Spontaneous Trip to Disneyland

So you wouldn't think being "UNEMPLOYED" and "DISNEYLAND" go hand and hand. For some reason we seemed to think they did. In hindsight, considering we are still unemployed two months later, maybe it was a bad idea. But we had the money in savings and we didn't think we'd still be unemployed this long (now its looking like it could be A LOT longer). We did it on a whim because we wanted to take advantage of the time we had to spend as a family. I don't regret the memories we made or that we did it- just the money we spent. 

We left late in the evening and drove all night.

We arrive about 4am and checked into the hotel.

the next day we went to the Beach and the Newport Beach Temple

and then the following day to Disneyland.

Our children had no idea until we walked up to the gates where we were and then our son went all giddy shy on us and would say Disneyland. 

We did kiddo things all day

.It was the first time in my life since being 10 that I went to Disneyland and didn't ride one ride I couldn't have rode the first time I ever went to Disneyland (when I was 4).

 Everything we did was focused around Al having a great time.

 We were able to go to CARSland. It was fun but I was very disappointed that the babies couldn't do even ONE ride there.

Al did find CARSland really cool 

 It was a *really* hot hot day. Too bad I thought it was going to be a bit cooler and packed our clothes for the low 80's and not for 100's.

Also it must have been twin day at the park. We met TWINS everywhere. 

These grown twins were there celebrating their bday. They told my girl that they have no idea what fun is in store for them. Since it was first thing in the morning at Disneyland I thought they were talking about Disneyland But then I realized that they meant 'in their lives as twin'

Halloween Night

A few months ago I had this epic idea... dress our children up as water for Halloween. We have twin girls and a 3 yr old son, two H's and one O H2O. Brilliant right? Somehow I thought it might be a little too crazy but mentioned it to him anyway. He LOVED the idea and we made it happen. And hey why not do it while our children are too young to argue yet about what they want to be.

Our son's oxygen costume was a red t-shirt with an iron on of Oxygen from the Periodic table. I made him some pj pants out of red cotton material from my fabric stash. For the girls I had white onesies that I iron oned the Hydrogen from the Periodic table, white tights we already owned and I made them white tutus out of tulle (just to give it a fun costume effect). As for my husband and I we wore my old lab coat from college (my husband borrowed one from a doctor friend), and we made ourselves look crazy. My husband made his own steampunkish goggles to complete the outfit. Overall all for of our outfits and the candy was under $20. Yes we do awesome Halloween for about $20.  As a disclosure I didn't count the iron on paper because I already owned it from a previous project and the paper has been gathering dust in my house. 

Happy Halloween

Primary's Got Talent

My friend the new chorister in our ward did this for their review and I asked if I could share it.

The judges gave the children feed-back on how they are doing and if they are ready to go to the next level ie the Primary Program. Such a cute idea. She drew the lettering on poster board and then cut out around the lettering. 

The Beach (first time)

Went to the beach for the first time with our children back in September.

The girls didn't know what to think of all the sand and took a while deciding what to do with it. 

On the other hand our son thought it was awesome and took no time at all to warm up to it and become friends with the other children on the beach.

We had a good time.

Glasses and Nose Bleeds

 

My girls are obsessed with my glasses. To distract them from my glasses I showed Rose that they could ware the Mr Potatohead glasses. It worked for about 5 minutes. 

I haven't figured out what Al is doing but he has started getting nose bleeds. In the last week its happened 3 times. I think he got hurt once and then has been picking it. Whatever it is he has been getting blood all over the place because he won't tell me  when it happens.

Sowards Family Vacation

I wish I had more picture from the weekend. I didn't get out my camera.
These photos of my daughters were taken by my brother with his awesome camera.

These girls are just so cute and are natural hams in front of a camera.

This creepy wood guy was on the outside of the cabin we were staying in, looking inside the cabin- it was just creepy.

Pioneer Day Celebration

The Saturday prior to Pioneer Day our stake had a celebration/fair. It was fun. We volunteered to help inform the stake about Indexing for the church's family history, mostly the 1940 census (which  is now completed). Our stake wanted to raise interest and recruit. We brought both of our laptops and our desktop monitor. My husband connected the monitor to his laptop so that passers by could see what he was doing. We weren't the only ones with our laptops there were about 10 others in our section, all of us indexing.

