My Twilight Update.......How I feel now

So I have gone back and am re-reading all the Twilight books. And I am hating the movie even more! Does anyone else feel the same way? It has ruined the books for me. I still love the books, but I have to work so hard to not imagine most of the characters in my head looking and acting how they did in the movie. I really hope that with the new producer working on the next movies it will be make them better than the first.

Other friends that moved FAR FAR AWAY!!

So I forgot to post these sooner. These are Adriann's and Kenyon's best girl and boy friends. Can you believe that they are all sisters and brothers? How lucky were we to have them match up so well. Well the girl and boy in the middle of each picture are Kya and Tyson Emonts that my kids have been friends with since we moved here almost 3 years ago, and they just moved to Los Angeles last week. We are all missing them and hope they are hating LA! Just kidding.

Thanks for moving!

So some good friends of ours moved houses and basically right behind their house is a huge nice community swingset! So they gave us their old one that someone had given them, and let's just say it's the best gift we've ever gotten!! The kids come home from school and stay outside till dinner. Then they eat, get ready for bed and crash! I love it! So I could never give enough thanks to our friends!

Our fun night

Sorry that the picture is so small, but it was taken with my phone and then emailed to me, thanks Sarah for telling me how to do that, and then I am now posting it! Wow, technology!! Anyway......Akoni got a flat tire today and I had to meet him at Walmart, and long story short, this is how the kids entertained themselves while he was putting his spare tire on! My car has a latch on the inside that you can open the trunk while you are in it, so the kids just sat there and kept shutting themselves in the trunk and then opening the door. It was pretty funny, and they had so much fun! Who knew my truck could be such entertainment?!

It's beginning to look like Christmas......

Well we are slowly getting ready for Christmas. I put the tree up with the kids this week and let Kenyon put all the ornaments on. They ended up all in a big cluster right in the front, so I helped him spread them out a little!! But I am noticing that the tree looks different every day, oh well, that's why it's fake and why the ornaments are from the dollar store! Someday we'll get a real tree again and have nice ornaments, but for now, this one is great. I don't have to water it and I can put it up and take it down all by myself.







Adriann got to put our little 2 ft tree in her room this year. She loves it and even put a few ornaments on it, and the Angel tree topper that I grew up with. Isn't it adorable? Growing up that's what was always on the top of our tree, I loved it. When my mom decided to get a nice tree topper a few years ago and was going thru all of her ornaments and getting rid of old ones, I snached this up. I absolutely love it and I couldn't imagine my tree without it.

Emergency Preparedness FHE

So we decided to test out our MRE's that we got in our 72 hour kits from Akoni's parents from a few years back. We thought it would be fun to have a Family Home Evening lesson on Emergency Preparedness, and so for dinner we cooked some of the food that was in the kits. Luckily we also thought it would be fun to pretend that there was no electricity and just use flashlights, so we couldn't really see the food we were eating! So how did our meal go you are probably wondering........well I will just say that if I was STARVING TO DEATH, I would eat the food. One smelled like throw up, the chicken was more like tuna which wasn't that bad, and the rest was......well I'm glad the lights were very dim.

So overall it was a good experience. The kids now appreciate my cooking more, Adriann kept crying the whole time that she wanted REAL food like the kind mom makes!! But we also found out that Kenyon will eat just about anything and that we don't have to worry about him starving at all!! Oh, but the Chocolate covered Oatmeal cookies were really good, so we will be reordering that one item!

But it was a fun FHE to do with the kids and we have decided to work on Emergency Preparedness the next couple of FHE's so that we can at least be somewhat prepared with the kids.

Oh Turkey Day!!!

We had a great Thanksgiving. We have no family here, so it was very relaxing and we did everything on our own time table. Akoni went to the Turkey Bowl in the morning, and while he was gone I threw the Turkey in the oven. When it was done I made the potatoes and stuffing, luckily I had thought ahead and made the salads and desserts the day before, and then when everything was done....we ate! We had one friend Earl come over since he has no family here either, and that was it! After we ate, we all took naps, then had some pie and turkey sandwiches later! I think it was one of the most enjoyable Thanksgivings ever. I do miss not seeing family, but I stayed in my pajamas all day, and you can't really show up at Grandma's house in your P.Js!!






I love to make Turkeys! I used an oven bag this year which I have never done, thanks Sarah, and it turned out really nice. I didn't have to scrape clean my roasting pan!! Akoni did a great job carving the turkey!








I made a homemade pumpkin pie and it was sooooo good!








The "Turkey Sliders" that we had later in the day with leftover Turkey! MMMMMMMmmmmmmm soooooo goooood!!!




I hope everyone else had a Great Thanksgiving!!

School Turkey Craft

Adriann made this really cute outfit at school for Thanksgiving so she had to model it (I'm not sure what sign she is flashing?), and of course so did Kenyon!

The end of the Soccer season!

