shorts, and I'm so proud of Angela's pattern.

We started having regular family home evenings. It now is Christine and Jacob's favorite thing we do as a family. Of course all of Christine's baby dolls have to participate.




There is usually a weekly fight between Jacob and the dolls where to sit. Jacob loves dragging the minnie mouse couch over to the table and then shoving the baby dolls off.

Christine loves to make assignments.  The third week, she announced that she would be doing the lesson.  In her usual head-strong fashion, she absolutely refused to change the assignments, and insisted that she would be giving the lesson. She then gave a 10 min lesson on baptism, reading her primary talk, having us sing the baptism song, and assigning Daddy to find the scriptures. She is an amazing little girl.

After family home evening we always have ice cream.

Jacob quickly decided that he liked this tradition very much. That's his death grip on the spoon.

I was on nights at the beginning of the summer, so I chronically had bed-head during the day. Christine insists that the ice cream be "fancy". So it always has spray cool whip, cherries, chocolate sauce, and usually sprinkles.

Summer has been filled with crafting with Mommy, while Daddy's been at work. There is a tomato from the garden ripening on the table.

June started off with my great birthday celebration. The big present was a new big screen TV! It had been time to say goodbye to our previous TV for many years now. But frugality won out time and time again, until finally we could not see the facial expressions of the actors on some of our movies. And Jacob kept playing with the color and tint knobs (yes it was that old of a TV) so the color was never quite right.  

A brief biography of our TV: The TV originally was owned by someone unknown to us for any number of years in the 80s-90s. The owner then donated the TV to the DI, trading it in for something nicer and considering it un-sellable.

That is when it entered into the Salas family. It was first bought by the Deeleuws as their first family TV. With some typical Salas ingenuity a special switch box was employed to allow them to watch new fan-dangled  DVD players with red/white/yellow cords on a TV with only the large cable hook-up. It enjoyed many years of love in their living room, until it was then given to Jessica's younger sister, my lovely wife Angela. I consider it part of Angela's Dowry. We used it in Provo, and then it took a long journey to Houston with us. In Houston it met its next upgrade, the internet! We would plug and unplug the DVD and ROKU player to the switch box to watch our streaming videos. Little did our old TV know it was first made expecting to show VHS tapes and TV shows through the cable wires, that one day it would be playing streaming on demand videos for a library of thousands of shows. The TV then traveled with us to Temple, where it was retired. Quite a good life.

For my birthday dinner we had delicious steak sandwiches with onion strings and fried zucchini. The onion strings were my all time favorite.  Of course there was cheese cake too!

Singing Happy Birthday


Daddy telling a funny joke.

Jacob is getting so big. He loves talking on the phone. He hold up any phone shaped thing to his ear and say "Hello".  He loves cars and toys that make noise. He loves computers, ipads, and cords. He is incredibly clever and can take anything apart.

He loves imitating his sister. He even sings, "Let it go" with her, but doesn't know any of the words.

Christine was born packed with personality. She is very into her princesses and her baby dolls right now. She loves dressing up as princesses and dressing her baby dolls.  Her sense of style she clearly gets from her mother, because whenever I try to pick out Jacob and her clothes, Angela always has to change them, but if I let Christine pick them out. Angela always responds, "Wow, these are really cute outfits you picked out today!" No, no. It was Christine.

Jacob turned one

Jacob turned one at the end of April, marking one year that we've been in Temple. I can't believe it's already been one year, but at the same time, I'm like, is residency OVER yet??? Sheesh. One year down, four more to go. Looking back, it's been a rough year. I've struggled with the newborn stage, having Jeff be gone ALL the time, and being the new girl with very few friends in a podunk town in the middle of nowhere. Poor Jacob didn't get the monthly photo shoots and monthly stats updates like I did with Christine when she was a baby. Jacob, I hope you will forgive me. You are lucky your mama is still alive.

We had a little birthday party two weeks after Jacob's birthday because we wanted to wait until Daddy could celebrate with us. Gigi and Pooh Bear came, and Tangie Bear and Blue (from blue's clues) were also invited (Christine was in charge of the guest list).

I made possibly the worst looking cake I've ever made. I think my cake decorating teacher would throw it in my face. The cake was too moist (though Jeff tells me that's impossible) but at least it tasted good.

 Christine assisted with the candle blowing.

 Then Jacob had his first ever taste of cake.

 He was a big fan of the strawberry cake.

 He gobbled it up quickly

And even ended up licking his plate clean.

Jacob is such a sweet boy. He likes to snuggle when he's not busy running and climbing and causing general destruction.

He says a few words like Daaaa (dad), bye, hi, ahhh duuu (all done), but nothing close to mama yet much to my dismay

He loves to run around outside. His favorite is playing in Christine's play house. For his birthday we got him a water table that he has so much fun with. Combine that with our splash pad and sand table and the kids have a pretty awesome time playing outside.

Jacob's main goal in life is to kill me. Recently he was chocking and I had to use the baby Heimlich maneuver on him. I had him upside down on my arm and wacked his back with my palm and out flew a metal bolt. "What the?!!!! Where did that even come from??"  I keep a pretty clean house, I try pretty dang hard to keep all small objects off the floor because Jacob puts everything in his mouth. I sweep my kitchen floor several times a day and had just mopped the kitchen floor spotless the night before the incident. How could he have possibly found a random metal bolt somewhere in the kitchen? a few hours later, Jacob was playing in the kitchen while Christine was finishing eating lunch at the table when I notice that Jacob has something in his hand: a metal washer. WHERE ARE THESE THINGS COMING FROM???? At the time he was under the table, so I get down on the floor and climbed under the kitchen table to figure out where these chocking hazards are coming from. Turns out he had UNSCREWED it from the table leg. I checked all the other bolts on the the table to see if any were loose and they were all tight. (afterwards I had Jeff take a wrench to all of them again to make sure they were extra extra tight). I was just baffled. He is deconstructing my furniture!  He must have been working on unscrewing that thing for weeks. Spinning and spinning it looser and looser until he got it off. Ahhhhhh!

 He loves to read books. Every night we read books together and Jacob loves to pull out a book and bring one to me then climb up on my lap, and when I finish he jumps down and grabs another. Christine of course wants to pick some books out too, so we end up reading about 10-20 books a night; always ending with Good Night Moon.

Sweet Jacob I love you so much!