Santa and Isaac's Birthday

Happy Birthday Isaac! He sure is lucky that he gets to party almost all of December! I decided since the kids hadn't seen Santa yet this year, today would be a good day to take them out of school early to see him. After Isaac got out of preschool, and Papa had come over to our house to give him a gift, we met Papa again at the mall to say hi to Santa and give him the scoop for Christmas. Isaac was surprised to see Papa twice in one day! We weren't sure what to expect from Ava, but of course she was terrified of Santa, but actually sat for a group shot with her brothers and sister. My favorite part was watching each of my older kids whisper what they wanted in Santa's ear.... then see him whisper back into theirs!

Christmas Is Coming...

Last week we decided to set up a photo studio in our house to take some Christmas pictures for our Christmas cards. We borrowed Michelle's tripod and had a lot of fun! The kids were so good, even though we kept them up until almost 10 pm. They got lots of Santa Points that night!! (some of you may remember those from last year) Here are some of the pictures we took that night....

Lots of Holiday Birthdays!

I guess another reason I haven't posted much lately on our blog is because October through January is usually a blur in our household. After Ava's birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Isaac's birthday, Christmas, New Years, this new baby's upcoming birth, Chris's birthday, and then Madisons birthday, we'll be exhausted by the time February comes. But its all so much fun, we do it every year!
Another fun thing we did in October, besides Halloween, was Ava's birthday party. So far we have only done "Sunday dinner" parties for her, maybe next year she'll graduate to a weekday party with ALL of her cousins and friends! We were really excited to give her a tricycle, because she always tries to ride Madison's old bike (thats too big) and the infant trike we already have (thats too small). But of course she's scared of her new trike and won't come near it. Maybe if we would have gotten her a Dora trike, or something prettier.... well, hopefully someday she'll lose her fear of the big scary red trike. She got a lot of other fun things, most of them having to do with Dora and Diego, her absolute favorite characters. My how we love the Rescue Pack and all the fun LOUD things he says when she pushes the button!









Isaac was luckier this year... he had a bunch of his friends and a few cousins (and all of his siblings of course) at his birthday party, and he had a blast. Even though his actual birthday isn't until tomorrow, December 18th, we try to celebrate his birthday early in December so that it doesn't become part of the Christmas blur. He got a lot of fun stuff, including his favorites, Star Wars, Pez, and Star Wars Pez! He also loves Batman, Spiderman, and Transformers and he was lucky enough to get all those things, too. He asked me the next day what he would be getting for his "real birthday party" (on his real birthday) and I said, uhhh... well Christmas is coming soon! He IS bringing cupcakes to preschool on his "real" birthday, so I guess thats where he got confused. :o)

blowing out the candles

playing "present hot potato"

Tyler and Isaac, cousins and best buddies

Yay! Star Wars!

How old are you, Isaac?

Catching up

Starting in on the pumpkins!











Proud Cameron who came up with his own design for his pumpkin











Maddy with her cute pumpkin with the "pumpkin nose"
















Isaac with his "scary pumpkin"

















Ava with her bat pumpkin
















Ok, so I have been horrible about posting on our blog... it all started when I got into the Twilight books... then I felt too behind to catch up. So I've decided to just sum everything up in one post. :)

Well, October was fun! First we carved pumpkins... we got a BIG pumpkin for each one of the kids... even Ava! They all had a lot of fun carving them (with a little help from Mom). Too bad they shrivelled up in less than a week! We also went to our ward Halloween party and the kids had a blast, playing all the games and getting candy for prizes... little did they know how much they would be getting a few nights later! We went Trick or Treating with their Sly cousins in Jen and Kendalls neighborhood, and got lots of good stuff, we'll have to go in a wealthy neighborhood more often! Our favorite was the half drunk guy that gave everyone cans of soda, bags of chips and offered the Dads a bottle of beer!


Mom and Ava as "Princess Dora" at the ward party




















Maddy and Ava with some friends from the ward, Maddy is a skeleton
















Cameron as a racecar driver
















Isaac as a ninja

School's here!

