Even though Jeff and I were sick, we knew we had to carve the pumpkins for the kids. This was before they got sick. Lindsay had gone to a pumpkin patch with her preschool class and picked out a pumpkin for her and because she’s the sweetest girl in the world, she also picked one out for Logan. I didn’t even ask her to do that, she just did! Logan was thrilled through the roof that he got one too and I could tell that Lindsay was really happy that she made him so happy. It was cute! (She picked out a white pumpkin for him and we learned later that they aren’t as easy to carve as orange pumpkins). Then Jeff and I picked out a big one at the store, so we had three to carve. We did simple faces on all of them and the kids got to pick the shapes of the eyes, nose and mouth. They helped me gut the pumpkins and then daddy carved them. I love this simple tradition and I love seeing the lit jack-o-lanterns on Halloween. I love watching the excited faces on my kids and remembering myself what it was like to be a kid on Halloween. Here are some pictures.
Helping daddy draw the faces

Gutting the pumpkins



Jeffy carving away

The kids being cute



The kids and the finished jack-o-lanterns. Jeff told them to make a scary face in this picture…

…are you scared yet?
Now just a smiling picture

So, we’re all sick. The week started out with just me, then by Tuesday it was me and Jeff and by today, it’s all four of us. No. Fun. We’ve been blessed with wonderful friends who so willingly took the kids for us those first couple of days so that we could get some rest, but now that we’re all sick, we have each other to cough upon. It’s so hard to watch your kids be sick and not have the energy to do much for them because you’re sick yourself. Just to clarify, we don’t have the swine flu, just some brutal colds. I have to be honest, I had expected us all to get a little something after coming back from California and the cruise. We almost always get sick when we come back from California, just from the change in the air, but it’s usually just a stuffy nose or something. But this time we went to Mexico as well so who knows what kind of air they have there. Stupid Mexico and their stupid warm air…

Anyone have any good Halloween movies we can watch on Saturday, in case we’re still sick and can’t go trick-or-treating?

June 2007

October 2009

My babies are getting so big…

Um, yeah.

I love Halloween. I. LOVE. IT. I don’t necessarily like to dress up, but I love seeing the cute little kids in their costumes. I mean really, what is more cute???

This year Lindsay is Supergirl and Logan is a backhoe driver. And really that’s just a fancy name for construction worker. But honestly, so cute.

Today we went to Patti’s Halloween party and every year she does such a great job! She always has great food, fun games and there’s always a pinata!
Here’s some pictures:
Lindsay waiting in line to throw a water sponge at Cory’s face.

Seriously, she’s so pretty!!

She almost got him!

Logan and I stood on the sidelines and watched.

Thanks Patti for a fun time!

After that we went to our ward’s Trunk-or-Treat. I think this is the best idea ever! Not too long after we go there, Lindsay spotted Superman across the parking lot and she just HAD to go over there and say hi. Aren’t they cute??

Here we all are.

I’m so glad there is still another week of October and more reasons for the kids to dress up. Yay!

I don’t really know how to post about this cruise except put pictures up. The cruise was awesome! We had a wonderful time spending the entire week together, doing things we’ve never done before. Before the cruise, I think the kids had a hard time picturing the cruise ship. They were probably just thinking it was a regular boat or something, so when we drove up and they saw this HUGE ship, they were both shocked.

Even Jeff and I were blown away by the size of this thing! The first day on the ship was mostly just walking around and getting a feel for things and checking everything out. We got a room with a balcony, which was really nice to sit out there and relax, but if I was to do it again, I probably wouldn’t get a balcony, at least with the kids. It was so nerve racking having them out there, wanting to hang over the edge and look down. I think they were trying to give me a heart attack. Here are some pictures before we set a few ground rules, literally. They were to keep their feet on the ground!

Lindsay had the camera so I don’t have any of her hanging over the edge, but believe me, she was, too!

We were all so excited!

Our room was pretty neat. It was big and small, but just right. It was weird.
Here was the entrance with the bathroom to the right and closets on the left.

Big closets with shelves to put all of our clothes and suitcases.

The cute little bathroom with the tiniest shower ever!

