Happy Halloweeeeeeeen

What would Halloween be without the rain I ask you? It seems to be the turning point from summerish to winterish weather. And I guess it just wouldn't be the same without it.
Our Halloween started on Thursday with the school parade and carnival. Dave was nice enough to bring Andee and Kenadie down for the events. It's tradition. I've paraded my kids through the school every Halloween since Paityn was born. I love it.
Cinderella won out again this year for Andee. We went through quite a few different options but I guess thankfully she decided on something we already had.

Paityn chose something simple too. A cute little cat! You can't see them but she had a cute tail and some cute little paws that didn't stay on long.

And our little Kenadie had no choice. She got to wear something we already had too. You can't really tell here, but she's a 50's girl. It's so cute to see her toddle down the hall in this little poddle skirt. She found this horse, which was part of one of my students costume, and just "rode" around the room on it for quite a while. I hope Santa was watching :)

Friday was the night we carved our pumpkins. I always love this activity. It really shows my kids personalities.

Kenadie is interested in how everything tastes. She came to the conclusion that the insides of the pumpkin weren't that great tastin'.

This is typical Andee. She has been grossed out by the whole thing ever since her first Halloween.

Need I say more about how Kenadie felt about the whole thing.

Paityn has always loved doing this. She is now to the age where she does the whole thing by herself. She was very thoughtful about what she wanted her pumpkin to look like. It turned out great!

The full affect. Left to right: Paityn's, Kenadie's, Dave's, Andee's.

The Pumpkin Carving Crew. I'm part of the "behind the scenes" crew.

Saturday night was our ward Trunk or Treat. It was actually 3 wards combined and it was meant to be in the "trunks" but ended up inside the church itself due to the rain.

Paityn was once again a cat

A bundled-up Cinderella this time

And we changed Kenadie's costume to a ladybug because it was much warmer. And besides, she is our little "bug".

This was the scene at the beginning of trunk or treat. POuring rain, lots of umbrellas, lots of puddles and lots of cold, wet kids. They braved the weather for about 10 minutes until we saw that everyone was moving inside the church. To be honest, the conditions weren't much better. It was a combined, 3 ward activity and there were so many people crammed into the gym. IT was hot and hard to move around. Oh well. They got TONS of candy. I'm thinking that if it rains next year, we're just going to the mall (great idea Angie!)

Me and Kenadie manned the treats while the others went tricking

Oh boy! Kenadie couldn't believe all the candy.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Family Vacation (minus 1)

UEA = Utah Exit to Anaheim. And that's exactly what we did. Leaving life for 8 days was great. We spent money like there was no tomorrow and just had a blast!
Our trip started out on Sunday afternoon when we left for Manti where we would stay the night and leave Kenadie to play with Grandma and Grandpa Maylett (and lots of cousins) for the whole time we would be gone. I highly recommend leaving little ones at home. I watched families dealing with little ones while we were gone and was so glad we decided to leave Kenadie to enjoy Grandma and Grandpa. I missed her like crazy but so glad we didn't have to worry about naptimes, what to feed her and changing diapers. We stayed in Manti Sunday night and set out on our 10 hour drive Monday morning. It actually probably took longer than that because we sat in traffic for 2 hours. The girls were real troopers and we made it to Anaheim Monday night.
We woke up bright and early so we could be at Disneyland at opening. Tuesday is a great day to go because the crowds aren't as big. The longest we waited in a line all day was 15 minutes. It was fun just to watch the girls' reactions to everything they saw though. It's just so MAGICAL there. I felt like a kid myself.

Our first character was Tiana from "The Princess and the Frog". They were mesmerized by the costume and just couldn't believe they were seeing a real, live princess! If I were to post all the pictures we took with the characters this would be a MASSIVE post. We got a ton of characters and filled up their autograph book.

We were all looking forward to the teacups but we got spinning so fast that I got a little sick to my stomach. I guess old age does that to you because I've never gotten sick on a ride before. That didn't stop me though. I love all kinds of rides. And I'm learning that so do my girls. Well, most of them I guess. They loved Space Mountain and Splash mountain but got really scared on the Tower of Terror.

This picture just cracks me up. This was typical of Andee the whole time. She's covering her eyes because of the sun. It never came out until about noon. I couldn't believe the amount of smog!

This was fun. They could get inside this huge box and pretend they were the toy inside the box.

I thought it was so funny to see this big guy (Dave) on the swings with this little girl (Andee). What a cute daddy!

One of the things they really wanted to do was ride the big white boat.

So we spent 3 FULL days at Disneyland and we were worn out! Our feet hurt so bad from all the walking. Our hotel was about 2 blocks away from Disneyland so it was hard to make it back at night.

The next day we drove to LA (even more smog and SO MUCH garbage on the sides of the roads) to go to Universal Studios. The crowds were pretty small so it was nice.

We saw a lot of characters here too. One of our favorites was Spongebob. He just had to do a belly bump with Dave. Cracked me up!

One of the rides was Jurassic Park where you go down this huge waterfall!

The whole gang of Scooby Doo was there (minus Velma and Fred) and they were great too!

awwwwww! what a cute family!

After Universal we drove to San Diego. It took us about 3 1/2 hours to get there because of the traffic! We had a hard time finding our hotel in the dark and it's not fun driving with Dave when he doesn't know where he's going.

We finally made it to our hotel on the beach and settled in for the next day. By this time we were about done with walking around and waiting in lines.

The next day we started out by going to the San Diego Zoo. It is HUGE!!!!!

We loved the elephants.

And this guy was so funny because he just sat there and stared at us.

We soon got to the point where we were tired of looking at animals and left. We only got halfway through. Like I said, we were done!

AFter the zoo we drove to Sea World which is about 2 miles from the zoo. It was a rainy, colder day.

The one ride we definitely wanted to do was the water roller coaster. Andee wasn't tall enough so Dave and I took turns going with Paityn. She loved it.

We, of course, had to see the Shamu show. We had awesome seats and didn't even get wet, much to Paityn's dismay. We did, however, go on a rapid's ride and got SOAKED! Needless to say, we were done at that point. We went back to our hotel for one more night.

The next day we went down to Mission Beach and spent a little time there. It was another colder, cloudy day but it was fun anyway. It was awesome to walk in the sand and water.

The girls got wet and we had sand everywhere but oh well.

One last picture

AFter the beach we drove to Vegas and stayed the night in Excalibur. Vegas isn't what it use to be, or is it I'm not what I use to be. Dave gambled $20 while me and the girls hung out in our room. We were in bed by 8:30. Sad I know.

We left Vegas the next morning, drove to Manti to pick up Kenadie and continued onto home. So glad to see Kenadie and be back home to our own bed and a home-cooked meal. We had missed all but had a blast! I think we're going to make it a 5 year plan and go again. Save your money and you can go with us!