Thanksgiving 2018

We moved into our house two Saturdays ago. It was not ready for us but we were ready for it! Lots and lots of details were not finished. We spent every night cleaning up dust, sawdust, boxes and general junk that the various trades left after doing their work. 10 days later we had our first houseguests! Beth and family arrived to celebrate Thanksgiving with us. 

I thought letting them play in the dirt would be fun. I didn't think about my new rugs and furniture. Hmm...one day in the dirt was all the poor kiddos got.

We did our best to make the giant hole in the back yard off limits. This folding table is still our dining table as I type but tomorrow morning I'm supposed to get the real one!

We love that we live close enough to walk to stores. A nice after-dinner stroll on Thanksgiving day was just the ticket for a full stomach.

The kids made gingerbread houses!

Anna and Mia organized what has turned out to be the annual Kids' Thanksgiving Show!

Anna played several songs on her violin.

Chase and Paige sang and danced to Baby Shark. So cute!

Mia and Anna sang!

They then got to eat the gingerbread houses!

This pole is now painted so the crazy pole climbing shenanigans are over.

On Friday we all went to see Becky's new house and then to the park.

We walked to Fourth Friday's and Dan bought the kids ice cream.

We then took a trolley ride down Fourth St.

Beth and Greg went home on Saturday. Next year, back to the desert for Thanksgiving!

Seal Beach Tree Lighting

The kids miss snow so we went to the Seal Beach tree lighting where there was some snow to play in.

Mia's friend Jessica lives right around the corner from us!

Do not throw snow...really????

Rocketship Park

Dan grew up a few blocks from Los Arboles Park. Everyone called it Rocketship Park. He went there all the time as a kid and we took our grown kids there many times as children when Grossie and Pop, and then just Grossie, still lived in Dan's childhood home.

I had been feeling a little under the weather during the week so we didn't do much on Saturday, but on Sunday we decided to show the girls where Dan grew up and Rocketship Park.

We had one of these rocketships at the park I grew up at too. This one here was actually removed, practically in the middle of the night, a few years ago. So many people complained that they renovated it and brought it back.

The school in the background is where Dan went to kindergarten.  After that, he went to a Catholic school.

We were here for two hours! I expected to be there for about 30 minutes because the girls are getting a bit bored of parks these days.  But I forgot about the trail going down the hill (no pic) and they played for a least an hour on that. Also, since there was some new play equipment there were a lot more kids here than when we used to bring the older kids. 

I didn't get a picture of the ocean view which almost always shows the fog rolling in and today was no exception.

Becky was in Long Beach working on their new house and decided to come over for a little bit to show the boys this little bit of Collins Family history. She was disappointed that the swings were taken out. The swings seemed to sail out over the hill and were quite fun.

A new sign with the local name of "Rocketship Park".

Halloween 2018!

We are still in the hotel, but only for another 10 days. Mia wouldn't smile because she didn't want the inside pink of her person lips to show. That wouldn't be very wolf-like.

Anna is a cute and cuddly unicorn. She only likes "real" makeup, not paint, so she put a little blush and eye shadow on.

Mug shots.

The girls had a parade in the morning at school. We weren't able to attend as we had some meetings for the house but a friend took this picture.

 

After dinner we went over to the new house for trick or treat. We loved that it was 75 degrees when we started out! All the kids said our house was perfect for Halloween because it looked like a haunted house with all the mess!

Becky said, "What a great picture to remind us of what life was like at this time!" Yep, four homeless kids having fun.

Another FULL Weekend

This weekend kind of started on Thursday. Becky and Arek went to work up in San Jose so we took the boys for two nights in our hotel room. First time using the sofa bed! On Thursday it was crazy sock day at school.

On Friday the girls both received awards at school. Anna received the Citizenship award. Here she is with the other award winners from her class.

Anna and her teacher, Mrs. Hairrell. We are so proud of her always doing the right thing and helping others.

QiQi also received an award.

Mia received the Amazing Author award for her great thinking in language arts.

Mr. Moretti is a tough teacher but Mia is rising to his expectations.

While eating lunch with all the kids on Saturday, Joey and Dan were texting about buying tickets for the World Series game that night! 

We decided to go for it! Joey and Brittany got a babysitter to watch all the kids and we brought Mia and Anna up to their house. With all the craziness, we didn't leave Moorpark until an hour before the game. When we got here, after NO traffic, there was ZERO line of people waiting to get in. You can see al the empty parking booths in the background.

There were no lines inside either! Apparently most people get to World Series games early!

We sat in our seats just as the sun was going behind the left field seats. Lucky us as our seats had us looking right into it,

The Dodgers lost but it was a really good game.

We spent the night in a hotel near Brittany and Joey as we were going to Underwood Farms the next day.

The kids spent the first 30 minutes playing in a large sandbox. We all decided we spent too much money to do that all day!

We got through the maze!

These two are always excited to see each other.

We watched the pig races!

Buddies!

Cousins! Sort of.