A BIG birthday treat

We don't really do sleep overs around here. So when Ashlyn approached me and asked if she could have a birthday sleep over at a hotel with her friend Grace, I was a little hesitant. BUT, after talking with Paul, we decided that it would be okay just as a special birthday treat. Originally we were going to have this birthday bash a couple of weeks after her birthday, but some plans got changed at the last minute and we decided to bump it up to this past weekend. I was glad because my In-Laws are going to be here on her actual birthday and we will be having a little family celebration with them. So now she will feel like she really got all her celebrating in before having to start school again.

Anyway, our plans all changed around like literally a day or two before the birthday overnighter, so I was pretty much scrambling trying to get everything ready for it. I found us a little hotel over by Magic Mountain and made sure to have plenty of snacks, movies and things for the girls to do at the hotel. Ashlyn and Grace both brought their American Girl Dolls (complete with accessories to change them throughout the trip). It was the cutest thing ever. 

I picked up my sitter at about 3:45 on Friday and then stopped and got Grace on the way home. Dropped the other three off with my sitter and then took off for the hotel. The girls were SO excited. I think she told me how excited she was for her trip at least 100 times. We got to the hotel and got a little settled in. Ashlyn opened her present from Grace. She had gotten her a Squinkie's game, so of course we had to play it. We went to Chili's for dinner and then over to Magic Mountain to run around and ride some rides for a couple of hours. We got back to the hotel around 9pm. The girls showered and then set up everything for a movie in bed. They watched "Mirror, Mirror" until they just couldn't keep their eyes open anymore and crashed out by 10:30pm. 

The next morning the girls woke up at 8am (I slept in too....shoot this was like a vacation for me too). We got some breakfast and then headed to the pool. We hung out there until almost 11 and then had to get back to the hotel to shower and pack up. After checking out we hit "Submarina" for some lunch and then had to take Grace home. The girls did so well and really just had so much fun together. They are like two peas in a pod they are so similar. They don't get to see each other too often, but whenever they do, they pick up right where they left off, as if they had just seen each other the day before. I'm just so grateful they met in our last ward and have stayed such good friends despite not being in the same school or anything. They do have Girl Scouts together though, so they at least see each other a couple times a month.

Okay, so you may not have noticed (wink, wink), but I tend to take A LOT of photos. I can't help myself. So get ready.

Ashlyn opening her present.

(She doesn't get her presents from us until her REAL birthday).

Playing the Squinkie game. We didn't finish it. But it's a cute game. I'm sure Ashlyn will have me playing with her again soon.

The girls with their dolls ready for dinner. They buckled them in the car and everything.

Dinner at Chili's where they both ordered Mac and Cheese with Cinnamon Apples and blue slushies.

Ya know the funny thing is that I wasn't even planning on going to Magic Mountain. But while at dinner, Ashlyn mentioned that it would be SO fun if we could go. Grace had never gone before so she was all for it. Problem was, I didn't think to bring any of the free passes I had. And we definitely didn't want to have to stop at home. SO..... we cheated (just a little) and used Leah's pass to get Grace in. I wasn't sure it was going to work. The lady at the entrance looked right at Grace and then at Leah's card and then scanned it and let her in. I think she knew it wasn't her, but it was 7 o'clock at night and the park closed at 9 pm. At that point it didn't really matter. Besides, I had a free pass at home and I didn't have Leah with me, so what's the difference (do you like how I have justified it all). 

Anyway, the girls were THRILLED that we were able to get in. The kid area is never really crowded and the girls got to go on all the rides they wanted to go on (both of them are pretty timid, so they stuck to the simple rides and thought they were a blast). 

Ashlyn and Grace trying to get out of the "rabbit hole".

Bath time!

Oh boy, they must have not cleaned behind their ears. 

I had Grace take a few photos of me and Ashlyn. The lighting was horrible and my phone doesn't take great photos in the dark anyway, but at least I got something even if it's not great.

 A quick stop to play in the water mist on the way out.

Ah....back at the hotel, cleaned up and ready for their movie. 

The next morning. Getting their dolls ready for breakfast. 

