California for Spring Break

For Spring Break this year, we took a trip to California, mostly to see family, but we did some other fun things along the way. We broke the drive down there up between 2 days and stayed with my sister's family in Henderson. Christy had a meeting from about 7-8, so we decided to kill some time in Henderson getting dinner and dessert. We ended up at a BBQ restaurant and ordered way too much food, especially Alyssa. We didn't want to carry the leftovers along with us, so we stuffed ourselves so full. Alyssa was the only one that ended up taking food home. Even though we were pretty full, the kids still had room for ice cream, so we stopped at Ben and Jerry's(we missed free cone day by exactly one week, by the way).

 Tyler had the best chocolatey mustache and beard, so I had to take a picture. I think we embarrassed him a little when we all laughed at it and he asked me to wipe it off as soon as I was done taking the picture. He kind of reminded me of Joker from Batman.

We got to Christy's house at the exact same time as her and had fun catching up with her and Dan and the kids before going to bed. They were up early for school, tennis, and work the next morning. We had planned to sleep in a little, but the sun comes up at like 5:30am in Vegas, so we were all up by 6:30. We took the time to shower and let the kids play a little in their backyard, including picking some lemons off of their tree, and then headed over to Green Valley Casino for a breakfast buffet. The best part about it was how the boys eyes widened at the sight of all of those "arcade games." We had to explain to them that it was an arcade for only adults. The girls didn't like having to walk through the casino, but we all really enjoyed the breakfast. We aren't quite sure why their breakfast spread included bread sticks, pizza, and tacos, but we enjoyed the other stuff.
After breakfast, we were off for Grandma and Grandpa Miner's house. We made it there around 2pm and the kids enjoyed an afternoon and evening of exploring Grandma's toys. We even got a nice musical serenade from the kids using Grandma's musical instruments.

I went up to the park with Alyssa before dinner so that she could do her track workout. She was supposed to do a workout every day of spring break so that she could stay in shape. I got to do them with her. I may have been more of a hindrance than a help since she is a much faster runner than I am. At least it helped me get my exercise in most of the days.
On Thursday, we were up at the crack of dawn to open up Disneyland Park. We made the mistake of offering the kids breakfast. This delayed our departure about 30 minutes which caused us to hit more traffic and get to Disneyland about an hour later than we wanted to. Lines were already pretty long, but we started the fast pass line up and line waiting and had a really fun, but tiring day. We got in the park around 8:45am and our kids actually lasted until 11pm. The girls would have made it to midnight, but we struggled to keep Camden awake for the final 45 minutes. We managed to ride everything that day that we wanted and some of the favorites twice. I think the kids favorite was Space Mountain and they probably would have loved to ride it a second time, but it was the longest line in the park and the fast passes ran out around 3pm. I didn't get very good pictures, but this is what I got.

It must have been bright that day because someone has their eyes closed in almost every picture. The kids were asleep within minutes of getting in the car and we rolled into Grandma and Grandpa's house around midnight. They had waited up for us which reminded me of my teenage days. :)
Friday was our rest day. We slept in, enjoyed more of Grandma's toys and games, and just enjoyed spending time with them. The girls got up on the roof in the evening to clean out their gutters and thought it was a lot of fun. They also picked a lot of lemons while we were there and made lemonade. We were glad for the down day. Alyssa and I even skipped the track workout. We needed it after such a long day at Disneyland.

Conference and Wheeler Cousins

On Saturday, we headed to Brian and Maryn's house to enjoy some cousin time and watch General Conference. They invited us to join them for breakfast and I'm sure our kids were so excited when they realized that they got donuts for breakfast(one of their family traditions for Conference). They also got to play Conference Bingo for prizes. I think the adults all got to listen to Conference better than usual since most of the kids disappeared upstairs to watch and we didn't have all the extra noise around us since they entertained each other so well. The weather was perfect, so the kids enjoyed playing outside in between the first 2 sessions.

These 3 boys claimed the trampoline for "the boys" and did not like when Alyssa invaded their territory.

In between the afternoon session and the priesthood session, we went to dinner at Fuddruckers(our request since there is no longer Fuddruckers in Utah and we miss it).

During priesthood session, Alyssa, Catherine, and Maryn made snickerdoodles while I took the rest of the kids over to the park. I also ran a little with Alyssa for her daily track workout.

