Thanksgiving Week Monday and Tuesday

On Sunday Joey and Brittany left in the morning to spend a night in Temecula for Brittany's 30th birthday.  While they were gone we made this gingerbread turkey with all the kids. It didn't look quite like the picture.

We took the Anna, Mia, Avery and Ben to The Living Desert while Beth and Greg went to visit Cathy and Ken.

Feeding the lorikeets is always fun!

Avery would not get too close to them but she did let me take this picture.

We also fed the giraffes! I said no to the camel rides. This place does nickel and dime you to death.

Tuesday night every one was at the house!

It was total chaos for the next five days!

We have six blow up mattresses, two cribs, three queen beds and one king!

Thanksgiving Week Has Begun!

After two flights, by myself with the girls, Dan picked me up at Ontario airport. We then drove an hour and a half to Costco in La Quinta. Lucky for us, we were just in time for the Saturday-before-Thanksgiving crowds. The aisles were packed crazy with carts and traffic jams and it was so loud it didn't matter that we had two wild and crazy cabin-fevered kids. Once out to the car, we laughed as we tried to get two carts worth of stuff into a rental car packed with suitcases. Let's just say Mia loved playing bongo drums on the turkey that sat on her lap the whole way home. But we made it to La Quinta for Thanksgiving 2017!

Joey and Brittany got there that night and left the next morning for a 30th birthday trip for Brittany. We will be watching Ben and Avery until Tuesday. And then Beth and Greg arrived this afternoon.

This microphone has seen more playtime than just about any other toy we have ever had. They are planning a show for 6:30 on Tuesday.

By Tuesday everyone will be here! Its going to be crazy but so much fun!

Our Last Week

After five years in the same room (except for a short time when we were having some issues), Anna requested she have her own room. Mia didn't want to have her own room, but it has been about three weeks since we made the change and she is doing fine. One of the first things Anna did was make a to-do list for every morning to post on her closet door. The top half is for school days and the bottom is for weekends (lazy day)! She cracks me up.

Last weekend we had the boys while Becky and Arek went to California for work. Sometimes it feels like we have five children still living at home!

The girls went to a holiday baking class yesterday. It wasn't gluten free but you have to have fun once in awhile!

After the class, we headed over to Stel's book launch and signing at Tattered Cover Book Store!

Michelle went all out. Publishers don't promote books any more unless you are a big name author so she has been working hard arranging book signings, school visits, and interviews. We all hope the book does well!

Bunny ears!

Mia has a project due tomorrow, cut out and disguise Tom the turkey so he doesn't get eaten for Thanksgiving. And then write a story about it.

Mia disguised him as a snow leopard! If I don't say so, he no longer looks anything like a turkey!

She wrote the story without any help. There are a few punctuation errors but I thought she did pretty well!

Tonight Anna made her First Confession. I was so pleased they got to do it with their Faith Formation class during class time this year. Last year, we spent three hours at church for Mia's. We did not get out until 10:00 on a school night because Mia was third to last out of 150 kids! And I had Anna with me because Dan was out of town. Anna fell asleep, of course.

While we Were in North Carolina...

Becky and Arek watched the kids while we were in North Carolina.

On Friday the girls had school and then Anna had her Tae Kwon Do test for her green stripe. She passed!

After that they all went to a Fall Festival at the girls' school. It was supposed to be outside but the high was 40 degrees that day so they moved it all inside. I heard it was fun!



On Saturday Mia had her first sleepover birthday party to attend. The party started at Boondocks Family Fun Center so while Mia was at the party Arek took Maks and Anna to have some fun there
 too!



Mia didn't call Becky to come home so she must have had a good time at the sleepover!

On Sunday, the girls went to Becky's friend Emily's house for another party. We picked them up there and headed home. I'm not sure I have ever seen Mia so tired. I'm not sure she slept at all at the sleepover, plus three parties in three days!

Thanks Becky and Arek for taking such good care of the girls!

North Carolina 2017

We just got back from a very relaxing weekend in North Carolina with our friends we met on a cruise 11 years ago! They get together every year, but with the girls it is hard for us to get away to go see them. It had been five years!

We arrived Saturday around noon and we were going to take the pontoon boat to a restaurant for lunch. However, it wouldn't start. Lucky for us, Ken bought a sail boat this summer so we took that instead!

Dan was thrilled to help with all the sails. He just loves doing that! 

But Rhonda was the first mate and could do it with a glass of wine.

We all gravitated toward one another on the original cruise because we were all much younger than most of the passengers. Nowadays we've caught up! Ken is 74!

The rest of the night we just talked and talked. In the morning we woke to this amazing sunrise.

After a leisurely breakfast, we went for a nice long walk. Then Ken and Dan switched out the battery of the sailboat and put it in the pontoon boat. We spent the afternoon cruising in the pontoon boat.

We capped off the day with a movie and pizza back at the house. Dan and I had to leave the next morning, but not without our own batteries charged.

First Sleepover

Anna and Mia had their first girlfriend sleepover last night. Of course it had to be Rylee. They planned it all week. We did lots of Halloween activities. I did have to tell them we would not be going all out like this every time someone slept over! The girls had so much fun.

They wanted to take a picture outside at the beginning. We have been having some gorgeous days this fall.

Next, they had to prioritize the list they made. What to do first was a major decision!

Making slime won! And I completely forgot I was suppose to taking pictures. 

But I got some of the next activity - ghost lollipops!

The lollipops enjoyed watching It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.

Mia is one of those kids that really gets engrossed in her TV shows.

On to the next activity - making mummy hot dogs for dinner. 

Nail polishing!

Making Halloween cookies! We ran out of time to decorate them so they did that in the morning.

Apple bobbing!  I could not do this - I tried! All of them got at least one. They laughed and laughed - it was the most fun activity for them.

Lastly, we made carmel apples!

We were smart and cleaned up after each activity so when the girls sat down to watch a movie Dan and I took a break too!

As we put them to bed they realized they forgot to carve the pumpkins! No, we are not doing it at 9:00 at night! 45 minutes later they were fast asleep. We were quite shocked. And even more shocked when they woke up at 5:00 AM!