Christmas Morning and Sea World

Christmas morning the kids got up and found that Santa had found us at the hotel and had left a few small gifts along with some tickets to all the different parks. The kids each got a pair of jammies and a new movie. They were super excited. Our first visit was going to be at Sea World. After traveling 5 more hours from Teri's house, it was going to be nice walking around for a while.

Hunter was really excited to get his new Lightning McQueen slippers and Alvin and the Chipmunks movie!

Sea World was a lot of fun. We got to see a lot of really good shows and a lot of different kinds of animals. We got there early, and it soon became really busy. There were a ton of people there. The weather was really nice. It warmed up a lot. It was a nice change from our weather at home. Hunter was such a nut. He loved seeing all the different animals.

We were walking between to see a show and ended up running into the flamingo parade. They were everywhere. Brian snapped this picture of Hunter as they passed by.

The first show that we visited was the Animal Tails show. It was a variety act that had lots of different kinds of animals including dogs, cats, pigs, and all kinds of birds. It was fun seeing these animals do tricks that you wouldn't expect them to be able to do. It was really cute, but my favorite part was watching Autumn's face ans she grinned from ear to ear. She is such animal person, so I knew she would enjoy this show particularly.

We decided to play it safe during the Shamu show and sit high above the splash zone. It was a good thing because I think the people that were sitting in our original seats got soaked. I could not believe how high theses whales could jump. They did these amazing flips in the air where their whole body sailed out of the water.

The Dolphin show was really neat. This time I sat with Brian and Hunter in the soak zone, knowing that they didn't splash as high. Autumn was terrified that she would get wet so she sat with Brian's parents up higher. We had great seats and never got wet. The dolphin tricks were amazing. with people ridding on them and them doing lots of flips. They also had a lot of people dressed in bright costumes doing amazing dives. I remembered that when I was young, I wanted to work with the dolphins. Who knows, maybe Autumn will be the one to work with animals.

The last show of the day was the Christmas showing of the the silly sea lions. It was a lot of fun. Just for Autumn, I got seats one row above the soak zone. She was very excited when she walked up the row to find that were were not in the soak zone.

It was an amazing day. The kids did really good. We all had a lot of fun. It will be a Christmas the kids won't soon forget.

Visiting Aunt Lola

We left Thursday the 23rd at 2 in the morning to meet Brian after he got off work at 3. We drove 12 hours down to Surprise, Arizona which is just outside of Phoenix, to see Brian's sister Teri (but the kids know her by Aunt Lola. We visited Terri just before Brooklyn turned 2. She had a cat named Lola so now the kids call her Aunt Lola. Kind of silly) Teri surprised the kids with lots of gifts. She really spoiled them. They had a lot of fun opening presents.






Then after dinner we all enjoyed a dip in the pool. Teri had it all warmed up for us at a nice comfortable 100 degree temp. It was so nice. The kids really had a lot of fun. The first thing Brooklyn wanted to do when we got there was go swimming. We enjoyed a nice Christmas Eve day relaxing before we headed of down to San Diego.

Christmas Trip 2010

We decided that we wanted to take the kids to Disneyland sometime this year. After looking at both our work schedules, we decided that Christmas break would require the least amount of days to be taken off. So we have been planning this trip for a long time. The kids have been so excited. They all asked Santa to bring them the tickets to the different parks and have been trying their best to be good. Of course they weren't always the best, but they tried hard to be.

Un-Lucky Me!!

I think lately I have been cursed with bad luck. I swear if something bad is going to happen, it will happen to me. All last week bad things kept happening. Starting with another doctor bill. Don't I already have enough doctor bills to last me a while. What is it with these last few months! Starting with Hunter's pricey visit to the ER and Autumn's beautiful purple cast. Now if my bills weren't large enough, we had to add another visit to the doctor last Monday for a very bad UTI. Poor Autumn. I hate seeing my kids in such pain. Once again, for some reason, I always end up going back to the doctor's office within a week or two from the first visit. Yesterday, I had to take Hunter in. He was fevering for the third day, had a rash and his tonsils were large. Not to mention the fluid that was coming out his ear. (I was thinking this was what we really needed an ear infection a week before we leave on our big trip!) Found out he had some type of viral infection that was causing the fever, rash and swollen tonsils. He also had fluid in his ear which was no big surprise. Luckily it had not developed into an ear infection, but he was still put on antibiotics to prevent one from happening. So now I have 2 kids on meds. Not fun! I had such high hopes that this week would be much better then last...but no. Here's to next week. I'm looking forward to some time off and lots of fun with the family :)