San Diego Trip Part 1

We recently got back from a 10 day trip to San Diego and I tell yah, it was absolutely AMAZING! We've never spent much time in San Diego, I don't know why. We try to take a nice trip once a year and in the past we've mostly done Cruises. I always thought that cruising was the way to go when you have small children. I've totally changed my mind. Our last trip we flew to Florida for a Caribbean Cruise on SouthWest which is something I do NOT recommend, especially if you have kids with you. You'll have at least 2 lay overs, which makes things very stressful with long flights, ugh! Talk about a pain in the... So anyway, by the time we got home from that trip, I felt like I needed a vacation from vacation. I was completely wiped out and felt like it was more work than it was worth. So this year we decided to forgo the airplane and take a nice long road trip to sunny California. I was dreading the drive a little, but thankfully we were able to stop in St. George and stay at our house there for a few days before making the rest of the drive. It takes 4 hours to get to St. George, then another 6 1/2 to 7 to get to San Diego. I had it all planned out though. I made up a fun schedule to follow to make the time go by faster. For example, we started by watching a movie (I was sure to get a new one specifically for the trip), then we read books for 30 minutes, played games for 30 minutes (I found some fun road trip games online using good ol' google), colored pictures for 30 minutes, played ipad games for 30 minutes, did school work for 30 minutes, ect, then we'd repeat the whole thing until the drive was over. I made everyone fun little snack packs full of healthy foods and a few treats. I made little binders for Oliver and Lily with lots of different printouts, like a map of Utah and California, bingo, word searches, coloring pages of the Utah and California state flags, birds, flowers, ect. I tried to throw in educational information to share with them about each state. I also got a bunch of dollar toys and gave them one about every hour or so. They loved that. We rented a beach house on Mission Bay which is right across the street to Mission Beach. Everything about this location was absolutely perfect. Here's a picture of the house we stayed in. We stayed in the bottom level of this place. Loved that we are literally ON the beach. Made going to the beach with kids a lot less stressful. Usually you have to haul all kinds of stuff, taking multiple trips to and from the car just to get set up. Then of course there's always something you forget to bring, like the sun screen, extra clothes, drinks, you name it. So it was nice, because if we forgot something, just head right back into the house to get it. I also loved being on the bay side since we still have small children and the waves can be a little daunting to them. They got to play in the water without the constant worry that the waves would carry them out to sea :). We still got to play in the waves, just walk across the street and we were there. Just perfect! Oh and another nice thing about being right on the beach is that Brooklyn could still take her naps. I was sure to bring the video monitor so that we could play outside but I was still able to listen for her when she woke up. We did a little paddle boarding. Sean's parents came with us on the trip. Don't you just love this picture of Brooklyn with her grandma. So cute! The first night we were there, Lily and I walked across the street to the ocean, played around and took a bunch of pictures until sunset. Collected sea shells... Examined the sea weed... Watched the surfers and boogie boarders... And made huge discoveries... Then we walked back over to the bay to do some more treasure hunting... I sure love spending time with this girl. To be continued...

Halloween Birthday Party

Seriously can't believe Lily is "7" now. I'm WAY too young to have a "7" year old. We just had Lily's party this weekend and it sure was a lot of fun.

I just love Halloween, so I always get so excited about planning Lily's party, what a great time of year to have a party right?

Lily helped me plan and make everything this year, which made it a lot more fun.

We started out by making our jello brain platter. We found a brain mold at the grocery store, then just bought 2 boxes of black cherry jello and added one packet of just plain gelatin. We needed to make sure it was good and firm and wouldn't fall apart when removing it from the mold. Also, I sprayed some cooking spray in the mold before adding the jello mix. It worked perfectly. the brain didn't fall apart and it came right out of the mold. I was so proud that I didn't screw it up :).

Then we made a graveyard cake. I saw a picture of one on Pinterest, but I think it originally came from the Family Fun magazine. This was such an easy cake to make and saved me about $20 too :). We just used a box mix, then added the frosting after it cooled. Then we used pretzels for the fence, short bread cookies for the tombstones, gel frosting for the letters and oreos for the dirt. I removed the white frosting from the oreos before crushing them.

Then we made a plate full of bones. These treats are so yummy and SO addicting. Just stick some mini marshmallows on the ends of pretzels, then dip in white chocolate. YUM!

Then we made some hot dog mummies. Just wrapped some hot dogs in croissant dough and baked at 350% until golden. Afterwards I added mustard for the eyes and served with "blood" (ketchup) for dipping. They were a hit! I saw this on Pinterest too. Don't know exactly where the idea originated, probably from the Family Fun magazine again. Love their website too.

