The End of Summer

Here's a few pictures from August that didn't make it into our other posts:

We had a goal setting night for mutual. I really love working with these young women in our ward. It's been the best two years so far, and I'm starting to fear we may be released in the next year or two. My calling in the Young Women's has been so fun and so rewarding. It has also been a bit challenging, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. 

 There have been some horrible fires around the state. The moon has been pretty scary because of it. We need rain so badly!

 I turned 35 this year! What? It was a crazy day, so we didn't get many pictures, but here's a few selfies I did get.

It is so weird to me to be 35. It's that age that you always think of as the prime of your life. I would say I'm pretty happy with my life at 35. I have the best husband and kids around, an eternal family, a beautiful house that is ours, good health, and opinionated mind, and a love of Dr. Pepper and treats. What more could I ask for? 

The day of my birthday was also back to school night for all three of our kids. They got to meet their teacher and see their new classroom. I think we're going to have a great year!

 I took Makayla to the dentist to get sealants on her teeth and as she was standing there I couldn't help but wonder what happened to my little girl? She is just looking more and more grown up these days. She looks more like a teenager that a little girl... makes me happy and sad all at the same time. 

 We went to a gender reveal party for Karly and Rico... looks like we are adding another boy cousin to the mix! My prediction was right! Karly was shocked and surprised, but Rico was thrilled to be having a boy.

 Caden got to make a poster for his class. I am so excited to watch him flourish this year.

 Emily and I went to the Dierks Bentley concert for a combined birthday celebration. Tyler was out of town, so Emily was the next best thing.

Back to School Time!

And just like that summer vacation was over and it was time to go back to school. It's crazy how fast (and sometimes slow) the summer can go. 

Makayla was the first to go back. Makayla is in 2nd grade this year at Elk Meadows Elementary and her teacher is Mrs. Snow. 

Makayla wants to be a teacher when she grow up and her favorite subject is art. 

 Makayla was so nervous about going to school that she was having melt downs about a month before school started. She felt better when she went to back to school night and met her teacher. The morning of school I dropped her off and she was able to find all of her friends. When she got home from school she told me what a great day she had. I think 2nd grade is going to be her best year yet!

Stupid Google photos showed me this picture just 4 years ago that makes me want to cry. Why do our kids have to grow up?  Makayla was just starting her first year of preschool and dance. I was still pregnant with Brynnli and ready for the summer to be over.

Since Makayla was in school, I took these two cuties to lunch for their last day before Caden started school. These two have really grown to be buddies over the last few years. Since Makayla has been in school and Caden was only in Kindergarten for half the day, they have become best buddies and worst enemies. They have played together and fought over what to watch for quiet time everyday. I think I can speak for Brynn when I say we are going to miss our Buddy so much when he goes to school all day.

 But because I'm not allowed to keep my kids home forever, it was time for Caden to start 1st grade at Elk Meadows with his teacher, Mrs. Otley.

At 6 years old, Caden wants to be a builder when he grows up and his favorite subject is recess. 

 I think 1st grade is the hardest grade. I just think 6 hours is a long time to be at school for a 6 year old and I worry about everything, like does he know how to get his lunch by himself? What if he doesn't know how to read his name? But Caden wasn't scared at all; he was so excited to start 1st grade. I dropped him off at school and watched him walk into class as he waved at me. And just like that he was gone. I worried about him all day until I picked him up from school and he came running to me screaming, "Guess what mom, I LOVE 1st grade!" So far he is loving school and really doing exceptionally well!

And I blame Google photos again for making me cry. Caden has changed, and not changed so much... does that make sense to any of you?

I took this picture of Caden standing in front of the 1st grade sign and Makayla standing in front of the 2nd grade sign... Brynn wanted to be in the picture too, so she stood in the middle. 1st and 2nd graders go through the same doors... I never thought I would have a 1st and 2nd grader, but here we are.

 Then just a few days later Brynnli started her first year of pre-school at Little Learners Academy with her teacher Ms. Aubrey and Ms. Abbey.

At 3 years old Brynnli wants to be a dancer when she grows up and her favorite subject is all the things!

 Brynnli was so excited to start school and be like her older brother and sister. She was a little scared her first day, but when I picked her up she was non stop talking about all the things they did that day. She got to color and have a snack and play with the play food.

Guys, now that Brynnli is in school I have 4 hours a week to run errands kid free. I have been looking so forward to this day and now that it's here, I'm kinda sad. Funny how that works.

