Thanksgiving Trip

We had such a wonderful Thanksgiving this year.  We went to my dad's the Friday before Thanksgiving and did Legoland and Sea World and had Sunday Thanksgiving with him.  Then on Wednesday, we drove up to St. George and spent Thanksgiving with Kenny's family at our Worldmark condos. It was so wonderful.  We relaxed, swam, played, relaxed, shopped, relaxed.  It was a fabulous week.  My birthday was the day after Thanksgiving this year so I got to do a little "Black Friday/Birthday" shopping too.  It was fabulous! 

 Having a blast with our marshmallow guns

 Drove and hiked around Snow Canyon.  We love that place!!

 Oh, I sure love these kids!!

 Dried lava from the lava tubes--way cool!

 The girls and Kenny went down into the now extinct lava tube where lava used to erupt inside Snow Canyon.  Way cool...and creepy!

 Gotta play in the sand dunes too while at Snow Canyon

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my little guy?!! :-)

Karate

Ashley is a natural dancer, but for some reason she pretty much hates it!  She has been asking me to quit every week and it's a fight to get her to dance.  I realized that there's no reason why she needs to be in dance, so I can take her out.  At the same time, Ashley's been asking to start karate for awhile, so in November we let her start to see if she liked it.  She LOVES it!!  She asks everyday when is her next karate.  How long til my next karate?  When is my next karate? :-)  She LOVES it!! For those of you that know her, karate seems to fit her true personality so I'm not that surprised that she loves it.
The teachers at karate seem to think she's a natural at karate too.  I think she's found a new love in her life!  It's so fun to see her love something and have such a good attitude about it!

 They spar, learn karate and taekwondo moves, play games, and have a blast.

 Ashley LOVES it and kinda loves being allowed to kick the other kids butts! :-)

New family pictures

When we were down with my dad for Thanksgiving we tried another round of family pictures.  It's always fun to post the good and not so good/funny pictures as we try to get some good ones. :-)  Enjoy!

The girls were a little scared to start ;-)

The true personalities

Tyler, not sure about what he's doing ;-)

"How many more pictures mom?"--Tyler

 Luckily we did get some good ones!!

 The kids sure love their Grandpa

 I love these three so much!!

This one was our favorite that we blew up to an 8x10.  I sure love new and updated family pictures!!

Reflections 2013

I love that Emily is so artistic.  I love that she wants to do Reflections each year.  I didn't love that she wanted to make a movie this year, but I was supportive and helped her get it done.
As usual, she totally surprised me with her artistic mind and made a really cool movie.  The theme was Believe, Dream, Inspire.  She wanted to learn how to do the monkey bars and made a made a movie about believing she could do it, dreaming she could do it, working hard to accomplish the monkey bars, and then inspiring someone else to try the monkey bars.  I wish that I could upload it, but I can't, so this description will have to do.  It turned out very cute in my opinion and she won an award at our school and now it goes on the city level.
I love that Emily does these projects because she loves being artistic, not just for the trophy.  Don't get me wrong, she's very happy when she gets a trophy, but her project is more important to her.  I hope it can stay this way as she gets older. :-)