Day 18,19, & 20: June26-28, 2010

We spent the next three days in Rupert Idaho with my parents.  Mark and his cute family came to visit as well.  Sheila and her two cousins, Allyssa and Ashlee were instant friends.  Sheila is almost exactly a year younger than Allyssa and just over a year older than Ashlee so it was a good age spread.

 Michael and his family also came over for a while to visit one of those days too.

I don't have many pictures of my siblings families together.  I remembered to get Mark's family together before they headed off.  I wish I had remembered to do it with my other siblings.

Tim's Birthday Party

I thought I had blogged about this last year but I didn't so here it is.  We had Timmy's birthday party a few weeks before his actual birthday.  We invited a ton of kids and had 8 show up not including babies (including mine.)  He had a spider man theme party.

In the last post about Missed Birthdays he had cupcakes for his actual birthday but he had this awesome spider man cake on his birthday.  All the kids mouths were black after eating that dark frosting.

Kimberly has a Fever

My poor baby has a fever again.  It is between 101 and 102.  Last time she had a high fever, which spiked over 104 for over two days, it was an ear infection.  However this time I think the culprit is teething.  She has run a temperature before because of teeth and today I investigated and sure enough another molar is starting to poke through.  Ray noticed the fever yesterday when he changed her for bed.  I gave her tylenol and put her to bed but this morning it was back up to almost 102.  We will see if the tylenol helps.  Another sign that it is probably teething is she is sucking her thumb like there is no tomorrow.  She only usually does that if she is teething.  She doesn't suck it hardly at all when she is not teething unless she is really hungry or really tired.

Missed Birthdays

I missed blogging about Sheila and Timmy's birthday so here are a few pictures of those days.  I think I blogged about Timmy's birthday party but we also had a little celebration on his actual birthday.

Pictures Galore

Sorry no posting any pictures today on here.  What I mean by my title is the other day Snapfish had a promotion to get free shipping for any order over $15 so I went ahead and ordered all the prints I needed to, spanning from Christmas to our trip during Spring Break massing to just shy of 350.  They should be here today.  Then I get to sort and divide through them to the different scrap books, which I didn't work on last month but plan on getting back on schedule this month.

Our new thermostat is great.  It did only take us a short time to install it.  The longest thing was getting the little wires out and labeled from the older one.  We got a seven day programmable one.  It is awesome.  We get to program four different time periods during the day so I don't have to go back and change it manually at night anymore.  I have been tweaking the schedule a little bit as I need to but for the most part my house has been very comforatble through out the day.  We'll see if it helps out the bill at all since it claims that it can save up to 33%.

Cutting, cutting, cutting

No I AM not cutting myself.  I have been cutting fabric for a good part of the day, or mostly towels. I am making the kids these cut bath towels for Christmas.  Kimberly's will be a butterfly, Timmy's a frog, and Sheila's a princess.  The pattern calls for bath towels, hand towels, and washcloths for the various pieces.  They will have hoods (hence the hand towels) and other embellishments.  Terry cloth sure leaves a mess once it's cut.  It's like fur or ultracuddly fabric.  Now I need to vaccuum again.

I got the new font through blogger.  I was changing my colors to match my new background and decided to change the font.  They use to only have like 5 fonts.  Well, now they have some more if you scroll down I think it says something about internet fonts or something and there is tons to choose from.  Yay!

I was checking on line the movies that are now playing so I could save them to my Netflix queue, which we have on hold right now to build it up some but will be getting movies again next week.  Anyway, I was on Fandango checking what was on the theatres here in town and I saw a news article about Robert Pattinson stating that the Breaking Dawn installments can't be PG-13.  So I decided to read that article.  At the end people were able to comment and most said they wanted it R so they can see all the gore and stuff.  Now I have read the books because I am a fan.  I already preordered the Saga book on Amazon.  I was really disappointed though reading that.  I will not be watching it if they do rate it R.  I have a prime example of how they can make it PG-13.  Look at Lord of the Rings saga.  I have to admit that I was shocked when they showed the actually beheading of some of those creatures.  But it was done it a way that wasn't so gross.  Anyway, I guess I will just have to wait and see.

