Happy 33rd Birthday Josh!!!

Happy Birthday Daddy!!!

We celebrated Josh's birthday this last weekend, and as usual, we did it in style! My parents took the kids for the weekend, and although I had to work on Saturday, coming home to the birthday boy and walking up the street to the local restaurant (Rounders) and enjoying a delicious kid free dinner was just what the doctor ordered! We love our kiddos more than anything, but sometimes Mom and Dad need a break! Oh, and the owner of the restaurant gave us 20% off our meal because we are Buckeye fans and everywhere Josh goes, he has to talk sports with people... SCORE!!!

The next day I had to wake up early and run to the lab to have my blood drawn because I accidentally stuck myself with a dirty needle at work and now for the next 6 months I am on surveillance for HIV and Hepatitis :(. Luckily, so far everything has been clean and good with my lab work so I think I should be fine. The day got much better once I got home and we went up to the New Day Cafe for breakfast and then headed to China Town for a couples massage! Okay, I got the massages for super cheap on Groupon and didn't really bother to look at where it was located. So it was interesting to say the least.... let's just say Asian massage is very different. Better in some ways, and worse in others. Josh was slightly violated and for that I feel so bad, but he didn't care much haha!

Heading off on our kid-free adventure!!!

Then we checked into our hotel at the Aliante Resort and went to a movie! Do you know how long it has been since we've seen a movie together?! Like ages! We spent the rest of the night eating way too much Mexican food, playing some slots, and we passed out early like the old farts we are now (hahaha!). Seriously though, Josh was asleep by 7pm and I went to bed at 9:30pm! We are so starved for sleep these days, so we take it whenever we can get it! Quite honestly though, we didn't care that our days of staying up into the late hours of the night are over. Apparently having kids changes you :).

The next day we woke up and ate breakfast at the Farm, a breakfast joint at the Aliante Resort. The food was sooo good and we were sad the trip was ending. But we were happy to see our kids and learn what they had been up to over the past two days. They had gone hiking out at Valley of Fire, visited the Lost City Museum, and built the most amazing box fort I had ever seen with Aunt Briana. Seriously, this thing had multiple levels and tunnels that led into different rooms! It looked like one heck of a party! My Mom had bought cupcakes for Josh and we sang Happy Birthday to him there :). The kids were so cute with him :). They love him so much! Almost as much as they love  blowing out candles! They each wanted to take a turn blowing out the candles after Josh had his turn, and since we had forgotten candles and were using matches instead, it was interesting haha!

Getting ready to blow out the candles!

Yayyyy Daddy!

Loves from Sis, aka the cuddle bug :).

And of course, loves from the A-man who loves his Daddy more than anything in the world :).

Happy Happy Birthday Josh!

We made the trek home and the kids fell asleep immediately in the car. Proof that, as always, it was a very overstimulating and incredible weekend at Grandma and Grandpa's house! Once we got home and got all our bags unloaded, the kids surprised Josh with their homemade cards and the candy bar/beef jerky bouquet we made for him! It was so fun watching each kid excitedly show their Daddy their cards and pretend to read to him what each of them said. Evie was overjoyed to show him all the Pooh Bear stickers she had decorated her card with and Austin was all about the Power Rangers! It was a fun way to end a very fun Birthday!

***Here are some pictures to prove why the kiddos were so exhausted! ;) Thanks Grandma and Grandpa! And let's not forget Aunt Nana and her boyfriend Thomas!!

Hiking at Valley of Fire!!!

Having fun and getting dirty!

This was one of my favorite places to go as a child! So much climbing and adventure!

The red sand there is the best! Seriously, it's the softest sand you'll ever feel!

Just look at that messy face! I love it! And look how high Austin and Nana climbed! :0

Our beautiful Indian princess in her element :).

 

 Exploring the Lost City Museum!

