Sea World November 2014

Sea World is awesome! They give military families free admission once a year! FREE! So, with Derek's day off we drove the 45 minutes across town and spent the day there. I think we all had fun. It was a lot of walking, they had missing animals sea lions and dolphins, and you could only see certain animals during shows (beluga whale). The park has a water park attached and several big roller coasters, so I can totally see how for teenagers it would be a lot of fun. During the winter a lot of things were closed down. We still enjoyed our visit and had lots of fun!

We got to see the Shamu show and there were several show off whales there!

 The had a merry go round and a shamu kids roller coaster. Eden INSISTED on going by herself. Well, I let her and she didn't love it so much. Kael was screaming at first, but by the end he said he really liked it. Eden did have fun I think she would have liked it more if an adult was next to her.

 The 4 year old girl going on 16 going by herself...

 And Elara loved riding on the horse!

Thanksgiving

Our traditional Indian Headresses this year. The kids decorated them all by themselves.

 They also made paper plate turkeys.

 About a week before we celebrated Thanksgiving we got our thankful tree up on our wall. It is still there today even though we are working on our thankful Christmas tree now.

 Derek took 4 days off work for an early Thanksgiving since he knew he would have to work on Thanksgiving no matter what. We were able to put up Christmas lights over the weekend and are so excited we have a house to decorate. Next year we will go big or go back inside because we can't wait to add TONS of lights to our house!

 We celebrated Thanksgiving the Saturday before the real holiday. We had a poo poo platter of yummy food all day long while the turkey baked.

 It was a lot of fun getting to celebrate with our family and be thankful that we all have each other. We miss our family far away and it was just a little sad not celebrating on the day of, but we are just thankful to have each other and are so thankful for Derek and all the hard work he does for our family. We are grateful we could celebrate with Dad and have this time together. This year has really taught us to be grateful for what we have NOW. And right now we have each other and I am writing this on here, IT'S PRETTY DARN GOOD!

This family of mine makes me so happy and so grateful each day that I get to call them mine. 

LOVE THESE AMAZING PEOPLE AT THIS TABLE!

They are amazing at what they are accomplishing in this life!

November Randoms

The girls had a Daddy daughter night and I got to take Kael to a birthday party. We all had fun!

 We had lots of this and thats from Elara.... We got child proof locks on the doors now needless to say...

 And THAT entire bottle of paint is now on my carpet downstairs... Still trying to get that out...

 I actually for the most part really LOVE taking my kids to the grocery store. "If I'm not in a hurry". I get these silly faces to deal with and they usually aren't stinkers, but try to be helpers.

Kael had a wicked virus that put him out of school the entire week before the Thanksgiving week off school. He didn't do much except watch Netflix and play on the ipad... The kid was spoiled. We did get a few good school projects in though the next week when he was feeling better.

And let the Christmas crafts begin. Elara's candy cane reindeer.

And some more silly kids.

More outside fun

The weather finally cooled off the beginning of November so we could enjoy some outside weather without sweating our pants off. However, this was still in the sweltering heat of September if I remember right. Derek grilled some drumsticks and we had some corn on the cob and had a picnic outside! 

Halloween

The kids were asked to wear costumes for story book characters to school on Halloween. I had other costumes already picked out and had to come up with an idea that was easy and CHEAP. A friend did this with her triplets, so I thought why not give it a go, and paid $2 for the blue hair spray. The kids loved it and had a great time getting to dress up in different costumes.

 We carved our pumpkins for family night the Monday before Halloween. They only had a little mold inside by Halloween, ya gross, but totally worth it for the kids to see their faces they drew for a whole week! Eden's is the far right and it is a cat with whiskers. Kael's is next with the triangle eyes. Then, Elara asked for Olaf the snowman from Frozen, so Derek did is best, and then the far left is a monster with one eye that Derek came up with. The kids loved it and loved drawing their own designs. Each holiday just gets more and more fun each year.

We had a ward trunk or treat the Saturday before Halloween which was about 6 days before the actual day. Derek was working and I took the 3 by myself. It was a crazy night and the kids got LOTS of candy.

 Elara on the left was Minnie Mouse, Hadley as Cinderella, Eden as an ice cream cone, and Kael as Anakin Skywalker podracing!

 Eden and her best buddy Hadley. They moved from Utah just about the same time as us, and go to preschool together and are in primary together. They hug every time they see each other and love having each other!

I loved the kids costumes this year. We went to a second hand store and said they could pick anything in their size. Well, the kids LOVED their costumes and I got them all for under $20 total! Elara picked her Minnie Mouse and has fallen in LOVE with her. She can't stop talking about Minnie Mouse. Everyone LOVED Eden as an ice creme cone and thought she was so clever and she always had to correct them because people's first guess was a cupcake. And Anakin was perfect for Kael. He loves Star Wars as much as I do, and I'm a nerd and love Star Wars. It was just fun seeing each of their personalities come out in their costume choosing. 

The actual day of Halloween was busy with school costumes, showing the blue hair spray out, getting on new costumes, chili, biscuits, and root beer for dinner. We went out trick-or-treating at 6 and got back by 7. The kids had even more candy at this point. The ate and ate as much as they wanted while watching Garfield's christmas and Despicable Me 2. Then, at 8 Derek had to go to bed and the kids decided they liked handing out candy more than eating it, and dumped all but 10 pieces of candy back into our give away bucket and we all sat outside in the wind handing out their candy they got that night. It was so fun. Kael ate more candy than I thought he did because he ended up puking around 11 that night. It was a LONG fun day, and I learned to limit kids candy intake... It does indeed cause puking...

Day 3 of Vacation: Campout in the backyard

We roasted hot dogs, ate smores, and set up the tent. We got all ready and realized we have a HUGE lamp right in our backyard that lights up our entire back yard all night long, and then we live on a main drive through road through the neighborhood where cars zoom by all night long... We convinced the kids to have a sleep over in the playroom together and they had a blast doing that instead, but it was fun to set the tent up and play in it for the day.

Day 2 (Corpus Cristi The Aquarium)

Seriously, this place was so much fun!!! Normally it's pretty expensive, but we could combine our zoo membership discount with our military discount and it made it reasonable vacation price! They had 2 dolphins that did a show, turtles that swam right up to you, you could touch sting ray's and sharks, and several other amazing creatures! Another super fun day. We drove home right after this and the kids just crashed in the car.

 These sea turtles were AMAZING. So BIG and they swam right up to us and were so social!