Thermostat went splat!

Our thermostat has kicked the bucket.  The day before we left on vacation I noticed it was cold in the house and the AC was running.  I went to check the temperature it was 4 degrees colder in the house than what I had it set on so I thought maybe Ray set it down for some reason.  When I tried to set it back up the buttons wouldn't push and finally it showed me it was set for 45 degrees.  I checked the heat and it was still set at 68 but when I tried to see if I could change it and hit the up arrow all of the sudden the number plummetted to 45 degrees.  So now I have to turn it on manually when the house gets too hot.  This weekend we are going to go and get a new one and hopefully we can figure out how to install it although Ray's friend told him it was really easy.

Busch Gardens

I had hoped to get to the park when it opened so we could do as much as possible until the kids got tired.  But the sour person from the day before caused a big scene at breakfast and I got most of the blame for him having such a lousy day the day before.  I finally had enough and left stating that I didn't have to take that and I wasn't in charge and I didn't want to be in charge.  I went out to the car with Kimberly and waited.  Finally after about 5-10 minutes Nettie joined me with the rest of the kids and about 10 minutes after that Ray finally joined me.  After another hour we were finally cooled down and ready to go.  By this time we would get there about an hour after the parked opened.  It was just about an hour drive over to it.  Then Ray's parents car wouldn't start. (We decided to take all three cars so if that person got tired again he could leave with his vehicle and no one was dependent on his car for a ride.)  None of the others had been to Busch Gardens and some weren't to thrilled about going since they thought it might not be so fun.  So Ray's other brother jumped it and it still wouldn't start.  Finally his dad realized that he had triggered the antitheft device, he reset it and it started right away.

Finally after almost two hour delay we were off.  Then we got on the freeway and no kidding there was three accidents and it took us 2 hours to go just over half the way.  We finally decided to pull off when we got to the third one and had lunch.  They decided to eat at a place that makes me sick so I barely ate any lunch.

We finally get to the park four hours after I had originally wanted us too.  We had just about 6 hours to see and do everything before they closed.  Ray's family love it.  Especially the sour puss from the day before.  Ray and him spent most of the time riding the rollar coasters.  I spent most of the time with the kids.  So did the rest of Ray's family.  We did go on the train but each station took so long that Kimberly got tired of that and it was a struggle to keep her on my lap.  We ran by the elephants and Ray, David, Nettie, Kimberly, and I did happen upon the tigers while we were trying to get to the log ride where Ray's parents and the two girls were waiting to go.  I had a little more fun than the day before but I really didn't get to go on any rides I wanted to and I didn't get to see the hippo again.  Maybe Ray and I will take the kids by ourselves.  Busch Gardens also has this awesome kid area (where we spent the last two hours) and I know I would like the kids to spend a little more time there since they didn't get to ride as many rides as they wanted.

Anyway here is some of the pictures from that day.

 The alligators are one of the first things visitors see when they enter the park.

 While their dad and uncle went off to ride the rollar coaster we went to the gorilla exhibit.

He was lying right by the glass.  It might be the same guy as last time (about 3 years ago) but last time we came one was right by the glass too. Kimberly actually saw him and was trying to point to him.  I tried to get a picture of her doing it but I couldn't get the right angle with all the people.

 On the trian we saw the white rhinos.  (I wanted to do the rhino rally ride where you get a little closer to them and some other animals.)

 The elephants are always a favorite.  Sheila wanted to see them but wasn't too happy with the smell.

 One of the beautiful white tigers.  They have redone the tiger exhibit and it is truly awesome.

 Here they have a popup where you climb up inside a glass enclosure.  This orange tiger was napping right next to it.

 Kimberly enjoying a snack while we took a break and waited for everyone to either get off the log ride or the roller coasters. I was little annoyed since I sat there for like 45 minutes by myself and I should have went and saw the hippo while I waited but it was all the way across the park and I was feeling that great at that moment.

 Grandma and the girls coming down the log ride.  Sheila hated it because she got wet.  As she came by the deck I was on she was crying and screaming and everyone was like laughing and saying, "Ah!"  Timmy later came down with Grandpa and Uncle David and he loved it.

