Disney on Ice

Last week we were lucky enough to get 2 free vouchers to see Disney on Ice. (Thanks to Grandma Suzy!) I told Michael he should take Kayleigh and go. At first she didn't know what it even was, but after showing her the on-line clip and talking to her about it, she got pretty excited.

Michael hurried to get home from work, pick up Kayleigh from my mom's (I was working) and get back down town. I was nervous that they'd be late, but thanks to a really nice parking guy, they parked for free right across from Energy Solutions Arena. When they went to the ticket booth to exchange their vouchers for tickets, Michael asked for the best seats available and they got row 10 seats. Lucky!

Kayleigh really loved the show! Her favorite parts were Ariel and Peter Pan. Michael thought it was a pretty fun show, too. I'm glad they got to go and have some daddy/daughter time.

Crawling

Landon is officially crawling! He actually started last week, I'm just barely posting about it. We knew he was close to doing it for some time because he'd get up on all 4's but wouldn't take off. Finally he got pretty motivated by the door stop (for some reason he is fascinated with these) and off he went. He is getting into lots of things, but not too bad yet. I think he forgets he can crawl still, but I know that won't last forever. So much for the Christmas tree... It's fun to watch him explore though and Kayleigh loves getting him to crawl!

Our Halloween

Landon enjoying a sucker from his sister.
Kay and all of her candy.

Landon holding onto the umbrella, so cute!

Kayleigh with her pumpkin.

Kayleigh and Grace

Michael and Kayleigh eating dinner of scones and chili.

Landon playing while pumpkins got carved.

This year for Halloween, Kayleigh dressed up as a pink piggy. She made a pretty cute little pig. I thought it would be really easy to find some light pink sweats for her to wear as her costume, along with the nose and ears. I actually found it very hard to find some. Every store that had pink sweats also had some sort of decoration on the top. It was very frustrating! Finally the week before Halloween I got her a pink fleece outfit from Kohl’s.

Landon dressed up as a skunk. Yes, the same skunk that Kayleigh was. I am very grateful Marie keeps sharing her costume that she made for her girls. It’s nice when you don’t have to spend money for a costume.

On Halloween night it rained and so I was glad each of my kids were dressed warm to go out trick-or-treating. Landon only came with us for one street, but Kayleigh kept on going. She actually tired out quicker than last year, but still got lots of candy. She had been looking forward to Halloween and trick-or-treating for quite some time. Thankfully the rain didn’t seem to bother her and after awhile I gave up on trying to keep her covered with an umbrella.

Before trick-or-treating we had a fun party at Nana and Grandpa’s. We carved pumpkins and had a yummy dinner of scones and chili. Unfortunately, Michael and I were not feeling very good at all. I hate when I am sick, especially on a holiday when we have fun plans. We still tried to enjoy everything though and help Kayleigh to have a fun holiday. As always, we love being with family and celebrating together. Grandpa came out trick-or-treating with us and it was really fun to have him with us. We like going out in his neighborhood, the kids got two full-size candy bars!

Even earlier in the day, we had invited Michael’s parents and grandparents over to our house for a little treat and to see the kids in their costumes. It was a quick get together, but Kayleigh liked the attention and getting to wear her costume. Happy Halloween!

Picture Time Again

Fall means picture time at our house. Poor Landon hasn't had his pictures taken since he was brand new. My friend, Sherri, took these. They turned out very cute! I was nervous they wouldn't turn out since Landon would NOT smile, but even though he isn't smiling in all of them, he still looks very handsome!

You might remember how I posted a few weeks ago about being stung and how it got infected. Well, during this photo shoot, I got stung two more times and had an allergic reaction to the stings. My arms were so red and swollen! Thank goodness for Zyrtec. I couldn't believe it when I got stung again, really, why me again? I went to retrieve Landon's binki that Kayleigh had dropped off the bridge and while doing that I must have brushed up against the wasp or something. Anyway, it got me twice and I was dancing all over the place to get it to stop chasing me. It was probably kind of funny to see. What's so dumb too is that we ended up getting back to our car without the binki anyway. Oh man...hopefully I am done with being stung for awhile.

Beautiful fall

I know I post pics every fall of my front door decor, but here they are for 2010. All the pumpkins are from my parents garden, even the huge one. They did some great pumpkin growing this year!

And those burning bushes are really burning, love them!

Silly tub time

This girl loves to lay down in the tub now to get her hair wet! She looks pretty funny in these pictures. The real question is: how long before she wants to start tweezing that uni-brow? She gets that from me and Landon already has one, too. Why can't my kids inherit my good traits? Okay okay, they do both have long eye lashes!

Up on the housetop...