Family Vacation to LegoLand and Knotts Berry Farm

Check! 

Tyler and I have been planning our family trip to LegoLand and Knotts Berry Farm for the past few weeks and it was finally here! We decided to go to LegoLand again because all of our kids, especially Caden, are obsessed with Legos. Caden had so much fun there last year and we realized in a few years they might be too old for LegoLand, so we decided to go again, and I'm so glad we did! I bought our snacks, Tyler found a rental car (because let's face it, our Mazda 6 is too small for that long of a road trip and the truck's air conditioner doesn't work that well... we wanted to have a fun trip.)

On Sunday we were off. I knew the kids would do fine on the way down, but I wanted to make sure they had plenty of things to keep them busy for our long drive to California. I found this idea of making markers on the way to help the kids understand how long of a drive they had left. At each marker they would get to open a little treat or toy. This was a huge success and all the kids looked forward to the prize along the way. Our first day we drove to Mesquite. 

Once we got to Mesquite we spent a few hours in the pool. All of the kids had a blast going down the slide. 

If you know Tyler, you know he loves ice cream, so of course we had to get one!

We put the kids to bed early so we could wake them up early for the rest of the drive to LegoLand.

We were getting slightly bored along the way, but Tyler made us all laugh with his impression of how Terry drives.

We finally made it to LegoLand and checked into our hotel. We decided to stay in the LegoLand hotel and it was totally worth it! Our kids LOVED it! The room was themed with pirate Legos, there were Legos in the room to play with, and there were a lot of decorations around the room made out of Legos.

The hotel had statues of Ninja Legos, a play area for the kids, and a dance room.

The kids' favorite part may have been the treasure hunt around the hotel to get clues to open a special treasure chest in their room.

When they finally figured out the code they opened the chest to find a Lego set for all of them!

We spent the rest of the night at the pool

We walked around the Castle Hotel next door.

At night after the park closed, they would have story time where the kids got to help make up the story as they went along. Makayla got to go on stage and help tell a new version of the Three Little Pigs. Caden got to tell jokes and Brynnli lost interest in the story telling and played in the castle.

Then ended the night watching a Lego movie beside the pool and attending the dance party. I seriously think our kids were in heaven and we had not even gone to the park yet!

The next morning we ate breakfast at the hotel and they had ice cream. I told Tyler and Makayls this would be the one and only time I would let them get ice cream for breakfast!

We spent a few hours at the park and got to meet some of the characters from Ninjago.

We went on a few rides

Caden told us one of the things he really wanted to do at Lego Land was build Legos at the building stations. They even had a special contest to see who could build the fastest car. All the kids worked so hard on their cars.

And after a few tries, Caden's car won the race and he won a special ribbon!

The girls got to meet Unikitty.

And we went on all of our favorite ride...the Ninjago ride!

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the Lego Water Park, and I didn't get any pictures there, but we had a blast! The kids' favorite part was the wave pool.

We ended the night riding a few more rides. I have to tell a funny story about this particular ride...

Lego Land has all sorts of weird height restrictions. Some rides we can all go on, some rides only the kids can go on, and some rides an adult has to go with them. Some of the rides that only the kids can go on there is an additional age restriction. This horse ride was one of them. The rider had to be a certain height and at least 4 years old. Well Brynnli will be 4 next month, so we figured she was fine. The only problem is that they don't ask the parents how old their child is, they ask the kid. We spent time in the line prepping Brynnli for when they would ask her how old she was. She knew to say she was 4. So we get to the front of the line and the worker says to Brynn, "how old are you?" and Brynnli proudly responded, "Four!" I felt relieved until Caden piped up, "actually, she's only three." My face went bright red. I had no idea what to say other than, "no, Caden, She's four... remember her birthday last month?" To which he responded, "No, she's not." I was mortified. I was totally caught in a lie, so I just looked at the teenage worker and said, "she's four." I mean really, what was my other option? Deal with Bynnli temper tantrum because she couldn't go on the ride? No thanks. The worker let her on the ride and I went to the other side to pick her up. I was so angry at Caden and couldn't figure out why he would tell them she was really three, and I planned on letting him have it. When Caden got off the ride I grabbed him and sternly asked him why he said that to the worker, and in perfect Caden fashion he responded, "Well... we shouldn't lie." I sat there for a few seconds trying to explain to Caden why it was ok to lie in this case, until I realized he was right. It's humbling that a 6 year old has that much of a moral compass that he had to remind his 35 year old mom that she shouldn't lie. #momfail. 