 The kids got to meet Big Bird.  Timmy also met Elmo but I couldn't take pictures of that but had to buy them which I did since he loves Elmo but the photographer really didn't get the best pictures so I was a little disappointed.

 The kids rode some of the kiddie rides in the Sesame street part of the park.

I definitely would like to go back and maybe we will next month before it gets too terribly hot.  The kids had a blast so I was very happy about that..

Disney World 2011

For Sheila's spring break we went down to Orlando/Tampa for a few days and visited some of the parks.  We drove down on the 16th and on the 17th we went over to Tarpon Springs near Tampa to visit my friends that will be leaving on a mission next month to Scotland/Ireland.  That night the rest of Ray's family arrived.  I got a migraine the day before and was still feeling sick from that so those two days weren't very pleasant for me.

They decided to go to the Magic Kingdom the next day.  Let's just say that it was crowded and hot.  The kids had fun but not so much the rest of us.  It actually was a big fiasco and made us decide to be more selective of who we invite on certain vacations in the future.

Here are some of the pictures from the day.

 Yay, we are finally here.

 We found Woody in Frontierland.  Timmy was very excited to meet him.  Kimberly not so much.

Sheila and I skipped lunch to find Ariel.  This actually got me in a lot of trouble with a certain one of Ray's family members.  Since they were busy eating I didn't think it was a big deal.  But I was accused of not caring about what the others wanted to do and going off to get signatures and pictures of all the characters.  But 3 of the 4 we got was before 2 p.m. (since we didn't even get into the actual park until like 10:30 and it takes so long to get anywhere) and 2 we just happened upon and the kids wanted to do it.  But Sheila meeting Ariel was the highlight of her and my day.  She was so happy and gave Ariel the biggest longest hug I have ever seen.

Here the kids, their uncles, their cousin, and Daddy went on splash mountain.  I missed them coming down.  I waited in the hot sun for about 45 minutes (even though they had fast passes) to see if I could catch them on the ride.  My family is in the two first rows.

 After splash mountain we ran into Mickey and Minnie.

 Kimberly enjoyed an ice cream with me.

 We all rode the carousel.

Since Lydia hadn't got to meet any of the princesses at the end of the day we went to find Tiana.  This is the other event that got me in hot water, although it had been 4 hours since the last one.  When I saw the line I wanted to go but the girls wanted to meet her so we stayed.  It was the three girls (Kimberly in the stroller) and Nettie and I.  I fianlly told Ray to tell his brother that he could leave with the rest of the family and and we would take Nettie back with us since we had room in our car.

Ray and I decide next time we will go around February (when it's a little cooler and less crowded) like we did two years ago and just go by ourselves or with other people who have children.  I wish I could say more positive things about our trip.

My doings

So this month has been really busy with doctor visits, dentists visits, and everything else.  Plus we are all going through another round of colds.  I really mean to blog more often but find myself doing other things.  I have pictures I need to post of birthdays and other events.  Thankfully we have one more appointment tomorrow and then we should be done for awhile.  Sheila had her doctors visit last week and ended up with an ear infection so is on antibiotics now.  Her bus is also coming at 6:30 a.m. now and we are having to get up a lot earlier.  Ray and I both went to bed by 9 last night.

Kimberly now has 8 teeth and two molars.  The 8th tooth broke through today.  The molars showed up the 1st.  Her other two molars on the other side are trying to come through too.  She also climbed the entire ladder up onto the top bunk all by herself.  I now put up the ladder during the day.  I don't think she would be able to get down by herself.

Timmy is now registered for preK next year.  Hopefully he will get in.  I registered the minute it came up.  If he does I will be driving every day next year to pick him up.  He will ride the bus in the morning with Sheila but will only be going for half a day.

We are going on a fun trip for spring break.  We are headed down to Orlando and spending a few days down there at Busch Gardens and Disney World.  Ray's entire family is suppose to be going.  I think the kids will have a lot of fun. The Sesame characters are now at Busch Gardens so I think Timmy will really love that.

Well, I will try to get the pictures up soon.  Sorry my blogging is so sporadic.