Merry Christmas!

One of my favorite things about the holidays is Christmas dresses! Here's my sweet girls in theirs...

We made a cool nativity scene out of chocolate for Activity Days, and I think it's pretty awesome!

And the festivities have begun!! My aunt Jackie let Claire loose with the trifle bowl...and she was in heaven!!

Finally, here's a few pics that my sister took...

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!

I Love My Sisters!

As some of you may already know, my sisters and I all went to New Moon on Thursday night at midnight. That's right, with the die-hards...or should I say "Twi-hards"! As much as we were annoyed by all the screaming girls ("This place reeks of puberty!!"), we all really enjoyed the movie and just love to do stuff together. It was a party!

This is our one good shot, and then the rest of them...

Remember...it was midnight and we obviously don't get out much!!

The best part was that we marrieds got dropped off at the theater by our mom! It was kind of fun to feel young and not as responsible again!

More Halloween Pics

Here's a few more pictures from Halloween. We had a really fun day! Trick-or-treating was a definite hit, but I've got to get this candy out of my house!! I have very little will-power...

OK, look at Claire's face in this one...is she not so dang cute??!!

Our little strawberry...

And we even had the Magic Mirror!

We're already planning our costumes for next year!

Happy Halloween!

More pictures to come!

Hope you all have a very spooky day!!

P.S. I am so thrilled for an extra hour of sleep tonight! Yahoo!!

I Have a New Niece!!

Her name is Rachel and she is what we like to call a muffin!!

She is tiny, sweet, and even though she looks like her brothers, she's a dainty little thing! I'm pretty sure she'll grow up being one tough chick...two rough and tumble brothers will do that!

We are especially grateful that she was born in a hospital and not in the car like the last one!!

We love you baby Rachel!!

Birthday Girl

Both of my kids have been sick for the last week, so I'm a little slow in posting about our awesome birthday party for Claire. But it was awesome!

I made one of the these cakes and the other one was free from Albertson's. Obviously one is for Claire and the other one isn't. Both were delicious! And the Reese's one...it has chocolate cake inside layered with frosting and peanut butter. Yes, it was as good as it looked!! I'm pretty sure the kids just wanted to pick off all the Reese's though, and I can't really blame them.

What a happy birthday girl!! A girl who loves her birthday...yes, she is my child.

She fully enjoyed eating her cake, and I have about 25 or so pictures to prove it, but I'll just show you a couple. Trust me though, there are lots of cute ones!!

She wasn't so into the presents though. This was pretty much the only time that she was actually by the presents. Luckily she had lots of cousins (and a sister) there to help out! Who knew one year-old toys could be so entertaining for kids of all ages?!

She really loved this card from Grandma Jackie however!

Happy Birthday sweet Claire! We love you!!

She Loves Preschool!!

But seriously, did anyone ever think she wouldn't?!?

And is it any wonder why this drawer is broken?? Good thing she's cute.

David found this creature on our front porch tonight. He sprayed it with a ton of bug spray and it rolled over to show off this...

Yes, that would be a nice red hourglass. I HATE spiders, and I especially hate black widows. The scariest part is that after I took this picture the dang thing started moving again! Don't worry though, we made sure it was REALLY dead before coming back inside. I really struggle with this time of year that spiders try to make their way inside...

One Last Hurrah

Well, we went on vacation again, so I guess it's time for another blog post! We headed down to California to visit family and enjoy some of the fun things there. The week went by so fast...I'm sure because we kept ourselves plenty busy. We hit the beach as soon as we could and the kids loved it, of course!

Claire was very fascinated by the stuff that kept sticking on her hands...

And she loved her first time in the ocean! I wish I could look that cute with that many rolls.

We headed to the Spectrum one night and had a great time, as always! We had a lovely dinner at P.F. Chang's and then wandered around for a bit.

We rode on the giant ferris wheel and Abby loved it. Her dad was a little scared, but I'll spare you the details on that, for his sake!

And of course we HAD to ride the carousel. Abby wanted Grandma Jackie to do everything with her. Good thing she's a good sport!

We drove down to San Diego the next day to enjoy the wonders of Sea World! It was hot (they were having an unusual heat wave, of course), but we still had fun. We got off to a bit of a rocky start though...we get in the park and are excited to be there. We make our way straight to the Sesame Street Bay of Play, ride a couple of rides, snap a couple of pictures, and then see all the Sesame Street characters doing their little show. And just as Abby is running up to Zoe to give her a hug, my camera battery dies. I didn't bring the charger with me (dumb camera seriously gives me NO warning about the battery life), and we have two days at Sea World that apparently I'll just have to remember in my mind. Yep, I cried a bit, right there next to Cookie Monster. There is a happy ending though...I was able to find a charger that night and have a camera for our second day at Sea World! We went to the Shamu show on the first day, so I've got lovely pictures in my mind of that one, but I was able to capture most everything else.

Good thing we had our map reader!

My family has this thing with touching manta rays, and here's the proof. I'm happy to stick my hand in there (the water was also cold and VERY refreshing) and feel the slimy creatures...

...but my sweet hubby, not so much. He almost did (as I sat there with the camera all ready to capture it), and then chickened out at the last second. He is brave about many other things, and I guess I'd rather have him get the spiders anyway.

Happy kids, despite the heat!

Love the flamingos!

This was our life-blood, frosted lemonade. They were four bucks a pop, but worth every stinkin' penny. I would have loved to have an IV drip of the stuff.

By this time, Claire was pretty much done though.

But we couldn't leave without one more trip to the Sesame Street Bay of Play! If you ask Abby what she saw at Sea World, the first thing she'll tell you is "the Elmo flying fish." That would be this ride!

And she loved Oscar's Rockin' Eel ride...

...and of course, the Abby Sea Star Spin.

And then the Sesame Street characters came out again!! I was finally able to get some pictures of Abby with Zoe (despite the red-head picture Nazi that you see).

And this picture made that new charger worth every penny!!

That's Abby Cadabby for those who don't know...

We just love San Diego and had a great time there. We were able to meet up with some friends we hadn't seen in a long time, as well as my cousins who live there. Even with the unusual heat wave, we loved it!

We had to hit the beach again before we went home, and even though we had a few meltdowns, there were a few smiles as well.

We're lucky enough to have family living in such a lovely vacation spot, and we always love spending time with them. We love our three California grandmas!! (And grandpa too...sorry I don't have a picture!)

We all hope we'll be back very soon!!