A Look Back in Time!

Each year at the Elementary school, Thunder, the red-tailed hawk (the school's mascot) heads out on a new adventure. While he's traveling he sends the students back clues to where he is so they can guess, they also have dress up days each Friday to correspond with where they found him.  This year Thunder travelled through time, so the students dressed up in 60's, 80's and 50's.  It was so much fun, my favorite year yet. 

60's was fun because we got to try out our hand at Tie Dye.

It turned out to be really easy and a lot of fun. The girls looked so cute!

Gentry - Peace

Sadie - Groovy

The next Friday was 80's...this was hilarious!

 I had so much fun dressing the girls the way I dressed when I was a teenager.

They thought it was so weird, but were good sports!

Here they are complete with their side pony tails, levi jackets, neon shirts tied to the side and LEG WARMERS. HaHa. I was laughing all morning while getting them ready.

The last Friday was 50's. This was my favorite.

They both looked so adorable!

Ticket to Ride

So while we were at Lake Powell last August, my cousins introduced me to a new game called "Ticket to Ride." I fell in love with this game. It was so much fun. So I put it on my Christmas Wish List. One Saturday Adam and I went out shopping and I finally found it at the little game shop in the mall that is only there during the holidays. I was so excited... until I saw the price...$60. Holy Cow! I put it back and then picked it back up, put it back and then picked it back up and finally Adam said "just buy it, it's Christmas" you don't have to ask me twice. I grabbed it, purchased it, went home wrapped it and put it under my tree. As it turns out that was the best $60 ever spent. We love this game. We can sit down and play it as a whole family (Gentry can even get in on the fun) Adam and I have even found ourselves sitting down to play a quick game and finally pulling ourselves away in the wee hours of the night. Everyone we have introduced it too, loves it. We played it with my Sister and Brother in Law one night and the next day they called and said they were having "Ticket to Ride" withdraws and invited us to bring our game over for another game night. So if anyone wants to learn a fun new game and play it for hours on end give us a call, we'd be happy to oblige. The only down fall is that you can only have 5 players at a time...I guess I better put another one on my list for next year so we can get even more involved in the fun:)!

Outnumbered!

With four girls in the family, Adam has always found himself outnumbered. We've always teased that he doesn't need a boy with Calli around, she's ALL tomboy, but Saturday morning when I looked out the window I found that I was the one totally outnumbered. Adam had all three girls outside shooting BB guns and Arrows. They were having so much fun. I went out for a minute it but it was too cold, so I found myself as happy as can be sitting in my warm cozy house watching and taking pictures from the window.
I love that my girls are adventures and like to try new things...although I think Adam loves it even more!

DiSnEyLaNd!

Anyone that knows me really well, knows that I am a Disneyland Fanatic. I love Disneyland, I love the sights, I love the sounds, I love the smells, everything. So as you can imagine I have turned my girls into fanatics as well. We usually go to Disneyland every other year, and each time it is just as much fun as the first.

The girls with their "Disney" luggage heading into the hotel.
The girls with their Disney landyards and pins anxious to get to the park.
(We love to trade pins in the park, it has become a fun tradition.)

Another tradition is a picture of the girls in the "A" at California Adventure.

This time Calli figured out that she could spell her name with the letters and herself as one of the L's (look close and you can see her between the L and the I...too cute)Also, notice how we are all alone and there is no one else in sight...that was how the entire day was. I have NEVER seen it that empty. It was supposed to rain the entire first day we were there, so it must have scared most of the people away because it was completly dead AND it ended up only raining for a few hours.

I love this sign!

Our little family!

We went this year with my entire family. There were 35 of us all together. (pictures below) We took the first day to just be with our own families before meeting up with the whole gang for the remainder of the trip.

Donald Duck!

First ride of the day...Matterhorn.

Now that Gentry is tall enough to go on everything, our family can just stick together and get on everything together, we had a blast!