Well Adriann finished soccer and had a blast. Here are just some pictures of her with her medal and trophy!

Kenyon slept in his bed all night!!

So we are having a big issue with Kenyon every morning at anywhere between 1 and 3am, coming and banging on our door because he wants to sleep with us. It drives me CRAZY!! Anyway, last night he finally slept the whole night in his own room without waking up at all until 7:30am when he came into our room crying because he had wet his bed! Probably because I always take him to the bathroom when I am walking him back into his room in the early morning hours, and because he always goes at 5:30 when I leave for work. But I will take the wet bed any day over having him not sleep with us at night!!

So we saw the movie last night!! I liked it, but I don't know if I loved it......How did everyone else feel? There were certain things that were great about it, but it was so different from the book. I am so glad that I had read the book first because I knew all the extra stuff that wasn't in the movie, but it was fun to see it all acted out. And I can't wait for the next movies!!!

Seeing my Dad in San Fran!

My Dad was up in San Francisco last week, so we drove up to see him for dinner at Hard Rock Cafe. I don't get points for picking that restaurant! I forgot how LOUD it is in there! I don't think I heard anything that anyone said and my ears were ringing the whole ride home. But we did have a fun time seeing my Dad, and the kids LOVE Grandpa, so they had a blast. And he was a good sport and ran around the restaurant looking at all the stuff on the walls with them.


The kids, especially Kenyon, would not leave the instruments by our table on the wall alone!! All he wanted to do was play with this guitar!




Adriann and Kenyon with Grandpa!



Me and my Dad!!


Having Ice Cream on the Pier! It was cold, but who can resist Ben and Jerry's?

Halloween Finally!!!

So here are the pictures from our Halloween FINALLY!! I don't know why it has taken me so long to get them posted. Here is my brief explanation of the pictures.

1-The kids did not want to TOUCH the innerds of the pumpkins. All they wanted to do was poke them with their safety knives, which did nothing and so Akoni and I had pumpkin duty. I scraped all the pumpkins and then carved 1, and Akoni carved the other 2. Mine was the lame spider and the other 2 were Akoni's. Isn't his pirate one cool? We took the other pumpkin to our ward party and it won "creepiest"!!

2-Yes Kenyon technically had 3 costumes this year, if you look at an earlier post he was supposed to be a dragon. He absolutely refused to wear it 5 minutes before we left for our ward party, so he threw on the "skywalker" costume and loved it because he got to carry his light saber! The Rocky costume is what he wore to school because I didn't want his dragon costume to get dirty at their party at school.

3-Adriann's pictures are of her when we were trying out hair color and makeup for her witch costume. I can only imagine the day when she actually wants to dress like that for real!! YIKES!! Even though I think she looks totally cute! And then the other picture of her and Kenyon with their candy is the only other picture I have of her! What a bad mom! But I am on the activities commitee and totally forgot to take pictures. Plus there were no pockets in my costume to carry a camera, see next picture....

4-Akoni had so much fun getting himself ready for Halloween this year! (And no he wasn't trying to be Edward! Except that I could have been pregnant Bella!) I think I finally broke him and he likes to dress up! Yay!! He even superglued fangs on! But then he realized that he couldn't eat with them and I think he had to rip them off! My costume was so much fun. Yes I was a Whoopie Cushion! The kids thought it was hilarious, and people kept asking me if I would lie down so they could sit on me all night! I must say that for being pregnant at halloween this was an extremely comfortable costume! I might wear it every year! It was fun and nobody else had it!

My Mom Came to Visit!!!!

My mom came and visited us for a few days and we had so much fun. She flew into Monterey and I was able to quickly pick her up so she could catch Adriann' soccer game! It was so fun for Adriann to have her Grandma there to see her play, and I know my mom loved being able to watch her.

Mom visit cont....Gilroy Gardens

So we took my mom to Gilroy Gardens and had such a blast! I love this place. I had won 4 tickets from the radio to go, so we waited to go when my mom came. Luckily when she went to buy her ticket, she was going to buy a youth ticket because they are cheaper, she ended up winning her ticket!! She was the 500th youth or something like that and so she got her ticket free from the radio station that was sponsoring that day. We lucked out with the weather also. It ended up being a beautiful day. We went on tons of rides and Adriann even went on one of the big kid roller coasters with Akoni. They were having a scavenger hunt while we were there and so the kids had to go and find booths around the park and got little prizes and a candy. It was tons of fun. My mom had just visited my older sister and they went to Disneyland, so this was a lot smaller than that park, but it is totally made for little kids and there are only 2 rides that Adriann can't go on and everything else they just need chaperones, so it's perfect for our kids.

Kenyon wanted so bad to drive one of the cars this year, the line was way too long last year, so we waited it out and I must say.......he is a horrible driver!!! But he had so much fun. He kept saying, "Mom, I'm the best driver!" and in between the whiplash and being thrown around the car I had to agree with him!! It's a good thing he has years and years to practice!