The breakfast was pretty good too. Eggs, sausage, cinnamon rolls. The girls had cereal and milk and juice. Not bad!

Okay, these two were cracking me up. Here they are waiting for their sunscreen to soak in before swimming. But they are both so fair that they were covering up with their towels and hiding their faces.

Seriously, I'm not sure Ashlyn could look much happier than she does here. Or through out the entire trip. She's a pretty too herself type of girl and doesn't show a whole lot of emotion. But I didn't have to guess how she was feeling this whole trip. She was beaming!

I'm so glad we went ahead and let her do this for her birthday. She said she wants to do this every year now because she had so much fun! I think we can arrange that if that's what she really wants to do. 

One last Beach day

I feel like this summer has been the summer of swimming. Multiple beach trips (more than I've gone in previous years combined probably), lots of Hurricane Harbor trips, and even more trips to our neighborhood pool and friends pool. Lucky for me, Carter LOVES the water. A little too much at times as he once walked right in fully clothed while I was trying to get sunscreen on the other kids. That boy thinks he knows how to swim already. 

So we took what will probably be the last trip to the beach this past week. We went with lots of friends and had a wonderful time. The kids all played really well and got good and sandy. Not that I like sand, but it's a mark of a good beach visit. 

Carter is quite good at his "cheese" face.

Tina and Michalle posing for a "Pop Chips" ad I guess. LOL!

Ashlyn and Darby found lots of jelly fish  and something called "salp". It looked like a jellyfish with an eye in it.

Becky and Christie had fun running down the beach with the kids and into the water.

Ashlynn and Ashlyn boogie boarding. Not sure they really did any, but they tried.

Little Baylee in the background ate a bunch of sand. 

Brandon and Elijah have fallen in love with the water and spend almost all of their time at the end of the shore.

These two are rough, tough and the best of friends.

Me and my little man! He sure keeps me busy, but I sure do LOVE him!

LA Science Center

I feel like Paul has had more of his Saturday's free lately. It's been really nice and has really become a day where we can go out as a family and do fun things together. We usually start the day with some house cleaning. Paul's great at getting the kids excited to clean (a few marbles for their jars always help too). He usually tackles the downstairs (i.e., the floors) and I usually take the bathrooms and try to straighten the kids rooms some. It's much easier when it's more than just me working. Although I must admit that my favorite house cleaning is when I get to call Norma and she does it for me. It's not very often, but when she does come, my house is like heaven it's so clean. 

Anyway, how did I get so distracted from the topic. Back to the Science Center. I think I take my kids a lot of places and am willing to wrangle them just about anywhere. But the Science Center and me don't get along too well. I don't know what it is about that place. Maybe it's all the hands on stuff. Maybe it's because it's HUGE. Or maybe because it just has it in for me, but I have decided it's not somewhere I will go without some help. Even with Paul's help, we still managed to lose Brandon for about two (VERY LONG) minutes. He had just wandered off looking at all the many interactive play areas, but still. That place is VERY crowded and not somewhere you want to misplace a child. Let me tell you I was VERY happy to have Paul call me (as I was frantically looking around) telling me he had found him. After that, Brandon had to stay in the stroller for a while. Whew...my heart still starts racing just thinking about it. 

Other than that incident, it was a really fun day and the weather was just beautiful. Really, we couldn't have asked for a nicer day. 

We started out "lifting" the truck of course and then hit McDonald's inside the Science Center for a little ice cream (no wonder I haven't lost any weight this summer despite exercising so much. I eat too much ice cream.) Then we went out to the rose gardens to run around a bit. After that, we headed inside to look at as many exhibits as we could fit in, in the time we had there. I think we only saw about 1/2 of the place, but that's okay. There's always next time. Ashlyn could have stayed all day, but we had to get home so Paul could go see "Dark Knight" with some of his friends. Now usually it's me heading out to a movie, but I guess from time to time I have to let him go too. (Don't feel too bad for the guy. He sees plenty of movies at work...on DW's dime and while being paid for it.) 

Carter walked over to smell the roses all by himself. I thought it was so cute, I had to take a picture of it.

Ashlyn worked very hard on her arch. She wasn't too happy when Carter came and destroyed it.

