New Blog!

I've run out of space at this blog address and have created a new blog at http://ouroddquad.blogspot.com/?m=1 Please join us over there! :)

Nature Hike and More

It was a glorious day today in Iowa!! :) I know we have limited days like this left this year, so we tried to enjoy as much outdoor time as we could.  I took the kids on a nature walk. They LOVE going exploring in the wooded area near our home, it's one of their favorite things to do.

Stella in a tree.

Walking along the stream.

Climbing on dead trees.

The kids were signed up for a 5 week session of basketball through a local Parks and Rec program.  It was their 1st time ever taking a basketball clinic and they really had a lot of fun and improved a lot.

Porter is in a yellow shirt passing the ball to his friend Evan. Such a small world, my good friend from college, Anica, had her boy Evan signed up for this same clinic. We had no idea until the 1st night we were there! The boys loved seeing each other each week.

Even during basketball, Stella found time to do gymnastic moves! LOL! Here she is doing a backbend.

Dribbling up the court. She also had a good friend from school in her class. She loved that of course! It was so nice that they each had a friend to pair up with in the class.

We celebrated Rex's 2nd birthday last weekend. :)  He was thrilled, can't you tell??

Last weekend we had another warm Saturday. The kids and I went on a walk around the neighborhood and collected things from nature to make art out of. We stopped by a local neighborhood park for the kids to play at.

Stella LOVES playing with her dolls, especialy playing school. She lines them up and then she's the teacher. It is so cute. :)

Today we bought Cosmo his Christmas outfit. Rex has his Santa "Paws" outfit. Now Cosmo has his Reindeer outfit. I think he likes it just as much as Rex likes his outfit!! ha ha

 The highlight of the day was a stop at Orange Leaf. The kids were being pretty obnoxious earlier in the day and had this treat taken away. Luckily for Mike and I they were able to earn it back!! Yum!!

Fall Activities

We've had a fun and action packed fall, I've been really bad about updating my blog. At the end of September we headed north to Center Grove Orchard. It was a wonderful sunny, warm day and we all enjoyed spending the day doing all the things the orchard has to offer.

One of their favorite spots is the corn pit.

Another favorite is the jump pillow!! :)

The corn maze was really fun, but hot. Luckily we had a bottle of water with us while we made our way through and found each station. We also picked out our pumpkins there, I uploaded a photo of the kids with the pumpkins, but now it's not here??

Last week we met the Little's to Trick or Treat at Homemakers!

On Sunday we headed to Newton for Mike to experience the Iowa Speedway. I bought him a package for his birthday to drive a race car. He took an hour long class, then they let them loose on the race track. He drove 17 laps and had a great time!

Sunday afternoon Stella's Brownie Troop put on a Spooky Skate at Skate West. Fun times had by all! By the end Porter was skating all by himself! :)

At the beginning of October we celebrated Mike's birthday and his parents were able to join us for his special day. :)

Last week we also carved pumpkins. The kids drew their own faces and this year Stella carved and scooped out the pumpkin all on her own! She made hers look like a ghost face.

Porter's drawing with a "mean mouth", he's doing the same mouth in the photo.

Hard at work.

Last night was Beggar's Night here in Central Iowa and that's when all the kids go Trick or Treating. We lucked out with decent weather, you never know what it's going to be like on Halloween! Captain America and a Bride.

P with his pumpkin. They were turning a little soggy already.

S with her pumpkin. Today is trash day so I threw them out and when I picked her up it had rotted through the bottom! So disgusting. I had pumpkin "juice" all down my yoga pants carrying it out to the trash. Ick.

With their loot from last night. They just stayed out for an hour, then they were cold so they came home and enjoyed passing out candy. We live on a dead end so we don't get much traffic here for TOTing, I think we had 9 kids total! Today at school are the kids Halloween Parties. I'm Room Mom for P's class this year and the party should be a lot of fun! :)

Here's a pic of Stella from Spooky Skate, it didn't upload the first time, with a couple of girls from her grade.

Walt Disney World (Part 2)

I think I hit a photo overload on the previous post, Blogger wouldn't let me add anymore photos. So here is our last day of our trip, Epcot.  To be really honest we could of spent a lot more time at Epcot, but we were beat by this point! But I really enjoyed Epcot.  This was the kids' least favorite, not as many rides, more educational than the other parks.

Here they are in a shark!!

I was attempting to get a family picture with the Epcot "golf ball" and I call it, in the background, but that just blended into the sky....oh well!

A small parade of patriots. Wish I would of had my piccolo, I could of  joined in!

In a little read phone booth in "Scotland".

Leaving Epcot. We left at 4 and went back to the condo, and swam, did laundry and packed up, all ready to head home the next morning.  We had a great vacation, the weather was wonderful. The kids were (surprisingly!!) amazing! Crowds were not bad at all, but it's always good to get home! :)

Walt Disney World (Part 1)

The past week our family had the times of our lives at the Walt Disney World Parks in Florida! :)

 We stayed at a 2 bedroom condo about 10 minutes from all the Disney Parks.  We flew in around 4 PM, by the time we got our luggage, rental car and got checked into the condo it was about 5:30.  Mike took the kids swimming while I ran to the grocery store.  We had a full kitchen, screened in balcony and washer and dryer. It was great!!

