The Young and the Restless

Party in Iowa

I'm still recovering from all the crazy late night parties in Iowa, so that's why it's taken me so long to post this :). The Saturday before Thanksgiving we woke the kids up at 5:30 to catch our 8:00 flight. After being on the plane for 3 1/2 hrs. we landed in Chicago, then met my parents and we caravaned another 4 hours to my sister's house in Iowa. It was a loooooong day, but so worth it! The kids were quite the troopers, I was proud of them. We were in a rush to get to her house because my nephew, Taylor was getting baptized that night. We were so excited that we could be there for the special occasion. Janessa is my absolute best friend and so we were dying for a chance to hang out, not to mention that our kids were so excited to play together too. Janessa is an amazing host--we ate way too much, stayed up way too late and laughed way too loud (just ask the husbands-they complained that they couldn't sleep because we were up all night laughing :) We stayed at her house until Wednesday morning and she had a fun-packed full agenda planned for us. Thanks so much, Janess for an awesome trip! Since pictures say a thousand words (and I don't have time to type a thousand words), here it goes: (okay, so I lied--I just got finished and I think I typed way more than a thousand words and I know I posted way too many pictures, but for the journaling sake I didn't want to forget anything from our fun trip, so feel free to skim through)

Pizza Tour:

In Janessa's ward they have a "lunch bunch" and while we were there they happened to have scheduled a tour of a pizza parlor so we got to tag along. The kids had fun making their own pizzas (Jayden took this job very seriously), touring the kitchen and then we all had fun eating pizza for breakfast (the tour was from 9-11 before the restaurant opened. Who knew pizza could taste that good that early in the morning!)

Children's Museum:

They have an awesome Children's museum here that my kids absolutely loved last time, so my only request while we were there was that we could make a return trip and Janessa was nice to make that possible. It did not disappoint. We could have spent all day there, the kids had a blast! We were sad that Taylor and Abby had to go to school that day, that Ricky had to work on his disortation and also that Jason had to stay and get some stuff done for work (although I think he did that on purpose in order to avoid an estrogen overload)

notice every picture of Jayden is the exact same profile view, just a different background. Unless I have something worth bribing him with, then this is the result.

Raptor Reserve:

After the museum we picked up Taylor and Abby from school and went hiking around to see this cool raptor reserve (mind you, all these activities are in the same day--did I or did I not mention that this was an action packed couple of days). It's a place where they keep injured birds while they nurse them back to health. We saw a one-eyed owl (pretty freaky if you ask me), a one-winged hawk (ditto on the freakishness), a vulture and the coolest was a bald eagle. I've never seen one up close and I was a little disappointed when the kids were more fascinated with the unidentified huge half-eaten rodent that was for his dinner. It was so fun to see all of the fall leaves and we even saw several deer close by. It was beautiful scenery, but was starting to get a little creepy once the sun started going down and we were husband-less out in the dark woods. It didn't help that as we were walking up to our car there was another strange vehicle parked right next to us and we hadn't seen anyone else the whole time we were there.....hmm, just glad we made it back safe and had a fun little outing.

Tot Time:

The next morning we went to their Rec Center where they have open gym time with lots of toys for the kids to play with. It was a fun way to spend a cold morning. After that we went to Abby's pizza party at school and even got to eat some of Taylor's Thanksgiving feast with him. Kylie loved going to see what their school looked like and even got to play with Abby at recess.

Ice Skating:

Janessa and I were so excited about this, but the boys on the other hand were a little skeptical about taking 6 kids under the age of 8 ice-skating for the first time (maybe they had good reason to be), but in the end it was a unanimous decision that, yes, the wives are always right. Everyone had a blast (minus a few falls, of course) and Taylor, Abby and Kylie really picked it up good (Kambry may have been good if she ever managed to let go of the side and Jayden would have had a chance if he managed to peel himself off of me :)

Okay, this picture cracks me up everytime I see it! As we were walking up Jayden was watching all of the ice skaters gracefully twirling on the ice and turned to me and said "I really good that, mom". His cockiness got the best of him as he ran out ahead of me on the ice and took a major fall. After that it was pretty much like the picture above, or at best gripping on to both of my hands.

There's something about ice-skates on Jason that just look, well, dainty. I think he was a little offended when they asked him if he preferred figure skates. Don't worry, hon, you still look hot :)

Jayden thought it was so funny to scoot around on the ice--for about one minute. Then he freaked out because it was so cold.