Cruisin to Mexico

Last week we went on a four night cruise down to Ensenada, Mexico. Danny and I had done the same cruise 10 years ago, but it was the first time that our kids got to go on a cruise. We ended up getting a room with a balcony and we were so glad to have it. The only scary part was the thought of Tyler going overboard. We held him with a death grip any time we were out there. Here we are in the port at Long Beach, waiting for the boat to leave.

The room was pretty nice inside too. So much bigger than our inner cabin from our previous cruise.

Here is a picture of Ashley up on the top deck while we were still in the port at Long Beach.

 One morning after breakfast, Tyler and I wandered out by the pool to find it had been invaded by these towel animals. So cute. I like the one in the background climbing up the chair.

Our dinner waiter liked to fold napkin animals for Tyler, as well. Unfortunately, they did not entertain him for very long. Dinner time was probably the hardest time on the cruise with kids.

Ashley loved going down the slides in the mini water park on board. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't warm enough to really enjoy it, but that didn't stop her from trying. Alyssa liked the hot tub a lot better than the slides or the pool, just because it was so much warmer.

We were at sea the day of Ashley's birthday. We were up early enough that day to catch the sunrise.

 At the same time of the sunrise, we could also see this rainbow in the other direction. It was a great way to start a special day.

 After watching the sunrise, we went into our room and let Ashley open her presents. It was hard coming up with gifts that were small enough to pack in our bags, but we managed.

 That morning, we went to a towel animal folding class. Ashley folded this little dog.

 The highlight of the cruise was probably when this girl got up on the stage during one of their shows. It was a Hasbro Game Show featuring Yahtzee bowling and Operation Skee ball,  We had watched previews for this before going on the cruise and Alyssa had said she really wanted to be part of it. So as the time for the show arrived, we made sure to get there really early to get good seats. They pulled 4 random people out of the audience who were able to answer the "Guesstures" clue correctly. She was the forth one to do it.

Here is the video of  her playing Yahtzee bowling.

Her team ended up winning and therefore got to pick a monopoly card to have a shot at winning the big prize-A bunch of Hasbro games.  She didn't win, but loves her monopoly key chain that she won as a prize.

They did the game show again on Ashley's Birthday. Imagine our surprise when she made it up on stage, too! She got to play Connect Four Basketball. She ended up scoring the winning shot for her team, so they also won. However, her hamburger Monopoly card didn't win the big prize, either. She was just as happy with the Monopoly key chain.

This is a video of her first shot. I wanted to upload the winning shot, but the video must be too large to upload. In the other one, you can hear the whole theater cheer when she gets four in a row. This video gives you an idea of what she got to do.

The cruise was a lot of fun, but by the end we were ready to go home and get back to normal again.

Disneyland and California Adventure

The kids all loved Disneyland, as we suspected they would. We went to California adventure the first day. It was more crowded than  we would have liked, but with the help of fast passes, we were able to do almost everything. My only two regrets of the first day being that we didn't manage to get a picture of Ashley with "Jake" and the second being that we didn't get the girls into the Frozen Sing Along Show. It was just so crowded since it is so new and we ran out of time. They did enjoy having their cousins and their grandparents there with us. 

Ashley and Lydia on the tram ride into the park

 I love the look on Tyler's face here. Pure joy.

 Even though Ashley didn't get to meet Jake, she still got to see the Disney Junior Show and meet Doc McStuffins. She loved the show and meeting Doc.

 On the second day, we went to Disneyland. It was just so much more crowded than California Adventure. However, we still managed to do everything that we felt the kids should experience. We did end up sending the dads home a little earlier with the sleeping/tired kids and the mom's stayed with the older kids to do a couple more rides and the fireworks show. After the fireworks, they created a fake snow over the crowd. Here is Alyssa in the snow.

 Grandma and Grandpa joined us for half of the day and were a huge help when they took Tyler off of our hands for about an hour. Grandma got this picture with Tyler and the Genie. You'll notice Tyler is as far away as he can get. He doesn't like any Characters getting close to him. He was the same way with Santa.

