Cute Little Carder!!

While we were in California Aunt Ashley (Maren's friend/sister) took a few cute pictures of Baby Carder! Everyday I give thanks to my Heavenly Father that he sent this sweet baby boy to our family! He is such a joy! He is a happy and content little guy!

You can't see it in the picture, but while in California we discovered his first tooth!

 

I think this is my favorite picture! He is sure a handsome little boy!

 Same picture black and white!

 I love this picture with his cute hands folded!

I just love this baby! He is growing way too fast! I am grateful for the happiness and joy he brings our family.

New Year's Eve Party

New Year's Eve 2012...the last night of the year. We celebrated at Blake and Maren's playing Minute To Win It. We divided into teams: Nate's Ninja's and Ty's Raptors! Which team will win? We had all sorts of activities, from stacking apples, to jabbing potatoes with straws and trying to balance M&Ms on them. Shooting elastics at targets. I thought I took more pictures, and I know someone has videos of the night, but for now these pictures is all that I have of our fun night.

Caleb doing the "elephant march". Yes, he does have pantyhose tied to his head with a tennis ball in them!! He had one minute to knock over ten solo cups!! Can he do it? Yes! Actually he did! It was so funny watching him swing around his 'trunk' trying to knock the cups down.

 

Now it's Mara's turn! She too had to be an elephant and try knocking over the cups.

Why is Mara wrapped up in toilet paper?! It was for the mummy spin--in one minute she had to unravel a roll of toilet paper by spinning around. Its harder than it sounds!!

I can't remember the name of this one, but Mara has a yo-yo tied to her pants and has to try and knock down the solo cups with the yo-yo! We laughed so hard watching her swing her hips and dance around with a yo-yo tied to her pants!!

This was Caleb just being silly! That's what this night was all about---having fun together as a family!! Talk about happiness!! THIS WAS HAPPINESS!! Laughing like fools! Playing to the death..okay not really the death but we were quite the competitive bunch! Even Caleb tried his hardest to be the winning team! What a F.U.N New Year's Eve party!! It sure makes me miss being in California with my family. We had quite the party all week long. How can it only have been a month ago?! It seems like last year!!

Rose Bowl Parade

New Years Eve was celebrated in Pasadena California! Nate has always wanted to see the Rose Bowl Parade. We looked into going but in order to get good seats you have to camp-out the night before or get up at 4am! We decided to go to the float party instead, which was so awesome! We were glad we went!

I know Nate really wants to go to the Rose Bowl someday! This may be as close as he gets! 

 Mara pushing Brook, who refused to stay in her stroller! She was as determined as my children! 

This was one of the floats we saw. It was amazing to be so close and see how the floats were made. Everything on the float has to be grown! They 100% natural! Flowers, fruit, vegetables, seeds....even seaweed!

Some floats we saw from a distance, others we saw up close.

Mara is just as pretty as the flowers on the float!

We could not believe the amount of flowers here!! Every kind and color! Each single flower was put in its own vile with water. Then carefully placed in the exact right spot!

We each were given a rose on the way in, we had a dozen roses at the end of the day! We gave them to Aunt Maren because she wasn't able to come with us because she had to work. 

The best part of it all was actually the next day when we watched the parade on TV and saw all the floats we had seen! There were several more floats in the parade that we didn't see at parade preview. 

Legoland!

The day we have been waiting for had arrived! Legoland Day!! Where we camped the RV was not too far from Legoland. We picked up Mimi, Scott, and Brook in the RV so we could all drive into the park together! The weather was perfect! The day was wonderful! The only thing that would have made it better was to not have such a crowd of people! The place was packed!! Everyone must have received Legoland tickets for Christmas! Oh well....it was still a lot of fun to go!

Blake and Cookie by our home on wheels! 

Three excited kids to be at Legoland!! Ty especially, he is our lego-maniac!

They had Dinoland, which of course someone (Ty) was most excited about! But Caleb had fun too climbing in the dino-shell!

 

 Caleb has his map of the park and he is ready for a great day!