 It's a cool museum outside of Overton that is full of actual adobe houses and all sorts of treasures left behind by the Paiute Indians hundreds of years ago! Austin was totally enthralled by all the rocks and gemstones, and of course he talked Grandma into buying all of them for him.....

Going back in time.....

Inside one of the adobe dwellings! Too cool!

Happy Birthday my love! We all love you so much and I don't know what we would do without you! You deserved every fun surprise this weekend had in store for you! ;)

We had a movie night/sleepover in Mom and Dad's room that night because apparently nobody wanted the party to end ;). That's how you KNOW it was a good one!

 

Disneyland in the Fall!

My beautiful family at the Happiest Place on Earth!

 Because we had such a spectacular time at Disneyland in April, we made plans to go again in the fall! We picked the best time of year for the least amount of crowds and the perfect weather to be outdoors all day!

 

Beach Day!!!:  

We made perfect time that first day to hit the beach by noon, but little did we know, there was an air show going on and  parking at the beach was INSANE!!! It literally took us 2 hours to park our car! Tension ran high as Dad got hungry and grumpy and Mom tried keeping the peace so he wouldn't follow through with his threat to turn the car around and skip the beach all together. Meanwhile, the kids did awesome looking out the window at the ocean..... they must have sensed how precarious the situation was. But once we finally got our dang car parked, all was right in the world again!

The weather was absolutely perfect and it was so awesome watching the fighter jets fly over the ocean doing tricks for us while we played! The kids are so enamored with the ocean, and quite honestly, so am I! It is one of the very few places on Earth that my heart feels completely at peace.

Be still my soul....

 We spent the first half of our beach day chasing each other in the waves and racing Daddy across the shoreline...

Seaside races

Someday she will be too big to throw in the air and it kills me :(....

Such a little stud muffin! He too is getting way too big for my liking!

Then after a while, we all kinda separated and did our own thing. Daddy went to take a nap in the sun while Austin pushed his little truck along the shoreline. Meanwhile, Evie and I continued running up and down the beach, chasing birds and trying to beat the waves... The peace and solitude of the ocean was amazing and our hearts were so happy. Evie's little cheeks were going to explode if she smiled any harder and her giggles were constant! I wanted so badly to bottle up her sweet laughter and save it forever, to listen to every day for eternity.

Watching the airplanes...

The jets were amazing and LOUD!

More airplane watching :).

Chasing the birds.

Even the shallow end was deep for her!

Oh how I love my girl :).

We are both obsessed with kissing and that's okay with me!

Right after she said, "Tank you Mommy for the beach!" MUAH!! Anytime baby :).

I love watching my kids in their element. They don't worry about looking silly and they live completely in the moment :).

Oh baby girl.... your sweet cuddles are everything to me.

Off to the next adventure!

She was sooooo happy!

Inexplicably happy!

One of those deep belly giggles I was talking about!

This boy loves his trucks! This one kept him busy for hours!

In his own world.

Let's just say we brought home half the sand on the beach from that day!

Then, after a while we found ourselves searching for sea shells, which is where Austin's little shovel came in very handy :). Each child's treasures were so beautiful in their own way, as each kid is in my eyes. Did I mention how amazing this day was?! Thank goodness we found a parking spot and got to experience it! :)

Our best attempt at taking a family photo! Evie was not very happy about being forced to leave the ocean for 3 minutes... haha!

My love, my everything.

Finding seaweed and attempting to throw it back out into the ocean. She giggled every time the ocean washed it right back to her :).

If at first you don't succeed, try try again!

Showing Daddy her treasure :).

She couldn't have been happier if she tried! Melts my heart :).

Searching for seashells :).

My boys :).

Finding all sorts of ocean treasures!

It seems like time stands still at the beach.

It fascinated me how each child picked out such different shells....

Happy kids. Happy parents :).