View from the entrance. Isn’t it cute?

Logan slept on the little couch/bed next to ours, and then a bed came down from the ceiling for Lindsay. I think the kids thought this was more fun/cool than the Kid’s Club. Too funny!

Every night on the cruise, they have shows in their big theater and I think we went to most of them.

This was us on the first show.

Every show was mostly just singing and dancing and although they were good, they weren’t great, but they were entertaining. Mostly because they had this guy:

Hello 40 year old guy. Everyone else was in their 20′s, early 30′s and then this guy. It was creepy.
While we went to the show, the kids spent some time in the Kid’s Club and this is what they looked like when we picked them up:

They had themes every day in the Kid’s Club and that night it was Princes and Princesses. They had a good time but when we picked them up, Logan was burning up. I went down the infirmary and got him some Ibu and Tylenol and got him started on some. He woke up with a fever and slowly it went down as the day went on. But he was pretty fussy and uncooperative most of the trip. Here’s an example of what he looked like most of the time:

He ended up getting an ear infection and so once we got him on some antibiotics (on Thursday evening) he was doing much better. It didn’t ruin the trip for us though.

Tuesday was a bad day. There was a tropical storm headed north toward Cabo and we were headed south toward Cabo…yeah, that doesn’t sound good, right? So we had to go around the storm and because we were going around it, we had to go faster to make up time and because of the storm the water was choppier and so that made for a VERY rocky day. The boat was rocking back and forth and side to side. We literally slept most of the day because that kind of movement just makes you tired. Good thing it only lasted that one day and then it was over.

In the kid’s club they had a build a bear type thing and so the kids each made a Pirate Puppy, but they call them Pirate Teddy.

One night on our balcony, there was a weird bug that we had never seen before and when we took a picture, he looked like he was glowing! So cool!

We took naps almost every afternoon and it was wonderful! And we would sleep from like 3-5:30pm sometimes! Only on a vacation where time doesn’t matter can you do that! It rocked! After one of these naps, Logan woke up drenched in sweat.

Isn’t that crazy!?
Our first stop was Puerto Vallarta and we didn’t take any pictures. Go figure. We took the kids to a water park and it was alright. It was fun, but not as fun as we had hoped. The kids couldn’t go on much and we ended up leaving early because we were done. I think it’s our new tradition, to leave water parks in Mexico early and take a taxi home. The kids had fun though and that’s all that matters.
Our second stop was Mazatlan and we didn’t get off of the boat because there wasn’t anything we wanted to do. It was beautiful though and reminded me of Greece or something. I’ve never been there but it reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of it. This was the only picture we took and honestly we were trying to take a picture of Mr. Smelly in the jersey. He literally wore that jersey every day of the cruise. And he was just plain creepy. His jersey had number 69 and ‘players’ on it. He was so high quality…

One of the most fun things we did was play at the Splash park with the kids. Logan didn’t like it the first day but once he got on his meds he enjoyed it.



A sad boy in a lot of pain. It was right after this that we took him to the doctor on the boat.

Every night we had dinner reservations at the Black Pearl restaurant which was beautiful! We didn’t go every night but when we did, it was fun. Our waiter’s name was Mamat and the kids thought that was hilarious. When we first met him, he said ‘My name is Mamat, it’s like Mama.’ He was a cute old Asian man who was so nice to us. Every night they folded the napkins into something different and one night they did candles and the kids pretended to blow them out.


We’re so cute.

A happier Logan and happy Lindsay at a Rock ‘n Roll show.

Our last stop and by far our favorite was Cabo. Cabo didn’t feel like Mexico. It felt more exotic. Cabo is beautiful and it has everything. Mountains, hills, ocean, beaches, cliffs, you name it, it was there. It was so pretty.


We couldn’t dock at the pier in Cabo so we got to ride on these little tender boats to and from the boat.

The kids loved it and they both were telling the big pelicans to move out of the way. Pelicans are cool, too. Not very bright, but cool.
We chose a semi-submarine ride for Cabo and it was so fun! The boat reminded us of the submarine ride at Disneyland. It was even yellow.

