Our vacation Part 1; Howie

Last night I finally downloaded our pictures from our vacation. I noticed a bit of a pattern with them. I had a great time, Dwight had a great time, Bailey had a great time, Calvin had a great time, Ella had a great time, Howie was a brat! Here is a picture of Howie on the bus tour of the San Diego zoo. Dwight was asking him if he liked seeing the anilmals. This was his sweet response to his daddy.

Here he is at Legoland. I was trying to get a picture of him looking like a giant in Las Vegas. You can see how much he appreciated us taking him to Legoland.

Legoland started to get a little too packed for our taste, so we headed over to the Wild Animal park. You can see how excited he was about that.
When we were back at the condo, he wanted to watch Ben 10 and it wasn't on yet. You can see how happy he was the hear that.
We decided to go back to Legoland a second morning to finish up the rides and beat out the crowd. He wasn't excited about it, until I found this. . . . .

Anyway, I guess it was just all a bit too much for a 3 year old. He did love his time with his great uncle Sam though. The rest of the kids were perfect throughout the entire trip and were so excited and happy to go wherever we said we were going to go. Bailey even babysat for us a couple times, while Dwight and I went out to dinner. I'll post pictures of my happy kids tomorrow (or sometime within the next 3-4 weeks).

Lost pictures

I was on my snapfish account, ordering some pictures. I had an album downloaded that I had never ordered pictures from. I pulled up those pictures, and I found this one. It was from about 3 years ago on the day Howie got blessed. My kids are so cute. (I know you were thinking it too!)

I was sad for a minute, thinking about how fast they grow up. But then I snapped out of it. Although it was fun having a baby around, and I miss Ella's curly hair, things are pretty great at the phase we are in now. Bailey is so responsible, and he gets along so well with his brothers and sister. They all look up to him so much, I am just so glad (and lucky) that he is a good example to them. Calvin is a bit of a daredevil, and is so entertaining. He is easy to make laugh, but you have to be careful, he will pee his pants. Ella has so many questions, but they all have to do with her getting a pet. I used to just say "uh-huh" in response to whatever she was saying. But she takes that as an agreement, and apparently I told her she could get a hypoallergenic dog if we won the lottery. Howie is at, what I think, the funnest age. He is mimicking all of us in the things he says and does. He is such a smart little guy, and has been my easiest toddler. He isn't too hyper, he doesn't have too many questions, he doesn't get into things, and he has never started a fire. Anyway, what I am trying to say, is that I have a freakishly good time with my kids, especially as they are getting older. We are getting ready to go on our family vacation, and I feel as excited about it as I used to when I was a kid myself. I LOVED our family vacations and I have the best memories from them. My mom and dad were always good about planning great family vacations. Two years ago we took the kids to a bison ranch in Arizona, and we had the best time. But Howie was little, and it stopped us from doing a lot of things we would have liked to do. This year we are going to go to San Diego. We have so many things planned, my only worry is we may have planned too much. We even changed our route on the way home to be able to get in a quick visit with Sam and Michelle. They have Emu's, so we are going to refer to this vacation as the one where we went to the Emu ranch. So, I will be taking a bit of a hiatus from blogging, not that you will notice much. But I will have plenty to tell about when we return.

Our weekend

I guess I pretty much suck at this, but I will go ahead and post about our 4th of July weekend anyway. We had my brother Tom and his family, my sister Jenny and her family, her brother n-law and his family, my brother in-law Cory and his girls, my sister Sara and her family, and my parents all over for a 4th of July b-b-que and a pretty dangerous fireworks show. It is the same thing EVERY year. The guys go out to the "Ill-Eagle" fireworks stand and buy about $150 each worth of bottle rockets, firecrackers, and anything else that their wives would freak out about them buying. They start letting off their dangerous explosives 48 hours before it is necessary to do so. Their wives (including me) start screaming at them about 48 hours before it is necessary to do so. They act shocked that we are stressing out about them sticking a firecracker in one end of a tube while a three year old has his eye to the other end. It is finally dark outside and they have barely managed to save a few fireworks to put on a scary, but decent show for us, and also manage to do so without any serious injuries or deaths. Then I go around the house looking for any leftover bottle rockets and firecrackers and hide them until the next year. I was raised with such extreme caution, that it makes this one of the most stressful holidays of the year. But we all did have a really great time....we meaning Dwight and the kids.


The party started on the back patio, until we all started to get smoked out. Then we moved it to the front yard for the BIG show. (I didn't get any pictures of that part, so you will just have to look at the back patio ones)
With all the cousins in town, we decided to throw Ella an early b-day party. It was just a day early. We decided to trash mom's house for that one. Ella was so excited to be able to have a party with most of her cousins there. We were only missing Becky's kids.

Here's one of the whole crew. Jenny sat in the picture, so Wolf would. Plus, she looks so young, no one would even notice.

I just had to add this next one in here. I have never seen my mom's house so trashed, I just had to take a picture to document it. I took some from several different angles, and you still won't get the same affect as you would have had you been down in the basment in person. The smell of 20 sweaty kids all playing down in a basement together is something that just can't be captured on film, but take my word on it, it was pretty bad.

So, everyone left today, and my kids cried all the way home. And I had to spend the whole time getting them excited for all the other fun things we could do during the rest of the summer. They want everything to include their cousins though. Bailey said he would rather spend time with his cousins than with any of his friends. I am so glad that all my kids get along so well with all of their cousins. It makes it so fun to get together with family. Thanks to Tom, Cory, and Jenny and their families for taking the time and spending the money to come up and visit us. We only wish it could have been for longer.