Venice Beach anyone?

Yesterday after church, we headed down to Santa Monica Pier and Venice Beach. Jason, Stephanie's boyfriend, has never been to California. And as I have said before, if you have never been here and you do visit, Venice Beach is an absolute must. It is by far the best people watching I have seen in my entire life. It is a whole different lifestyle down there. From medical marijuana being sold on the street, random people trying to find their 15 minutes of fame by singing, Muscle Beach to the two homeless people having sex on the beach (in front of everyone)!

Oh but it was so cold there yesterday!!!! Well it was mainly super windy.

Walking in Venice Beach...
Stephanie and Jason on the beach...

The speedo guy! Sorry about the bad picture. For some reason it came out so dark that the only way you could see his speedo was if I lightened everything around him. This guy is there every single time we have been there! But he upgraded his speedo from the American Flag to basic black.

And ok seriously?! Butt Cheeks anyone? How can you not know your skirt is that short?

And the weekend is over. Short but sweet trip. Time to say good-bye to Auntie Stephanie.

And Jason

Scott and his littlest sis.

We hope you two had a good visit. It was nice having you!

Simi Valley Cajun Festival

Saturday we went to the Simi Valley Cajun Festival. We went a couple years ago and it was so much fun. Look how much William has grown up since the last time we went!

Here are the guys!

We had a great time eating a ton of Cajun food and the kids had a great time on the bouncy slides.

I think this one had a little too much fun. It was so loud with the bands and he slept like a baby! And we DANCED!!!

Me and Stephanie

Stephanie and Jason.

Me and Scott. We never have many pictures together so it was fun to have a few.

We were there for over 7 hours so you can imagine the sunburns the Missouri kids got :) LOL. This is why I am not ashamed to use 50 SPF! Ha. It was a really fun filled day.

Another Six Flags kind of Day!

Can you imagine how shocked the boys were when they woke up after a Six Flags day and I asked them if they wanted to do something fun again today?! William's response was, "oh can we go to the park?" Harry's response was, "oh, can we go to the gym?" I said, "nope, lets do something more fun." And William responded with, "There is something more fun than the gym?!" OMG!!! Anyway, we went to the airport to pick up Aunt Stephanie and her boyfriend, Jason. On a side note, I have to tell you what Harry did when I said Aunt Stephanie was coming. When he found out that Aunt Kelly wasn't coming with her, his face got all puckered and pitiful and he said, "not Kelly?" He was so upset. Ok, onto the original post.

So we picked them up from the airport and headed to Six Flags!
Stephanie and Jason Jason has never rode a roller coaster before. Here is his very first one (with William). He started off easy until Stephanie made him ride The Viper that flips 7 times!

Harry Trapped!

Scott met us there after work and rode some rides with us.

A tradition at Six Flags...I'm sure you have seen similar pictures of this game on other posts.

William could talk anyone into anything.

Silly Willy

Stephanie, Jason, Will and Harry.

We stayed at the park relatively late and then went to Los Torros for dinner. It's our favorite Mexican restaurant here and we are determined to make everyone else enjoy it as much as we do :) The boys fell asleep at the restaurant. They were worn out from two back to back days at Six Flags. I don't blame them :)

A Six Flags kind of day!

Things have been so busy lately. My friend Shawn and I decided to take some time for quality family play. So last Thursday, we took the kids out of school an hour early and headed over to Six Flags for some fun. We even closed down the park! Here is William with Nicholas. William on the roller coaster. There were no lines so him and Nicki kept running to get back into line. This was their favorite ride.

I also learned that we could ride the log jammer. It's the water ride with two big drops. The boys absolutely loved it. I would scream on the drops and Harrison would laugh. I told him, "Harry, will you scream with me? This is one time you are aloud to scream as loud as you want." He thought I was funny.

Miss Shawn with Harrison.

Michael and Harrison.

The boys fell asleep as we were leaving the parking lot. They fell asleep by 7pm and slept through the entire night until 6:30 the next morning!!!!

Palm Desert Vacation 2011

We had such a FANTASTIC mini getaway over the weekend. We made a very last minute decision to get away for a couple days. After T-Ball on Saturday, we headed to Palm Desert, CA. Here is a view from the drive. On the way, we stopped in Cabazon to see the "World's Biggest Dinosaurs." The boys love dinosaurs so we thought this was a perfect opportunity to explore. They enjoyed mining for treasures...

