Family Photos

For BYU Homecoming the College of Education put on an Alumni tailgate party and offered free family portraits. We weren't so sure about how well the photos would turn out, but I just got the CD today and I am SO pleased! Help me pick out the best one to print! OK? You can vote in the comments or I am going to put a poll in the sidebar. Thanks! (you can click on the photos to see larger)

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Karate Kid

Ryan's latest endeavor has been Karate. He has wanted lessons for years so I finally enrolled him. He has really enjoyed his karate class. And last week just took his first belt test. He was recognized as one of the hardest workers in his class and now has his Gold Stripe Belt! Great Job Ryan!

California Vacation! Part 4! Final!

We went into Downtown Disney for our "souvenEARS". We decided for our family souvenir to make a Build-A-Bear. There is a bear that says "Custom made at Downtown Disney" on one foot and the other foot has a mickey silhouette and there are Mickey Silhouettes in the ears too! It is soooo cute! We LOVE Build-a-bear and we LOVE Disney so this was perfect for this trip. (pictures forthcoming)

It was getting late and walking back to the hotel was not as much fun, because we were all so exhausted from our fabulous day at Disney. We zonked out pretty hard when we got back and there were no early risers the next day! We did homework in the morning and then we were off to the Beach! We went to Corona Del Mar because that was the beach Aaron's family called their own. It also has some pretty cool tide pools. The Tide was WAY too high so we didn't get to see tide pools, but we had fun playing in the waves and sand.


We built an awesome sandcastle. Tessa was in charge of telling everyone how she wanted it made and everyone pitched in at some point or another. Aaron made an awesome mote around the castle! We stayed for a few hours. We wanted to stay to watch the sunset, but we were starving so we went to Outback Steakhouse for dinner and by the time we were done the sun had already set. Oh well.

evidence that Nathan was there....

Saturday was our drive back. We drove straight through. It was a hard drive and stopping midway might have been better, but really being home was great.

I think it was WAY too short of a vacation, but overall we had a great time and made some great memories.

California Vacation! Part 3!

After Big Thunder Ranch, we went to Space Mountain. I didn't like the Halloween Theme on Space Mountain either--I thought it was too creepy for little kids. We then went on the Matterhorn which is so fun! Ada really wanted to do the Tea Cups and Kielle was a GREAT big sister and went on with her. She was looking kind of pale afterwards--she said " I hope Ada knows how much I love her!"

"Why did I agree to get on this ride?"

Not feeling so hot after all that spinning!

Our next ride was Small World. I love the way they have updated it and I love how at the end everyone is dressed all in white to show that even though were are from all over the world we are essentially all the same.


We waited in line for about 20 minutes for Peter Pan's Flight. It wasn't open last time we went so we wanted to go on on it. Everyone was a bit disappointed because the ride was super short, so it was a let down for the length of time we were in line.

The kids LOVE Innoventions. We spent about 45 mins in there. It is a pretty awesome experience. We took a ride on the Monorail in the private rear compartment. The kids were giddy and excited about that. We asked the cast member if he would "make our dreams come true and let us sit back there!" We had to have our last ride as Pirates--just like last time and as we were walking out Nathan walked us into Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln. We got to see the last showing of the night. The kids really enjoyed the presentation and it was a nice end to our day at Disney.

California Vacation Part 2

The next day we went to Disneyland! We were all up super early, because we were so excited to go! The park didn't open until 10am! We went to Downtown Disney and had Jamba Juice for breakfast. They have amazing oatmeal there, did you know that? They slow cook steel cut oats--I want to try to make that too! It is delish! (Oh and we used our Jamba Juice gift cards from Costco -which are a fraction of the regular price--can you see a theme of trying to stay cheap here?)


Disneyland was, of course, AMAZING! It was Halloween at Disneyland. Decorations Everywhere! We could barely fit everything we wanted to do into one day! The park closed at 8pm the day we went. But there were no long lines on any of the rides, I think the worst was a 30 minute wait for Autopia and Space Mountain.


We went on the Astro Orbitor which is the Dumbo ride in space ships. Ada was dive bombing her craft! We did Buzz LightYear Astro Blasters, Autopia, The Matterhorn.



This is how most of our photos of Nathan look--from the back, from a distance, with his hands covering his face, etc. I just felt that we should at least document that a 12-yr-old DID indeed come with us. He was like that one commercial where the mom catches the daughter smiling...and then its gone!





It was so hot so we crossed the park and went on mine and Tessa's favorite ride Splash Mountain! That cooled us down--Kielle especially (she had the front spot in the log) Then we went to the Haunted Mansion which was all decked out for Halloween and the Nightmare before Christmas. I am more of a fan of the regular Haunted Mansion theme.




We went to Pirates of the Caribean and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. The line for that was non-existant so the kids kept riding it over and over while we took Tessa around the corner to the Big Thunder Ranch. They had some Amazing pumpkin carvings there. I wish I had thought to take photos of them. Jessie came and started coloring with Tessa and Ada. That was a fun moment.

California Vacation! Part 1!