There were lots of soups of every kind and then pies. I brought two pies. (I was only asked to bring one but I ended up making three, so I brought two). One was a sugar-free, chocolate banana cream pie, the other was an Almond Pie (pecan pie but made with almonds). The chocolate banana cream pie was gone before I even got to try a bite. Wish I took photos of both of them.

I had two reasons for making an Almond pie, 1- oh my goodness nuts are expensive. I always buy my nuts at Costco and I thought they were expensive there. We were out of pecans and all I had were Almonds. I thought I'd just buy a bag at the local grocery store until I saw the price. I couldn't stop thinking about that carmelly goodness. I wondered if I could use my almonds and sure enough I found a recipe on the internet for almond pie 2- I shouldn't be eating pecans because I'm sort of allergic. Its not an immunological reaction (which to be a true allergy it has to be immunological reaction- meaning your immune system is reacting like its a virus or bacteria something to threaten your health.) My reaction is mostly to walnuts but I sometimes have a reaction to pecans. What happens to me is I get welts all over my tongue. I've been told it has to do with the acidity of the nut. But all nuts produce acidity and the ONLY nuts I have a problem with are walnuts and pecans. So I normal substitute almonds in everything: oatmeal, cookies, brownies, desserts, jello. Anywhere you'd use walnuts or pecans I use almonds exclusively. Now I will be making almond pies too.

It was a beautiful day. The weather was nice, it wasn't too hot, the clouds coming in gave a nice cover (although I still go seriously sunburned), the clouds also brought a cool breeze. It was a bit on the humid side, but the rain held off just long enough for all the activities to be over (line dancing, butter making, stick pulls and other games). As we packed up the car it started to pour.

We all had fun including the cutest twins on the block

Awesome MONSOONS

It is so hard to capture rain in a photo. We've been getting A LOT of rain this Monsoon season. Good thing too because we NEED it. Our last few years winter rain season has been super dry and the last two monsoon seasons have been a little less than stellar. So we've been thrilled with the day after day rain. It seemed like it was starting to slow down, not everyday, and then we had three days in a row again. This is part of the reason we've decided to have our girls one year bday party at our house. We're not taking any chances with rain changing our venue. 

Singing Time Olympics- (Subbing)

Yes I was released over a year ago, but I was asked to sub for the next few weeks. The current chorister gave me her plans to teach "I'm Trying to be Like Jesus" starting on Sunday, and left the rest of it to me.
Since the Olympics in London are on going I wanted to find a way to teach the song, work hard on the song (not take a lot of time away from singing), and incorporate something to do with the Olympics.
I found this blog post on singingasongisfun2do about her Olympic Singing Time. I liked her visuals and the idea of using the actions, but I was having trouble mashing it with teaching the song. I finally came up with the idea that after making through the whole song once, I'd have 3 children come up and do the action for one of the sporting events while we all sing through the song. Then at the end of the song, I'd award a medal to each of the three children. I am going to preface that anyone who cries or complains about which medal they get will get no medal at all. Although if they don't want the 1,2,3rd place medals they can quickly exchange it for a colored one. (They say wow, great job, awesome, singing champ, you're a star...) We will do this until the time is up.
I'm using the visuals of the Olympics from the above mentioned blog post plus one of my own Kayaking. For the action we'll row, two on each side, I guess it could also be rowing. You're welcome to use it.

I created my own medals by cutting circles out of construction paper and writing on them with permanent marker. 

For the ribbon I used cheap curling wrapping ribbon. I was stingy on my tape because I was almost out. I wouldn't recommend it, use enough tape.

Each one says Sing Time on it, The fun colored ones say "Singing Time Olympics" on each one.

After I made these I quickly made up some that ya'll can print off. Download as an image and it should print in a 8.5 x 11 paper.  Or click on these links to download from box.net 

OLYMPIC MEDALS1 

ColoredMEDALS2

Personally I don't have a color printer so my construction paper will work just fine.

Good Luck Hope this helps ya'll. Happy Singing.