Merry Christmas

I just want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. Sorry for the lack of posts. I took on some big projects for Christmas that have taken up most of my time. Unfortunately, one was too big and will have to be finished after Christmas. Oh well, can't do everything. Hope all is well with everyone and you all have a wonderful holiday.

Great Wolf Lodge

We had the most amazing opportunity at the beginning of November. We got to go the the Great Wolf Lodge in Grand Mound, WA, over by Seattle. It is this huge hotel with an indoor water park. When the kids found out what we were doing they were so excited. I can't tell you how many times Abbie and I spent looking at their web page.

While Terry was in meetings the kids and I went swimming. Afterward, we planned on doing some activities in the Kids Club during the afternoon. While we were walking around the hotel we saw most of the kids running around the hotel with these wands. Riley wanted to find out what they were for, so we went to the gift shop that sold them. We found out that you can buy these wands that are infrared wands, like a remote control for a TV. Than you go on a quest to earn ruins that help you defeat a dragon at the end of the quest. Of coarse Riley wanted to do this. I sat down with my kids and told them that they each could buy one souvenir and each choose one activity to do. Pretty much every activity they had cost extra money. I wanted my kids to have fun, but couldn't afford to have them do everything. Riley and Abbie both chose to buy wands. Than Riley chose to do the quest and Abbie chose to do the jumping with bullfrogs activity. It worked out well. We were able to put Abbie's wand on demo mode for free. This meant that she could light things up with her wand but she couldn't participate in the quest. Also, while Abbie was doing her activity, Riley got to listen to all the information. He just didn't get to make all the fun stuff that Abbie made.

We stayed pretty busy while Terry was in his meetings, and got in some good exercise at the same time. The quest required you to do a lot of walking. The quest was spread out over five different floors, and you had to walk up the stairs most of the time, because they had some clues on the stairs. There were a lot of times we would walk up five flights of stairs to turn around and walk back down five flights of stairs. Than repeat it.

After Terry finished his meeting we went swimming again. I felt sorry for Terry because by the evening we were all worn out and feel asleep, were he was ready to have some fun. The next morning we tried to finish the quest while Terry went to his last meeting than we went swimming one last time. Unfortunately, we didn't defeat the dragon. We got to fight him and got close to beating him, but we ran out of time and had to leave.

Eating breakfast!






The kids trying to figure out what all these decorations were for. We later found out they were part of the quest.

This was the TV that was on our floor. It was a snoring tree trunk. They were excited when we got to wake up the tree and have him talk to us.


Abbie with her plant aquarium she made during her Jumping With Bullfrogs activity

My little bullfrog

Taking a rest during our quest.

The kids sitting in front of this big fire place in the lounge. This was a huge lounge

Riley getting some more clues for his quest.

Lighting up the lantern with his wand

Swimming with dad. The indoor water park was awesome. I wanted to take lots of other pictures, but is cost $10 to rent a locker. I didn't' want to spend that much, so I took a few pictures and than took the camera back to our hotel room. They had all these fun slides you could go on. Riley, Terry and Terry's coworker went on the Howling Tornado first. This is the description that there web page gives for this ride, "Our most thrilling adventure. Grab up to 3 other members of your pack willing to drop into the 6-story funnel. You'll quickly learn how this ride earned its name. Repeatedly swish and swirl 30 feet up the sides of the funnel, before making a safe splash landing." Terry said he was to scared for Riley and keeping him on the ride to be scared for himself. After this we couldn't get Riley to go on any other rides. We had Abbie crying because she was to short to go on most of the ride and she wanted it to, and Riley who was tall enough refusing to go on the rides. Finally, right before we went Riley agreed to go on another ride with Terry. Which he enjoyed a lot more.





Going on part of the quest with dad.




I never got a picture of Riley trying to defeat the dragon. We were in a hurry, but this is Riley and Abbie right outside the room were the dragon was.

