Pumpkin Patch 2013

We made our annual trip to the pumpkin patch on October 22nd.  And a pumpkin patch experience wouldn't be complete without Wyatt, Beth, and Jason. We are always so lucky to be able to go with them:-)

We decided upon taking family photos at the pumpkin patch before doing anything else.

Then Makenna and Wyatt headed over to play in a few of the bounce houses.  Knowing from experience that bounce houses weren't Kyler's thing he had fun getting wagon rides from daddy and uncle.

Next we went over to have the kids drive the little cars.  Makenna of course chose the only pink car that they had.  We decided to let  Kyler ride along with Makenna since her car was the only one with seat belts.  But, unfortunately he didn't like it at all and about a minute into the driving we took him out and just let Makenna drive herself.  She did way better than she did last year and only had a few times where she got stuck, ran into something/someone, or needed help.

Then the big kids and the two daddies went in the corn maze.  It took a REALLY long time for them to get through, but they had a good time.  Beth, Kyler, and I were able to join them halfway through the maze.

And our last stop for the evening was going on the quad ride.  Kyler had seen them going by and seemed very interested in riding them.

The kids were super tired by this point so it was time to head on home and get them in bed.  We are looking forward to next year and once again spending time at the pumpkin patch.

Little Readers

I love that Makenna and Kyler are really starting to enjoy doing things together now.  I saw them reading together and just had to take a picture of big sister reading to little brother.  It is really funny because even though Kyler isn't that much smaller than Makenna, he loves to sit on her lap and she loves encourages him to sit with her so she can read to him.  He never stays for very long but it is super cute while it lasts.

Southern California Stay-cation 2013

We decided to take our "summer" vacation September 29 - October 4, 2013.  This year, instead of going away, we figured that there was enough that we wanted to do in our own Southern California backyard so we decided upon a stay-cation.  It also helped sway us this way when we knew that we would be able to put the kids to sleep in their own beds and thus ensuring us a good night sleep:-)

Sunday, September 29th

Our first stop was heading out to Torrance to go to our old church and say hi to those that were a big part of our newly married life.  It was great fun to see everyone!!  From there we headed to our favorite lunch place, El Burrito Jr. and then trekked down to Long Beach to go to the Aquarium of the Pacific.  It had been a while since we had been there so it was fun to go back and discover all of the new things.  It was super crowded there because they had a festival going on, but we still had fun wandering around and seeing all the sea-life.

After the aquarium we had been promising Makenna for a LONG time that when we went to the beach next that we would take kites and fly them.  Unfortunately our area doesn't have much of a breeze to fly kites proficiently.  So we walked to the park that is right next to the aquarium and brought our little butterfly kite and huge dragon kite in order to fly them.  Well, I guess the weather had other ideas because unfortunately there was not enough wind to get even Makenna's little tiny kite to fly, so we didn't even bother taking out the huge dragon kite.  Makenna was pretty disappointed, but they did give it a good effort.

So instead of flying kites they just played on the grass...

climbed in the trees...

and got nice and tired for napping on the long ride home.

Tuesday, October 1st

 After a day of resting on Monday, our next adventure was a trip to Disneyland.  This was Kyler's first time at Disneyland.  We were a little concerned about how Kyler would do while waiting in the lines but we found that as long as we had snacks to munch on the entire time in line that he was quite content being held and eating.  And Makenna of course was so excited to go back again.  She insisted that the first ride that we went on was Peter Pan.  She is very into Jake and the Neverland Pirates television show, but has never seen Peter Pan, so it was kind of funny that she picked that ride as the one that she had to go on first.  Here are a few photos of our time at Disneyland...

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

Dumbo

It's A Small World

Rocket Ships

Alice In Wonderland

And as our tradition, each of the kids got to choose a stuffed animal to sleep with on the way home.  Kyler chose Winnie-The-Pooh and Makenna chose Sofia the First.

It was so much fun and not crowded at all.  At the end of the day Kyler's favorite ride was the Carousel (he LOVES horses) and Makenna's were the Teacups and It's A Small World.

Wednesday, October 2nd

Since we had such a long day yesterday we decided to stick closer to home and went out to Jumping Jacks in the afternoon.  It is a big warehouse building that has inflatable bounce houses set up.  Makenna and Toby had such a great time jumping around, going through the obstacles courses, sliding down slides, and dueling each other.

And Kyler really didn't like the feeling of how the bounce houses made it difficult to walk. So we got him to go down one slide with me but other than that he mostly just played in the little toy area and had fun running around on the solid ground.

Thursday, October 3rd

On Thursday we headed out to the Huntington Library and Gardens.  As you know they are our favorite and it was a free day that I was lucky to get tickets for.  So off we went to enjoy the day in the beautiful gardens. Our first stop of course was to the Children's Garden.

We visited the "houses"...

 the fog area (where they got soaked)...

the water fountains...

we went through some of the other garden areas, ate lunch, and then we ran around and played hide-and-seek before leaving to drive home.

Oh, how we love those gardens.

Friday, October 4th

Friday we joined up with some of our friends and went out to play at the Children's Discovery Museum of the Desert in Palm Desert.

Saturday, October 5th

Then for our last official day of vacation we went locally up to Oak Glen for an morning of apple picking.

And we had yummy apple pie, apple muffins, apples...apples...and more apples for weeks.  They were delicious!!

We had such a terrific time on our vacation.  It is always so fun to get to spend a whole week of time doing fun things with the people we love so much.

San Diego Zoo 2013

I completely forgot a post in June.  That is what I get for only having my little camera and not downloading pictures off of it regularly.

At the end of June Beth, Jason, and Wyatt asked us to go with them to the San Diego Zoo.   The kids all enjoyed seeing the koalas and climbing on the play structure...

We saw the elephants (Makenna's favorite animal) and stopped a few other times to let the kids run around and play on the many other play structures around the zoo.  We let Makenna and Wyatt take over the map and tell us where they wanted to go.  Unfortunately some of the animals were sleeping, but that is always the case in the middle of the day.

The play area that Makenna still talks about though is the seal area where they got to climb through tunnels and pop their heads out of the "ice".

We had a great time at the zoo playing and watching all of the interesting animals.