Trick or Treat?

Miss Gracie recently found a tote full of Halloween costumes and has been having a ball playing dress-up with all of her little friends. They wanted to go show the other Mom's how cute they looked all dressed up and when Gracie came back home she told me Sarah gave them a cookie...Sallie gave them chocolate....Hmmm I thought, she wasn't playing with Sarah's kids and Sallie's kids are all grown up????

Me: "Did you go trick-or-treating?"
Gracie: (with a shrug) No. We just knocked on people's doors and they gave us candy."

Do we live in the greatest neighborhood or what?

Spring Break Part 2

So the rest of our warm, sunny, relaxing vacation went something like this...wake up, eat breakfast by the pool, swim/layout, eat lunch by the pool, swim/layout, go back to the room shower, go shopping, play miniature golf, ride go-carts, visit with my Aunt June Bug and cousins, climb the lemon and orange trees, pick the fruit off of them and eat it, paint our toenails (Lee wouldn't do this with us. :(), go to dinner, come back to our hotel, swim until 9 or 10 p.m., eat popcorn and play cards outside, go to sleep, wake up and do it all over again.

I even got to spend my birthday lounging by the pool ALL day and then my Aunt June took us all to dinner at Texas Roadhouse. Of course my girls thought this was the best restaurant in the world because you could eat peanuts and through the shell on the floor and they had root beer in bottles and Mom got to sit in a saddle while the whole restaurant sang Happy Birthday! Ye Haw!

Friday we went to Prescott and stayed with my cousins Rick and Ginger and their cute family. They have two daughters and a son that still live at home and they are SO cute with my little girls. They also have two cats and three dogs one of which is a little Chihuahua named Chicklet that Addy and Gracie totally ADORED. They got to dress Chicklet and Lucy (the cat) up in these cute little outfits and I don't think they put that little puppy down for two days.

We all had a SUPER FUN spring break. It was nice to visit my Aunt June, Bill, Rick, Ginger, Ashley, Robert, BreAnna, Brooke and Ricky.
Thank you all for EVERYTHING.
It was nice to spend time together as a family (yes Katherine is now my adopted daughter.) And it was wonderful to enjoy some SUNSHINE!

Spring Break!

Okay, so I have had a few people asking me when I am going to get our spring break adventures on here....but I have been in mourning. Let me just say, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Arizona. I love the way it feels, looks and even smells... so it was hard for me to come back, especially to the cold, rainy weather.However, we had tons of fun. I have to admit I was not looking forward to the 12+ hour road trip. But we stocked up on lots of yummy treats, DVD's, the girls got new songs on their ipods, Katherine brought Nintendo DS's for her and Kenzie, the little ones got new games for their Leapsters, I got a few books from the Library and Lee got to spend hours in the car with five girls. YIPEE!

Gracie and Katherine both had dance competitions on Saturday so we got a late start and decided to stay in St. George rather than drive all night. We arrived in St. George about 1 a.m., crashed for a few hours and then hit the road again Sunday morning. I guess because of all the tourists it took us about two hours to get around Hoover Dam!!! But it was so nice and warm, we just rolled down all the windows and the girls stuck their feet out and enjoyed the sun. Then I decided we should take the girls down the strip in Las Vegas...oh my gosh!! The CMA Awards were being held in Vegas that evening, so we were literally inching along the strip. We wanted to stop somewhere "famous" and take pictures of the girls, but we could not get anywhere. We finally see the New York, New York Hotel and decide that will do just fine, so Lee pulls into a parking garage and we totally had a Clark Griswold moment. Our luggage is banging all of the overhead signs and then all of a sudden it smacks into the roof and totally stops us. Luckily we didn't lose our luggage but Lee was maaaad! I won't go into details about his meltdown, but he moved some cones around, did an 80 point turn-around and we made it out of there. Us girls just zipped it and let him drive and this is where he took us.Leave it to a guy.

So... I'm trying to get everyone together so I can get a picture with New York, New York in the BACKGROUND and I notice Addy (with some pretty wide eyes) looking at something.....a pole covered with very naughty pictures. Yes... I was trying to gather my family around the "porn pole" for pictures. Uggh.

We quickly got them away from the pole, snapped a few pictures and got outta there!
We decided we shouldn't have gone to Sin City on the Sabbath but Kenzie and Katherine LOVED Vegas and we all had a good laugh.
We arrived in Arizona around 3 p.m. and spent the rest of the day swimming and basking in the SUN!!
To avoid rambling I will post part 2 tomorrow ;)
Just a little footnote: Gracie came into the room and saw the pictures I was posting and she said, "Oh Mom, we don't talk about the "porn pole" or the pictures of the girls with stars and hearts on their boobies." Oh my...we have ruined them.

Easter

Easter was a little different at our house this year.
We went to Arizona for Spring Break and our plans just kept changing. Well, I kept changing our plans. I just didn't want to come home so I was continually extending our vacation. We were going to leave Arizona on Saturday, visit the Grand Canyon and then stay in Kanab Saturday night and get up early Sunday and head for home. Well, when we left Arizona the weather at the Grand Canyon was 35 degrees and snowing. Um no thanks. So we just decided to drive and drive and drive straight through and come home. We arrived home at 2:30 a.m. Sunday morning and of coarse my little ones were WIDE awake and worried that the Easter Bunny would forget about us because we had been gone. And Addy was afraid he would sneak downstairs and she would wake up and see him and be totally scared. So she wrote him a note instructing him exactly where to hide the eggs and to please not come downstairs. Ok that being done, Addy and Gracie just weren't tired. So they stayed up until 3:30 a.m. watching a movie. I was finally able to go to sleep around 5 a.m. And wouldn't ya know it my kids were so excited for Easter they awoke bright eyed and super excited at 9:00 a.m. Yipee!
Before I could even pry my eyes open and haul myself out of bed the girls had already found all the eggs and were going through their baskets and McKenzie was in the shower getting ready to go to church!!! Being the BAD parents we are...Lee and I stayed home from church along with Addy and Gracie and poor Kenzie went alone. Her response to this was "Well, you guys are always late so I don't sit with you very much anyway."
Luckily that good ole' Easter Bunny stops by Grannie's house so I was at least able to get some pictures and the girls had fun looking for eggs with their cousins....

Cole, KamBree, Kenzie, Addy, Gracie and ShanDee.

My Gorgeous Girls

These two BFF's are just so stinkin' cute!

Wow! Someone FINALLY figured it out!!!!