Cali Trip!

So over my fallbreak/UEA we chaperoned the Younglife trip to California. It was crazy/fun/exhausting, and so so worth it. Our friend Rob runs YoungLife in Park City and works out with Joe a few times a week. He told us to pray that more adults would step up to chaperone and we told him that we were free that weekend and would be glad to go. He was ecstatic and couldn't thank us enough for being willing to do it. There ended up being around 130 kids go. Here are the details of the trip

Wednesday:

Meet at 9 PM for Club. The speaker for the weekend was Joe Cole and he was absolutely amazing. He has a passion for Christ and for teenagers, I wish I could take just a little bit of it into my life. We also had the pleasure of hearing music from Josh Rosenthal, amazing singer/songwriter. Check him out here or iTunes. Then we finally loaded up the buses and hit the road around 10:30 and drove all night til we reached Cali!

Thursday:

We arrived in Cali and our hotel was right on the beach in Oxnard. So most of the day was spent on the beach even though it was cloudy and the water was freezing. We helped the kids set up for some beach volleyball and played a little football. That night we had some pizza then had our second club and a nice little concert from Josh. Joe and I slept in different rooms so that we could interact with the kids and my girls were kind of shy but a few opened up and shared things with me and I shared with them. I hope to keep up some of the relationships that were made on the trip.

Friday: We woke up and headed to Six Flags-Magic Mountain. It was my first time ever being there and it was so much fun. I am for sure an adrenaline junky and these roller coasters were right up my alley. I suggest anyone taking a trip to SoCal to make time to head here. Favorite rides of the day: X2, Goliath, Batman and Tatsu. We ended the day again with Club and discussion time with our groups.

Saturday: We packed up and did Club in the morning and had a new believers walk. 15 kids devoted their life to Christ! It was amazing! Normally kids go on this trip for the fun and they usually don't have anyone accept Christ so 15 is an amazing number. After this we made our way to Disneyland! I love Disneyland, but hate the crowds. I wanted to take the kids next summer but decided to wait til they are a little older. We had tons of fun hanging out with a new friends and enjoyed the rides. My only disappointment for the day was not riding Space Mountain because the line was way too long everytime we checked.

Disney closed at Midnight and we climbed onto the bus exhausted and headed home.

Puttin up our U's!

Splash Mountain!

Loved all the Halloween Decorations

Before Captain EO

It was a fast paced, never stopping, incredibly fun trip that I would for sure do again. Count us in for next year!

P.S. Love that fact that I got to sleep during the 13 hour drive there and back. Wish I could do this everytime. :)

Christmas Spirit!

I love Christmas time and this year it seems extra special. My own house with my kids and fiance. We went and picked out our tree last week and it was so cold! We hurried and found a nice full nine footer. It didn't look that big til we got it in the house. It is seriously huge. It was the kids weekend to go with their Dad and I wanted to make sure they could decorate some of it but we only had a few sets of lights so I put them on the bottom of the tree and then gave them the whole box of ornaments to put on. It was the cutest thing. Of course all of the ornaments ended up on the bottom part of the tree. I felt bad taking them all back down to put the new lights on after they left but we left some of the ornaments for them when they got home and Cadence is now constantly rearranging them.

After our huge snow storm over the weekend we decided to take the kids out to play in the snow. We finally got their boots and snow suits. It was so deep that Cadence couldn't even walk in it. We had tons of fun and made a snowman and named him Bob. He is right out our window so the kids can always see him and they like to make sure he is still there. We didn't have anything to make his face out of except for some baby carrots so Joe carved his mouth and we used balls for his eyes. After I stuck his arms in Braxton wanted to put a stick in too so he put about 6 sticks at the bottom and said they were his feet.

The other day we decided to make some Christmas sugar cookies. We had tons of fun and made a huge mess but it was so worth it. I let the kids help cut out the shapes, we had a Christmas tree a star and made some plain old round ones. We made red and green frosting and had red and green sprinkles. I gave them to the kids and let them go.

My family has so many Christmas traditions and I love every single one of them but I am so excited to be able to start some of my own and things that the kids can look back on and remember how special Christmas was during their childhood just like I remember mine.

Catch up...