We have been planning a trip back to Disneyland ever since the start of the year when we did our Disney Give a Day Get a Day service project. We decided that the best time to go would be when the crowds are low. We had an extremely busy summer and so we decided to wait until school was in session and pull the kids out. We have been working with their teachers since the start of the school year so that they don't get too behind. The person we were most concerned about was Nathan (being his first year in Jr. high) but I think he will be all caught up by the end of next week.

So we left as soon as school was over on Tuesday, Sept 28. We even got out pretty much right on schedule! We drove down to Vegas (although at St. George we felt pretty shot and might stop there the next time if we break the trip up and leave at the same time.) We rolled into Vegas at about 10pm and checked into the Excalibur hotel. Our beds were NOT comfortable, but we did sleep...and it was nice to stop for the night.

The next morning we were on the road to California by 9am and it wasn't much longer til we got to our destination! We stayed at the Peacock Suites which is about 1.5 miles from Disneyland. My friend, Crystal, who I met at EVO and has a travel blog helped me find this hotel for an amazing rate through Expedia. She was such a help and we saved so much money on this trip thanks to her help with our Vegas and Anaheim hotels! Thanks Crystal! You're Awesome! We were happy with the hotel. It had a microwave,mini fridge, plates, cups and silverware. It took us about 15 minutes to walk down to Disneyland which wasn't bad for this particular trip. There was a shuttle as well, but we opted not to pay for it (I honestly don't even know how much it cost!) I would definitely stay there again especially for the great rate, but really I think I'd like to opt for the Grand Californian next time (dreamin' big...).

Once we got to the hotel we took a little quiet time and had the kids work on their homework (nice vacation, huh? We still make our kids do school work!) And then we walked to Downtown Disney and perused the shops there. Some new ones had opened since the last time we went and we enjoyed some of the favorites like World of Disney and The LEGO Store. Last time we didn't get to spend much time in Build-A-Bear--this one has so much MORE than ours at home! We loved it!


We went to House of Blues for dinner. In my continued attempts to keep this trip as inexpensive as possible, I had picked up a $50 gift certificate from Restaurant.com for only $6!!!! So that helped out the final cost tremendously! All the food there was so delicious! The kids are in love with gumbo since they tried it at the Blue Bayou (the restaurant in the Pirates of the Carribean ride) last year and the House of Blues had an amazing Gumbo too! I found a recipe for the Blue Bayou Gumbo and am going to try it out this week. I hope I do it right! We had a great waitress there too. She kept spilling water, but was so good natured and had such a great sense of humor, we let it slide :)

All the Rage...

Kielle has been participating on a local accelerated Softball Team called the Springville Rage. She has been with them since July. They recently played in the Summer Wind Up Tournament and ended up taking 3rd place in their division! Kielle has been really dedicated to the team and loves playing! We are so pleased with her achievements!

EVO conference

This past weekend I went to the Evolution of Women in Social Media conference. It was amazing. I saw some old friends, met some new friends and learned a lot along the way. It was very inspiring. So many tears were shed during the conference. we heard heartbreaking stories such as Maddie Spohr's story, and inspiring stories from the Make a Wish foundation. I learned a lot about how to make things I do for my job better. I always come away so inspired from these conferences. There are also so many amazing women in attendance. I wish I had the time to personally recognize them all, but I know I would forget someone. The ending keynote speakers were Brene Brown & Karen Walrond. I was so touched by what they had to share about being authentic. They shared some thoughts about parenting that I really enjoyed. One thought was:

As a parent it is important to help our children be ok with being imperfect. Our children shouldn’t see us questioning our own worth.

I really like that thought. I am reading the book The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin right now and her chapter on her children really goes hand in hand with this.

Another quote was:

Who we are as people is more important for our children than what we know about parenting

My favorite part of the weekend though, was getting to see my family again. The organizers of Evo threw an amazing Party at the Park City Mountain Resort. We had a delicious dinner and we rode on the Alpine Slide multiple times and the kids got to rock climb and Aaron & Nathan went down the zipline. It was an amazingly great time. I wish it could have lasted longer.

Collection

For Cub Scouts, Ryan needs to have a collection. It can be of anything. Since he started playing guitar this summer, he decided to start collecting guitar picks. Aaron works with Shauna, the mother of the lead guitarist for Maroon 5, James Valentine, and I mentioned how it would be so cool if we could get James to sign a pick to put in Ryan's collection. I mentioned it over Thanksgiving break and Aaron was like, Shoot, you should have mentioned it sooner cause he is home for Thanksgiving and won't be back again for a while. But he mentioned the idea to Shauna anyway after the break. Well it turned out that he came back in town again right before Christmas and he was thrilled to sign the picks for Ryan and they also gave us a copy of the latest CD (autographed) and an autographed photo of the band. It was so nice of them to take the time to do that for Ryan. It was his favorite gift that he got for Christmas and helped complete his collection. After Christmas he asked his guitar teacher to teach him how to play Won't go Home Without You and he uses his special pick to play that song only--like he's channeling James Valentine or something. It is too cute.




This was a really special gift to Ryan and to us. We were so glad that the Valentines were willing to add this special piece to Ryan's collection.

• Won't Go Home Without You by Maroon 5

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