tree trimming time!

The girls were very excited to decorate the Christmas tree. I wanted to wait til next weekend, after our new floors are in, but they were so excited, and since the front room is not getting new flooring, I decide to let them do it. 

Ben was at work, so I had to get the tree set up this year. It was a pain, but I managed to get it up. 

My happy helpers!

Evie didn't help that much,because she kept going back to the kitchen to finish her snack. 

I also set up their small tree upstairs. Kara did almost all of the decorating for that one. Kiersten helped some, and Evie didn't help much at all. 

Feels pretty cheerful around here!

Thanksgiving

Nancy was back with her kids on Wednesday on their way out of town. The girls really wanted to to an art project for Thanksgiving. So I had them trace their hands to make thankful trees. 

Tommy made a hand turkey instead. 

I made Evie think of something she is thankful for to put on each leaf. she had lots of leaves, and is thankful for lots of disney characters. 

Whitney's pretty tree. 

Kara didn't want to make a tree, so she made a Thanksgiving hat for Whitney. 

So then Kiersten needed me to make one for her. Kara made one for Tommy, and a pilgrim hat for Tucker, but I guess I didn't get a picture of those. 

This is the hat Keirsten made for me. I also didn't get a picture of Evie in her turkey hat she made at school.

playing duck duck goose.

Kiersten spent forever making this hat for Kara. Kara wasn't really a fan, but I made her wear it anyway to be nice.

Tommy really wanted to have a race, so we all got our coats on and spent a little time out in the front yard. 

It was really cold out, so when we came back in, Kiersten begged for hot chocolate. 

After the Sutherlands left, Evie helped me back a cheesecake for Thanksgiving. 

I had 2 cute little helpers on Thanksgiving morning, while Ben was playing football. They were a lot more excited for the holiday than I would have expected. 

Kiersten was so proud to set the table. I did have to help her quite a bit, but she really wanted to have a say in what went where. 

Kara spent a good amount of the day playing nintendo, so she was happy. She doesn't often have time to play for very long.

Ben's frined, Mike came over for dinner. The girls are always excited to have a guest to climb on.

I let Kara take a few pictures, so these last 3 are hers. There were a lot of really strange ones, but she got some decent shots. 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

old lady

We had Ben's sister, nancy and her family visiting for 5 days last week. I kept thinking, "I should get the camera out..." but I didn't end up with any pictures other than a few from my birthday dinner. I'll have to do better next time. So just a quick update this week. I turned 32 on the 17th, and it was fun having family in town to celebrate! Nancy and Victor watched the kids on Friday night so Ben and I could go on a date. We saw Last Vegas, which I have to admit, I wasn't too excited about seeing. But it turned out to be really funny. We laughed out loud several times. We also got to go to dinner, which is always nice to eat without the kids. 
Nancy helped the girls make me a spa out of paper. The girls are really into these 3D art projects lately. This one was particularly fun. I'll have to get pictures of some of the others that they've done. 

The one and only picture I ended up with of our visitors. I think Kara took the picture for us. 

I had plenty of birthday treats this year!

Characters and Mayan ruins in Cozumel

Of course being on a Disney cruise, we got to meet lots of Disney characters. On the first day, as soon as we finished lunch, we found the "fabulous 5" at the deck party. Chip and Dale were also there. 

Story time with Belle. 

Excited to meet Peter Pan. Peter was so fun with the kids. On one afternoon, I was running back to our stateroom to get something, and as I got to the top of the stairs, I ran smack into Peter Pan running down the stairs. I said, "oops, excuse me", and then he giggled and ran away. I felt kinda bad about it, until later, the girls spotted him running at full speed up and down the halls and laughing. So then I figured I'm probably not the first person to run into him. He kinda had it coming.

There was one character breakfast. Evie was the most excited, but all of the kids loved it. 

They got to meet Mickey, Minnie, Chip, and Dale. Our server had told the girls the previous evening that Daisy Duck would be there, so Evie was a little disappointed not to see her there. 

Evie did not want to meet Captain Hook and Mr. Smee. She loved meeting them when we were in the Bahamas, so we were surprised that she didn't want to. She kept saying how naughty they are. Kiersten said that Hook was a gentleman. I think Ben told them that his mother told him to be nice that day. 

Meeting Dopey and Snow white. 

We had to bring Evie back to meet them later when she got out of the Oceaneer's club. 

after she met Snow White, Kara decided she didn't care to meet any more princesses. She would rather do science experiments in the Oceaneer's Lab. (And hang around with a certain boy who was in there)
So we took the 2 littles to meet Belle.