Dragons

Riley like most children right now is obsessed with dragons. This is all due to How To Train Your Dragon. After we bought the movie and watch it, Riley was insistent on building a dragon out of his Lego's. So, Riley and I spent an afternoon building this dragon. It was lots of fun seeing him come up with the idea and initiating it.

Porcupine

Terry took some of the young women and young men over to the temple to do baptisms for the dead. When he got home he came inside got the camera and asked me to come outside to look at something. I started to get worried, thinking that he had gotten in an accident. He than showed me these porcupine quills in the front tire of the van. He said that he had almost hit a porcupine on the way home.

Halloween Parade

The Friday before Halloween, Riley's school had a Halloween parade. The kids got to dress up in their costumes and walk around to all the class rooms and show them off. Than they come back to their classroom and had a little party. Riley really wanted to be a blue ninja.




This is Riley with the student teacher Mr. Erland. Riley was a blue ninja and Mr. Erland was a ninja master. Of coarse Riley wasn't the only ninja in the classroom. There was a least two other boys who dressed up as ninjas.

Trick-or-Treat!

Okay so I am finally getting around to writing about Halloween. I made the kids costumes this year. Riley's was quite simple. He wanted to be a ninja, so I just made a karate vest for him and bought him sweat pants to wear underneath. Than, on-line, I found this cool way to put the ninja wrap around his head. All I had to use was a long-sleeved shirt. The only problem I ran into with his wrap was that the shirt was a little big, so it didn't want to stay. He wanted to be a blue ninja and it was the only blue long-sleeved shirt I could find that would work.

Abbie's costume was a totally different story. She wanted to be a ninja until I tried the head wrap on her, and than she changed he mind. She decided to be a pink 'Super Abbie.' It was my own fault that I ended up having troubles with the costume. I decided to skip a step and paid for it. I didn't want to try the pattern on Abbie. I figured if I just went by the measurements according to the pattern I would be fine, big mistake. I got the fabric all cut out and had sewn that bodice part of the pattern to together (thank goodness I hadn't gotten farther). This included sewing the applique onto it as well. Than I tried the bodice on her. Well what to my surprise, it was to short and to tight. This should not have surprised me one bit, considering my daughter has a long torso, and was blessed with my broad shoulders. Luckily I had bought extra material and had enough to cut out new bodice pieces. The most frustrating parts were trying to figure out how to make the applique work, and trying to make the skirt fit the larger bodice. I didn't have enough material to cut out new skirt pieces. I ended up adding strips to the sides. After I was done, I wish I had just gathered the top, but I was not changing it at that point. I also, did not want to start over on the applique. I ended up cutting it out of the old bodice and sewing it onto the new one and it turned out fine. The costume wasn't perfect. The most important part is that Abbie loves it. Besides it was dark for most of our trick-or-treating adventures so nobody could see the mistakes.


On Friday, we took the kids trick-or-treating to the stores down town. I hesitated doing this because it was a nightmare the year before. We decided to give it a try, if there were to many people we would leave. It wasn't nearly as bad as the year before.
You can see that the ninja wrap was to big. Riley had a hard time seeing out of it. When I first tried it out, it was with a smaller shirt and worked a lot better.



Friday night we went to the church for some fun trunk-or-treating. The kids had fun, but didn't want to go for to long. They wanted to mostly hand out candy at our van. Terry got a little frustrated because everyone kept giving him their candy to hand out instead of setting up their own vans.

On Saturday the high school was having a trunk-or-treat as well. The different clubs set up cars to hand out candy. They also had a couple of haunted houses. I wasn't to excited to go to this because it was raining, but Riley and Abbie really wanted to go to the haunted barn. Than Abbie was scared to go into the barn, so we waited outside. The funny thing is she wanted to go to the other haunted house they had in the auditorium. She did pretty well with it until the very end. At the end you had to open a door to exit, and for some reason she didn't want to open the door.

At church the next day they found out that their babysitter had been involved in the haunted house and they were excited about this. They love their babysitter and are always asking when we are going out again so they can have her over.
Abbie waiting for Terry and Riley outside the haunted barn


Riley and Terry coming out of the haunted barn.



