Lordy Lordy Look Who's 40!

I hit the big one this year.  I've walked through the big doors into an older generation. 

My family and friends did a great job in making it a special day. 

My surprises and fun started on Thursday.

#1- My friends came and picked me up and took me to Cheesecake Factory; my favorite place!!  I got some fun gifts for turning 40; including a tiara that says 40 on it.  The girls loved it and wanted me to wear it on my birthday.

#2- A box arrived at the doorstep on Friday afternoon.  I opened it to find a lovely colorful bouquet of roses in every color.  My boyfriend...he loves me.

#3- Friday evening I was doing some cleaning in the kitchen and turned around to see Coelton standing in the living room!  He totally surprised me and came home for the weekend.  I was so surprised and overcome; I started to cry.  He made fun of me.

#4- Saturday morning the family woke me up to give me breakfast in bed and presents.  A new camera!!  Now I can take some sweet pics of the kids on the track!  The kids gave me a gift card to Downeast.  Coelton thought it was a restaurant and was disappointed we all weren't going to Downeast to eat. 

#5- The Fam sent me out the door after my breakfast for a pedicure and a manicure!  It was awesome.

When I drove home I was surprised to see a big banner on the garage door!

#6- We enjoyed a nice quiet day and a great dinner of french dip and birthday cake! 

What a great birthday!  Thanks everyone for all the birthday wishes and phone calls.

LIFE BEGINS AT 40! 

Disneyland Trip 2010

5 years ago in 2005 we went to Disneyland.  It was my first time, and I was 35 years old.  Joel had been about 3 times as a kid.  We took Coelton (13) Caden (10) Hailey (6).  Chloe was only a year old so we left her in St. George with Aunt Jan. 
5 years later Chloe is finally 48 inches tall and ready to go to Disneyland! Only this time it was Coelton who was left behind.  He couldn't take time off of his classes. I still don't think the kids realize how lucky they are!
  We get free hotels and free airfare (Daddy's gone all the time PERKS) so that part was easy.

  We did a 3 day "park hopper" to Disney and California Adventure.  We also did a day at Sea World in San Diego.  We rented a car to get us to and fro and we were set!
Nov. 3, we caught a plane to Orange County and flew into the John Wayne airport.  The kids didn't have school on the 4th or 5th.  We stayed a total of 7 days; flying home on the 9th.

~DAY 1~
We were up early and ate our free breakfast.  We saw the Simpson's at breakfast.  Bishop Simpson and his 6 children were there too! (along with lovely wife Lynette)   It was a HOT day...97 degrees!
We headed to Disneyland, parked the car and shuttled to the main gate.  We decided to do California Adventure first.  We headed straight to "Tower of Terror".  What a thrill! 

Our favorite California Adventure attractions are:
Tower of Terror
California Screamin'
Soarin over California
Toy Story Midway Mania (Joel had the high score for the day!)
Grizzly River Run
Aladdin the musical
It's Tough to be a Bug show
Muppet Vision 3D show
Mickey's Fun Wheel

There is so much more at DCA, but these are our favorites.
The girls loved filling their autograph books with characters autographs.  I think they have like 25!  It became a game to find ALL the princesses.  Caden enjoyed collecting smashed pennies, and everyone liked trading pins with the staff.

~Day 2~
Up and at em' early again.  The parks opened at 8am.  We arrived on time and was there for the rope drop.  We headed for Tower of Terror again.  We loved riding all the great rides in the mornings.  We could walk right on without crowds.  
This day it was a little cooler, only 85 degrees. 
We did Disneyland for the majority of the day.  Our favorite Disney Attractions are:
Splash Mountain
Indiana Jones
Matterhorn Bobsleds
Disney Princess Fantasy Fair
Space Mountain
Pirates of the Caribbean
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
Jungle Cruise
Haunted Mansion Holiday
Pixie Hollow
Mad Tea Party
All the princess rides

This day was a Friday and it was more crowded.  We watched the night time show "Fantasmic" which was awesome.  We also watched the fireworks and saw Tinker flying in the air around the castle.  SO COOL!
By the end of this day it was 11:30pm.  We were SO tired.  Chloe slept through all the shows and had to be carried back to the shuttle.

~Day 3~
We drove to San Diego to Sea World on this day (Saturday).  We loved all the shows and were happy the only ride here is Atlantis.  We were "rided" out! This day had cooled down nicely to 75.  Our favorite shows here were:
Believe- the Shamu show
Blue Horizons- the dolphin show (we saw it 2 times)  They have 2 trained pilot WHALES.
Seal Lions Live- It's like Saturday Night Live...So funny!
Pet's Rule
Pirates in 4D show.
Shamu Rocks  

For the Shamu rocks show I really wanted to be front and center.  We arrived early and when they started to let people in; Joel started running to get us a spot.  They were yelling at Joel to "Stop running!" but it didn't stop him.  We got awesome seats and put on our rain gear and really enjoyed this show.  We were DRENCHED...but dry underneath : )
Another high light of sea world was petting the sting rays.  We also ate the most amazing food we had the entire trip!  We went to Pineapple Pete's Island Eats and got funnel cakes!   We shared 2 brownie and one strawberry, piled high with ice cream and whip cream and hot chocolate syrup!  Yummmm!!