Scott and Brook at "Fairy Tale Brook!" Cute! We missed Lorisa and wish she could have been with us, but she was taking care of baby Graham who was just a few weeks old!

The first ride of the day we went on was Splash Battle. The wait was only 30-40 minutes...it got worst as the day went on!

We started with the wet rides first so we could dry off in the hottest part of the day.

Poor Caleb got the most soaked on this ride!

Next ride was the log ride. 

This ride was over an hour wait to get on! It seemed that the rides got longer and longer throughout the day.

The ride was fun...not as fun as splash mountain at Desneyland!

We were able to do the baby swap on some rides which allowed me to hold Carder while Nate and the kids rode the rides then we switched.

Oh no! Ty has been swallowed by a shark!

I have to admit the best part of the day was seeing my kids so happy and excited!

Funny how what one kid does makes all the kids want to do it too!

Brooky is not too sure about being eaten by a shark!

Because of the long lines we went on a total of 5 rides! Now times that by an hour each and that was half our day! Next time we go to a theme park we will take our kids out of school and go when everyone else is in school!!

The rides at Legoland really weren't that great...however, all the things made out of legos were incredible! This minitown was amazing!

Several cities were designed with the right scale and details! Can you tell where this is?! Time square New York!

 Next was the Star Wars exhibit!! Lego Darth Vader looks totally real! The kids thought a life size Darth Vader made out of Legos was totally awesome!

 

Caleb's favorite for sure was the Star Wars exhibit! I still can't believe everything was made out of legos! Caleb LOVED seeing Yoda!

Princesses Mara with Princess Leia!!

Ok, maybe Darth Vader was Caleb's favorite! Or maybe he just liked them ALL!

Ty with his Ewok friend!

Ty and Luke Skywalker!

The kids wanted to ride a horse...well it's the closest thing to a horse! 

Sir Caleb riding his valiant horse!

The sad thing is, Ty was almost too old for Legoland! We went at the perfect time for him, he loved riding the rides and seeing all the things made out of Legos.

The entire crew at Legoland! The best part of the day really was being as a family! It's true what they say..."A family that plays together, stays together!"

I have to give a big shout out to Blake and Maren for being such troopers!! They probably would have preferred and had more fun at Disneyland, but they were so excited to have a day with the kids! They walked all the way back to the RV and made our lunches and brought it into the park for us so we could enjoy the park more! Thanks Blake and Maren you guys really are the BEST!

We saved the best ride for last! The Dinocoaster! It was pretty fun, and Mara loved being able to ride it with Uncle Blake!

The RV!!

Uncle Blake has a friend in the RV business who let us rent an RV for a few days so we could travel down the coast to Legoland. It was only about 3-4 hours away but we took our time and made a few stops along the way. We stopped at Huntington Beach and walked along the pier. 

This was the kids favorite spot to be--up top looking out the front window of the RV.

We loved playing our new Disney headbanz game we got for Christmas!

 We also enjoyed playing Lego Bingo and Mara spent most of the time coloring!!

Cute Aunt Maren snuggling Carder! One perk of the RV which was Carder's favorite part was not having to be in his car seat! 

Some funny memories from the RV adventure I don't want to forget:

Stopping for lunch along the way only to discover most of the lunch stuff was left at home! "Dang it!"

Picking up Papa on the side of the road in this big huge RV! He rode the train down earlier and wanted to ride down with us to legoland!

We stayed the night in a resort RV campground next to the bay! It was pretty awesome! 

We ate the most incredible dutch oven dinner and monkey bread prepared by Nate! He made some sort of Mexican Chicken deliciousness!!

Driving through the resort towns in an RV was pretty comical! I don't know how Blake managed to drive that thing!

Caleb standing outside the RV pooping his pants because he didn't think he could poop in the RV bathroom! (poor kid!)

But mostly it was just fun to be with Blake and Maren and spend time with them and laugh with them! We woke up one morning to rain. So we just hung out at the campground and watched movies and played games and talked and laughed!