With it being so slow, we never had to wait in lines, we would walk right up and get on. When the ride was over we were asked if we just wanted to stay on and go again. We also got to choose where we wanted to sit on almost every ride. Here is Calli in the driver's seat of Indiana Jones. This was Sadie and Gentry's first time on this ride, it ended up being one of Sadie's favorites. Gentry wasn't too sure about it but still went on it 4 other times.

The New Toy Story Ride "Midway Mania"

This was so stinking cute, I loved it!

"California Screamin" was a favorite with all the cousins and family so we spent a lot of time on this ride. I couldn't even guess how many times we all went on Screamin. This was Sadie's first time on this as well. She wanted to go on it so bad but she was so nervous, however, as soon as we got her on, we couldn't get her off. They would get off and jump right back on.

The later it got, the emptier the park became. At one point as we were running through fantasy land I noticed that Dumbo wasn't going. (which is odd because Dumbo always has a huge line) I wondered if maybe it closed because of the rain so I asked the cast member if Dumbo was closed. He laughed and said "Nope, and I think we still have some room." So we went on Dumbo all by ourselves. The last few years we have gone we have been rained on, but as long as you come prepared, it's one of the best times to go, (in my opinion.)

By the end of the day the girls were hungry wet and tired. We had gotten on 90% of the rides in BOTH parks, in ONE day, it was crazy. So we headed over to Downtown Disney for dinner at Rain Forest Cafe'. The last time we were in Disneyland Adam's mom was with us. His mom and dad took us here, so we returned in memory of her.

I think we'll make this a new tradition as well.

Here is the entire (minus one brother) motley crew in our Disney shirts in Toon Town!

The next three days were all about Family. For the most part we all stuck together and hit lands and rides together.

Grandpa and Grandma with just the grand kids.

The grand kids.

There are 17 grandkids aging from 18-3 years old. They are all the best of friends and had so much fun hanging out with each other in the happiest place on earth..

Our cute little Family.

To add to all the excitement...Adam's dad, Marilee, his sister and her family popped in for a couple days as well.

It was so much fun going on the rides with everyone. At each ride the cast member would ask us how many we had in our party and then just laugh when we told them how many of us there were. We'd usually fill up the entire boat, or have to take several different ones to get us all on. (We almost sunk the boat on Pirates of the Caribbean because they got us all to fit in one boat)

Here we all are on Jungle cruise...

Thunder Mountain Railroad...

and The Grizzly Run...

and here is Calli after Grizzly run. I'm such a wimp and wear my poncho when I go on this ride so I don't get very wet, but Calli is a die hard and got totally soaked.

Another fun thing about going with family is you have a lot of choices of who you're going to sit by on each ride...

Here is Adam and Tyson (oldest nephew) together and...

Calli and Ben (Uncle) riding together on Heimlich's choo choo train.

You also never know who's going to end up in your family pictures with you. We had Kassi and Jantzyn (cousins) with us through most of Toon Town.

OR...

who's going to end up in your stroller. I think each of the cousins took a turn in our stroller, we never knew who we were going to be pushing. That's what's so great about families...everyone just looks after each others kids. If someone had been watching they would have had no clue which kids belonged with which parents because we all just meshed together.

I think by far my girls would say that the best part of the trip was being with their cousins, they had so much fun!

Here's Ashyln, Jorrin, Jadyn, Calli, Sadie and Jaicelyn huddled together in the elevator of Haunted Mansion.

Sadie hanging out with her two best cousins, Kassi and Jaicelyn. These three girls are only 6 months apart.

Best little buddies and cousins, Gentry and Jantzyn.

More cousins on the Tea Cups: Jorrin, Ashlyn, Calli and Sadie.

Ashlyn and Calli are just a month a part.

After our fun filled days we'd all head to dinner together. Here we are taking up the whole back end of Tony Romas.

"The Hoodie Train"

The cousins walking from Tony Romas to the hotel in "the hoodie train." It was so funny seeing the looks on peoples faces as we passed them on the street, especially when some of us adults jumped in and joined the train...

Where else can adults act like kids, wear Mickey ears, dance and skip down main street, sing on the all rides, and laugh until you about wet yourself?...The happiest place on earth with my crazy, amazing family!