Mykala's #7

This year we did an art birthday party for Mykala and it was really fun and very simple. It worked out pretty well! My clever husband had the idea and we ran with it, trying to make it as colorful as we could. Alicann did a great job decorating the pavilion with plastic tablecloths, and we put clothesline around three sides of the pavilion for the kids to hang up their artwork. We had a coloring table where kids could color pictures, and a painting table where they could paint wooden pieces, draw their own picture, or paint the clothespins to hang them up with. We had a lot of fun and a great turnout. The kids were having so much fun playing at the park, the party went for 3 hours.

Daisy, Jace, Lily, Mykala, Rachel, Claudette, Alison, Isabelle, & Julian

The kiddos

(Showing off their ringpops)

Julian painting a clothespin

Claudette & Rachel

The boys hard at work. 

Our little Jacer is a coloring machine and it's adorable... even if he likes to color Barbie. :)

Mykala pushing her friend Rachel on the swings. 

Alison, who had a birthday just last week, is on the swing next to them.

Julian & Jacer McRacer (they were inseparable)

Sweet little Daisy

Isabelle, Mykala, & Alison

The girls playing in the caves   :)

Claudette, Alison, Mykala, Rachel, & Lily

Butch & Carol

Crayon/Rainbow Cake

As soon as we came up with the art birthday party idea, I was stoked about doing a rainbow cake. :) As you can see, the layers didn't exactly come out even (or straight) but it's pretty dang colorful which was good! :) I did the cupcakes as well, which were a bit harder, but even those came out looking awesome.

 And the crayon candles we found for the cake were just too perfect.

The Birthday Girl

(who wanted to be called "7 year old")

The ring pops were a hit (hence the blue mouth).

Isabelle, Claudette's little brother, & Claudette

Lily

Daisy

The girls

Rachel, Claudette, Mykala, & Alison  

I think this picture is so cute. :)

Joyce & Doug

Artwork by Daisy, Julian, & Jace

Halloween 2012

                       Jacer as Iron Man                Mykala as Merida (from Brave)

Jace shooting

Princess Ball ~ Sept 2012

Kala's Quote of the Day

Kala's version of Journey: "Don't stop... believe me"

Greetings... from San Diego!!

Ready to get out of here!

Lunch break in in Yuma                     We rolled into San Diego about 5:30pm

Dinner! YUM!

 What happens when we take him places.

 Dad taught Jace how to eat crab.
He wasn't too impressed at first, but once he tried it, he really liked it!

Kala was shocked to hear that the crab we were eating were real crabs...  

it took a while for that to sink in. :)

So, we've all been excited about sharks these days....

The beach at night

When we left the hotel for dinner, we accidentally left Bear at the hotel. Jace broke down in tears because he wanted to show Bear the beach. And, of course, since he's part of the family, we couldn't very well let Bear miss out! I had to make a special trip back to the hotel to get him. 

The beach was incredible; we were all in awe. After we stood there for a minute taking it all in, we had some fun. We dug holes, ran from the waves, ran in the sand, and got super wet. :) At the end of the day, all of us agreed that the beach was, by far, the best part of the day.

How the kids woke up this morning. I'm surprised that both of them managed to do this!

They needed their rest, though - the next morning we went to Legoland!

First trip to LegoLand!

It was overcast the whole time we were in San Diego, and we got rained on while we were at LegoLand. 

Overall, we're not quite sure how we felt about LegoLand. We don't regret going, but I'm not sure we'd go again.

The kids' first rollarcoaster!

While we were waiting in line for the safari ride, there was a place for the kids to play legos. 

Brilliant, I tell ya!

Glasses for the 4D movie. Don't they look cool? 

We could not convince Jace to put the glasses on for the movie and he had a look of confusion through most of it. Towards the end, I snuck the glasses on him and he finally realized what all the fuss what about. :) 

How could anyone be grumpy while standing next to R2?!?

                       Kala holding Leia's hand                     Jacer pushing Darth Vader's buttons

                                                               

 

These were so fun and impressive, but when kids like Jace see it, they just want to pull it apart and build their own! Jace kept saying, "Can I break this?" 

Unfortunately and surprisingly, there were cobwebs on some of the models. you'd think that with how much admission is, they could at least take care of all of their attractions.

BUT they were still pretty neat and the park made you want to play with legos. :)

Mykala in a bubble :)

This crab was huge!!

Mykala wanted a Hello Kitty face painting as her LegoLand treat

SeaWorld!!

This was the first show we saw at SeaWorld. It's called Blue Horizons and it had dolphins, pilot whales, parrots, cranes, and trapeze artists in it. It was pretty dang impressive! 

The pilot whales gave me the chills!

When we went to the Blue Horizons show the first time, we sat in the soak zone and hardly got wet, despite all of their warnings. Then we went to the Shamu show and sat closer. We got DRENCHED. The kids were crying and so we had to run off and buy some towels. 

(I, however, had a blast and was ready to do it again..)

Lunch

(The cookies were SO yummy!)

Believe it or not, Jace was SO grumpy when I took this picture.

(This was after we got soaked by Shamu)

While we were at the Blue Horizons show, we saw a huge group of flamingos wandering the streets of the park!

We were all so excited about the sharks - SeaWorld did not disappoint!

This guy was huge!!

I love his pose here. :) He was in the middle of dancing!

Bear was really excited about seeing a polar bear and Jacer was excited to show him!
 We left the polar bear gift shop with another white bear in our family (named Polar Bear).

:) (And yes, it's real ice!)

The belugas were beautiful!!

They just leave you speechless.

Pictures by Mykala and Jace:

                                                         Jace's new shark shirt

And last, but certainly not least.... the beach! It was overcast the whole time we were there, but it felt great and was still very beautiful.

I already miss it.