Riley having fun at the FFA station. Abbie didn't want to wait in line for this one so we moved on.


We didn't plan on doing anything for Halloween on Sunday except hand out candy. Than I remembered that our next door neighbors would have something special for the kids, so we got them dressed up and took them over. It is a good thing we did. They are wonderful neighbors and always do special things for my kids.
Abbie and Riley going over the our next door neighbors house.
Abbie holding the special treat from our next door neighbors.



One last picture with their pumpkins.



Abbie laid out all her candy and organized it. I remember doing this when I was little. She loves candy and would have eaten it all at once if I had let her. We let them have a few pieces and than put it up. They can than have a couple of pieces each day until it is all gone.

Pumpkin Time!

For FHE, the Monday before Halloween, we carved our pumpkins. This was the first year that my kids would even touch the inside of the pumpkin. It was a lot of fun. Riley choose a traditional face for his pumpkin and Abbie choose a raccoon on top of a pumpkin.

Phase 6

Beach!
After we went to the Oregon Zoo, we headed over to the beach. We stayed at this really cool KOA in Astoria for a couple of days. The KOA was located across the highway from Fort Stevens Stake Park, and not far from several fun beaches. They had free pancake breakfast, miniature golf, an indoor swimming pool, a play ground, and lots of other fun stuff to do at this KOA.

We spent one day at Seaside playing in the sand and walking down the board walk. We spent another day by Cannon Beach at Ecola State Park at Indian Beach. While I was up at the van getting the kids shorts, so they could play in the water, and the food. Riley decided to play in the water and get all wet. The sand got all over him and we couldn't get the sand off. It was the last pair of clean pants I had for him, so he got a new pair of pants, and I got to go to the outlet mail. The next day we went over to Stevens Stake Park to this beach that has the remains of a century-old shipwreck, 'Peter Iredale'. It was really foggy and cold and we needed to get on the road, so we didn't stay long. On the way home we drove into Astoria. We stopped at the Columbia River Maritime Museum, so we could take a look at the cool boats. Than we came home. The kids had a blast and keep asking us when we are going back.

I have added captions to some of the pictures. If you want to read them just click on the slide show and it will take you to our picsa web album.

Phase 5

Oregon Zoo
We had fun at the Oregon Zoo this summer. I thought we would be done exploring by around 2 o'clock, but we got done more around 5 o'clock. There was so much to do and see. They had a dinosaur exhibit set up that Riley loved. Abbie had a lot of fun at the Trillium Creek Family Farm, mainly because you could pet the animals. We all enjoyed the train ride. It was one of the last things we did so it was nice to just sit for a while. Just because there was so many wonderful pictures to share, I made a photo slide. I have put captions on some of the pictures, but you will need to click on the pictures to read them. Enjoy!

4 Year Old

On October 18th my lovely little girl turned 4 years old. This year her birthday fell on a Monday. Abbie just happened to be in charge of the lesson for FHE, so she choice to go to the pumpkin patch. Than we went to McDonald's for her birthday dinner. Afterward we came home and had more cake and ice cream and opened her presents from mom and dad. She had quite a weekend full of fun for her birthday.



I love this picture of Terry going down the slide, at the pumpkin patch, with the kids.


Terry and the kids at the bottom of the slide. The extra one is the little girl I watch.





Playing on the boat at the pumpkin patch.




Abbie picking her pumpkin.


Riley picking his pumpkin



Abbie opening her presents. She had been begging for a pair of suede boots for a couple of years, so I finally got her a pair.





Abbie playing with her camera she got for her birthday. We tried to buy her a cheap camera, but it didn't work well. I ended up taking it back and getting her one of those cameras made for little kids. I spent more than I had planned on, but I like it much better and so does she.


Abbie playing her My Little Pony DS game that she bought with the money that Grandma and Grandpa Carlsen sent her.