Our Vacation!

This is a long post so if you only have a second you might what to save it for later. I keep getting pressure from a couple individuals to get some photos up from our vacation. So, Here is goes.

We took a family vacation the first week of February to Southern California. It took a lot of coaxing from some good friends and our kids. We spent four days in California (not including driving time) and did five pretty big activities. We pulled the kids out of school for four days and Chris even took four days off work. This is extremely unlike him!

Here is a quick outline of our trip.

Day 1: Drove to Grandpa and Grandpa Hills house in Logandale.

Day 2: Drove the rest of the way to Oceanside, California. This is the first place we stayed.

Day 3: Spent the whole day at the San Diego Zoo. We only saw about half the Zoo. It was a blast but the kids were dragging their feet by the time we headed back to the hotel. We had dinner and then went to the Oceanside Pier. It was pretty cool. It is one of the longest wooden piers on the West Coast, spanning 1,942 feet in length. When we got back to the hotel the kids swam in the pool. I don't know where they found their extra store of energy.

Day 4: Spent the whole day at Sea World. The kids swam again when we arrived back at the hotel.

Day 5: We got up early, packed all our belongings, and headed up the coast. We spent a couple hours playing on a real fun beach. It had sand and rocks. The kids found some cool stuff in the rocks. We then drove the rest of the way to Anaheim and checked into our hotel. We then walked to California Adventure and spent about 3 hours. I was raining the whole time. By the time we walked the mile back to the hotel we were soaked to the bone, cold and tired. The kids were not interested in trying out the pool. Heston was so tired he didn't even want dinner.

Day 6: We got up early and walked back to Disneyland. Luckily we had beautiful weather all day. The longest line we stood in was about 20 minutes. We chose a great day to go! By the time we made it back to the hotel everyone was exhausted. As we stood in the elevator on the way up to our room Dad asked Levi and Casey when we should come back to do this vacation again. Dad asked, "How about 3 years?" No answer......... "How about 5 years?"......... Levi was quiet for a minute......... Then Levi looked up and said, "How about 7 years?" Chris and I both laughed.

Day 6: We got up early, packed our bags and headed home. We stopped in Logandale for a couple hours to rest and visit. We finally arrived to our home sweet home at about 10:30pm.

Relaxing in the hotel

Playground at the Zoo

We flew over the Zoo to get to the other side in these cool things.

We took tons of photos at the Zoo. I think this is because it was our first day. The pictures slow down as the days go by.

Casey liked the swings at the hotel.

This is the Oceanside Pier. It was really cool. It might have been my favorite part of the trip. It is dark so you can't see the ocean. It was a huge pier! I read on the internet that it is 1,942 feet in length and is all made out of wood.

Sea World! The kids liked the star fish and the manta rays.

The kids loved the pool the first three nights. After that they were too tired. Whit loved it but was not interested in getting in. He just wanted to watch.

The Beach!

California Adventure!

Disneyland!

Levi could not keep his eyes open during "It's a Small World" ride. He liked the big roller coasters. His favorite was the most scary. I think it was called Paradise Pier.

Chris does not like roller coasters! The whole time we were wishing he could be the pregnant one so I could go on the rides and he could sit with the baby!

The kids were having a hard time keeping their eyes open by this time!

Heston and Whit crashed on the long walk back to the hotel.

I guess we have another 7 years before we take this trip again!

Catching Up

So what has kept Jodi so busy that she couldn't get around to her blog? Truth is I'm not really sure. Maybe it is running Casey around to her piano and gymnastic lessons, maybe it is Levi's little scout group that she is over, maybe it is chasing Whit around, maybe it is volunteering in Heston's kindergarten class, maybe it is playing with her ponies or talking to her chickens, maybe it has been the morning sickness that luckily has passed, or just maybe, like a lot of other bloggers, she just lost her motivation to keep her blog updated. Who knows? Anyway, I thought I would at least try and put up a few pictures to show what we have been up to over the last couple of months.

Levi participated in a 3rd grade basketball league this year. He had a great time.

Grandpa and Grandma made Whit a cute little rocking chair for Christmas.

