NO TIME

I have a load of things to blog, but I HAVE NO TIME!! I owe myself an update but here is my excuse, I am working more this summer than I have in a long time, somehow I am in charge of a family reunion in August, we just finished helping and attending a wedding, and we are headed to a different family reunion this weekend, and 3 more coming. I feel like we have paid our dues when it comes to gas consumption. All this added to the norm of chasing and cleaning up after 4 cute little MONSTERS, maintaining a weed infested yard, and being in the nursery at church! I am feeling spread a little thin and all I can think of is that school starts again in a little over a month. WHAT?!?! My goal is to just try and enjoy what's left of this crazy summer cause it'll be over soon.

String Cheese and Otter pops!

I have a fairly bad habit of being TOO BUSY for my own good. One of the things that suffers is my eating habits.I think that I have been living off of string cheese and otter pops for too long. Stu can always tell when I haven't eaten all day because I get extra extra grumpy. He always is telling me to sit down and eat something......Speaking of Stu.....

This is a SIDENOTE:

I never posted anything about how great of a Dad/Husband Stuart is for Fathers day so here you go hon'!

Stu is absolutely THE BEST FATHER on the earth (sorry everyone else) I'm serious though. I don't know any dad that can do what he does with our kids. He is their hero and mine too. I love him more than anyone will ever know and I don't know what I would do without him.

Anyways, back to my original post,Earlier this week I seriously had 4 string cheeses (sick I know) and 3 otter pops and that is all. Does anyone have any appetizing, easy and quick to prepare, healthy food/snacks that I can eat on my super busy days?

California Trip part 2 (finally)

The more time I have to think about our trip the more I long to go back.

One tradition that my side of the family has had for about the last 9 years is going to Disneyland...It seems we can't go to California without going to our favorite place. There truly is something for EVERYONE there. I dont' know how much longer our family will be able to keep up this tradition with how fast our family is growing, plus I don't want to spoil my kids, but I totally enjoy every single time we go. Mitchell will ride everything that his height will allow...Braden on the other hand gets a bit nervous. So this time we decided that we would talk him into going on all the rides before we got there. Well, we were having our family prayer and Mitchell prayed; "Please bless that Braden won't be scared to ride the big boy rides." Oh the faith of a child. Braden did ride all the rides and had a blast. He thanked Mitchell for praying for him.

One of the highlights of the day is that my family (all 18 of us...even the babies) won Disney Dream Fast Passes. We got off of the Pinnochio ride (2nd ride of the day) and they were standing there handing out passes that get us on all the rides with little to no wait. You should have seen us grown people screaming and jumping around. Now if you know my family you would understand that we are crazy about figuring out ways not to wait. I think we have more fun figuring out how to avoid lines than actually riding the rides so these passes were really a dream come true. They even got us into California adventure for free.

There were tonz of other cool things about this day, but I will only tell three more...

Camden is HILARIOUS. He was taking a small nap and I thought that instead of riding rides that we would go and watch the parade. He woke up right as the parade was starting. He loves everything Disney. We happened to be a place on the parade route where there is only spectators on one side of the street and it just happened that Cam and Joss were the only kids under the age of 13 in that area. Well, you know Disney...they are supposed to play it up to the kids. I wish I could have captured that kids face. He still believes that the parade was just for him. Every character came right up to him and waved and stopped 1 foot in front of where he was sitting. He was beside himself with excitement. He still talks about "my palade"!

So Stu hates getting wet so he thinks it would be a great idea to have everyone take their shirts off (boys only of course) for the picture coming down splash mountain...guess who was first to rip their shirt off... you guessed it Mitch!

Well to make a long story short, they stopped the ride and made sure everyone put there shirts back on. I can't stop laughing about Stu actually thinking that this would be a good idea!

Last but not least all the in-laws (except Sarah) and my mom took the kids home at around 8:30pm which left just my dad, me, Kara, and my brothers to run from ride to ride like little kids till the park closed. It was a blast. We stopped to get snacks for the ride and had fun visiting all the way back to the beach house.

Cali Trip Part 1

We just got back from a week long vacation to California. We rented a beach house in Oceanside, and my whole family (just my side) stayed together. We were only missing Uncle Kimball who had to work. We really missed him, but We had a blast....The beach house was really nice and we had great weather. We also got a great deal. Since we booked it last minute they dropped the price by $2500. That was a huge bonus!!

I can't believe how much my kids love the beach. They weren't afraid of the cold water and they wanted to spend all day out there. Braden picked up boogie boarding really well. He wasn't afraid at all. He would walk clear out into the ocean, wait for the perfect wave, and then jump on and ride it all the way back in. I was a little nervous for my 7 year old to have so much freedom in the ocean, but he was having the TIME OF HIS LIFE. I have to say that I caught a few good waves too and it was so GREAT! I never thought I would get into surfing or body boarding, but it is pretty exhilerating to catch those waves.

We played games, bbq'd, spent time in the hot tub and walked the pier...the pier is the most interesting place I've been in a long time. There is such a diversity of people on the pier. You could fish off the pier without a license 24 hours a day soooo you know exactly where Stu and my dad and my brothers would be until midnight. They caught quite a few little fish.

I would definitely recommend that everyone get their family to a beach house once or twice. I loved the idea of everyone sort of forced together and it helps that it was such an awesome atmosphere. I did not want to leave!