And finding a lot!

We had fun climbing inside the T-Rex all the way to his mouth. Here is William being a scary dinosaur!

And here is the outside shot of where we were.

We stayed at the JW Marriott Resort and Spa. I have to say we lucked out. This resort was awesome and nothing like I have seen before. They had so much to do there. Here is the view from our room looking over the mini golf course included in our package. Since we didn't have time to golf, the boys said we have to go back. I agree!

Here is the thing I haven't seen before. The property is over 400 acres. So they built a man made lake on the property. The amazing thing is that the hotel is 8 stories high. One wall is all windows and the lake comes inside the lobby where there are boats waiting to take you on a tour or to dinner. The boys LOVED this. You could walk to dinner much faster but it was definitely more fun to get a boat ride there.

We did a LOT of swimming. The boys were little fishies. And I have to say that Harrison is not afraid of anything. William respects the water and gets scared if we don't hold onto him (even with a life jacket). Harrison, on the other hand, listens to all instructions and can swim! It wasn't hard to teach him at all. I was surprised. It was really hard to get them out of the pool. It was so much fun and I have a sunburn to prove it :)

Family picture!

Here is a picture from the boat ride. I thought this was pretty. The whole grounds were so beautifully maintained.

Can you tell we took several boat rides?

They also had exotic birds in the lobby. "Cowboy" was the boys favorite because he talked to them. Dinner was fun. One night we went to Mikado, the Japanese Steak House. We have been to Japanese Steak houses before but this one was by far my favorite. The chef did so many tricks, made music, jokes, etc.

Even when it was time to catch the shrimp in our mouths, he went a step further after we caught them at the table. He made Scott moved across the restaurant to catch more! He's the guy in blue in the very back!

On Monday, we checked out but headed over to "The Living Desert" which is a zoo in Palm Desert. I LOVED this zoo. The exhibits were so large that you couldn't even see the end of the cages. I loved this because I often feel so sorry for animals in the small cages. They let these animals be in the most normal habitat possible.

We had such a great time! The boys did great and we even received several compliments on how well behaved they were. Now I am not so scared to take them on a big vacation. The switch did flip as soon as we got home and immediately were in time out within minutes of getting home. At-least they know how to behave in public, right?! It was so refreshing to get away and not worry about anything else. We had 3 rules on the trip: 1. Have fun. 2. Behave 3. Eat. The boys repeated these several times. Maybe I just need to remind them of these at home too. I took so many great pictures, I decided to put them in a slide show. Have fun looking!

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Happy Birthday Scott

May 13th is Scott's 32nd Birthday. I let this year be all about the boys. We spent some time at the mall looking for the perfect present for Daddy. Of-course that comes along with some rides...

When is came to the cake, I decided to order one this year opposed to making one. So the boys and I visited the bakery. I let them browse through the entire book of cakes and told them it was up to them to pick the cake but to remember, "the cake is for Daddy, not for you so please pick a cake out that Daddy would like." I reminded them of this several times. And even when the assistant was taking the order, she asked, "is this what your Daddy would like?" And they were very confident with their YES.

Scott came home a little early tonight so we were able to celebrate with cake and ice cream and open presents early.

The card the boys picked out for Scott.

And cake they picked out perfect for Scott and nobody else.... even though it came with bath time water squirters that you know Scott is going to use....

Blowing out the candles.

The Birthday boy.

The fun part about having a 3 and 4 year old is that right before you open any present, they tell you EXACTLY what is inside including EVERY detail so there is nothing left to the imagination :) I love kids! This evening, I took Scott to Cafe Firenze for dinner. Fabio, the chef, was the fan favorite on Top Chef Season 5 and is the owner/partner. I managed to get a "Chef's Table" reservations that included a 5 course meal accompanied by Fabio himself. Well what do you know, he was out of town filming so we got his apprentice instead. It was still a fabulous meal. It was a great experience.

And now a very last minute decision, we are taking a mini vacation to Palm Desert, CA after T-Ball tomorrow morning. We are excited to have some quality family time together with no other distractions. More posts (obviously) to come on that.

Happy Birthday Scott. I am so blessed to have you as my husband and the best dad to our boys!