Well school for Cameron and Madison has FINALLY started! Yay! We were all starting to wonder if the summer would last forever. Their new school as of this year, EduPrize, wasn't finished being built by the original start date, Aug 14th, so the first day of class was postponed until September 17th. When I first heard the news, I was so irritated, but I soon realized I kinda liked having the kids home with me doing whatever and not having to wake up at the crack of dawn to rush around for an hour, and then worry about homework at the end of the day. Not to say that I am not so thankful to have school here now! Its nice having some quiet and most of all, Cameron and Madison's little brains and bodies occupied a whole lot more than the last 4 months had done.
Isaac started preschool in Aug, and he loves it! His teacher is my old next door neighbor, from my old neighborhood, (who I used to also visit teach) Tiffany Martinez, we happened to run into her in Amy and Todd's ward, and found out she lives in the next neighborhood over, and that she was teaching preschool this year! On the first day of preschool, we realized that our neighbor down the street, who teaches Ava's nursery class, and her daughter Leah is in our nursery class, had her son Carter going to the same preschool! So now we carpool. And Isaac has a new friend on the street play with. :) Here are some pictures of his first few months in preschool, as well as the first day of school for Cameron and Madison!

Bryant's performance

For all those who enjoyed watching the video of my crazy brother, Bryant, please comment here!

Hawaii, here we come!

Our second trip of the year, and definitely my favorite, was the week we spent in Hawaii, mostly by ourselves, but also with Russ and Pam Sly, Chris's brother and his wife. They live in Washington State and we don't get to spend much time with them, so it was way fun to spend a whole week with them!
We stayed at the beautiful Marriott Ihilani at Ko Olina, pretty far away from Waikiki, but worth the drive. It was secluded, and had many of its own beaches... along 5 lagoons made just for the resort! We stayed on the 5th level, in a gorgeous room that overlooked the pool and lagoon near us, with a view of plenty of beautiful palm trees! The palm trees in Hawaii are much different than the ones found in AZ... the palms are much bigger and more tropical looking.... what you would imagine a palm tree should look like! Not like the tall ugly ones here. My favorite part about staying at the resort was one evening when we went down by one part of the beach with hammocks, tied to palm trees of course, and just laid for a while listening to the waves crash on the rocks, watching the bright moon and stars, and feeling the cool ocean breeze... I could have sworn we were the only people for miles! It was so quiet and peaceful. I could have spent the whole trip at the resort, except there were too many great places to visit and fun things to see.
We had to go to the Polynesian Cultural Center, of course, after hearing about it for most of my life. It was an eye opening experience to learn about all the experiences and lifestyles of the many cultures represented there. We had fun learning new dances and making things out of palm leaves. The best part though, was the Luau- watching the dances close up, having a pina colada smoothie in a pinneapple, and especially getting to go up on stage together, pretending like we were newlyweds. :o)
Another great thing we did was snorkling at Hunama Bay. It was so fun! This was another first for me, but Chris had been there on his last trip to Hawaii. It was also my first real time snorkling, so I had a blast! We saw so many beautiful tropical fish, sea anemone, urchin, starfish and we even spotted a sea turtle way down below us! We got to follow him for a little ways, as he swam away. Our backs got pretty torched since we didn't pay attention to the fact that we were out in the water for over 3 hours without putting on more sunscreen! Ouch! But it was worth it.
We also spent some time at the Dole Pinneapple Planation, sampling pinneapple ice cream, bread and all kinds of yummy stuff! We also took a tour of the plantation and got to plant our very own pinneapple plant as well learn about much of the beautiful vegetation on the Hawaiin Islands. One of the most amazing things we learned was that there are over 5000 varieties of hibiscus, one of which is the famous Hawaiian state flower. We were able to see about 50 different kinds in the hibiscus garden.
We spent a few days at the Waikiki beach, one of which Chris and Russ decided to try surfing. They had a lot of fun and did really well, especially for their first time! After they finished, I was kinda wishing I had tried it too! But it was too late, cuz they were wiped out. Pam and I had a lot of fun shopping at all the tourist places while the boys surfed. We sure found lots of good stuff to bring home to the kids! There was also a guy on the street who had some birds that he let us hold that I included pictures of.
We decided to climb Diamond Head, a mountain near Waikiki beach, and boy was I exhausted when we got to the top! I was definitely the least in shape of the group, I kept lagging behind, and needed to take the most breaks on the way up, but boy was it worth it once we got to the top! There was such a gorgeous view of the ocean and the coastline, including Waikiki. We stayed up there and enjoyed the view for quite some time!
The one thing we wanted to do but weren't able to, was visit Pearl Harbor. We went to get tickets and there was a 2 1/2 hour wait! Since it was the last day we were on the island and we also had to pack up our stuff, we decided we just didn't have time. I guess we'll just have to save that for our next Hawaiian vacation!