Rudolf Grilled Cheese

Grilled cheese sandwich with raisins for eyes, pretzel antlers and a cherry tomato nose.

Hockey

Allen has been playing hockey on Monday nights, and one Monday night after our quick family home evening, Brayden said, "Daddy please don't go." He had his stuff all ready, but he decided to listen to our cute 4-year-old. The kids wanted to see what is in dad's giant hockey bag, and he let them try on all of his gear.

Allen wanted me to try it on too.

Brayden and Kayla both fit in dad's hockey shorts at the same time.

It was a little hard for them to get out of the shorts.

Christmas Parties

Spencer wouldn't go anywhere near Santa's lap, but he was still happy to receive a gift from him.

Brayden and Santa

Kayla and Santa. She got a toy keyboard.


Brayden got a toy guitar from Santa (two strings broke in the first week).

Spencer got a toy drum.

Allen and I at the dental christmas party.

Stop! You must not hop on pop.

My boys absolutely love their dad, and they also think he's a great jungle gym. (Spencer is wearing the snowman teddy bear's hat that he claimed as his own for the month of December.)

Thanksgiving Break at Disneyland Paris

We had a really fun trip to Disneyland Paris. We met my brothers family there (he live in London), and the kids loved being with their cousins. Above is a picture on the shuttle bus of Sabrina, Marissa, and Kayla.

We decided to go to Disneyland Paris for 2 days so we could really see everything. We thought it wouldn't be too crowded at the end of November, and our first day there was great. We were able to get on all of the rides in 15 minutes or less, and we even had clear, but frigid, weather.

It was really fun that everything was decorated for Christmas. It was a great way to have fun and get excited for Christmas.

Steven and Brayden - they quickly became best friends even though neither of them could remember the others name.

Brayden and the pirate ship.

The Cheshire cat - I really liked that his eyes rotate. It is such a pretty park. It's different from the one in California. It's much smaller, and Space Muntain and Indiana Jones both go upside down, so none of the kids were tall enough to go on them.

Kayla, Sabrina, Steven and Jessenia dancing with Pinocchio.

The Merry-go-round.

Beautiful castle lights!

Kayla looks super cute and Brayden's face is hilarious. The second day in the park was crazy crowded - I won't ever go on a Saturday again. We had such a great day on Friday that we thought it wouldn't be that bad on Saturday, but it was miserable. It also rained all day so we had to deal with the cold and wet and umbrellas everywhere. We rode the train around the park, saw the shows (which were really great), waited an hour to ride on a Casey Jones train ride (which was one of the kids favorite rides), the storybook boat ride, and It's a Small World, and then we were really cold and ready to go home.

Brayden wanted to ride the big park train the day before and we never got to it, so he was really excited that we finally did it.

Cute Spencer.

My Allen!

The big Disneyland train - Hooray!

Halloween

Superman Spencer!

Kayla the Jaguar and Speed Racer Brayden.
This year our kids got pretty sick and didn't really have a great Halloween, but luckily we carved pumpkins Monday and went to the church for a trunk or treat on Wednesday. We had about a dozen German trick or treaters which was fun. Even with our kids getting sick, we still have too much candy!

Pumpkins

Spencer and Brayden with the pumpkin that Brayden designed (and Mom carved).

The pumpkin Kayla designed (and Dad carved).

Dinner in a pumpkin.

This year I went to a cooking club where we carved out our pumpkins and put a face on them. I then went home and made dinner in our pumpkin. We ate the meat and rice combo as our main course and ate some pumpkin as our vegetable. The kids loved looking at the pumpkin in the oven. They were able to look at it for quite some time since it took ~2 hours to cook.