Pirates of Penzance

When Audrey was in first grade, she participated in the school play The Pirates of Penzance. She didn't have any speaking parts, but she had a lot of fun participating.

I especially liked when she started waving at us during the performance. Unfortunately I didn't get any good pictures though since it was so dark. These were the best I could get. She is looking forward to being in The Wiz this year.

I Can See Clearly Now..

..my contacts are gone. Just shortly after we got back from California, I had my eyes fixed. I was beyond excited and just a little bit nervous. When I went in for an evaluation last December they told me I had thin corneas and that I didn't qualify for LASIK, but I did qualify for PRK. I was actually thrilled because I was quite nervous about the idea of them cutting a flap in my cornea and with PRK they just change the shape of your cornea from the outside, no flap cutting required. The only downside is that your vision doesn't become perfect immediately. For me, it took about 2 months. I really didn't care though because my vision was still drastically better than it had ever been and now it is fantastic. For the first couple of days, I felt great. But, on the third day after I had it done I wondered if I had made the right choice. I felt like I had sand in my eyes and I could feel that my eyes were swollen. So I laid on the couch all day with a cold pack on my face and kept my bottle of Advil handy. Also, I had to tape these sexy things to my face at night for about a week.

Once I made it past day 3, it has been smooth sailing. The best part is waking up in the morning and being able to see. It is such an amazing thing and I'm so glad I had it done. Seriously one of the best things I have ever done.

The Beach

I don't think we could have gone to California and not taken our kids to the beach. They really enjoyed it except for the fact that it was a tad bit chilly that day.

Since it was a bit chilly that meant we were the only ones there and we really didn't stay for very long.

Disneyland - Part 2

Not only did the kids love the rides at Disneyland, but they also enjoyed getting their pictures taken with the characters. By far Audrey's favorite was Rapunzel.

Evan really loved meeting Woody and had a hard time letting go.

At times Evan was a bit too friendly. Here he is about to lift up Minnie's skirt.

We got to watch Phineas and Ferb dance.

Adventure is out there.

Here's my favorite.

The Fairy Godmother.

Alivia was pretty much just scared of them. She gradually warmed up to the idea, but she never really got too close.

Evan was not very happy about meeting the princesses.

Sometimes he just refused to be in a picture with a princess.

Disneyland - Part 1

I believe Santa was too nice to us last year and brought us a trip to Disneyland. Way back in January of this year, we headed to Disneyland. Of course the kids were excited and so was I. It had been over 11 years since I had been to Disneyland and neither Colby or I had been to California Adventure. Two years ago we went to DisneyWorld, but it just isn't the same when you are 6 months pregnant and can't really do anything. This time around there was no baby in my belly which made it a lot more fun for me to spend time with the kids. You can't really tell from this picture, but Alivia hated this ride and screamed the whole time we were on it.

She was much happier in the teacups.

Look right into the sun and smile please.

This ride was definitely a favorite, but we only went on it once because the line was always so long.

We also only went on Mickey's Fun Wheel once because the kids HATED it.

It was a little chilly in the mornings, but by noon the weather was a perfect 70 degrees.

Audrey loved the fact that she could ride on the swings with me. Last summer at Lagoon she was about half an inch too short to ride their version.

Evan loved going on anything and everything he could and he was extremely disappointed if he was too short to go on a ride.

Our first day there we discovered that Evan was about a quarter of an inch too short to ride some of the "bigger" rides like Star Tours and Space Mountain. We were really disappointed the first day and had just decided such is life, but Colby decided on the second day we should try stuffing his shoes with napkins to see if we could make him tall enough. A few napkins in each shoe did the trick. Evan was able to go on so many more rides now that he was 40" tall. He really was much happier the rest of the time we were there.

Temple Square Lights

We finally made it to see the lights with our kids. We have never taken our kids before because we dreaded being out in the cold with them and we knew they would complain. Well on December 30 the weather was perfect, so we headed out.