Paul took the kids in the tornado force wind tunnel. Leah's hair was awesome flying all over the place. 

We spent a good amount of time in the Kids Discovery area, which was really nice because they only allow so many kids in at one time AND it's enclosed. So go figure I only took one picture in there. And it was of this tarantula. Haha.....

Our last stop was through the ecosystem area. We watched a video and walked around a bit. Our last exhibit was this desert with a flash flood. It was pretty interesting to watch the water all soak up into the "ground" and then come flooding out again with thunder and lightening. 

AND....that was it. Maybe we'll make another trip out there next summer. As long as I have Paul with me, I'm good to go.

$1.00 movies

 On Tuesday's and Wednesday's at our local theater they offer movies for $1.00. They are mostly movies that came out during the last year or so, so they aren't new releases, but it's still fun for the kids to get to go to a movie. Plus that way I can bring Carter and not stress that I wasted a bunch of money on a movie I didn't get to see(or pay a ton for a sitter for just one kid). So we've gone a couple of times this summer. The first time Carter lasted about 30 minutes in his seat and then I wandered around the side of the theater with him. The second time, he was done after about 20 minutes but had figured out how to get OUT the theater door (yes he's strong enough to push it open), so I spent a lot of time in the foyer of the theater. But luckily my friend Becky came with me both times, so at least my older kids got to stay inside and watch the movie. 

My pictures aren't too great, but I'll post them anyway.

I'm thinking next year will be a lot easier (since Carter will be close to 3) and we'll get to go a lot more. 

Last Trip to the Aquarium

.......for a while that is. It was the day before my passes expired, so I had to take the kids one more time. We aren't going to renew our passes for this next year. It's pretty far of a drive, plus we like to mix up our passes and get different ones each year. It was a beautiful day and the drive down was super easy. Got there really quickly. It made me sad that I wasn't going to renew our passes. BUT then when the drive home took us 2 hours (yes, more than double what it took to get there), I wasn't so sad anymore. I guess there was a stalled bus in the middle of the freeway and then a stalled car a little while after that. It had traffic pretty much at a stand still for a while. I was pretty wiped out by the time we got back to our valley, but I guess not so much so that I didn't have energy to stop for some ice cream. I figured I deserved it after a two hour drive. The kids were pretty nuts in the ice cream shop though so I guess I shouldn't have pushed it. At least the ice cream was tasty.

 Anyway, back to the Aquarium. We did our usual bring lunch down and have a picnic before going in. I warned the kids they had to stay right by me at all times (it gets pretty crowded in there). Ashlyn did a fabulous job of listening. Everyone else.....not so much. But they did pretty good and we were there long enough to see everything we wanted to see. 

Enjoying lunch in the nice cool weather down in Long Beach.

I asked a random guy that was walking past us if he would take a picture for me. I guess I should be happy it wasn't me trying to take a picture of all of us....but really dude! You HAD to cut off the top of my head. Oh brother!

So I had to try and snap a few on my own. 

Didn't do so well. My hair is cutting part of Ashlyn's face off.

I was really excited to see the new penguin exhibit, but I must say I was pretty disappointed. It was just one small section and they only had a hand full of penguins. Oh well, this one took a liking to Ashlyn and kept swimming back and forth in front of her.

Then we went over to the touch tanks where I tried and tried to get Carter to pet the sting rays. He was willing, but the sting rays were too fast for him. And with me trying to keep an eye on my wandering Brandon, I couldn't focus on Carter long enough to help him get the sting ray when it came up in front of us. 

Okay, now this was cool. I think I have been to the Aquarium probably 20 times since living here and I have never seen this tank. These little things are real eels. You can read about them below but basically they bury their tales into the ground waiting for plankton to swim by. They really did look like sea grass swaying back and forth with the "current". 

And of course I can't go anywhere with out getting at least one crazy photo of Leah.

We finished off the visit with a little playing in the water. It was starting to warm up and so the kids were more than happy to get a little wet. 

Maybe we'll renew our passes in a few years. That way it will be exciting to the kids all over again. Either that, or they will be too old for it and bored to tears. We shall see.