No, this is not a Christmas post...my parents are currently having the stucco ripped off or their house and wood siding being put in it's place. My mom has always wanted siding as it is more the Victorian style that she likes. Since the wood was getting damaged under the stucco, they decided to make the change. My uncle (my dad's little brother) is doing it. Last Thursday when I took the kids to my mom's before I went to work my uncle said they could go up on the roof if they wanted. Well, what kid says no to that?

So out the window they (my nieces were there, too) went to my uncle who walked them VERY CAREFULLY to the table saw and let them hang out for a few minutes. I think they were all a little scared as they sat there. You can tell in the pictures how they were always holding on to something. It was kinda fun to watch them do something we don't ever do. And we are excited to see the final project when it's all done.

Oregon

NOTE: This is a VERY long post! I tried to load pictures in order of our trip, but there are some out of order. And be sure to check out my other posts that are new today, but because this one is so long it pushed them all to the next page and you now have to click on "older posts" to see them.

Alright, I am finally going to actually post something about this. I know you've all been waiting. Let me start first by saying it was a very fun family trip. We all loved being together, Kayleigh loved being able to play with her cousins, and we got to meet our little nephew for the first time, little Thomas is very cute! A huge thank you to my parents who made the whole trip possible. Thanks, Grandpa and Nana.

We left on a Friday night with my sister and her family. That night we drove to Boise, ID and go there about 2 in the morning. We stayed at a very nice DoubleTree Hotel and enjoyed their breakfast the next morning. We then continued our long driving journey to Oregon that Saturday, arriving at the beach house where we stayed at about 9:45 p.m. (The drive was very beautiful! Lots of the drive was in the dark though, so the following week when we drove home it was even prettier because it was light and we could see.) The house is in Gearhart, OR which is right by Cannon Beach, Seaside and Astoria.

Kayleigh did AMAZING on the drive. She didn't seem to mind the 14+ hour drive. Thank goodness for portable DVD players, finger puppets, snacks, and books. Landon, however, didn't like the drive so much. He's not one who likes the car anyways and he had a cold/fever so he had a rough time. The drive to Boise was probably the worst, he cried for a good part of that 5 hr. drive. He got better as the trip went on though.

Sunday we headed to church where Kayleigh, Grace and Anna all went to Sunbeams just fine and had a great time. I enjoyed going to Relief Society-something I haven't gotten to do very often since I've been in Primary now for 6 years. After church we headed down to the beach for the first time. The beach was Kayleigh's most favorite part of the trip, she loved it! Even though it wasn't 90 degrees, everyone still played in the water, dug in the sand and ran around having fun.

Monday we went to the Tillamook Cheese factory and enjoyed their yummy ice cream and cheese curds! After that we went to Cape Mears where we saw a lighthouse and some beautiful scenery. Since the lighthouse had recently been vandalized we couldn't go up to the top, but it was still neat to see. While we were there we go to see a whale out in the ocean, it was very neat. It would blow water out of it's hole about 3-4 times then we'd see it's tale come up.

Tuesday we went to Fort Clatsop where Lewis and Clark spent about three months preparing to head back to St. Louis. It was also pretty there, but we were a little disappointed in that their gun demonstrations and tours weren't running because we came in the "off-season". It was fun to be there with my little family though since I'd been when I was little.

After getting home from the fort we headed down to the beach again to take family pictures and play. Trying to get 7 grand kids to be happy for a picture is challenging! That night we had a fire on the beach which was awesome! Nothing like roasting marshmallows on the beach.

Wednesday took us to the Seaside Aquarium. This was also a highlight of the trip. We got to see an octopus swimming around. All the girls got to hold live starfish, crabs and sand dollars. They also got to tough anemones and sea urchins. There were seals there too that you could feed baby fish to. We all liked this and so did the seals! I think they will always eat.

For lunch that day we ate out and had some really good seafood.

Thusday all the mom's went to Cannon Beach to shop and then we came home and started the packing process. Yuck, I hate packing, especially when you know it's because you have to go home.

Each night we'd get all the kids to bed and play games. I really enjoyed this! My favorite game that we played was The Celestial Marriage Game. My mom, John, Marie, and I played a wicked game of Sorry one night after everyone went to bed, it was fun.

All of the mom's brought crafts for the kids to do. We thought it'd be fun for them to have something to do each day at the house. They had fun making necklaces, pilrims, a treasure box and thank you's for Nana and Grandpa.

It took us two days to get home. Just outside of Portland we stopped at Multnomah Falls, a very pretty waterfall. It helped to break up the driving and it was very beautiful. (I think I've used that word a lot in this post.) Friday night we stayed in Boise again and drove home on Saturday.

As always, after being away it's nice to come home. We miss it though, we miss seeing my brother's family-we're never really sure when we'll see them again. And we miss having our Daddy with us all day every day. He was not excited to go back to work! Anyway, it was a very nice, fun trip.