It seems like it was in the 50's that day. Nobody whined about being cold. In fact, they took off their hats and gloves and Audrey also wanted to take off her coat. Glad we finally made it.

Once There Was a Snowman

It snowed in early January and so of course the kids wanted to build a snowman. I told Audrey and Evan to try and build one without me, but that didn't really work out. So I put all of my hateful feelings towards snow aside and went out and helped them. I am really not good at it and I hate doing it, but it turned out okay.

The kids had a lot of fun and clearly they love snow more than I do.

Christmas 2011

It just wouldn't be Christmas without a gingerbread house, right? So build one we did. Of course we had to go to 3 stores to find the Neccos, but the roof just wouldn't be the same without them. The only problem is the kids lose interest after about 30 minutes and Colby is a perfectionist when it comes to building things, so he ended up doing most of the work.

The kids were pleased with the end result though.

Santa did find his way to our house last year despite all the threats made to our children.

With Christmas being on a Sunday, the kids had to wait until after church to open all of their presents.

It looks like it was worth the wait though.

Gymnastics Shows

In September of 2011, Audrey and Evan started taking gymnastics classes. In December they put on a show to show off all of their newly acquired skills.

They both love it, but they probably aren't the most graceful children out there.  Case in point.

This was the only picture I got of Evan that wasn't blurry.

This picture is from the spring show which took place in May of this year. Audrey has really improved and has moved up a level.

The Big Wind Storm

December 1 of last year there was a big wind storm. Everybody talked about it for a while and then people got sick of talking about it after a while. They called it a 100 year storm. Sustained winds were over 60 miles an hour and gusts were over 100 miles per hour. I first heard the wind around 4 a.m. that morning and of course I never made it back to sleep. I could see my shutters moving, I could hear stuff hitting my house, I swear I could hear stuff being blown off of my house, I could hear the wind in my attic, and so on and so forth. Our power went out that morning and by 5 p.m. it wasn't back on so we headed to Grandma's house. Our house took a beating. We had quite a bit of damage. Quite a bit of our fence was blown down.

The window in Evan's window was broken. Luckily only the outer pane was broken.

More fence gone and really just a mess here.

Trampoline was ruined. We also discovered that it did not have legs on it. It is pretty crazy that we didn't know that.

We also had to replace our roof and quite a bit of siding. I just realized this post should have included after pictures, but I don't really have any after pictures right now. I will need to go outside and take some when the sun is up. We just recently finished all of our repairs. It was a frustrating process, but in the end things have turned out quite well. We were able to do quite a few things to improve our house that we might not have otherwise done.

First Day in First Grade

Somehow I skipped over this event. Way back on August 22, 2011 Audrey started first grade. She loves to pose.

Alivia is a late sleeper so I didn't have time to get her dressed and all that before we had to leave. We just gave her some Gatorade and off we went.
We took her to her class, took a quick picture and we left her for her first full day of school.
One of us was not so happy about leaving her at the school.

Halloween

Just 7 months later, that's all. Last year we went with a Phineas and Ferb theme. Here is the whole gang: Linda, Candace, Perry, Ferb, Isabella, Phineas, Vanessa, and little Suzy Johnson.

Perry didn't do a very good job wearing his hat and Ferb wasn't too happy being Ferb, but I thought we all looked pretty good. Last and probably least, here is Dr. Doofenshmirtz.

We even got some pumpkin carving done last minute. Here is Evan's pumpkin (carved by his mother).

Here are Audrey's and Alivia's pumpkins (also carved by their mother).

Probably the most exciting part of all, the trick or treating. Evan had a hard time keeping his hat on, so it came off before too long.

It was really cute to watch Alivia go trick or treating. I wish I had some pictures. She would run up to the doors and yell knock knock. Evan was really funny because he would strike up conversations with everybody. He would ask them what they were watching on TV and if he could come in and watch it with them. They all told him he should just go get more candy, so that is what we did.