Evie loved meeting Cinderella. She was telling her a bunch of random things about carving pumpkins, and our house. Cinderella was really nice, and gave Evie many many hugs and kisses. 

Kiersten got so excited when she saw Ariel coming down the stairs. She whispered in her ear, and later wouldn't tell me what she had said. 

Dancing the Do-Si-Do with Snow White. Evie and Kara had fun, but if I remember correctly,  Kiersten was being quite a stinker.

Hanging out by the pool with Donald Duck. I forgot I wanted to get Ben's picture with Donald, since he has always had a soft spot for him. 

In Cozumel, we went on a tour of the Mayan ruins. I really liked it, and Kara says she did too. The other girls got bored rather quickly, but still behaved pretty well. 

I'm surprised how well Kara was listening to the tour guide. She was re-telling me several specific details the other day. 

All of the kids got super distracted by this iguana. I think the tour guide was relieved when it finally ran down a hole. 

The kids trying to figure out where the iguana went. 

As much as I enjoyed it, I don't think we will do anything like this again for a while. maybe in 5 years or so. 

After the tour of the ruins, we drove around the beach side of the island, and then had a couple hours at the beach. When we went to change into our swim wear, it was discovered that Kara's bathing suit had been left behind on the ship. So I got the little girls changed, and played with them on the beach while Ben took Kara to find a bathing suit in one of the shops. He couldn't find any for kids, so he ended up getting her a women's small. Definitely strange to see a 7 year old in a triangle top bikini, with the waist pulled as tight as possible. (luckily it had a belt thingy). In the ocean, there was a big blow up, floating toy with climbing walls, trampolines, slides, etc. I didn't intend to swim out to it. I just thought Ben would take Kara, but all the girls wanted to go play on it. So I swam out with Evie, which was a pain, because she was terrified of sinking, (despite the life jacket), so I was dragging her along, and swimming with one arm. Halfway out, We passed Ben on his way back to the beach. He clipped the camera to my life jacket, and I swam the rest of the way to the floaty thing. We played for a minute, but Evie was so terrified, and crying, so I decided we'd better go back to the beach. Just then, she slipped into one of the center pools, and was freaking out, so I jumped in to help her back up. But then I struggled to get back up, because there wasn't anything to grab hold of there. After a couple minutes, I pulled myself back up, but saw that my vest was unbuckled, and the camera was gone :(   Evie was crying, and Kiersten started crying when I said I dropped the camera, and then it started pouring. I wanted to wait for the rain to let up before swimming back with Evie, and while we were waiting, Ben came back. So I told him what happened, and after we got Kara, we all swam back to the beach. i was very impressed with kiersten's swimming. I thought I would need to help her more, but she kept right up with me. Kara did lag behind a little, but didn't need any help. I took the girls to get changed, and Ben rented some snorkel gear to go look for the camera. The water was about 12 ft deep, so he thought he might be able to find it, since I pretty much knew right where I'd lost it. About 5 minutes before we needed to get back on the bus, I asked my parents to take the girls and wait for us there, while I went to look for Ben. I could see him still out there, so I asked the guy at the snorkel shop if he had any way to communicate with the guy on the floatie, so they could tell Ben to swim back. Instead, he just sent someone out in a boat to drag Ben back. He didn't find the camera, so that was sad. While I was waiting for the boat, I noticed I didn't have Ben's shoes. So I started looking, and then remembered that I had taken them in the bathroom when we changed. They weren't in there, but I ended up finding them in the lost and found. I was relieved, because I imagined Ben would be pretty annoyed if I lost the camera and his shoes in an hour. On his way back to the beach, he dropped the snorkel mask, so he had to swim around a bit to find that. By the time he got in, we were already late for the bus, so we hurried as fast as we could. Luckily they hadn't left yet, and we weren't the only ones late getting back. Everyone on the bus was so sad for us losing the camera. the lady behind us kept talking to me about it, even though I kept trying to hint that I didn't want to talk about it. It turned out that she lives in Provo, and I went to high school with her daughter. I didn't recognize the name, but her daughter would have been in the grade below me, so maybe Angie would have known her. Anyway, I felt pretty mad and sorry for myself for a few hours, before I forced myself to get over it, and enjoy the rest of the trip. There are a lot worse things that could happen to a person, and we still have all of our fun memories, even if there aren't any pictures to go along with them.