Ward Christmas Party Ideas!?

We are in charge of our wards activities committee and are trying to come up with something for our Christmas Party this year.  It is a family event and centered around the kids.  We did a nice sit down ham/potatoes/salad dinner last year.  Our ward is really big, there are over 100 primary aged kids, there is no stage in our gym which is pretty small and we get really good turn outs to events.  Does anyone have any fun, great ideas for a ward party?? What have wards you've been in done before??  Any ideas would be great - Thanks 

Extended Halloween

MARIO and LUIGI

We are enjoying an extended Halloween this year. Grandma Madsen invited us to their wards Trunk or Treat on Saturday, so the boys got to get all dressed up in their Mario and Luigi costumes I made them and went trunk or treating, and then will get to do it all again this coming weekend for Halloween!

You can see in the picture above that I am pointing to the candy I think Ty should get - so I can eat it later!

Tag

8's

8 favorite TV Shows:
1. Office
2. So you think you can Dance
3. The Hills
4. Gossip Girl
5. The Starter Wife
6. Privledged
7. Kath & Kim
8. Anything on HGTV

8 Favorite Restaurants
1. Puerto Villarta
2. Costa Vida
3. Chili's
4. Jaker's
5. Rumbi Island Grill
6. Arby's
7. Red Robin
8. I wish I knew a good Sushi place

8 Things I Did Today
1. Woke up way too early thanks to
Kade and Ty
2. Ran on the treadmill
3. Made chili
4. went to a trunk or treat with kids
5. Set up for chili cook-off
6. Was in charge of chili cook-off
7. Ate chili and cleaned up after
8. Ate popcorn with a chaser of chocolate :) Nice ending to the busy day!

8 Things I look forward to
1. Sleeping tonight
2. My parents coming home
3. Christmas
4. Our 10 year anniversary cruise with our friends
5. Going to the production of Wicked (hopefully we can get tickets)
6. Eating carmel apples tomorrow
7. Kade's primary program tomorrow
8. The twilight movie

I'm tagging Jenni, Heidi, Rachel, Anne and Nicole!!

Belly Badges

Kade and Ty are being Mario and Luigi for Halloween - these are the hats I made for them.  They love them and they were so cheap and easy to make that I made a couple for the neighbor boys so they could all play mario and luigi together.

Kade and Ty were playing over at the neighbors house and came home with no shirts and marker drawn all over their bellies.  When I asked them what was all over their stomachs Kade  said, "It's a belly badge!" like I was crazy for not knowing that.   I still wasn't sure what he meant and then he told me that they were pretending to be care bears and needed belly badges so they drew their own belly badges with markers on their stomachs. 

Disneyland

We have been counting down to this Disneyland trip for about a year and were so excited to go. My sister's family went with us and my parents were able to drive over from Phoenix to spend the week with us, which made our trip even better! Our flight was out of Salt Lake at 7am which had us getting up a lot earlier than we are used to. The boys did great on the flight but fell sound asleep as soon as we got in the rental car to drive to the hotel. We had a busy week planned which started out with 4 days at Disneyland but we broke up the days at Disneyland by going to Knott's Berry Farm for a day. We have so many fun pictures but here are some of my favorites.

Meeting Mickey Mouse


We played so hard all day long that Ty fell asleep in the middle of it all. This picture is waiting in line for the new Toy Story ride in California Adventure. Ty was so excited for this ride that we didn't want him to miss it. We woke him up just before getting on the ride and he LOVED it!! We all LOVED it! I think it was one of the favorites for all of us. We rode it two times in a row we loved it so much.

Kade, Luke and Braden in their 3D glasses for the new Toy Story ride - Midway Mania

Braden and Kade going into the ride. On this ride you shoot those little red and blue guns at targets on the 3D screens and it keeps track of your points. Rich's score was always at least 3x more than mine.

Ty and Grandpa Burnside riding the carousel

Grandpa loved to buy ice cream and treats for everyone in the afternoon, and we all loved eatting them :)

Kade was so excited to ride the Indiana Jones ride. He kept asking when we were going to ride it and wouldn't let up until he rode it.
The temperature while we were at Disneyland was in the mid 90s, so we would go over to California Adventure in the afternoons and watch the 3D shows and playhouse Disney shows and let the kids run around and play in the water to cool down.

