St. Patrick's Day!

Well, I know it has been a little while since my last post ;) And figured it is time to get back on the ball! Instead of trying to catch up, I am going to just start fresh from now or it would be a lot of posts! Anyway, I LOVE traditions!!!! So much! But never really had any for St. Patrick's Day, except for wearing green, and the occasion green themed foods. So this year I really wanted to make it fun for the kids! I found some really fun ideas all over the web, oh what would I do without it!

Anyway, first off I told Mason all about leprechauns, some stories and tales. We learned that they are tricky, mischievous little buggers that LOVE gold! And if you catch one, he has to give you all his gold too. So we built a trap this year, we found the design and instructions online. When you lift of the fake pot of gold, the cage (disguised as a cloud) falls down to trap whatever tried to take the gold! It was alot of fun to make and really made the kids excited for St. Patrick's Day.

We set out the trap the night before St. Patrick's Day and waited for what the next morning would bring! Well, unfortunately we did not catch anything :( But we did get a visit and some interesting surprises! Now we can't be sure what exactly happened that night but here is our theory from the evidence....

We decided to leave out a bowl of Lucky Charms cereal (leprechaun's favorite!) to entice the leprechaun to come to our house in hopes of catching him. From the looks of it, he came in through our back door, onto the counter top and ate some.... but only the marshmallows!



Then we figured he went down the counter and saw the pot of gold we left out on the trap...
The trap went off, but not fast enough because it looks like he got away! Though he did leave behind a $1 gold coin and a little note.
Then we follow the footprints down the hall
After researching leprechauns online to prepare for this day, I did learn that they are shoe makers, and really have quite a fetish for shoes. I also learned that if you leave a pair of shoes out, they might fill them with treats, or just steal them.... Luckily ours were filled with chocolate coins, candy, and shirts! What a nice little leprechaun!

After filling our shoes, I guess he needed to take a potty break and forgot to flush... kinda nasty!
... and play with the toilet paper a bit too
Then it looks like he headed back down the hall and out the back door.
Well that is our hypothesis from what we could see...
the kids really got a kick out the little visit, but decided to build a better trap next year to ensure victory!!! Here are the kids wearing the St. Patty finery..
The rest of the day, we played and had a fun 'green' dinner with some family. I made these green cupcakes and decorated them with some printables I found online too.
It was a really fun day and will try to do this or something similar every year! I hope it creates some fun memories for the kids when they get older!

Oh Christmas Tree(s)

I have been so excited for Chrismas this year, I am not sure why this year is any different, but I am! Even so that we set up our Christmas before we left to Disneyland. The kids were really into it this year too. So I took out some old little pine trees that we had at our old home and let the kids each put one in their room and decorate for their own with some old ornaments we saved. It was so cute to see them get all excited and put on each one. One of my hopes is that since they each have their own tree to play with is that they will leave our big one alone... I guess only time will tell. We decorated our tree a little differently this year, something I have had in mind for while actually. I simply adore snowmen! They are so cute and chubby. I wanted to go with kind that this year and the colors fit our family room perfectly too. I found most of the decoration as Quilted Bear in SL. My favorite detail is the top hat! The tree was covered in black ornaments, various snowman ornaments, berries, snowflakes, and mini top hats. I wanted to do something fun to kick of December, so last night we took the kids to Festival of Trees. I asked Mason if he wanted to go look at a bunch of Christmas trees and he said yes, but after about 8 rows he said he didn't want to see THIS many trees! Here are some of our favorites that we saw:
Coca Cola Bear theme I guess trees don't have to be just for Christmas anymore... Pirate theme, one of the things I love the most is all the detail people put into the whole setup! Ginormous Snoopy How fun are all the characters! Disney characters Harry Potter And Mason's absolute favorite... I think mainly because of the tree toppers... They had some clowns there tying balloons for donations, so we got one for them to keep them entertained. Mason's gun Avery's flower that soon became a 'gun' too It was a fun evening and kind of a nice way to kick off Christmas, we may do this again next year.

Disneyland Vacation

The week before Thanksgiving David's parents took us to Disneyland for vacation. It was so awesome of them to take us, seriously so blessed with my inlaws! They are the best! It was the first time for kids, and needless to say they were excited!
We were to fly from SL to Long Beach and then drive to our hotel in Anaheim. This was also the kids first time flying. Mason was super excited, but not so much for Avery. She fussed and cried most of the time when she had to wear her seat belt, but was pretty good when it was off. The seat had little TV's in the back that kept them entertained for a bit. We ended up not being able to land in Long Beach due to fog and had to be diverted to LAX, weight for 2 hours -ON THE PLANE- then fly back to Lang Beach to land and get our luggage. Needless to say that Avery had enough of airplanes and was not a happy camper. But we eventually made it and they both crashed as soon as we got our car.

The next morning we headed straight to Disneyland. We spent three days there and did both parks. It was SO much fun and the kids just loved it. Here are some highlights from the weekend.... Avery was super excited to meet Tinkerbelle and a bunch of other characters.She would not stop talking to most of them and was hard to try and take a picture! Silly thing Even though the weather was a bit more on the colder side, Mason still enjoyed doing all the water rides like canoeing, splash mountain, and the grizzly river run. We picked up some ponchos at Walmart before we left for just the occasion. One of the fun things about Disneyland is that they have tons of parades and little shows all over the parks and throughout the day. They were fun to watch. There was also a Wilderness Explorer training camp were they could 'earn badges' and was great for the kids to run around and play. Mason was so excited to do the zip line and rock wall. We missed Doug and Russell and the end which was kind of a bummer, but was still a blast. Random 'cool face' pose taken in line for a ride Jedi Training! We were all so excited when Mason got chosen as one of the kids to go up. Thanks goodness too! It was so cute, he went crazy just hitting Darth Vader wherever he could! Then when he was done, he kept asking me if I saw how good he did! So proud of my little Jedi! While Mason went on some of the larger rides, I took Avery to see Princesses. No trip to DL isn't complete without a trip to seeing them (if you have a girl), and she is such a girly girl! Her absolute fave is Ariel! Our last day at Disneyland rained A LOT! We hung out and drank hot chocolate in a covered place and waited for it to let up a bit. The kids didn't want to leave and once we decided that it wasn't going to stop, we just went decided the heck with it and went on more rides. It actually wasn't too bad because most of the people left and we were already soaked so it didn't matter too much. The morning before we left we took the kids to the beach to see the ocean. They had such a fun time watching all the surfers and seaguls. Avery loved looking out at the water and saying "pretty sparkly". We had milkshakes at a little diner on the pier then David took the kids down by the water. They had fun looking for seashells and playing in the sand. Avery was scared of the waves but Mason had so much fun running in and out chasing them. Then is was time to head to the airport and fly home. Avery wasn't really looking forward to getting back onto a plane, but it sure beats driving! Thanks Grandpa and Grandma Hanna for the best trip ever! We love you guys so much!