Whit also got a truck. He loves riding in it especially when his brothers or sister push him around.

Since our kids spent Christmas with another family this year, I surprised Jodi with a trip to Vegas to watch Phantom of the Opera on Christmas day. She sold a dog to a man who works for the Mandalay Bay in Vegas. He gave us tickets to the buffet so we spent Christmas Eve with her parents eating at the Mandalay Bay. We had a really good time.
We have had a fair amount of snow this year. It has been fun.

Levi finally got his Wolf badge earned. Now he is working on his Bear badge.

Casey is really enjoying her gymnastics class. I am willing to spend the money for the confidence it seems to be building. As for the danger and future cheerleading bills I wish she would quit.

Christmas Tree Hunting

We had tons of fun getting our tree this year. The kids had a blast playing in the snow. We took our old sled and they rode in down the steep road over and over. I can't believe someone did not get hurt. We topped the fun off with snacks and hot chocolate.

Halloween & More

We had so much fun this year for Halloween!

Our ward always plans such a neat party.

This year we had dinner, activities for the kids and a trunk-or-treat.

Later in the evening we headed to Grandma's for yummy homemade donuts and chili.

Grandma's are the best!

On Friday night we had our annual pumpkin carving party with some friends. Yummy food was included. This year we tried cooking the food in a pumpkin.

The kids are growing up so fast and becoming extremely independent. They all carved their own pumpkin this year. It makes me sad but it sure is nice!

Chris found some great templates for carving pumpkins on the internet and they were a hit. Our finished products are on another camera. You will have to wait until later to see them.

Now for something other than Halloween...........

Whit finally figured out how good it feels to stand by the heater. Now when it comes on we have four kids racing for the best spot instead of three.

There has been a lot of time spent lately raking leaves into piles.

Levi is having a blast with scouts. This is a shot from our last pack meeting. He just turned 9 so now he gets to be in the Bears with me. I am so excited!!!

We have had perfect fall weather for quite some time now. But, last weekend we had a little taste of winter. We had snow and were freezing for two days. The kids sure loved it! I am glad to be having nice fall weather again though. I am not quite ready for winter yet!

Whit is the clown of the family. His siblings are always teaching him new tricks and he thrives on it. Whenever he wants a little extra attention all he has to do is pull out one of his tricks. He loves to get everyone laughing at mealtimes.

Beans!

Our Zuni beans finally dried out enough to finish harvesting them! Chris rigged up a little contraption to separate the beans from the rest of the plant and it worked like a charm. We ended up with 60 pounds of these babies. I think we might be able to take a few summers off before we will need to plant them again. Zuni beans make the yummiest refried beans our family has ever eaten!

Whit loves watching the marbles go down in the towers the kids make. He also likes to knock the towers over.

Fall Colors

Yesterday after picking the kids up from school we rode up the canyon a couple miles to check out the fall colors. It was beautiful!

I am glad I grabbed my camera!

Busy!

Chris and I have been enjoying our family and friends blogs so much that I wanted to thank everyone for the time they put into them. We love to see what is going on in your lives.

We have been doing a lot of cleaning up the last couple weeks. The garden is officially frozen which means I should be done with all the bottling. I am not. I still have lots of apples and tomatoes sitting in my washroom waiting for my attention.

Our friends invited us to take a little vacation to their cabin and when we arrived home all our flowers were dead. So...we spent the afternoon cleaning out the flower beds. The kids were great at helping.

Whit is walking everywhere now and is getting hard to keep track of. He thinks he is as big as the rest of the kids.

The kids hard work paid off. We finally brought the pumpkins in out of the field. They are hoping to make a little money by selling these beauties.

Chris used his big muscles to press the juice out of a lot of apples so we can enjoy apple juice all winter. We ended up with about 30 gallons of juice off of our one tree. We gave half to our friends who provided the press and I bottled the rest. It ended up being a lot of juice.

Casey and Whit washing the apples before they went into the press.

This is a photo of some of the finished apple and grape juice we did this year. We ended up with 140 quarts of grape juice and 60 quarts of apple juice. I am grateful to be done with that job!