It was so fun just taking Kade and Ty with us. It was sad being away from Zack for so long, but we really had a fun time with just the two boys and not having to worry about naps and bottles. We took Kade and Ty to Disneyland 3 years ago and it was so fun to see how different this trip was from the last one. Now that they are a little older it was fun to see them get so excited over things and being able to ride most of the rides together.

Swimming in the hotel pool was always the highlight at the end of the day - even if the water was cold.

Everyone sitting and waiting for the Disney parade. We loved the parades at Disneyland and California Adventure.

Kade loved seeing the characters - a little too much!! He would chase after them and pull on their shirts and almost tackle them. It was funny to watch but the characters didn't like it very much.

This picture pretty much sums up Ty's experience at Disneyland. He cried on most of the rides that I made him go on. If it was his idea - he loved the rides. But on some of the bigger rides he was not thrilled to be there and I was covering his mouth most of the time to muffle the screaming and crying. But usually after the ride was over he would say he liked it. There were a few that he still tells me he doesn't like. This is Rich's "I told you so" face. I think he thought I was torturing Ty by making him ride on the rides. But this is Ty's reaction to everything in life - he is very uncertain and nervous to new things until he tries them.

Knott's Berry Farm

We spent a day at Knott's Berry Farm which is so fun. There are lots of big roller coaster rides for the adults, which I LOVE!!! The kids all loved Camp Snoopy, which has smaller rides for the kids. They had a Halloween treasure hunt for the kids with a map to follow and collect pieces of a pirate costume and candy. Kade wanted to ride a big roller coaster, Montazuma's Revenge, but he was just an inch too short so we stuffed socks in his shoes to make him a little taller. When we got up to the ride no one even checked his height and we walked right onto the ride.

Sea World

We spent a full day at Sea World. It was a little overcast which made the temperature perfect for walking around all day.

Picking up the star fish at the Tide Pool. After we were done picking them up out of the water I saw a sign telling us to keep the star fish in the water so they can breath. Hopefully we didn't kill all the starfish he held.

The killer whale show is so fun to watch. It is so amazing to me how they can teach these killer whales to perform on command. They have pretty much taught them a form of sign language. The trainers will do hand signals to the whales and then point a certain direction and the whales go and jump or splash the audience or wave their fin. It is pretty amazing.

The last time we went - 3 years ago - there were only 2 killer whales in the show. Now they had 4 which was pretty impressive.

The dolphin show is fun and very impressive as well.

San Diego Zoo

Saturday morning we went to the San Diego Zoo. We had to be back up to LA for our flight home at 5:30 so we only spent a couple hours at the zoo. We took a bus tour which was 35 minutes long and took you through 75% of the zoo, that is an ideal way for me to see a zoo!

Hannah, Braden, Luke and Kade waiting to load the bus

After the bus tour we took the "skyfari" across the park, a 4 min. ride, to see the polar bears

Braden, Ty and Hannah sitting on a polar bear statue

The polar bears were very active - swimming and pushing against the glass, playing with the little pink ball you see. They were very entertaining!

Ty watching the polar bears play around in the water.

3 column template

I googled how to change my template to a 3 column template last night and after following some instructions on changing the code - VOILA! It actually worked. I am not too computer savvy so this was a big step for me in my blogging career.

From Sun to Snow!

We spent all last week in sunny California and returned home to freezing cold weather and SNOW!!! I have so many pictures to go through and post and journal about each day, but here are a few to start.Meeting Mickey Mouse

To make our trip even better, my mom and dad took a week off from my mom's medical treatments to come spend it with us. They drove over from Phoenix and we loved spending the week with them.

While we were in California, Rich celebrated his 33rd birthday by going to Disneyland all day and then we all went to Red Robin to eat! Red Robin - YUM!

Zack Crawling

Zack is officially crawling now - and into a lot more trouble! Now I need to baby proof the house.