Disneyland Day 1:

Fun and laughter was in the air the entire time as we joyfully glided between rides! And the greatest part? Austin is finally 42 inches tall so he got to ride most of the big kid rides! Space Mountain, The Matterhorn, Splash Mountain, you name it! He was so brave! And it made it so fun because we got some one on one time with each kid as Daddy took Austin on all the scary rides while Mommy rode all the baby rides in Fantasyland with Evie girl :).

Our big boy ready to hit up the Matterhorn for the first time!

Boys and their cars :).

I can't even count how many times I heard Sister squeal, "Evie ride Dumbo! Evie ride Dumbo!"

Getting dizzy on the teacups with my girl! Austin has started experiencing motion sickness lately and decided to skip this one :(.

There's a lot of love in there somewhere hehe!

Austin makes the perfect Mr. Toad!

We met up with our friends from college (Susie and Brian) like last time and had a blast playing with baby Wayne! He is walking already! Evie was fascinated by him and followed him around everywhere :).

Oh how I love my Susie-Q!! Friends forever!

Evie and baby Wayne! Little buddies!

aka future troublemakers...

I wish we had gotten a group photo! This is the best we got!

Wayne needed a nap by afternoon so we split up for a while and then met up again later for dinner at the Hungry Bear Diner! We stayed until our kids were too exhausted to walk anymore and then sadly said goodbye to our dear friends :(. Until the next California trip!

Oh and I can't forget about the character breakfast! Austin has grown a lot in the last 6 moths and wasn't quite as fascinated with the characters as Evie was. However, he made sure to get up and hug Pooh Bear! Who doesn't love Poor Bear?! I will let the pictures speak for themselves, but I just have to mention how sweet it was to watch Evie wait patiently, and sometimes impatiently for each character to come to our table. She would squeal and clap in delight, jumping up and down each time  a new character arrived! And don't get me started on her excitement when she met Minnie Mouse again! This time she brought her own little Minnie to show the real mouse herself! Evie carries this Minnie Mouse around everywhere and I could tell this was a big deal to her to let the real Minnie Mouse know this!

All that yummy food!

ALL THE LOVE FOR WINNIE THE POOH!

Gotta love Rafiki!

Evie and the love of her life, Captain Hook :). Someday she will be old enough to take him up on that marriage proposal! hehe!

She's not sure what to think haha :).

These chipmonks were as fun as ever! The kids loved playing the "poke the nose" game they played last time!

Chatting with Eeyore as we headed out the door!

Hugging Rafiki goodbye!

Group hug!

She wasn't sure what to think about Max haha!

More love for Pooh!

And the lady of the hour!! MINNIE MOUSE!!!

This girl has so much love for Minnie it's ridiculous!

One last high five! It took a lot to get her to leave :(

Showing Minnie her little mouse! Such a happy moment! It made the whole trip worth it!

Disneyland Day 2:

We took far less pictures on this day because we were too busy living in the moment. But not every moment was so awesome.... We had many tantrums thrown and time outs given, and by the end of the night we had an extremely long talk in the hotel room with many threats about never coming back to Disneyland again. Basically the kids were exhausted from our first Disney day and didn't handle it well. But that's not to say that we didn't have fun! It was just more exhausting and complicated.....

Little turkey.....

He's all about this ride!

Trying to lighten the mood with Mickey Beignets! Works for me!

Once Evie got some food in her belly she was A-OK! :)

The ultimate little turkey this day!

We polished off our happy day with the carousel (per Evie's request). She wanted to ride it all day long which of course would have been ridiculous so we had to make sure we ended with it :).

Evie couldn't ride Space Mountain so she got to play in the water while Mom and Dad switched off with Austin. It didn't bother her one bit!

We went back to our hotel room that second night, tired and happy. It was a good trip and no amount of tantrums could alter that! As the kids cuddled with Daddy while Mom slipped into pajamas, they were already asking to come back again..... and deep down inside, Mom and Dad were already planning on it :).

Hotel cuddles. Cheers to another awesome trip to Disneyland!