Newport Beach

Our California trip finally arrived!  We had 3 day tickets for Disneyland, but we made a stop the day before at Newport Beach.  The kids favorite part was playing in the sand... but they also enjoyed getting in the water.  I thought it would be too cold to play in, but it actually felt great.  It was a beautiful afternoon...

Tiny Pumpkins and Spooky Bats...

We've been getting in the Halloween spirit at our house this past week and I love it!  Halloween is my favorite holiday to decorate for.  The kids drew pumpkin faces on little clementines.  We have them all in a bowl on our kitchen table and we've been eating through our little jack-o-lanterns here and there.  :)

We cut out bats and put them in some of our lamps - spooky...

Then we added some more bats to the wall next to the stairway...

We ended our evening with caramel apples - yum!  I think my favorite part was eating all the leftover reeses pieces the day after.  :)

Family Outings

Well, I guess summer is finally really over because we spent our last weekend at the waterpark.  It's officially closed till the next summer season.  And it's cooled down to 92 degrees!  I couldn't be more excited to be out of the 100 degree temps.  Happy October!  haha.

Bye bye Wet N Wild!  We'll see you next year!  In the meantime, I'm happy to retire the swimsuits and sunblock for a little while.  I need to try to get in the mood for fall and holiday time.  It helped to decorate for Halloween as our FHE activity this week.  The kids were thrilled with all the orange and black and pumpkins and crows.  We topped off the night with pizookie :)  We had just gone to oreganos that weekend for dinner, and were reminded how delicious an underbaked large cookie with ice cream on top is.  :)

Our new tradition the past few times has been to eat out as a family when Ben has his Friday night overnight shifts.  These are elective shifts, but the moonlighting helps out the financial hole we are working ourselves out of.  I'm thankful that my husband is willing to work so hard!  But, it's been fun to come pick him up from the hospital for an outing in between his day shift and night shift.  He has about 3 hours till he has to be back at work - so we've been finding it fun to try out new restaurants in the downtown area (or old favorites) and then to wander the botanical gardens nearby with our passes.  :)  We went to Duck and Decanter, a place introduced to Ben by his friend Karl.  We ate on the patio and enjoyed the live music.

Look at the sweet cheesy smile on Claire.  She is the best :)  And who's that photobombing?

After dinner, we stopped at Zoe's Kitchen and picked up some chocolate cake and large cookie to take with us for dessert at the Botanical Gardens.  I love my family.  I have unique, smart, outgoing kids who are so enjoyable to hang out with - and Ben is the kindest daddy and such a caring husband.  I just feel so lucky to have this little crew to spend my life with.  :)

Out in the desert

I'm so happy that it's September - it means we're so close to October (which is one of my favorite months of the year!) and I can already see signs of cooler weather coming.  The mornings and evenings are much more comfortable outside - so we've been taking advantage of it this week.  Ben had to work an overnight moonlighting shift over the weekend, so we picked him up from work (in between his 2 shifts), to go out to dinner at Zoes Kitchen (so yummy!).  Then we spent the evening at the Desert Botanical Gardens.  It's so beautiful there - I'm so happy that we have season passes - especially as the weather continues to cool down, we've already picked out some of our favorite picnicking spots.

The sun was setting and it was beautiful...

On Saturday, Ben was just getting home from his night shift and was needing some sleep... so I took the kids to the park.  The kids rode their bikes and we took a lunch.  By the time we were heading home just after noon, it was getting pretty hot outside, but we really enjoyed our morning playing at the neighborhood park...

I can officially announce that Claire is a walker.  I don't ever see her crawl anymore.  She LOVES walking!  She's such a sweetie...

Hmmm... I see this leading to trouble...

Yup, yup - I called it...

Let's see what Jake thought about being at the bottom of that dog pile...

I love to watch the kids come up with their own imaginative activities - Becca was playing school and was being a rather bossy teacher... :)

Emma got a head start heading home.  Here's to many more park days!

September Randoms

Aaron's girlfriend, Stefani came to Arizona to visit her sister who just had a baby.  So we decided to come on over.  The girls love Stefani!  They even got to skype with Uncle Aaron while we were there.  :)

And I got to hold Stef's little niece.  She's adorable.  :)

On Labor Day, Ben and the kids and I were trying to figure out something to do.  We ended up at Scottsdale Fashion Square to eat lunch and do a little browsing and shopping.  Jake was most happy to be playing Starfall on a computer at the Microsoft store... we probably could have left him there while we did some shopping and he would have oblivious.  :)

We are still going to water park here and there.  Since school started, they are only open on the weekends, so most Saturdays we find ourselves making a visit...  fries taste extra good at the water park...

Emma had a dentist appt during school this week - we got done a little earlier than expected and there was 20 minutes to fill till I needed to pick up Becca from Kindergarten - so Emma, Claire, and I played at the park across the street from the school...

Emma LOVES Claire...

Ben was so nice this week - I wasn't feeling up to making dinner, so he stopped at the store on his way home from work and got stuff to make little pizzas.  The kids did all their own toppings and they tasted delicious.  Thanks Ben!

This is random, but I thought it was amusing - This is right next to our neighborhood. Do you notice something odd about 2 of those cactus out there?  ;)  I'm guessing they are cell phone towers or something?

As we were eating dinner last night, it all of a sudden started to downpour - so we ran outside and played in it before it went away...

It's hard to read Claire's expression, but she did not like getting wet in the rain...