It's been a while since I posted. Life has just been so busy. I have started my summer semester at UVU and my classes aren't hard they just require A LOT of reading so when I'm not at work I am usually doing homework. I try to spend as much time with the kids as I can too. We have been going to the park a few times a week and they just love it. Joe and I also bought Lagoon season passes! We bought them last year but didn't use them as much as we would have liked to so this year we decided we would buy them and go on the weekends the kids are with their dad. We've only been once so far but we are planning on going alot more. We took a trip to Denver to visit Joe's mom over Memorial Day weekend. It was tons of fun. We got up at 3:30 on Friday morning so we could be out by 5! It was crazy but worth it to have the kids sleeping for half of our long drive. They did really well until we were about 30 minutes away. I think that they could sense that we were getting close and they got really anxious. We got there about 12:30 and just hung out at his mom's house. We went to a restaurant call The Elephant Bar for dinner and it was so delicious. The best part was the desserts. They were so good that I would plan a trip to Denver just for the desserts. On Saturday we went to this really cool ampitheater called Red Rocks, it was gorgeous! We took the kids to a park and went shopping. We went to dinner and watched the Lakers/Nuggets game. On Sunday we went to a town south of Denver called Breckenridge. It looks just like Park City. They had a main street just like Park City that has a bunch of little shops that were all way cute. It started to hail and rain really hard. We were quite a ways from the car and we covered the kids with some jackets and ran all the way to the car. We were soaked but the kids were pretty dry, Cadence actually fell asleep. I don't know how you fall asleep in a stroller with a jacket over your head and pouring rain but she managed. As we were on our to Joe's mom's house it was still raining but now there was lightning and thunder with it. I've never seen so much lightning in my life and it was so close to us. We went to dinner at Carinos which was really yummy. Cadence was stealing my salad and noodles off my plate, she didn't want her own dinner. She is the only 2 year old I know that likes salad, most of them just spit it out. After dinner we went back to the hotel and decided to go swimming which was a really bad idea. There was WAY too much cholrine in the pool and hot tub and it gave all of us chemical burns. I felt so bad for Braxton he had it really bad. It mostly just burned his private areas, and we tried to put him the bath to wash the chlorine off but he just wanted to take a cold shower because it felt better. Poor guy. I was so mad that the hotel didn't test the water before letting people in the pool. We were all pretty much better by the next morning though. Monday was Memorial Day and Joe's mom and Cousin Julie were running in the Bolder Boulder which is a 10k race they hold every year. It was a really fun atmosphere to be in and they did great. We enjoyed cheering them on and watching them finish the race. There were so many people there, they had about 50,000 people in the race and then all of the people that were there just to watch. It was crazy. Joe and I are going to do it next year, I am really excited. After the race we went to downtown Denver and walked around, ate lunch and bought souvenirs then Julie had to catch her flight back to Ohio. We just hung out at the hotel for the rest of the night. We had to be up at 6 so we could catch our flight (Joe's dad flew out and was driving the car back). Braxton was really excited to fly. We made sure to get window seats and the kids got to watch us take off. They loved it! Braxton thought it was the coolest thing ever and Cadence wasn't really sure what to think. They were surprisingly good, I thought they were going to disturb everyone by being loud and obnoxious but they didn't. It was a fun trip and it was great to spend time with some of our family.

Cadence's 2nd Birthday

Cadence's birthday was on the 8th so this is a little late but I finally put the pictures on my computer. We had the whole family over for her birthday and she got lots of fun stuff. My mom gave her a little princess chair that she loves and we gave her some clothes and a cute pink baseball glove. She loved everything and had tons of fun.

Anniversary

So last Thursday was our (me and Joe) one year anniversary. We didn't do anything on Thursday because we had the kids and decided Friday would be easier. We made reservations at The Melting Pot and we got all dressed up. It was really fun. If you haven't ever been to The Melting Pot I really recommend it. It's expensive but very worth it. It is a fondue restaurant and absolutely delicious. First you decide on a cheese and they bring you bread and veggies to dip in it. Then you decide on a flavor for the entrees. They bring you a plate full of raw meat which is kind of gross but you just boil the meat and veggies and it's really good. Dessert was worth the whole dinner. We had a dark chocolate with some peanut butter in it and they bring you a plate full of delicious goodies to dip in it. There were strawberries, bananas, rice crispy treats, brownies, marshmallows, cheesecake, and pound cake. Everything was great. It was a great night and we had a great time.
I can't believe we have been together for a year now. I wouldn't have it any other way. I love him and my life it going really great. He supports me and helps me anyway he can and he treats my kids as if they were his. I can't wait to spend more years together just like this one.