LegoLand wasn't that crowded, so the kids were able to go on just about every ride and walk right on to most of them.  

We ended the night with another Lego movie by the pool and then crashed in bed.

The next morning when we went to go get breakfast we got to meet Lloyd from Ninjago! Caden's favorite. Caden was even wearing his Green Ninja shirt!

We spent the entire day going on every single ride in Lego Land.

We walked around the Lego city to see all the replicas of famous places.

One of the kids' favorite rides was the new Deep Sea Adventure. We got to go in a submarine and look at the sea life. I think we went on this ride at least 3 times!

Sometimes Makayla can be such a pain in the ass!

We also got to go to the aquarium, eat Apple Fries and churros, and ride every single ride possible and see every show we could. We were all feeling sad when the park closed and it was time to leave. I'm so glad we decided to go to LegoLand again this year.

We left the park at closing and drove to Anaheim while the kids slept. We spent the night in the Knotts Berry Farm Hotel and woke up bright and early to start our day at Knotts Berry Farm!

Knotts Bery Farm was really fun. They had Camp Snoopy for Caden and Brynnli which had all these fun rides that they loved and then they had the big, scary roller coasters that Makayla loved. The only thing that was hard was that they didn't have a lot of family rides, so we spent most of the day separated. I'll tell you one thing though, Makayla doesn't have a scared bone in her body. We went on some of the scariest roller coasters I have ever been on, and I was pretty scared, but Makayla wasn't scared one bit and kept asking to go on all of them.

I think this is the only family picture we got at Knotts Berry Farm. Good thing it's a cute one!

One thing is for sure, it was so stinkin hot there! I have never been so miserable in my life. From about noon until five we were all dying from the heat. We noticed our kids were getting irritable and they all wanted to be in the stroller. We kept finding reasons to sit down or go inside for a little relief from the heat. The funniest thing was when we went to the Snoopy show and both Tyler and I fell asleep during it. It was dark and air conditioned... what do you expect?

I just love how Brynn's hair would curl from the sweat and heat.

About dinner time our kids were hot and tired and hungry... not a good combination at all. We decided to get dinner, but we couldn't decide what to get and we were standing in front of a Johnny Rockets, so we decided to go there to eat.. convenient, in the park, and our kids eat fairly well there. So we walk in and sit down and start looking at the menu. My jaw dropped when I saw the prices... $8 for a hot dog... not a hot dog meal with fries and a drink... $8 for a hot dog! We were stuck; it's not like we could get up and walk out of the restaurant, so we ordered 3 hotdogs and 2 hamburgers. To make it worse, our kids only ate the hot dog, not even the bun. We paid our $50 for our dinner and walked out to our stroller to get snacks because our kids were still hungry. That was probably the worst part of our trip.

Once it started to cool off and our kids weren't hungry, they did much better and we ran around the park going on as many rides as we could.

We ended the night with this lame attempt at a family picture. Brynn was tired and not cooperating, so we called it good.

But not before spending almost 30 minutes in the gift shop watching the slowest people on the planet ring up and "gift wrap" as Tyler would call it, our Knotts Berry Farm Jam and Caramel apple.

We got the kids settled in the car and they all fell asleep as Tyler and I made the 4 hour drive to Vegas. We were both exhausted, but we knew if we could make the majority of the drive while the kids slept, we would be better off the next day.

Our last day of vacation was spent in Vegas. We swam in the pool for a few hours then made our way home. We decided to take a detour through Richfield to show Makayla where she was born and the house we lived in.

One thing is for sure, things have really changed since we moved away almost 7 years ago. It was so fun to drive around the town and remember all the memories we had there. Some things made me sad and some things made me so grateful to not live there anymore. I still believe Richfield was the best place for Tyler and I to live and experience our first few years of marriage.

Here's Sevier Valley Hospital where Makayla was born.

And our house.

This house makes Tyler and I sick. Tyler and I spent so much time planning and building this house. It had the classiest brick but the new owners decided they didn't like it and covered it up with a horrible purple colored rock that doesn't even match.

I loved this tree that was basically in our backyard.

After our detour through Richfield we made the rest of the trip home. Our family vacation was so incredibly fun and we just loved spending time together and making memories.