Sledding

Austin took the kids down to a nearby park that has the perfect sledding hill for these little kids. The older kids who were a little more adventurous even built a jump. As I was getting out of my car to video tape my kids, another boy was walking up to his mom just bawling his eyes out and he had blood all over his face. I guess he got a bloody nose and a split lip from a bad landing off of the jump, so my kids were forbidden! Thank goodness, they thouroughly enjoyed going down the plain little regular hill! Here are some videos!

LegoLand

My kids thoroughly enjoyed our trip to LegoLand. If you've never been there, it's definitely worth a trip... but probably not worth going back to for the price. Lucky for us, though, our good friends had leftover tickets from their trip in November and they gave them to us...thanks, Scott and Linda!! They have a section of the park that is just a bunch of cities completely made from legos. It was very impressive and the details were amazing! Spencer is standing in front of one of the hotels from the "Vegas strip".



This was one of the few rides that Spencer was able to go on that he thought was a "big kid" ride. He went on it probably seven or eight times in a row. There wasn't much to it, but he enjoyed pretending to attack the lego figures in the middle with his make-believe sword. Hey, whatever keeps them happy, right?



The champions of the fire truck rescue race! They toasted everyone else!!


Craig taking a "snooze" and Kristen bothering the poor old sleeping man! The lego "artists" (not quite sure else what to call them...sculpturists?) had a good sense of humor. You can't really see, but this guy's socks were two different lengths and one of his shoes had a much thicker sole than the other. If you pay attention to all of the little details at this place, it's pretty entertaining!

Traffic jam! Spencer loved this one as well. We thought that the guy that worked here had to be underpaid with how frustrating and patience testing his job must be. Anytime one of those little kids ran into the curb or the fence, he'd have to walk over and pick up the front of their car to reposition them. I got annoyed for him by just watching!


I really wish that I had a picture of this from further back. The older kids could drive these cars through a little city with streets and stop lights, stop signs, etc. It was really cute!


They had to raise their hands when they understood all of the road rules. Kamae very enthusiastically did so!



Jack was such a trooper on these day trips! He just sat in his stroller so contently...couldn't have asked for him to be any better!


Not that I am an amusement park connoisseur, but I've never seen a ride quite like this one. It was an arm with chairs attached to it. You get to pick the "thrill" level of the ride and that determines how fast and crazy it goes. The kids could only do the lowest one, but they enjoyed it nonetheless. Of course, the adults had to do the highest one!

Austin and Kamae
Craig and my dad



The whole day it was threatening rain and it got windy at some points, but we lucked out and it didn't rain until about 20 minutes before the park closed. So we ducked into this little place where they could build and race their own lego cars. It was kind of fun to only have 2o minutes to do it because it was a race to see who could build one that actually rolled down the ramp in time!

Swimming and Knott's Berry Farm

The kids absolutely loved being able to swim in the heated pool. I need to remember that our family can take a vacation to the middle of nowhere and as long as there was a pool, they'd be content. This was Jack's first time swimming and he seemed to enjoy it. I could've sworn I took more pictures of the kids swimming, but I guess not. This is all I have!






I decided at Knott's Berry Farm that we were just going to enjoy the day and not worry about taking pictures of everything. We just took a couple. We had a great time here and it was perfect! It had rides for all ages, we were pretty much the only people in the park so we didn't have to wait for anything. There was enough for the little ones to do, but unfortunately Spencer was the only one who was caught in the middle, meaning he wanted to ride the bigger rides, but wasn't quite big enough. The last picture will tell you how well he handled that!

La Jolla

In January we took a trip with my side of the family (all 20 of us!) to San Diego as one last hoorah before Craig left on his mission. We had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed being together and basking in the non-freezingness of California. (We apparently missed 2 nasty storms in Utah while we were gone..yippee!) We were there for an entire week...several days we went places, and others we just hung out and swam and played games. It was a blast! I'm just going to post one event at a time, so here goes La Jolla beach!

