Halloween Festivities

First off here are cute pictures of my kids in their costumes. Max was very excited to get his picture taken,

Kate was not.

But she does make the cutest Tinkerbell I've ever seen!  On Friday Dustin's work had a Halloween party so I got the kids ready and we headed over there for a bit of cubicle trick or treating.

Dustin revived his "Coach Watson" costume from last year and won 1st place in the costume contest!  He won a Starbucks gift card, which he traded to his friend Jermaine for a weeks worth of McRib sandwiches.  After the work party we headed home to get ready for our ward trunk or treat.  I hadn't purchased a costume and wasn't planning on dressing up, but after being told that I was lame, I dressed in black and put on some Minnie ears.  It wasn't the best costume, but at least I matched Max.


This is the only picture I got from the trunk or treat.  We were busy eating when we were inside, and busy trunk or treating outside.  Dustin dressed as "Fancy Batman" for the ward party.  But, he got in trouble for his Batman mask and had to take it off, so basically he was just fancy. 

Kate had so much fun running from car to car getting candy.  We love our ward, and we always have such a fun time when we get together!

Saturday night our neighbors had a Halloween party so we got Kate in her costume again (the rest of us were lazy) and went to hang out over there. 

We stayed there for about an hour and then headed over to ANOTHER Halloween party that some other friends were having. It was lots of fun and needless to say we were exhausted by the end of the night. So exhausted, that Kate and I ended up sick that night! What I thought was just a case of bad allergies escalated into a cold for me by the end of the night, and around 1:00 Kate woke up crying and struggling to breathe. Not as bad of an asthma attack as last time, but I didn't hestitate to give her a breathing treatment. Then I tried to get back to sleep, but around 3:00 Kate threw up. She has only thrown up once before and that was due to car sickness, so this was a new ordeal for us! Well, for Dustin, he's the champ who cleaned it up. So on Sunday we all rested and we're feeling a bit better today. We'll see if we feel better by tonight, but if not, I'd say we still had an amazing Halloween!

Random

This post isn't about anything specific, I just had some random pictures floating around that needed posting.

Aww....they're holding hands!  I used to do the same thing when my brother was a baby.

I believe I've mentioned on here before about Kate's crazy sleeping habits.  She will not sleep in her bed.  I don't know what it is, but she just thinks the floor is cool!  More room to be crazy I guess?

The other day as a Halloween activity/treat we made ghost cookies!  They are nutter butters dipped in white chocolate, with mini chocolate chips for the eyes.  Delicious!

A beautiful genuine smile for the camera.  Too bad that manican head is in the background ruining the picture.  I know it's kind of creepy, but it's one of Kate's favorite things to play with.

Such a cutie!  I love this boy!

And I love this girl!

3 months

Little Max is 3 months old today! I know I say time is flying by every time I talk about my kids, but it's so true!  My baby is getting big so fast!   I don't have any official stats for you today, but if I had to guess I'd say he's about 15 lbs now. He's such a chunk! I love it!

He's found his voice now and it's so cute!  He makes the cutest sounds now, and is always jabbering. He loves to smile and kick and play with his sister.  

 Cutest boy EVER!  Just look at that face!  I just want to snuggle and kiss him all day.

Ahh, look at him sleeping with his Simba.  Adorable.  He is sleeping so well now!  I just let him set his own schedule for naps during the day, and at night he only wakes up once to eat and he'll fall right back to sleep.

When he turned one month old I remember complaining that he was a hard baby.  Well, he is definitely more mild mannered now.  What I eat doesn't bother him anymore and that has been such a blessing!  He cries when he is hungry or sleepy (or when his sister is bothering him) but other than that he is a very content baby boy.

Kate never ever wants to take pictures,  but whenever I'm taking pictures of Max she's always trying to get in the frame.  It's annoying, but at least I got this picture out of it.

I LOVE MY KIDS!

Crystal Cove

(vacation day 5)

We had checked out of of Disney hotel on the previous day and joined the rest of the family at some beautiful beachside villas.  We were only about a mile from the Crystal Cove beach, so that's where we went.  It was a nice quiet beach and the weather was beautiful!  The water was freezing cold, but that didn't stop us from playing in it!

*sigh* It was an amazing vacation! We had so much fun and it just flew by way too fast. Now onto real life...

Disneyland Day 3

(vacation day 4)

It was our final day at Disneyland and we were excited to have some fun.  We headed straight for the Princesses, and I'm so glad we did because the park was so crowded that day.  We got there right as it opened (maybe like 15 minutes after) and still had about a 45 minute wait to see the princesses.  This place is adorable!  It's definitely every little girl's dream.  There are always 3 princess in there all the time, but you have no idea who they will be until you go inside.  We brought Kate's Belle dress from home and just put it on top of her other dress.  Belle is Kate's absolute favorite so I really hoped that she would be in there, but I didn't say anything to Kate because I didn't want to disappoint her.

After waiting in line forever, it was finally our turn to go inside.  We turned the corner and the first princess we saw was Belle!  I almost cried I was so excited! 

You may have noticed before but Kate gets really shy around the characters.  She'll go straight up to them and talk to them but she's so quiet and timid.  She would not smile for any of the pictures!