We stayed until about 7:30 and then headed back to Grandma and Grandpa's to get a good nights rest for our drive home the next day.
On Sunday we were up and on the road shortly after 6. We didn't even bother getting the kids dressed, just loaded them and all of our stuff in the car and left. We stopped in Barstow for breakfast and got everyone(except Alyssa) dressed there. We listened to the first session of Conference by streaming through our phone. Our lunch stop didn't work out as well and we ended up having to stop as the second session was starting. In hindsight, this was probably a mistake. We probably should have skipped the stop and listened to Conference. We ate as quickly as possible. Danny and the girls finished first, so they got in the car as the first speaker was starting. The boys took a little longer, but finally finished and we were on our way. The traffic was heavy on the freeway and Danny was commenting about how the next few hours were not going to be fun if it was going to be like that all the way home. The car in front of us stopped quickly and we barely were able to stop in time, but fortunately we did. Unfortunately, the car behind us did not. We heard squealing tires and then we were forced forward. Danny swerved to avoid hitting the car in front of us and somehow managed to maneuver our car in between the car in front of us and the truck hauling a trailer to our right. I still don't know how we fit in that space without hitting any of them. We pulled off to the side with a car full of crying kids. Danny dealt with the people who hit us(their car hardly had a scratch on it), the police officer who finally responded to the accident(like 30 minutes later), and our insurance company. I calmed the kids down. We were all wearing seat belts and no one was injured, except Ashley having a little pain in her neck(mostly from the seat belt rubbing on it). There was a bigger accident not too far behind us(probably a chain reaction from our accident) that the officers responded to first, so we had to wait for them for awhile. After filling out a report with the officer, we were on our way. We tried to listen to Conference through it all, but it was quite difficult. I guess we will need to re listen to those talks. Our car is now in the shop being repaired. Not sure how long it will take, but we are grateful for insurance and that no one was hurt. We still made it home around 6:30, even with the delay.

Activity Days Daddy/Daughter Hawaiian Dance

Ashley had her last activity days Daddy/Daughter dance a couple of weeks ago. Our Stake does this dance every year and they always have so much fun. This year the theme was Hawaiian. Ashley borrowed my Hawaiian shirt and Alyssa's lei and flower clip. Alyssa also did her hair and make up, including spraying her hair with a coconut flavored hair detangler. It made her smell like coconut suntan lotion.

They went to dinner with a bunch of other dads and daughters from our ward before the dance. They said the lines were crazy long so they all ended up getting to the dance late. They got to have their picture taken and then do some dancing.

They seemed to both have a fun night. I didn't get a picture of it, but the rest of us went to Arctic Circle with some other Mom's and kids from our ward for ice cream and to play during the dance. Alyssa was a little old for the group, but she enjoyed the chicken tenders and ice cream.

Wicked

 For Christmas, Alyssa got tickets to go see "Wicked" at the Eccles theater. She has wanted to see "Wicked" since she was 7 so it was a much anticipated outing. I told her that if we got there early enough, then we could go to The Cheesecake Factory before the show. They don't take reservations later than 5, so we got there as soon as we could(around 5:15) and had a 30 minute wait time. The weather was kind of nice that night, so we were able to wait outside.

The wait time also gave us a chance to scope out our favorite Cheesecake(which was super helpful when our food took FOREVER to arrive at our table and we had to order our cheesecake, a carry out box, and the check all at once in order to get out of the restaurant on time). I was a little sad that I didn't get to sit and enjoy my s'mores cheesecake a little more because we were so rushed.

We made it to our seats about 5 minutes before show time. It would have been sooner if we hadn't had to take our leftover food up to the 5th floor of the parking garage and then have to wait in lines to get into the theater and up the 4 stories to where our seats were. (Oh, and we both had to make a bathroom stop on the way in, as well, since the cheesecake factory restroom was out of toilet paper).

We were on the front row of the highest balcony. The view was great, but getting to our seats was a little scary since we had to climb over so many people and the railing only came up about 3 ft. I kept having visions of one of us falling over the railing because someone bumped us too hard. We weren't supposed to take pictures in the theater, but Alyssa snuck a couple. This one is the stage from our seats. It's a little blurry, but there was a big map of the land of Oz hanging down before the show started.

We brought our binoculars, and Alyssa thought it was amazing to be able to see the facial expressions of the actors. At intermission, Alyssa checked out the merchandise. She brought her own money so that she could get a souvenir. She really wanted a sweatshirt, but it was $70, so she chose a shirt, instead.

We also stopped at the theater photo booth and they took this picture for us on my phone. I would have set our stuff off to the side if I had known they would do a full body shot, but oh well.

The show was well done, and most importantly, Alyssa had so much fun. We were able to get out of the theater pretty quickly, but got stuck for like 30 minutes in the parking garage.  We got home shortly after 11 and went straight to bed, since Alyssa had school the next day. It was nice to have a fun night out with just the 2 of us.