 The cousins together with Danny. They got along so well and had so much fun together.

We wished we had had an extra day in between the two parks to rest, but overall the kids did pretty well. Tyler refused to nap both days and as a result, ended up being pretty crabby towards the early evenings. He fell asleep in my arms both nights as we were finishing up for the night.

Photo Shoot

I attempted to get some new family photos done in order to update pictures for our parents and to send out a Christmas Card. The parents got the pictures, but the Christmas Cards did not get sent. The pictures turned out really well. Here are a few of my favorites.

 

 They did a really good job of hiding my pregnant belly as you can see in the pictures below.

Unfortunately these will be outdated again, come May, but at least we can enjoy them until then.

Christmas Happened

So I decided it was probably time to move on from the Halloween post considering we have said goodbye to 2014. Christmas happened in our house, even though I was far too busy the past 4 weeks to document it. I took the kids over to the mall to ride the train and visit Santa.

 I made them matching jammies, as usual, to wear for Christmas morning. They are sure lucky to receive so many presents. They loved them all and we even managed to get them to obey our Christmas morning rules(i.e. No waking mom and dad up before 6:30, and Do not go downstairs until we tell you it is okay). Christmas morning went much more smoothly this year than last because they obeyed the rules. Their big gift this year was two days at Disneyland before going on our Cruise.

 This little sweetie turned 9. We celebrated by going to the Japanese Steakhouse for dinner(one of the only places open on Christmas and it is one of her favorite places to eat). She got to stand on the chair and "Shake her bootie." We failed to get a video of it. After dinner we came back to the house for presents, cake, and ice cream. She got a lot of doll accessories to go with her "Our Generation" doll.

 Ashley loves her big stuffed dog and insists that her dogs are part of the family. For Christmas she got a puppy that looks exactly like this stuffed dog. Sometimes it is hard to tell the fake dogs apart from the real Casey.

 This isn't really Christmas related, but I found this cute picture of Tyler and couldn't resist posting it. He loved Christmas and caught on really fast to the idea of opening presents. His big gift this year was a train set that he loves to play with.

Oh, and our biggest news of the season is that we found out we will be having another little boy, due in early May. We are so excited for the new addition he will be to our family and that Tyler will have a little playmate in the coming years.

Happy Halloween

I know this is a few days late, but our kids enjoyed Halloween this year. We did the Ward trunk or treat on Wednesday and then trick or treating around our neighborhood on Friday. Alyssa chose to go with a friend this year instead of sticking with the slower younger siblings. They dressed up as a puppy, a tiger, and Queen Elsa.

Spelling Bee Champ

Alyssa was able to participate in her school spelling bee again this year. In order to be part of the school spelling bee, you have to get either first or second place in your class spelling bee. Alyssa got second place in her class spelling bee. She lost to the girl that got second place in the school spelling bee last year. She did really well in the school spelling bee this year. She was very confident and spoke clearly as she spelled her words. It got down to her and the other girl from her class in the end. They went on a few rounds without missing words and then they got to the 7th grade spelling words(ones we hadn't practiced with Alyssa). She got out on the word wherewithal (if that is even how you spell it) and placed 2nd overall. We were very happy with how well she did. I think she was happy too, even though she admitted afterwards that she really wanted to participate in the spelling bee the next day for the 4th-8th graders (only the first place winner from the 2nd and 3rd grade spelling bee goes on to compete with the older kids). She came down with a fever the following day, though, so she wouldn't have been able to do it anyways, even if she had gotten first place.

The winner, Nora, is in the center of this picture. The other boy is a 2nd grader who got 3rd place. I love how happy the two girls look. They loved being there together and spent the rest of the day together. They became good friends through competing together.

 Here they are with their principal afterwards.

We are so proud of her and look forward to many more spelling bee's in the future.

Moab Trip

We took a trip down to Moab during Fall Break. We joined Becky and Jake's family there since they were also on Fall break. We only spent 3 days, but had tons of fun. It was mostly fun to get our families together and see the kids play so well. On one of the days there, we went to Arches National Park. Here is our family in front of "Balanced Rock."

