Vacation 2012, part 3

The drive from Vegas to California is a very boring one, lots of hot, dry, dessert areas and not much to see.  It's also very hot, so I was glad we were in a car with AC.  :-)

After a few hours more of driving though, with a stop along the way for a picnic lunch, we made it to San Diego!  It is sooo pretty in San Diego, it's almost more than a person can take in, especially after coming through such bland scenery.   This is a picture of Balboa Park, one of the tourist attractions in San Diego. 

We pulled over at a local strip mall, and spent some time on Priceline.com locating a hotel in our area in our price range.  We ended up getting a nice hotel for $50 a night!

After a good nights sleep in a "real" bed (instead of sleeping in the car!), we enjoyed a complimentary breakfast at the hotel and headed out to do some tourist type things!

Next up: San Diego Automotive Museum and Air and Space Museum!

Vacation 2012, part 2

Las Vegas, continued:

After visiting Circus Circus we drove down the road to Treasure Island.  We were much more impressed with the interior of this casino, very nice and luxorious.  We especially liked the two ships outside the front entrance.  They do shows with the ships daily, but not till the evening, and we didn't want to stay that long so we didn't get to see them.

Then it was on to the Mirage.  This was by far our favorite, mostly because of all the beautiful landscaping!  It was soo pretty.  By this point all the gaming areas were starting to look the same to me, but we did enjoy walking around all the beautiful grounds.

After finishing our walk around this casino we decided to be done.  I was getting very overheated (it was almost 100 degrees and this was only 12:00!), and we were anxious to move on to California, which was still a fair drive away.  So, we continued on!

Vacation 2012, part 1

This past week was very busy for us: the kids stayed with my parents for the whole week, and Mark and I went to San Diego to visit my sister!  I took a TON of pictures, so this will have to be multiple posts to cover everything we did.  But first, a picture of the kids at my Mom and Dad's:

They all had a wonderful time!  My folks said that the kids were very good and that they didn't have any problems, which is always such a blessing for a parent to hear.  :-) It was such a good time, in fact, that my parents want to watch the kids for a week every summer!!!

We dropped the kids off at my parents house Friday morning, then started the looong drive out to California!  We drove non stop till about 2 a.m., then pulled off the road and slept for a few hours before heading on to our first tourist type stop, Las Vegas.  We wanted to see some of the casinos, what they were like inside, not to gamble.  So, we were a bit different from the average tourist there.  :-)  (Sales people kept trying to talk us into staying longer, trying different games, etc. but we had to be firm with them and tell them no.)

Our stop off point, in the hills of Nevada

Our way of locating the casinos was very scientific:  drive down the road till we find one!  We did make a detour to a Dennys restaurant for some breakfast though, we were both starved!  I wish I could have taken pictures of some of the people there, it was incredible that anyone would appear in public looking as crazy as they did (big short puffy skirts, hair in various unnatural colors, and other ludicrous looking clothes).

After breakfast it was on to our first casino, Circus Circus.  We were both amazed at the number of slot machines and other games they had.  It was like a giant mall, with all the stores located on the perimeter and the gambling section in the very center.  We were not very impressed with this casino.  It seemed old and kind of scuzzy.  They have circus acts somewhere, though we couldn't find them, so we saw lots of families with small kids.  We both got the feeling that this was a casino for "poorer folk", if you can say such a thing.  They even had penny slots!

I did get a kick out of this sign, just outside of the gaming area:

Both Mark and I got a good laugh out of that one!


*This post is taking me longer to put together than I had anticipated so that will have to be it for now, but I will post more as soon as I can.  Thanks for your patience!*

Dollhouse Purchases

We have a small dollhouse store in our area with all kinds of neat stuff and this past week I was able to visit it!  I spent lots of time browsing around and ended up buying just a few things.


First was this set of itty bitty silverware!  I love it, it's so cute and little!

Also this tiny cookie sheet.  Now it just needs cookies on it!

And these teeny tiny cans with printed labels for me to cut out and glue on. Fun!

And finally, a plant kit.  I've wanted to try one of these for awhile, and this one was a great price!

Here they are all together, to give you an idea of how small they are.  I can't wait to use them!

Kid Pics

Here are some cute picture of the kids that I have taken recently.  Just pics of the little ones this time...  :-)

Patriotic Decorating in Mini!

I decorated the dollhouse again this year for Memorial Day/4th of July.  I love how festive all the different decorations look, so very patriotic!

I saved all the decorations that I made last year and reused them this year.  The blue blanket on the back of the couch is just a scrap of fabric folded over.  I bought the little American flag next to the fireplace at the dollar store (in a pack of 24, I'll have to come up with some other uses for them!)

I also have started on the kitchen so I elected to put out some holiday type food.  I am trying out this arrangement of the furniture right now, and I have to say that I like it much better.  Still a long ways from completion, mind you, but I have a good idea of what I want.

I made the little hot dogs myself, as well as the bowl of blueberries (didn't make enough blueberries, oops!), the small teacup, and the cookies on the plate.  Emmaline made the brown doughnut (on the white plate at the very front of the table).  I still have more things I'd like to make (more blueberries for one!) but I'm happy with how this is coming along.

Again, sorry for the poor picture quality.  I've finally figured out that I just don't have enough light in the garage for good pictures.  I'll keep trying to get that figured out!  Thanks for your patience!

New Fridge!!!

Our fridge has always been a bit tempermental, from the time we first moved into our house.  It has always leaked water down the back of the fridge part so I have had to keep containers in the back to collect all teh water running down.  Lately though it had been getting worse, I had to have a container on every shelf!

When the weather started getting warmer we noticed that the fridge didn't seem very cold anymore, so I turned the temperature knob down all the way but with no change.  The water containers in the back of the fridge were no longer freezing like they used too, and all our food just seemed warm, almost room temperature.  So, we knew we needed to start looking for a new fridge.  We had only just started looking on craigslist when we mentioned in passing to some folks from church that we were looking for a fridge.  And, incredibly, they had one sitting in their garage that they were wanting to give away.  So, they gave it to us!!!  It is stainless steel, side by side, bigger than what we had, and very fancy!

It has special controls for the produce and deli drawers, and a special shelf just for drinks, which keeps them extra cold!

We are loving it, and feeling very spoiled.  :-)

Visit with Auntie Mary

My sister and her husband were in town this week to visit family!  We were able to spend an afternoon and evening with them at our house.  It was such a special time!  The kids enjoyed getting to know their Aunt and Uncle a bit more and had lots of fun playing with them.  It will be a few years more before my sister and her husband can move back here so I'm glad the kids had this time together with them.

Mary and Ty with a few of the kids

Me and Mary with Jeremiah

Some beautiful flowers that Mary brought for me!

Say Cheese!

Having fun out back...

Lego Birthday!

Elijah celebrated his birthday this weekend with a lego party!  He picked out the theme months ago so we had ample time to plan.  :-)  The only activities he wanted was for the kids to have contests building different lego things, so we set up a table in the garage with all our legos on it and all the bigger kids had contests, first to see who could build the tallest tower, and second, to see who could build the coolest thing.  The kids had so much fun!  After all the games were over most of the kids just kept playing with the legos, they are such a universal toy!

For Elijah's cake I made some giant legos.  I choose to frost them in bright colors, just like the real deal.  I tried stacking them but that was a dismal failure so I just lined them up on a few trays. 

After cake Elijah opened his gifts.  He got all kinds of legos, books, clothes, and other stuff.  He was one happy camper!!!  Overall it was a great party!