Family Fun Day

As incentive to help our family be better at studying the "Come Follow Me" manual this year, we came up with some rewards. We didn't think there was any way that we would be able to accomplish daily scripture study with our kids. All attempts in the past had failed. So we told them that after a week, we would reward them with a family outing to get a treat. And if we could do it every day for a month, we promised them a fun family outing. We accomplished the week pretty easily and were amazed when we had studied the manual and scriptures every day for a month. After some thought, Danny and I decided that it would be fun to try something new. I suggested snow tubing up in Midway. I have wanted to take the kids there for a few years now and felt like they were at the perfect ages to try it out this year. Doesn't it look fun?

We picked a Friday when the younger kids were off of school. We had planned to pick Alyssa up from school at lunch time, go out to eat together and then head up the canyon for a 2-4 pm reservation. Unfortunately, 2 days after we reserved the time we wanted, we got an email from the tubing place telling us that their lift had broken and they hoped to fix it as soon as possible, but that it wouldn't be fixed by that Friday reservation. We were so sad. Postponing the outing wasn't really an option with Danny's bone marrow donation approaching and then spring weather to shortly follow. So we came up with a list of other fun things we could do. We decided that Provo Beach Resort would be equally as fun for all of us. We even told the girls that they could try out the flowrider.

I wanted to post the videos of them doing this, but they were too big. You can boogie board or Surf on the strong flow of water. Ashley tried surfing one time, but fell right away and didn't want to try it again. They did have fun on those boogie boards, though. The boys had fun in the giant play place while the girls were doing this.

After the flow rider, we did a game of bowling. We all had fun with that, but 1 game was enough.

Next, we tried out the ropes course. Danny and I each took a boy with us and the girls were on their own. I thought, for sure, that Camden would be scared of the ropes course, but he actually did really well with it. We were probably on there for about 30 minutes before he was done. Tyler, surprised us all by climbing across the first stretch of rope and then refusing to move from the platform that he and Danny had gotten to. Danny could not get him to move for 40 minutes. Finally after all of the bribing and coaxing that he could think of, he picked Tyler up and carried him back across the ropes so that he could leave the course. Then I entertained the boys while Danny went back on with the girls to actually do some of the rope obstacles. I got these pictures of them from above.

 We also played croquet(there is a croquet course similar to miniature golf), but we didn't get any pictures of that. We finished off with arcade games and the carousel and then headed home. It wasn't quite what we expected the day to be originally, but we all had a lot of fun and stayed there way longer than we had expected.

Alyssa Loves Selfies

We have like a thousand selfies of Alyssa over the past 2 years. Sometimes she gets other people in her pictures. Here are some cute ones that she has taken in the last couple of months.

We went to get ice cream as a family and after the boys finished theirs, Alyssa let them play a game on her phone. They looked so cute cuddled up together that I couldn't resist a picture.

 We sure love these 4 kids.

Ashley's Birthday

 Ashley had a fun birthday a little over 2 months ago(I know, I'm way behind on this one). She wanted to go to an escape room for her birthday party. I was able to find a good deal on one that allowed her to invite 6 friends. She decided to invite 3 from school and 3 from our neighborhood. The kids had fun with the escape room, but Danny and I agreed afterwards that it wasn't as well done as the other escape rooms we have been in. With a little help, we were able to escape with about 30 seconds to spare. Here is the group after we got out(one of Ashley's school friends didn't make it to this portion of the party, but she joined us at our house afterwards).

 After the escape room we got pizzas and went back to our house to eat them and have cake. Alyssa and I had fun designing and making an escape room themed cake. Here is how it turned out.

I couldn't resist the bomb and dynamite candles when I saw them at the store. I was as surprised as Ashley when we lit them and they started sparking.

 After cake, Ashley opened her presents and then anyone who wanted to, played outside with Lula.

Ashley had a lot of fun and so did all of her friends.

Tyler's Beatrix Potter Tea Party

Tyler's kindergarten class celebrated finishing off reading Peter Rabbit by having a tea party. They got to leave the uniforms at home that day and dress in their Sunday best. About a week before the tea party, his teacher sent out a request for someone to make a Peter Rabbit themed cake. I needed some more service hours and thought this would be an easy and fun way to get them so I volunteered. I could have gone with an easier rabbit head cake, but I thought the garden scene cake looked so much fancier. This is how it turned out.

Here is the whole kindergarten class with the cake and tea cups in front of them. Tyler is kind of in the middle in the blue sports coat.

 A closer look at the table.

 Before they ate the cake and had tea, they got to play a couple of games.

 All ready for cake and warm apple juice "tea."

At the end, they got to line up with a boy escorting a girl to walk out to the front of the school. This is his favorite friend in the class, and also the girl that we carpool with. Her name is Hadley and it was so cute to see him escort her out to the front of the school.