Circus Circus Adventuredome

This little thing was funny!  It was called the Frog Hopper!  We loved watching the kids on this thing!!

This is them going down...love those faces/expressions!!

We both had the weekend off so we decided to do something fun and different with the kids (read: not do things like clean or honey-do's!) so we took off to the Circus Circus Adventuredome!  The kids really liked it and had a fun time.  Allie was still just a tad bit small to go on some of the rides, but she had fun and didnt mind waiting with me for Hunter and Jeff.  Jeff and I havent been here in 100 years!!  Ha! Brought back a lot of memories for us!

Hot dogs and ice cream

The kids and I had been out running errands and stopped for some lunch.  On a whim we decided to have some ice cream cones after our hot dogs.  They were delish!  I love random summer days with these two kiddos :)

I want to be these kids!

Im not sure where I saw this cute idea, but all I knew was that I wanted to treat my kids to this fun drink!!  I melted a little chocolate, dipped the rim of a cup in it then dipped the chocolate rimmed cup into sprinkles and filled the cups up with chocolate milk!!  They absolutely LOVED it!!  Oh, and those treats they are eating? Ya, S'mores pops...y.u.m. 

Weekend with Allie

Mike and Debbie took Hunter to Knotts Berry Farm for the weekend and I happen to have 6 (glorious) days off!!  I really love it when life works out like that...Anywho, we decided we werent going to just sit around and wait for Hunter to call us (every hour) screaming into the phone how much fun he was having and "could we hear that??  That ride is next and its soo cool"! haha!  So we took little Suzie Q to the park, to McDonalds, to Grandmas to go swimming, and when we hit up Lowes we ran into this kids workshop activity center and let her hammer away (for 30 seconds!) at this little project.  When an older lady saw all these kids building and hammering away she walked over and started asking some of them what they were building.  When she asked Allie what she was building she replied: "Nothing, my Mommy and Daddy are"!  hahahaha...she's right too.  She had lost intrest at that point and we were sitting there finishing it for her...aw well!! She had fun for about 1 minute and I got some cute pics of her and her Daddy!! Mission accomplished for Mom!

Memorial Day weekend 2011 camping trip

(That's a mouth-full of a title! haha!)

The Pools (both sets!) and the Reece's went camping for the first time this season over memorial day weekend.  We were going to go to Panguitch, UT but a few days before the trip, Dad said the weather was going to be really bad so we decided to go to N. NV instead.  I will say this: it was really cold in Ut., but N. Nv was doing its best to keep up!!  Wow!!  It was horrible weather; raining, windy and Jeff and I even ran into snow flurries!!!! Snow flurries...2 days away from June!! So crazy to us...
Even though the weather was bad, we still had a great time. Thank goodness for Mom and Dads new, larger 5th wheel or we may not have made it the entire weekend!!! 
The kids had fun fishing and digging and being dirty and riding the quads.  I dont think the weather even phased them!!

$11

We decided to treat my parents to dinner the other night and met them at Tony Romas.  When we got there Hunter ran over to my Dad and started taking to him.  My Dad came over to us just as we were to get seated and said told us what they were talking about:

Hunter: "Guess what Grandpa"?
G-pa: "What"?
Hunter: "I have $11"!!!
G-pa: "WOW!! You do? How did you get $11"?
Hunter: "My Grandma Jeanie gave me $10 for my birthday and I already had $2"!!
G-pa: {Trying not to laugh too hard}"Oh, well that makes $12".
Hunter: "Oh.Ya.Thats what I meant"!!!

Gosh, kids are so adorable!!!

Christmas 2010

Allison and Mom before the chaos! HA!

The 4 of us :)

Let it begin!

Last gift...what did Santa bring?

WOW!!  An LGB train set!!

One happy boy!!

Best Christmas ever...so far!

Inspired Post...What I didnt do

I read a blog tonight that made me smile. It summed up exactly the way I felt this holiday season. Its about all the things that the person DIDN'T do this holiday season. I was feeling the same way and guilty about it, but after I read this I remembered that sometimes most of my stress comes from doing things that I think I NEED to do versus the things I have TIME to do. I get this picture in my head about how things should look, how much I should bake, what I should cook for who, what to buy who and then the fiasco of planning who's house we go to on what day/time is enough to make me want to cancel the celebrations altogether! So here is my list of things I didn't do:

I didn't make sugar cookies from scratch for Santa. But I did let the kids roll pre-packaged dough out and cut out any shape they wanted without my help. And they didn't know the difference and Santa loved them!

I didn't write a long letter for each child to Santa, and no-one knew better or complained and Santa still came through!

We didn't buy $15.99 matching Christmas pajamas for each kid this year and drive across town just to pay another $15 to drive through the parade of lights. And yet we still had fun driving around town every night and looking at all the decorated homes.

I didn't wrap one present until Christmas Eve. Not one. And I got Jeff to help wrap and it wasn't overwhelming!

I used a Sharpie instead of fancy sticker'ed name tags to write to and from on. And it was fine.

I let the kids stay in pajamas all day Christmas day and only re-dressed them in clean ones before putting them to bed.

I didn't take a million pictures on Christmas, I may regret it, but I was enjoying the moment and trying not to get so caught up in "recording" it.

I didn't buy every single gift brand-new out of the box and the kids enjoyed them the same.

I didn't put up every single box of decorations in the garage and I have already taken the tree down. I have to say: it's nice.

I hope to be more organized about Christmas next year. But, if I'm not, I hope that I don't feel guilty for not doing the picture-perfect Christmas I see in my head. Life happens.

Holiday Pictures 2010

My Mom wanted Christmas pictures of all three Grandkids. I have been watching Brett (a.k.a "Little Mister") on Monday's while Krista is in school so I got all three kids bathed and dressed and toted them all to Sears to get pictures. It was horrible. The photographer was a male, so Allison shied away the entire session, Hunter mis-behaved and that Little Mister cried every single time I set him down!!! I finally gave up, called it quiets and scheduled another session for the next week with a woman photographer. The next week I bathed, dresses, and hauled kids to Sears again and still didnt get very good pictures, but decided it was good enough. Sometimes you dont win...I needed to accept that! Ha! Anyway, I snapped this picture the very first day and I have to say that its defiantly the best shot of the three of them!

Halloween 2010

The kids in front of my Grandpa Antoninos house

We went to Utah again for Halloween.  The kids just love to hang out with all those cousins that they dont get to see very often.  We have a ton of fun.  The Moms get together and bake all day while the kids play, I usually get my hair and toes done, and we eat pumpkin shaped pizza!!  On Halloween night we usually hit up about 3 trunk-or-treats and visit all the Grandparents.  Then we go back to Talias, eat something warm and hit her neighborhood for at a couple of hours!! The kids totally score and its sooo much fun!  Hunter was Batman this year and Allison was a 50's poodle skirt girl! They were adorable, and I love watching them run from door to door screaming "trick-or treat"!

Washington 2010

It was fun :)