We got to see one of the oldest boats still in working condition. I think the guy said it was from the 1870′s. Crazy.

At first we rode on the top part of the boat, but after a few minutes, they took us below and that’s when we got to see all the fish. It was so neat! They had these little fish index cards with pictures and names of the fish we might see. Lindsay was so cute and wanted me to find each one of the card, including the little reef sharks. Logan wanted to see everything.The kids loved it…



…unless you’re two and then of course every good thing comes to an end…

(Yep, this picture will bring lots of laughs in the years to come)
Then after about 20 minutes under we came back up and they showed us some pretty awesome things.
These cliffs that were out in the water had these neat caves in them. It was so cool.

This was called The Arch. Doesn’t it look like a dinosaur leaning over to get a drink of water?

Isn’t it pretty??? I just love the color of the water.

Another neat cave.

Out among these cliffs and caves is a group of sea lions, and this one sea lion had perched himself on this rock and had posed himself. He stayed like that the whole time we were going around.


That’s a lot of sea lions.

Maybe not everything in Cabo is pretty…

After the sub ride, we walked around a bit and ended up getting ice cream. Logan proved that a two year old + Mexico+ ice cream=a big mess.

This was our favorite towel creation the whole week. It’s a monkey hanging from the ceiling!

This was one of our other favorites.

At one point, Lindsay got a hold of the camera and this is what followed:



*YIKES*
Lindsay with Fun Ship Freddy. He was the mascot, I guess, and he was in the Kid’s Club quite a bit.

We really did have an enjoyable time and we look back on it with nothing but happy memories. I love my family and I love being with them. I actually got really sad the night before we were to dock in Long Beach. Traveling with kids always has it’s ups and downs but even with those we did have a great time. We learned once again that we have great kids and I’m so grateful for them. I really do think the kids grew closer on this cruise because since we’ve been home, they have been great together. I know they love each other so much and I love seeing that.


Thank you Digicert for giving us this opportunity to go somewhere new and spend time together. Thank you!

While we were in California, we got to go visit my grandparents. I love going to visit with them. It’s always so special spending time with them. They still have so many stories to tell. They kids are always a little shy, but Lindsay will at least give them hugs and talk with them, Logan is still a little nervous. He did give them hugs when we left though. My grandma is so cute and always has new little toys for the kids to open and play with when we’re there. The kids love it! My grandma used to be a teacher and so she wanted Lindsay to read for her so Lindsay grabbed a book and started reading. She picked ‘Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day’. I forgot how much I like that book.

My grandma was floored by how well Lindsay can read and she said she’d be surprised if she spends more than one day in Kindergarten. I guess we’ll see.
Then she read a book to grandpa and it was so sweet to see her up on his lap.

My grandpa is an amazing man and even though he is 92, he is still so strong. I love this picture of him and Lindsay, seeing the difference between old and young…

I love that my kids get this opportunity to get to know their great grandparents. We love you Grandma and Grandpa Bocker!! See you at Christmas time!

The kids and their friends are into picnics lately. They love to get out the green blanket, throw it outside on the grass and eat crackers or popsicles. It really is cute and I’m sad for them when it gets cold and they won’t be able to do it anymore. At least, not outside…

Lindsay, Logan, Matthew and Angel

We went to the circus the end of September and I’m not sure why I never posted about it. The circus can be summed up in one word: AWESOME! It was totally worth every penny and we all enjoyed it!! They do so many crazy and impossible things that you literally just have to keep watching to see what happens next. The kids really liked the elephants and the tigers, and the part where they shot two girls out of cannons all the way across the arena. That was my favorite part, too. I didn’t want it to end but of course it had to. It was fun being there as a family and watching the kids watch the excitement. When the tightrope walkers and the other crazy flippy people were doing their stuff, I leaned down and told Lindsay that if she keeps up with gymnastics she could someday do those things and she thought that was pretty cool. We didn’t get very many pictures because our battery died, but here are just a few.

A funny clown

How they do all that with just fabric, I will never understand.

The kids watching the elephants at the beginning.

Apparently, elephant can paint. Who knew!

It was so fun and we can’t wait until the circus comes to town again!

I promise an update soon…