The first full day we headed to Magic Kingdom! It was a blast.

Porter behind the wheel! Yikes!!

Stella outside a ride.

Cinderella's Castle

Getting ready for the night parade (forget what it was called), with their light up light saber and Mouse Ears.

The parade was really amazing. here's Minnie Mouse.

We went hard that first day. We were all beat by the end of the day. Mike and I had planned what park we were going to do what day. There are 4 Disney Parks: Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom and Epcot. 
The second day we had a "down day", where we hung at the pools, played miniature golf and just chilled. That night we went to Downtown Disney where there is a bunch of shopping and restaurants.
The must stop for us was the Lego Store. Here was one of the cool lego sculptures outside the Lego Store.

I had made reservations at the T Rex Cafe for us that night. Enjoying a very large beer!

Oh no! Stella being eaten by a triceratops!

Looks like Porter is in danger, also!!

Day 4 we went to Animal Kingdom (blogger uploaded my photos out of order!). This was Porter's favorite park (Magic Kingdom was Stella's).  The large mountain in the background is actually a very big roller coaster (I forget the name, something about Mt. Everest).  You have to be 44 inches to ride this. Porter is 42.5 (close to 43.5 with his tennis shoes on).  We just kind of pushed him on through and hid him between Mike and I, so he wouldn't get stopped to get measured, he really wanted to ride it!). He made it through and LOVED it!! It was scary even for me, but we all had fun! :) And we also rented a double stroller for our week in Orlando. Best $70 we spent all week! It held our waters, sunscreen, umbrella, sweatshirts, snacks, along with the kids! Definitely recommend! :)

Playing the bongos in "Africa".

Stella with some hippos in the background on a Safari Tour.

We saw a really cool bird show.

Our monkey's with a monkey

There was a fantastic Lion King show at the Animal Kingdom

 


The Animal Kingdom closed at 5 and we had tickets that night for Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party starting at the Magic Kingdom at 7, so we had a couple hours of downtime at the condo to rest up. The kids wore their Halloween costumes, Stella was a bride and Porter was Captain America. This is outside the Haunted Mansion ride at the MK, acting scary.

There was another night time parade, here's Captain Jack Sparrow.

The entrance all lit up for Halloween! We were kind of on the fence whether or not to do the Halloween Party, but we are SO glad we did!! There were hardly any crowds and we were able to walk onto every single ride. We were able to get Porter onto Space Mountain (another ride that was 44 inch height limit)! He was totally pumped. All the most popular rides that had 90+ wait times, we just rode back, to back, to back. It was great. There were able spots around the park to go trick or treating at, which the kids loved. Our kids weren't into meeting/having pictures taken with the characters such as Mickey Mouse, the Princesses, etc (some of those line were at least 60 minutes long!), but if they were the lines for the characters were super short that night too.

We stayed at the parks until 11:30. Porter ZONKED out (Stella is pretending to sleep!), remember we also had done Animal Kingdom earlier that day. I was SO tired!

So the next day, day 5 I believe was our second "down day".  We spent it lounging in the condo, going swimming, Mike and I napped.  I tired to get the kids to nap but they wouldn't! We ordered room service and just had a great time being lazy. :)

 So now we are back to day 3, when we went to Disney's Hollywood Studios. Where I literally ran into my college roommate!! It was so crazy.  I knew they were going to be at Disney, but I had NO clue what park they were going to on what day. Well I was walking down a street (with my head buried in a map) and all of a sudden I get stopped short by my old roommates husband! Totally crazy. Wish I would of gotten a picture!
Here's Mike, Stella and Porter getting ready for the 3D Muppets Skit.

We saw a really cool Beauty and The Beast show.

Ran into a green toy soldier from "Toy Story".

Saw a couple of very cool stunt shows.

Stella hula-hooping at Hollywood Studios.

Hollywood Studios opened at 9, we got there at 9:30 and headed directly to the Jedi Training sign up. (There is SOOOO much to know about Disney and I now know about 1% of it, luckily I have a good friend who knows like 99.9% of all things Disney and she gave me lots of advice otherwise I would of known NOTHING about Jedi Training!).  So we get there 30 minutes after the park opens to sign the kids up for this, they put on shows like ever 40 minutes or so all day long....well we got the VERY LAST time slot of the day at 8PM! I about died. I thought we would be at like 10AM!! But it was worth it, Porter especially LOVED this. I know nothing about Star Wars, but basically the Jedi's fought Darth Vadar and Darth Vadar kept trying to get the young Jedi to join his side.  They did this all on  a stage at Hollywood Studios.  The cool thing about being the last group was that it was dark by that time and so the light sabers lit up.
Here's Stella defeating Darth Vadar.

And Porter.

Continuing on another post. Just one day left! :)