Austin's sister, Suzy, lives about 5 minutes from where we were staying. She met up with us at the beach along with her kids, Preston and Annika.

Annika, Piage and Kamae


Talia, Kamae, Kami and Paige (my sister, Tiffany's, girls)

The whole gang. Well, not quite. Marc got sick and had to leave with his family, but this is the rest of us!

We went over to see the sea lions and while we were stopped to watch, Jack dropped his binky down into their area. We didn't care about the loss of the binky as much as we were worried about one of the sea lions eating it and hurting themselves. So, Austin walked over to the station and asked one of the workers what they thought he should do. They suggested that he quietly climb down the wall and go and get it, trying not to disturb the sleeping sea lions. So, that's what he did. On his way back up, a lady gave him an earful about respecting animals and leaving them alone, etc., etc. He explained what had happened and she was pretty embarrassed.



They had a tide pool area that the kids really enjoyed. This kind of stuff is right up Austin and Paige's alley. They had a great time until they fell in the water while trying to "repel" down a little wall. Woops!




I

A New Reason To Be Sent To Time-Out

I never in a million years thought I would have the following experience:

We are through with family night a little late tonight and we still have to eat dinner and bathe the kids. During dinner, I bathe Jack because he can hardly keep his eyes open any longer and he's getting pretty ornery. So, I finally join the family for dinner just as they are finishing up. Austin had started working on building some shelves for our linen closet, so he is out in the garage. I send the girls up to start their bath. I hear the water go on and then less than a minute later, I hear blood curdling screaming coming from Paige. I bolt upstairs, figuring she has burned herself with hot water. I am yelling "Get out of the water!! Get out of the bathtub!" as I'm running up the stairs. I run into the bathroom and I can see steam coming up from the bath water and that the dial is turned 100% to hot and my mind starts racing about how to treat burns, expecting to find Paige with bright red or blistered skin. I glance around and I can't see her at first (because I'm expecting to see her in the tub) and I find her on the toilet, naked. I'm thinking, "That's a weird place to be after you've just been burned." I glance at her and she's dripping wet, but not appearing to be burned and I'm just confused. I ask her if she got burned and she says the following sentence...one which I never thought I'd ever hear: "No, I'm not burned! Spencer just peed all over me!" At this point, several emotions run over me: 1) Relief she's not burned 2)Anger that she's screaming like someone had just ripped her fingernails off when she was in no pain whatsoever 3)Shock that Spencer really just peed all over his sister and 4)Humor...I've never wanted to laugh while been so angry at the same time. Of course, my anger won over my laughter because I sure didn't want Spencer to think that that was funny. He is standing in my bedroom about 3 feet from the entrance to my bathroom with this look on his face like "I have no idea why I just did that...please don't be mad at me, Mom". I finally conclude that once the bathwater had been turned on, they both realized that they needed to go to the bathroom. They both run over to the toilet and realize that they have competition for its use and since Paige was already undressed, she was quickly able to slip in front of him and beat him to it. Well, as Austin later explained to me, once a boy's equipment is out and the brain has sent the signal that "it's time", there is pretty much no way to stop it. Since he had probably already gotten to that point when Paige slipped in front of him, he no longer had control and all over her it goes! Seriously!?! Have you ever had to send a child to time-out for peeing all over his sister? I had originally assumed that he just did it on purpose, so against the wall he went in his underwear and socks. Once I finally calmed down and came to my senses, I had to leave the room for fear of laughing my head off! I later talked to Paige about how that kind of screaming can only be used for real emergencies. She said to me, "Mom, has something ever happened to you that just made you so mad and so frustrated and you just don't know what to do that you just start crying really hard? Mom, I just didn't know what to do when he started tinkling all over me!" I'm not sure that I would've reacted much better! It goes right up there with things you only experience because you're a parent...like finding a half-eaten bowl of oatmeal in your bed, under your covers. Ahhh, the joys of parenthood!:)