2/20/09

Trip to CA & mermaid visit

We just returned from a week visit in CA. Darrick had taken the time off work and we were due for a visit to my family so this worked out for us. We stayed with my mom who has always had a fondness of animals and growing things. She currently has 3 cats, a dog, fish, and a bundle of baby chicks. The girls had a good time with all those fun animals, none of which I would ever permit at our own home. My sister, Dana, was gracious enough to let us use her house as a central gathering/hang out location most of the week. We enjoyed playing her Wii on the 50" flat screen, playing around her huge backyard, eating tons of good food, and having tons of cousins for my kids to play with. A big thanks to my sister Shannon and her family that were able to spend some time with us and also dropped off a couple dune buggy machines for everyone to enjoy for the whole week (we had so much muddy fun). I really should have taken some shots of how muddy these kids and Darrick got from head to toe- I only snapped the clean version. Even the dune buggy was lathered in grass and mud that was inches thick in some places. It took some serious cleaning afterward. My Dad was a great sport about traveling to meet us every day to hang out even though he has a good 40 min. drive each way. And my dear little sister Kati was good enough to share her room with two of my girls and play games with all of us during any and all down time, especially with me- THANKS KATI.


Here's the smaller munchkins gathered to eat:

Baby chicks!

Katlyn & Daddy (look @ the buggy behind them, it's so cute)

Laur & Daddy

Mad Dog




We still have a couple days before Darrick returns to work so today we set off to hike up to a cave I spotted up a little mountain a ways from us, to our disappointment there is "no trespassing" signs everywhere around the area. So we went to the Silverton casino where there is a huge fish tank that a mermaid swims in at the top of every hour. The place is also filled with waterfalls, stuffed animal like zebras, bears, elk, lions, cheetahs, etc. and lots of fish and aquarium tanks. It was a neat place to go. What was even more unique was we were there with Penn (from Penn & Teller) who was also waiting for the mermaid to show his little grandkids that were with him. He looked at some of the stuffed animals with us and joked a bit with us while Darrick and I poked each other and gawked at who he was. There was no crowd (Thur. afternoon), just a very few wonderers, none of which made a big deal about who he was. He did wear his long hair down instead of tied back, but he is well over 6 1/2-7 ft. tall, a hard man to miss. Our realtor had shown us the huge estate that he lives in, in southwest Vegas like us, but it was a treat to run into him like that! I didn't think to get him in a picture but his grandgirls are in some of them with the mermaid.



We had a little bit of a girls' night last Darrick was at the hospital overnight and decided it was best to have oreo and banana milkshakes for dinner. If you look closely at Madelyn's happy picture with the milkshake you can make out Katlyn licking the cutting board where we smooshed the oreos. I also wanted to include Katlyn diligently making a homemade Valentine card for every single one of her classmates. She is an incredibly thoughtful child and projects like these make me so proud of her. I did not help a bit and they all turned out so cute. She made little pockets for the candy, wrote a personal note to every classmate, and decorated them all.

4 comments:

Toni said...

What a fun trip. I'm glad you got to see your family. It was fun to hear that Wayne and Crystal are headed your way.

Shalie said...

What a fun trip! It has been so long since I've seen your family, how are they all doing? When you wrote about your mom loving all animals and growing things, it reminded me of when we brought home the pheasant eggs!
It looks like you had a really fun trip with your family!

James and Laura Neibaur said...

SO glad you had so much fun--if you hadn't had a blast it would have been that much harder to not have you here with us for the week. I'll keep working on James for coming up in April, even for just a few days.

We miss you guys and the girlies of course!

Matt and Jenny Mitchell said...

you do such a great job of providing amazing opportunities and activities for your family. what an awesome mama you are! we miss you guys so much. congrats on your bro moving to vegas with you all! we were kinda hoping that you would hate it there and move to ohio wiht us!:) now with family moving there, we have lost even more hope of that:) we will never find anyone who appreciates a good game night like you guys...we soooo miss our weekly ritual! love to all you guys!