Then we got Lily all decked out in her costume. She wanted to be a vampire. I found these vampire teeth at the grocery store. They were meant for adult teeth so they didn't last very long. Just long enough to snap a picture. But they look awesome don't you think? The make up was done using a stencil kit I found in the Halloween section at the store.

We decorated the table. We also made some witches brew with dry ice, but I didn't get a picture of that.

Then all the friends came.

After we had dinner and cake we painted pumkins, played hide and go seek in the dark using glow sticks, then watched the Shreck Spooky Tales. It was awesome!

Happy Birthday my sweet Lily Rae!!!

Fish Guts

I meant to blog about this a while ago. I'm working on my yearly family photo album (I use blurb.com to print off all my family albums) and realized I've left out quite a few events. When I first started this blog it was mainly a place for me to share information, tips, and ideas, but I've decided there's no harm in sharing our family outings and activities, right? Hope you still find it interesting. So anyway, we tried out fishing with the kids for the first time this year. We found this great man made place to fish which I think is perfect for young kids. They get VERY impatient I've learned. We went to two different spots, the first one we didn't catch anything and the kids were going crazy, saying, when are we going to catch a fish, about every two minutes. The second place we found pretty much guaranteed a catch immediately. It was AWESOME!!!

We caught 2 then brought them home and actually cooked them up. Lily was surprisingly really excited about gutting the fish, lol. Look at this girl. She's loving every minute of it, which of course makes her dad VERY proud.

Getting Ready For Halloween

Don't you just LOVE this time of year! The leaves changing, weather cooling off, holidays coming up. Oh, and let's not forget Football and hunting :). It's always fun watching the kids trying to decide on costumes for Halloween. It seems like they never REALLY decide what their going to be until the day of. We've been trying out different face painting techniques. We came across a little tutorial on youtube and Lily insisted I try it out on her face. Not sure what she's supposed to be, and it's a little creepy if you ask me, but we had fun with it. Here's the youtube link, animated doll eyes. And here are the two costumes Oliver is deciding between.

Got this ninja one from Costco.

I got these cute jackets from KMart for $15 each. Don't ya love them!!!

I saw this idea in the Family Fun Magazine. They called them Troll toes! Looks appetizing right :).

We tried out a little Halloween craft.

I saw this idea on Pinterest. It didn't quite work out as well as I hoped. It's supposed to look like this...

But when I tried to peel the glue off the wax paper, it just stuck to the paper and got all messed up. So I must have done something wrong.

Update

I wanted to give you all a little update on what we've been up to. Also I'm working on a video for those of you who are interested in what our daily homeschool routine looks like. I've had quite a few people ask me about it, so I wanted you to know I haven't forgotten about you :). I'll probably post it next week. I've just got a bunch a random pictures I thought I'd just throw out there for fun. Hope it's not too boring for you. First of all I wanted to tell you about this little rascal. She is the sweetest little thing...

Well at least she was up until the last couple of days. She's learned how to use her teeth, and boy does she love to use em. She's been chewing and biting on everything, INCLUDING MY NIPPLES!!! Excuse my openess about my nipples, but seriously. I cannot believe this girl. Hasn't she ever heard the term, don't bite the nipple that feeds you? I swear she's doing it simply for my reaction. Yesterday I literally spilled my drink all over both of us after those sharp little baby teeth clamped down like little crab pinchers. I keep telling her NO BITE when she does it, but she just looks at me, cries for a minute, then bites down again! What is this all about? I don't get it. Not cool Brooklyn, SO not cool. Haha, don't you love this picture. Last week some of you may have seen my post on Facebook about the little snake we found on our nature walk. The kids insisted on bringing it home. So we let them. On the way home that darn thing got loose in my car. AHH, that's enough to give me a heart attack. I'm not really afraid of snakes, but when I can no longer see it, but know it's there somewhere, THAT's when I get a little freaked out. The thought of that little thing ending up on my shoulder, or crawling up my leg. There's no way I would be able to maintain control of the car while driving. Thankfully we found it. I was about ready to trade in my car for a new one. Lily started horse back riding lessons. If any of you live in Utah, you've got to check out Luck Star Stables. They are great. Lily was in heaven. She's been wanting to ride horses for EVER. She always says she wants to be a cowgirl when she grows up. She's also been doing a lot of homeschool projects with her other homeschooled friends. This has been great for her. She's such a social butterfly and just LOVES to be doing anything that involves friends. Lily also loves Science. We've been trying out all kinds of experiments. Some work, some don't, but they are all a lot of fun. Olly and Lily love to do anything that involves getting their hands messy. This was just a fun little preschool activity. Not really educational, just fun :). And here are just a couple cute pics I took today before church. Don't you just love these skirts? They will be available in the Lil'Star Boutique soon. If you are interested in one right away, you can email me.