The other princess that were in there were Ariel and Tiana.  Kate didn't recognize Ariel at first because she wasn't dressed up as a mermaid, or wearing anything that she wears in the movie.  Tiana was the most in character of the princesses.  She talked in a southern accent, and said "ya'll better go get some beignets now ya hear?"  And we sure did later that day at my favorite Disney restaurant, Cafe Orleans.

Mmmm...Cafe Orleans.  Dustin and I ate here every day when we came to Disney 3 years ago.  We're too cheap to order any of the actual entrees so we order two cups of gumbo, these amazing seasoned fries, and mickey mouse shaped beignets for dessert.  SO GOOD!  I may have to cheat on my diet and try to re-create this meal next week because just thinking about it has me drooling.

We also went to Toontown.  This could have been the only thing we ever did in Disneyland and Kate would have been happy.  She was loving all the little houses and things to play with.  We also saw Minnie Mouse.  We waited in line forever to see Minnie because Sherice and I really wanted a picture of our girls in their dresses with Minnie Mouse.  Well, when it was finally our turn (Minnie had to go
"check on her cookies" twice) Emma just screamed!  haha.  Oh well.  What can you do?

Max also had a matching outfit but he blew out of it before I could get any more pictures of him in it!  Little stinker.  Oh- side note.  I LOVE the baby care centers that they have both at Disneyland and California Adventure.  It's such a nice quiet place to go nurse, change, and take care of your babies.  The workers in their are dressed as nannies (adorable) and are so sweet.  They even have little potties in the back for toddlers!  Kate thought that was pretty cool.

The only picture we got of him in his Mickey ears :(  This will probably be his Halloween costume too because we just did not get enough use out of it!  And yes, he is sucking his thumb in this picture!

While trying to take a shortcut through Adventureland to meet up with the family we saw Princess Jasmine!  Of course we had to stop so our shortcut ended up not being a shortcut at all.  The line was short to see her, thank goodness, and Kate was more excited to see her than any of the other princesses.  I think it was because she could actually see why and who we were standing in line for.  Plus, she's been obsessed with the movie Aladdin lately.  Have you figured out by now that Kate is a huge Disney fan?

This day is all jumbled up in my head.  I know that at some point we went on the new Star Tours which is worth mentioning because it was really cool.  Then we headed over to California Adventure again for awhile.

We rode our favorites again and ate dinner there.  Disneyland was open late that night so we headed back over there when it got dark to play there for a couple hours.  We rode Thunder Mountain in the dark (so much more fun) and then watched Fantasmic!  Kate's still talking about the dragon that breathes fire at the end.  After that it was really late and everybody was done. 

We had had a very full and fun time at Disneyland.  I love Disneyland so much, I already want to start planning our next vacation!

Vacation day 3

We had checked the forecast earlier and it was supposed to rain ALL day.  So we decided to take this day off from Disneyland.  If we didn't have so many kids with us, Disneyland would have been awesome that day.  No lines, you could ride Splash Mountain as many times as you want...but with kids it would have been miserable.  It was nice to have a relaxing day in between too!  I think it helped a lot with the kids to have a restful day.  I think I'll plan future vacations like this too.

Anyway, so we got to sleep in a little that morning (haha, yeah right).  I wanted some breakfast and as I was searching for the room service menu, I found the flyer that advertised the character breakfast in the hotel.  Adults: 25.99  Kids (0-2) FREE!  Dustin never eats breakfast anyway, so I just took Kate down to the character breakfast.  I figured about $30 wasn't bad for both of us to eat.  I'm so glad I did!  This was one of the funnest things we did this trip.  They really make it worth the money to go.  Each and every character makes sure to stop at your table to hug the kids and make sure the parents get pictures.  Then about every 15 minutes they would have a big dance party with the characters.  The food was delicious, and of course disney themed.  We had Mickey Mouse shaped waffles and pancakes.  Kate was loving every minute!

 We sat right next to this little stage.  I couldn't get Kate to eat much breakfast because she was having so much fun dancing on it!

  And yes, she does have only one shoe on.

Kate was so excited that she got to "dance with daisy!" that that's all she talked about all day.

All in all, it was definitely worth the money and something I would do again.

We relaxed and napped in our hotel room for a little while and then we met up with the family in Long Beach to go to the

Aquarium of the Pacific

This was a fun little aquarium and the kids just loved it.  When the kids first saw the fish they all started freaking out and laughing!  They were way more excited to see fish than to go to Disneyland.  haha.  Dustin has video on his phone, I'll have to post that later.

The coolest part of this aquarium were these shark embryos.  Yup, these are unborn baby sharks still in their eggs.  There is just a piece of plastic where the rest of the egg should be so you can see inside.  You can actually see the baby sharks swimming around in their eggs!  It was really fascinating, I couldn't stop staring at them!

Those of you that know Kate well know that while she is girly, she is also fearless.  Dustin was helping her touch the stingrays when the worker asked if Kate wanted to touch a shark.  Kate said yes and the lady pulled one out of the tank for her to touch.  Kate touched it and then...

SMACK!  The shark decided it had had enough touching and wiggled itself out of the lady's hands smacking Kate's face with it's tail on the way down.  If you look closely at this picture you can see the shark plunging into the water and Kate's face in shock that it just hit her.  She didn't cry, even though it left a pretty big welt.  She just laughed and said "a shark hit my face".

 

When we were done having fun here we grabbed some McDonalds and went back to our hotel. We all went to bed pretty early. We wanted to be rested for our final day of Disneyland.