Weekend

I hate just sitting around on Saturdays so we are always looking for things to go do with the kids. This weekend we decided to take them to the Living Planet Aquarium. It was pretty fun. There were tons of people so it was hard to see the fish and you had to wait for a spot to open up in front of the tank to get a good look at them. Braxton loved it and Cadence just kept running around saying "fish, fish" it was funny. They had an area that you could pet stingrays but both of the kids were too scared to put their hands in the water. I was going to show Braxton that it was okay to touch them and tried to work my way up to pet them but no one would move and when I finally reached the front some redneck jerk got in front of me and then scared the stingray away so I just gave up and decided that I just wasn't supposed to pet one that day. All in all it was a pretty fun experience. I think if we go back it would be on a day that wasn't so busy. I forgot my camera so we have no pictures, sorry.

SPRING!

I love that it is finally getting warm and so do the kids. On Saturday we took them to the park for the first time of the year. They loved it. We have already gone again. They would go everyday if we would let them. Hopefully we can go alot more once it gets a little bit warmer in the evenings. Here are a few pictures.

VEGAS!

We went to Las Vegas over the weekend and it was tons of fun. It is a tradition in my family. They go to the Nascar race every year. (I go shopping =D) Everyone but me, Joe and Cadence went down on Wednesday night. I couldn't go because I had a test for math. Braxton wanted to ride down with my mom so I let him. Wednesday morning they had a parade of all the semi-trucks that haul the cars to the different tracks. Braxton loved it. We left Thursday and had a nice trip down and stopped in St. George for In 'N Out. I love their burgers they are so good. We finally got to Vegas and into our hotel. We were staying at the Stratosphere so we decided it would be fun to go to the top to the observation deck. It was gorgeous. Then we decided to go on the rides. They were awesome and scary at the same time. They next day we went to the pool it was really awesome. It was on the roof. It was kinda chilly because the wind was blowing but we had fun playing and I tried to teach Braxton to swim. He didn't really catch on but he had fun. As we were leaving the hotel we were trying to catch an elevator but it was pretty much impossible so when we finally got one all 19 of us decided to squeeze on. It was really funny to see peoples faces when they saw how many of us were on it. I was in the corner so I decided to take a picture of everyone. We wanted to take the kids to see the fountains at the Bellagio but they didn't start til 3:00 and we were there at 12 so we just decided to go to lunch at In 'N Out again. After lunch we went to the race track and walked around and looked at all the different trailers with the drivers merchandise. It's also a great time to check out all the really redneck people. You can find a lot of them when you are around Nascar. We had to drive to Mesquite because that's where we were staying the other 2 nights. We went to a Mexican restourant in Mesquite, it's really good. We were pretty tired by the time we got to our hotel so we just went to bed after. Saturday morning the guys woke up and went to the first race. We didn't want to fight the crowds or traffic in Vegas so we decided to go to St. George and go shopping and then take the kids to the sand dunes in Snow Canyon. I got some great deals on clothes for the kids for summer and bought some toys for us to play in the sand with. The sand dunes were lots of fun. Cadence had fallen asleep and was really cranky when we first got there and didn't want to touch the sand but she came around and she really loved it. We buried each of the kids in the sand (except Cadence) and dug a really deep hole. We all got really dirty but really enjoyed it. We drove back to Mesquite and had dinner as the Casa Blanca. The kids wanted to go bowling so my mom and my aunt took the kids and we decided to do some gambling. I don't gamble much because I hate to lose money. My brother was the only one to win any money but we all still had fun. On Sunday the guys woke up and went the 2nd race and we again went to St. George for more shopping. We got home at about 9 that night exhausted but happy from a great trip with the family.