 I guess people thought it was cool to stack up rocks next to balanced rock because there were tons of these little rock piles. These two girls are so similar and had so much fun together.

 Here are the older kids in front of "Delicate Arch." We opted to do the shorter hike to the upper viewpoint instead of the strenuous 3 miler to the actual arch. It would have been fun to get closer, but not with tired kids in tow.

These two couldn't get enough of the climbing. Some places they climbed to scared me to death, but they always managed to make it safely back to the ground. If you look closely in the second picture, you can see Jake, Conner, and Alyssa in the shadows of that huge rock towards the top.

I guess Ashley and Claire were not in the mood to smile in this picture, but here are all of the kids together.

The Moms with the kids.

We rented a 2-room condo south of town, which ended up working really well for our families. The kids kind of sprawled out in the living room, with the younger kids in the parents bedrooms. The condo ended up having a hot tub on it's patio and access to the community pool. The kids loved the pool and the adults loved the hot tub. The kids also loved the shared backyard area complete with a patch of red sand to play in. Ashley and Tamma spent most of the time we were at the condo out in that sand.

 We learned quickly that Moab is the place to go to do some serious offroading. Becky and Jake knew this and mostly planned the trip for this purpose. They brought their jeep and the guys took the oldest two kids out one morning to do a trail.

 This hole is called the Hot Tub and the drove their jeep right through it.

They sounded like they had a lot of fun. Becky and Jake had to head out of town a little earlier than us because they had a longer drive home. After we parted ways, we went for a drive along the Colorado river and found this dirt road that took us into Canyonlands National Park. (Danny had been told about it by a couple of people, so we went looking for it). We stopped along the way to do some more climbing.

We also stopped to take another look at the Colorado River.

 Here is a picture from the top of the cliff that we drove up. you can see the small dirt road that we came from. That road lead us right to the bottom of the cliff and then zig-zagged us up to the top. It was beautiful and a little scary at times, but well worth the 2 hour detour.

It was a really fun trip and we were glad that the Knudsen's invited us along. I have wanted to visit Moab and Arches since I was a student at BYU. It was nice to see the beauty down there and cross another thing off of my bucket list. The weather was also perfect.

July and August

We had a lot of fun this summer. So much fun that I have completely neglected our blog. We took a trip down to California in July for the biannual Miner Family Reunion. This time, my parents found a beach house that was located right on the beach. The kids had so much fun with their cousins and it was so relaxing to spend a week at the beach with my family. Here is the group picture in front of our house.

While we were in California, we also spent a day with Danny's brothers and their families. It was fun to see so many members of our families.

Shortly after we got back from California, Danny and I went on a weekend getaway to Portland. It was nice to celebrate our anniversary with a couple of kid-free days.

While in Portland, I got to spend some time with one of my childhood best friends, Gemia. It was so good to see her, meet her kids, and catch up on life.

After we got back from Portland, grandma and Grandpa Miner came to visit for a couple of days. We had planned to go to the children's museum the first day, but discovered shortly after arriving that admission was only $2 that day, drawing in crowds from all over Utah and Salt Lake Counties. We quickly changed our plan, deciding that cheap admission was not worth the crowds. We went to the aquarium instead. Here we are waiting for our 4D movie to start.

We returned to the Children's museum the following day. Grandma even paid for the girls to try out the high ropes course. They thought both days were awesome and can't wait for Grandma to come visit again.

I took the kids up to temple square last month. We toured the conference center and went to the church history museum. They loved it and asked if we can go back soon.

I knocked something off my bucket list by taking the kids on the Timpanogos Cave Hike and tour. They did great for most of it. Ashley and Tyler both got bored while inside the cave.

Afterwards, we sat on a bench on the trail and had a snack. This squirrel wandered right up to us, begging for food. We gave in and gave him a couple of orange slices.

Then the girls started school.

It has been quiet with just Tyler at home, but a nice break. It's just nice to go to the store again without hearing complaints the whole time.