~Day 4~

We slept in and went to church at 10:30. We had just set the clocks back due to daylight savings. The extra hour of sleep was perfect. We attended the Anaheim 4th ward which was just around the corner from our hotel at the Homewood Suites.
After church we went to see the Newport Temple. We also walked around the beach and enjoyed that alot.
We lounged around the hotel and enjoyed the swimming pool for the rest of the day.

~Day 5~
Jeff and Mel go to Disneyland every 3 years and it was time for another trip.  Our vacations overlapped this one day.  We met them and McKenna at the main gate early Monday morning.  We once again headed straight for Tower of Terror!  We had fun trying to keep serious or sleeping faces for the pictures. 
The weather was very nice on this day.  A jacket wearing day of 65. 
It was really neat to see all the Christmas decorations going up.  Each day there was a little more. 

Chloe was such a trooper the entire trip.  She did everything and never complained or was scared.  One time she cried on splash Mountain when she got drenched.  The only thing that scared her was the "Bugs Life" Show. 

We really enjoyed this day, being with Jeff's family.  Hailey especially loved being with McKenna.  We basically did all our favorites on this day and filled it in with the stuff we hadn't done yet.  Jeff brought his watch that tells you how many miles you have walked.  We did 12 miles that day, but aren't sure if it counted ride miles too. 

We went to the show World of Color at DCA before the park closed.  It was a really good show!!
 Joel's parents came this day.  They flew in late afternoon, so we went to their hotel to visit at like 9pm, before we went back to our hotel. 

~Day 6~
We were scheduled to fly out at 6:30 a.m.  This meant getting up at 4ish to get there on time.  I begged Joel to change our flights, so he did and we had a new departure time of 10:30. 
We got up at like 8 and packed everything, got ready, hurried downstairs for breakfast and then drove to the airport.  We arrived back in Boise at 4:00. 
It was a great trip.  I wouldn't say it's a great vacation, just because you are so tired by the end of it.  Disneyland is truly magical and amazing.  Chloe kept asking if it was real....the princesses, characters, shows...it all seemed so real!!  I loved seeing it through a child's eyes. 
Farewell Disneyland...until 2015.

H a L L o W e e N

This year Halloween was on  Sunday.  Chloe was not very happy about it.  Joel kept telling her she couldn't go trick or treating because it was on Sunday. 
She got to wear a halloween costume to a friends halloween party.  She dressed up like a baby.  I didn't get a picture of her.  But she was cute in her pink blanket sleepers.  She had a bib and a binky too.
She wore her Cinderella costume to school.  She makes an adorable Cinderella.  We put her hair in curlers the night before.  Chloe has very STRAIGHT hair...not a kink in it.  When we took the curlers out the next morning, she was shocked.  I knew it would relax, and sure enough it relaxed a lot....but so cute!!

Hailey went to her first young women's activity.  They had a costume party and she went as a construction worker.

I am over the activity days for girls and we had our "daddy daughter date".  We did a fear factor Halloween party.  It was a lot of fun.  Hailey wanted to come and help, even though she is in young women's now. 

Our ward had a "trunk or treat" on Saturday night.  Chloe dressed up like an  Indian and Hailey managed to throw a hobo costume together.   We were so lucky to get to "dog  watch" Harly for the weekend.  They brought his halloween costume over and the girls loved dressing him up in his "jail bird" costume.  He was so ashamed he wouldn't let us take a picture of him.

Jordyn, Hailey and Ashlee

We had a hand full of trick or treaters on Saturday night.  I sent my girls out to trick or treat a few houses and they said some of the neighbors told them it wasn't Halloween and they should come back on Sunday...whatever.  So we had this for dinner.   Mummies and monsters.

I did not spend one penny on costumes this year.  When the girls started to clog, and their costumes became pretty expensive I told them what ever they were dancing in is what they are trick or treating in.  Funny thing is neither of them wore dance costumes.  It's amazing what you can come up with.

Sunday night we had a lot of trick or treaters.  We let the girls answer the door and pass out candy.  When it was all gone we told Chloe to lock the door and turn out the lights.  When the doorbell rand again she answered it to find 5 trick or treaters and NO CANDY.  We told her to just give the some of her candy.  After a few minutes she came into the living room, when we asked her how it went she said "well, I had a stick of gum and I ripped it into 3 pieces and gave to 3 of them, then I opened my box of juicy fruit candy and gave one of them a piece of that.  The other boy had a lot of candy, more than me, so I gave him my wrappers".  WHAT!!!   We laughed so hard, because she was so innocent about it and thought she did the right thing. 

Caden just hung out with us and played with Harly.  He didn't dress up or go out with friends.  He had been with Nick the night before.  I'm glad he likes to hang out with us. 

   Coelton called Grandpa Judy and asked him if he wanted to go to watch the "State XC" races in  Soda Springs.  Mountain View boys and girls were racing this year.  Grandpa couldn't say no to Coelton, so he picked him up Saturday morning and they drove to Soda.  Dante, one of Coelton's friends also went with them.   Coelton was excited to get to go and was able to see the girls take state and the boys took 4th.  There was only 20 points between the 1st and 4th place teams.  Parker had a horrible race and had he raced as he usually does our boys would have won.    That's XC for ya.
Coelton had a ward halloween party Saturday night at BYU-I that he went to when they got back.

I wish I had pictures of all of Coelton's "goings on".  But he doesn't have a camera, and even if he did I don't think he would take any pictures.  We'll have to work on that.  Any pics I have I get off facebook.