Disneyland!!

OK. So it has been very hard as of late to blog. Having my camera stop working, then borrowing someone's super old camera, Dexy lost our big memory card, my computer starts throwing fits every time I try to work with the pictures folders, and blogger has been disliking me recently on top of all of it. That is why my posts have been so few and far between. But, here are the pictures from Disneyland. I put a lot on Facebook, but here's some here too just in case. Brian's parents got everyone a 3 day park hopper pass for Christmas this year. It was such a super awesome present!! We wouldn't have been going to Disneyland for quite some time if it wasn't for them. The boys loved it! Everything was amazing and exciting!! I threw a little fit a time or two when I had to miss out on my favorite rides because I'm pregnant (still never been on the Matterhorn and always sad about missing out on Space Mountain and Indiana Jones), but besides my crabby attitude moments, it was all good. The boys did have some crabby moments, too. We had a great, fabulous time!!

Yay!! Walking into Disneyland! It was so exciting. Only my third time and, of course, the first for the boys.

The Little Mermaid ride; one of Dexy's favorites. He asked to go on it again by name the next day.

Stellar! Bug's Life 3D show. Ollie's not really a fan. He wouldn't keep the glasses on.

Dexy rocked the glasses and loved the show.

The Heimlich Chew Chew Train; Oliver's favorite. We rode this one a good 3 times.

Splash Mountain; Dexy was an inch too short :( But it was Oliver's other favorite, again with multiple rides.

This is a new ride down in California Adventure and it is so much fun! A new favorite for Brian and I.

You wear 3D glasses and pull the string on this 'popper gun' to shoot things. Much fun!

Ollie didn't way love the dark and semi-scariness of Buzz Astro Blasters, but he was brave.

Now Dexy did love shooting all the aliens; his other favorite ride.

Awww!! They're so precious!

Small World Christmas style was so festive and cute! Dexy was staring in amazement. Unfortunately, Ollie fell asleep in line and missed it.

Plumb worn out on the last night. We stayed in the park til at least 10 the first 2 nights and pushed it all the way til close at midnight the last night. They happily climbed into bed together and were almost instantly asleep. So much fun!!!

Leaves!!

OK. All caught up. At least for now. This was Friday evening. We had been in the house for a while, so we headed outside to check the mail. On our way back, we found a gianormous amount of fallen leaves up again the wall of our condo complex. The boys asked if they could play in them and I said, "YES!! Let's play!"

We started fairly innocently with leaf throwing, crawling through them, and sitting in them.

Then running and jumping into them from the ground. Then I gathered them all up into a corner of the wall and we moved to jumping off the wall into the leaves. Ollie ran inside and got a little chair, which he hauled all the way back outside to us, so they could climb up on the wall by themselves. That left me free to continuously fix the leaf pile, making it suitable for big time wall jumping fun!

At which point, Ollie did this! A head first dive, off the wall, into the massive leaf mountain! It was brilliant!! But by then, it was unfortunately getting dark and it was time for us to stop playing. Good thing we had a ward Christmas dinner to go to that night or I don't think I could have convinced them to stop.

Christmas Cookies

A few days ago, Cristina made dough and colored sugar sprinkles and then brought them over to our house after Ollie got home from preschool. The boys loved rolled out the dough, picking a cookie cutter to use and cutting out all sorts of Christmas shapes. After they baked and cooled, they even got to frost and decorate them. Dexy and Jude were all about just getting some frosting on their cookie and eating it asap. Ollie, on the other hand, needed to not only frost it with a mountain of frosting, but pile on the sprinkles before he would get to eating his. I love Christmas sugar cookies!

My Helper Boys

My boys are so nice and helpful. They especially love helping me make dinner. So, I put them to work. This night we were making delicious, coconut milk shrimp. I love the smell of it when it's simmering! Ollie peeled basically that entire butternut squash by himself. It was awesome! And then Dex, taking a break from his stirring, chomped down on several pieces of raw squash. He said he liked it! You go, boys!!

Sand Dunes

OK. Here's more catch up. Way back in November, we seriously piled everyone into my car (with Derek and Cristina in the trunk - don't tell anyone), so we could pay only $6 and get into Snow Canyon State Park. We went to the sand dunes and had a GREAT time!

The kids happily played for a good couple of hours. And so did the adults. It was well worth the 6 bucks. We got to roll, jump, dig, bury, and plow in the sand. We really need to go do it again!

Jubilee of Trees

I haven't blogged in forever. Sorry. I've been having computer, camera, and energy issues. So here's my first catch up installment. We went to the Jubilee of Trees a little while ago. The boys loved seeing all the Christmas trees. I wanted to go and I knew that Cristina wanted to go, but we didn't actually plan to go together. But, as luck would have it (and kid's schedules), we ended up there at the same time! The boys loved the tree with the train that went around it. They sat there and stared at it forever. We saw trees, played bells, took Christmas pictures, ate a little treat or two and watched the dancers that were performing. We ended up being there for A LOT longer than I thought we would. The dancers right at the end really helped hold their attention for another 30 minutes or so. It was fun and got us in the holiday spirit!

Making Slime

A couple days after Halloween, we got together for more 'Octoberish' fun by making slime. After jumping off the outside wall several times, we finally convinced them to come in and give the actual activity a try. It's just white school glue, water, and Borax, but you have to add it in a certain order. It made actual, real slime. Pretty cool!

Halloween!

I'm really suppose to be cleaning the kitchen, so I am of course blogging. I decided that this is a least a somewhat productive form of procrastination. And since I haven't blogged in forever and never got around to the actual Halloween day, here it is. We had a super fun Halloween. Everyone got all decked out and then we took the kids to the carnival at the library first.

They had all kinds of fun games that earned them tickets, which we traded for prizes when we were done.

Dexy, the blue crayon. Did you expect anything else from my blue obsessed boy?

Ollie was a purple crayon, Jude an aviator, and Alice a ballerina. They all looked so adorable.

Even face painting was a part of the fun.

Then onto more games!

Soon the grown-ups....

.....and the baby decided to take a stab at the fun as well.

Then we came back to our house for a quick mac 'n cheese dinner before heading back out to do the actual, door to door trick or treating. The boys got the point of it this year and were really enjoying the activity.

The Stielme's house was the best! Look at them all into the Halloween spirit!

Even Alice, who was quite the trooper through a long day of lots of activity, seemed to be having fun.

It was a good time! We cetainly did enjoy Halloween to it's fullest this year.