Trip to CA Day 3

Thursday morning we packed, ate lunch and then headed up to Long Beach to board our cruise. My parents really wanted to do a family trip with all the kids and  their families and we all (well, most of us) all thought a cruise would be the best. No one had to clean up, cook and or plan entertainment. My parents were very generous and paid for all the family cruise tickets. THANK YOU!

My brother David and his family didn't want to go on a cruise...something about international waters, so they weren't there. They lost out on a lot of fun. So, it was my mom and dad, us, brother Robert and his wife Sarah and my brother James and his wife Shannon. 

Blake is completely my son when it comes to packing for a trip. He starts plenty in advance. I told him that we didn't need to start packing until Monday, which was one day before we left. So, Monday morning I heard  them upstairs making noise, so I went to check it out. They had all their clothes laid out..starting to pack because well, it was now Monday morning. They were a little concerned because the cruise was 4 days and they each only had 3 Hawaiian shirts...or as they call them Grandpa shirts. 

Anyway, here they are once we got onto the cruise ship.

We immediately went and got ice cream....Dylan was very excited about being able to eat as much ice cream as he wanted. The ice cream and pizza place stayed open 24 hours a day. He kept track of his ice cream...he had 13 ice cream cones during the cruise. He might have had some even during breakfast.

We went to check out the ship. We were on Carnival Imagination. Very fun!

It was docked right next to the Queen Mary. I tried to tell the boys the history of the Queen Mary, but they didn't really care. They just wanted to go swimming.

We went swimming. Blake lost his tooth after he went swimming and eating ice cream cone #2. The tooth fairy did find him that night even. He was pretty excited.

The boys loved the creations the housekeepers made with towels.

We got the kids ready for bed, but they loved looking out the window as we went out of the port and headed off to Mexico.

Trip to CA Day 2

The kids might have woken up a little early. Trying to adjust to the time change is tough. So, I took the boys to the park while Grandma and Grandpa slept and Aaron worked.

After breakfast we went to the beach. The Watts family lived in Texas with us and then moved to Minnesota for about 6 months then moved about an hour from my parents. Cohen and Blake were best buddies (along with Kenny) and Robyn and I are good friends. We wanted to get together with them, but had a pretty busy schedule on our trip, so they met up with us at the beach.

We all really wanted to go to the beach--don't you love Blake's reaction?

Here are Cohen and Blake. They are the same age. They had fun playing together and I had fun catching up with Robyn. I miss her and her family so it was nice to catch up with her.

The boys went boogie boarding.

The Watts--Robyn with sons Issac and Cohen.

Aaron was our photographer so he took several....

and even captured.....

this lovely picture. Hilarious...and not. It was her own son, Cohen who doesn't have the best aim. He might have laughed a whole lot about it, although he did apologize.

We went to the same beach as last year and Grandma and Grandpa were there too, but I didn't get pictures with them. We all had fun, but then it was time to say goodbye and head to see my Grandma.

Here are the boys with their Great-Grandma. She fell and broke her hip a couple months ago and is still recovering. She is 93 years old. Doesn't she look great? She is slowing down, but she is still fully alert and has her great personality.

We are so happy that she is healing. Blake does an amazing job at praying for her every day. My kids are really good at taking silly pictures, but not always awesome at taking not silly pictures. 

Trip to CA Day 1

Tuesday, July 11--we left our house in the morning for the airport for our trip to CA. The airplane had personal TVs which made the kids so happy.

We landed and Grandpa picked us up. We drove to Cafe Rio for lunch and met Grandma there. Cafe Rio--I love that food. Then we went to Grandma and Grandpa's house and swam.

Then we went to my brother David's house and went over to the park to have the boys ride some BMX bikes. We went to the park because Seth and Kaleb (cousins) were there, so Blake and Kaleb rode bikes.

And played some basketball. Then we went back to the house for some dinner.

Stitches Out

Monday, July 10 we went to the doctor to see if we could get Dylan's stitches out. Here is his foot before .

And he got them taken out. His foot hadn't been soaked in water in 2 weeks so it was kind of gross. We washed underneath his foot, but the top part was gross. Later that afternoon we went swimming and his foot looked so much better.

His doctor has boys of his own and knows that Dylan is a typical crazy boy and said that he needed to wear water shoes on our trip to help keep his foot a little more flat when he jumped so that it wouldn't tear open again. 

He was really excited to get his stitches out and I was so happy that they were out and  that we would be able to do all our planned activities on our trip.

Stitches

Thursday we went to the doctor to get stitches out. The doctor who put them in told us he could get them out in 7-10 days. Thursday was day 10. Our doctor look at them and said it wasn't yet healed and we would have to wait until Monday. I told him that we leave Tuesday for our trip which included a cruise. We are praying that it will heal. I questioned the whole 10 days and he said that it usually is more like 2 weeks to heal. It is possible for cut to heal on someone who stays off it and take it easy, but we all know that Dylan doesn't take it easy. Our doctor also noticed that it was a really deep cut. Dylan was really sad because it meant no more swimming for even more days. He is certain that he will get them out on Monday. The doctor did take 1 of the stitches out...the one that looked the best, so he is down to 4 stitches.

4th of July

The morning of the 4th I got a call from my friend, Amber Smart--the one I did one of the half marathons with to see if we wanted to go on their boat with them. We were just going to hangout at the pool so we said yes. We met them and another family in the ward at the lake. Amber is in the boat that is in the water, not getting into the water.

We all went tubing. It was awesome and Dylan's foot was dry.

Aaron with Dylan and then Amber with her son, Adam. She is pregnant right now.

Dylan's face isn't burned...it is the cover over the boat which was red. The weather was actually really nice....for 4th of July in Texas. The water in the lake was really nice, but it was a little choppy.

We got home around 3. We had dinner and then did our own fireworks, well, poppers really. We had originally planned on seeing the fireworks that the city does at 9:45, but we were wiped out.

I hope everyone had a happy 4th of July!

Home Depot

Saturday morning we went to Home Depot for a project. They had a bounce house. It rained that morning so we couldn't do yard work.

Later that day it had dried up so we went outside. Blake was bit by something. We have no idea what it was, but he was screaming in pain. He also threw up. We put ice on it. Blake looked at me at one point and said, "Mom, what else can we do? Can you say a prayer?"

We called poison control to see if we should be concerned  that it was a poisonous friend that attacked Blake. They weren't concerned. The kid didn't sleep well that night. Poor guy. The swelling did go down. I didn't get a great picture of it.

I was ready for the week to be done--these kids had a rough week.

Day at the Park

Friday morning we went to the park. We invited our playgroup, but everyone is out of town. We have had a lot of rain so the kids needed to get some energy out and they had a great time at the park.

That afternoon we went and saw "Cars 3". It was a fun movie. Amazing animation.

Basketball Camp

The boys finished their basketball camp. Dylan did just fine with the stitches while at camp. They learned a lot and had a lot of fun.

This is how Dylan's foot looked 3 days after. Looks so much better, but still a little swollen. Earlier that day we had Reese over to swim. We put a bag on his foot so Dylan could go in the pool.