ON THE ROAD

I've had the whole week off from school, so I decided to take the kiddos on an impromptu trip to Sat Lake City. They'd never been to the Planetarium, so I decided to take them there. (Mostly cause I was trying to find something cheap and fun) Believe me, the planetarium is much more of a "Dad" thing. He could definitely have explained the exhibits better than I could (he's kind of a science geek LOL) but oh well!!
We started out at the cloud exhibit. The kids thought it was pretty dang cool! You'd have thought they'd never seen fog before LOL

 Next was the telescopes.

 Preston was convinced he was getting struck by lightening.... there was no convincing him otherwise.

 The Black Hole exhibit was pretty funny! You insert coins and they spin down into the "Black Hole". Of course, the kids had to give it a try... after his quarter disappeared, he said (VERY LOUDLY) "Wait, did that thing just waste my quarter?" Everyone around us just busted up laughing! Too bad he didn't figure that out BEFORE he wasted the quarter HA!

Racing to see who could turn the light on the fastest.

 Making the pendulum swing

 Who know a globe could be so fascinating?

 I thought boys were from Jupiter....

 Um... it's the moon that doesn't have gravity, baby girl!

 After the planetarium, we went to dinner and then went to ZooLights at the Hogle Zoo. It's really not that great, but the kids thought it was pretty fun! Basically, they just put thousands of Christmas lights up and turn off the other lights. I have to admit, the zoo is CREEPY in the dark. Here they are trying to see the monkeys. It was pretty funny watching them freak out when they discovered that the little eyes staring back at them WERE NOT theirs! HAHA!

 Preston LOVES the giant Elephant at the Zoo. He always has to climb on it and make it "scream"

It was a FUN trip!

The Real "Tis the Season"

You all know that I LOVE Christmas. Usually I go all out with decorations and all, but honestly this year I just wasn't all that into it. We've just been so busy that I haven't had a ton of time to decorate. Oh well, we had a good Christmas anyway! I did, however, get my tree up!

Every year, the 1st graders do a little program and invite the parents to make gingerbread houses with the kids. Preston has gotten to make them with the girls, so he was stoked that it was finally his turn. 

One of my fave traditions is decorating our own stockings. I plan on giving them all of their stockings when they get married. This year, Preston dumped an entire bottle of glitter on his. He said, "Um... lesson learned... you only need just a LITTLE BIT!" hahaha

 Of course, we opened out gifts on Christmas Eve. I think everyone LOVED their presents. I know I loved mine! I got a new iPad! This was the first year, I haven't figured out what I was getting. I was totally convinced that I was getting a KitchenAid. But I LOVE the iPad! Chris got a new gun, but he won't let me post pics!

 After opening our presents, we got snuggled up for bed. It wasn't a smooth night, but oh well... stuff happens I guess. Anyway, After the kids were finally in bed, Santa arrived.
Preston is WAAAAAY into Beyblades, so that's pretty much all he got this year. I think he ended up with 15 new "beys". He's had a blast with each of them.

 Morgan got a new Rip Rider 360. She's had SO much fun with this thing.

 After taking hunters safety, Shelby has been begging for her own gun. She and Chris went hunting for jackrabbits the day after Christmas and had a ball. 

All in all I'd say we had a very good Christmas! Most of all, it was fun to spend the whole weekend together!

Still Alive

Yes, we're still alive. Just insanely busy. Here's the girls dance recital video. I promise I'll write more when I can.

Cuties!!

I took the kids out for "kid pics" today. We got SO many cute ones! Here are my faves!

Brains and Beauty

The Iron County School District does an annual "Calculator Contest" for the 4th graders. They have special calculators that feed math problems to the user. They don't use the calculator to figure out the problem, they just simply input the answer. The calculator then keeps track of how many they get correct. The contest tests on speed and accuracy. It works like this: they always do 25 problems, but in the 1st round they get 3 minutes, 2nd round-2 mins. 3rd round-1 min and 4th round-30 seconds. If a student gets below 92% in the first 3 rounds, they are disqualified. On the 3rd round, they go by the highest percentage to find a winner. Accuracy is the most important, but in case of a tie they go to speed as the tiebreaker. The top 3 from each class competed in the school contest. The top 3 winners of the school contest go on to represent Three Peaks in the district competition. The three girls in the center are from Shelby's class. Shelby is in the blue shirt (in case you didn't know HA!)

They're all pretty stoked to be going to the district contest next week!! I'll let everyone know how she does!

Happy Halloween

I swear this Halloween has gone on FOREVER!!!! We started off on Friday night with the school Halloween Carnival.

We did the spook alley again this year and the kids loved it!

That's Chris in the background wearing the "Scream' outfit.

Saturday, we took the kids to see "Thriller". I think we're going to make it a Halloween tradition. Preston literally laughed so hard you could hear him above the entire crowd during one of the skits. The girls' Hip Hop teacher played one of the zombies and they thought that was pretty cool! This is Sydney, their teacher, with the girls. (Notice Preston hiding under the blanket in the background)

Morgan was totally freaked out by the zombies at first. She wouldn't even go to the bathroom because she was afraid one would get her in there. Then all of a sudden, one approached her and she just looked at the girl and said, "Hey what's up?" Shelby, on the other hand, JUMPED OVER PRESTON and into my lap SCREAMING BLOODY MURDER and crying when the same zombie approached her!! It was freaking HILARIOUS!
Sunday, we took a break from the Halloween festivities for the kids Primary program at church. All 3 kids did a fantastic job!! Not gonna lie, I got a little teary eyed at one point!!!
Monday, the school did their annual COSTUME PARADE.  I got to go to Preston's class party, which I really enjoyed.

After school, we got ready for the big night. I had so much fun getting the girls ready. One good thing about having little dancers is that there's never a shortage of stuff to make a costume out of. Morgan was seriously FREAKED out by Shelby! It was so funny. Shelby even creeped me out a few times.

Shelby kept doing this to everyone. She was soooo serious that it was freakin' creepy! She swears she's going to do this to me in the middle of the night. I told her if she does she better be prepared to get smacked HAHA!

I promised her that I'd post a picture of her hair. She had a Fauxhawk and she thought that was pretty cool...until she had to try to take it down...HA!

 Morgan was my little "Rock Star" The eyelashes were a little much for her to handle HA! They were basically teal and black spotted feathers on her eyes. They kept blowing in the breeze and tickling her face. It was pretty funny! She also like her sleeves. ** For future reference: if you ever need to make sleeves for something like this, buy some fishnet pantyhose and cut the crotch and toes out. Put them on upside down and WAHLAH! You have a shirt.

Preston was the cutest little FBI Agent you've ever seen. He was pretty funny yelling "Freeze FBI! Put your hands up and nobody will get hurt" HA!

My 3 little hoodlums!! Love them to pieces!

After trick or treating, we went on a haunted hayride. Shelby was of course freaked out. Preston swore he wasn't scared but he ended up jumping into a complete strangers lap more than once to get away from the "monsters" on the ride. Morgan tried to play it cool, but she had a death grip on my hand the entire time!

It's been a LONG but FUN weekend!!!