Legoland - Orlando

I had kind of wanted to make Matthew's 8th birthday something pretty special. This year is a HUGE year in the church. I think kids in the church start looking forward and counting down birthdays when they are 5 or 6. Anyways, I thought about maybe doing something with Matthew since we were already going to be in Floria maybe take them to an amusement park. I was originally going to take them to Disney World there in Orlando. Chris thought it would be a good idea. I started looking at my nieces facebook pictures trying to find some that she had posted about Disneyland when I came across her pictures of Legoland. I immediately hoped that there was one in Orlando and THERE WAS!!! I knew that was such a better place to go for MATTHEW'S birthday....AND it was so much cheaper then Disney World, double winner.

My kids haven't been to an amusement park that I can think of right now. We took Matthew to Sea World right before we had Allison but he was only 2, probably doesn't remember it.

I showed Matthew pictures of amusement parks so that he would know what it meant to be going to one of these places. 

I printed off a picture of the entrance to LegoLand. I was SO excited for Matthew to open his present and see that we are going to go there for his birthday.

I didn't have enough wrapping paper to wrap the box, so it looks terrible but I wrapped it and gave it to him so we didn't stare at the terrible job very long.

I was really disappointed in his reaction, his very last question:

 Having never been to an amusement park, he must not have known what was really there. I was really excited though so I was really let down when he wasn't as excited.

I tried to post the video but the sound didn't come through.

If I hadn't already bought the tickets I may have said forget about it, it is not worth it.

Thankfully for him, and Allison I already had.

Florida Park Fun

After I got back from having fun hanging out with Mike at his office and around this office, I came back to the house. Wendy had ALL 7 kids, she is such a trooper. We ate then I took the oldest 6 with me to the park.

We had fun and there were some adorable kids that I got to take pictures of.....

like this little Vanessa

and this adorable little Garrett

I enjoyed taking pictures.

Kenneth, Shannon, and Matthew

At the end, they were all playing this game were they had a clubhouse and had commanders and spies, it was fun watching them play together.

I LOVE seeing cousins having so much fun together and building those friendships/bonds. I realized this trip that it is SO very important to get my kids with their cousins. They are now at the age that they actually remember their cousins from the last time we visited them.

I am excited that all these kids get to be together again in July for our family reunion.

My Brother's Office View

Check out this view. This is what my brother looks at every day he goes to work. Ummm, yeah, pretty amazing. What a lucky duck:) I absolutely love being around my brother Mike so it was super fun to go to his office and be his little sister that he introduced to everybody. I took this picture from Mike's office. Pretty sweet view for sure.

Here is his office

I sat in his chair and took this.

 After Mike introduced me to all of his co-workers, he took me outside and we walked around.

This is a famous statue called the Unconditional Soldier.

Statue of the famous moment a sailor kissed a stranger in Times Square at the end of World War II

 It is really tall

Then there were all of these boats here.

 It is beautiful just walking around.

It was fun to just walk around and talk to Mike and see where he works and his area of life. 

I really enjoyed Florida.

My Amazing Family

I have an amazing family....but my siblings have married some amazing people as well. I just love being around my brother Mike and wife Wendy. They are such great people and they make me want to be better.

Look at how Wendy is. She just had her 5th baby 3 weeks previous and yet she is able to make this amazing dinner and set up this gorgeous dinner for us WITH CANDLES!! Can you believe that? Yeah, they really made us feel special.

She is such a great cook too so everything she makes has so much wonderful flavor.

We were treated like the queen, prince and princess while we were there. They are so welcoming.

So fun to be with them!

Replaced Brake Pads and Resurfaced Rotors

I am so proud of Chris and I. We are starting to think about learning how to do more things ourselves and save more money. I was told that I need new brakes and to resurface rotors if I did it soon. If not then I might need new rotors altogether.

We have some other work under our porch that Chris said that he thinks we would be able to do it ourselves. It is a big project in my mind so I was surprised to hear him say that. It made me start thinking about other places that we could save money. I have always heard that changing your brakes is pretty easy so we decided to give it a try. We got the brakes and I started looking online to see how it was done. I have watch quite a few and finally I really felt like I had an idea of what was going on and I was excited to do it. Chris had our friend David Hansen help him change his brakes about 10 years ago but that was a long time ago. Today though, even though it took us all day, 4 trips to the store, for the next tool that we didn't have, we finally were able to get the rotor off. We took it in to O'Reilly Auto Parts. After an hour and $20 we had resurfaced rotors. We came back and just put it all together. It was actually pretty easy. These were the videos that really helped me.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjqFpPRWLPY

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4PPkLR3A-Q

 We had soccer games to attend but many, trips to the store but we were finally done around 4:30pm today. You have to push on your brake pedal and then pump it a couple times to make sure you get that brakes working again. I really enjoyed doing this project with Chris. We really helped each other and it was fun to figure it out together. I added up all of our costs. It cost about $70 to get all of the tools and materials. If we had to do the same thing over again, it would cost us probably only $42 ($22 for brake pads and $20 for resurfacing the rotors). I am so excited about us being more independent and that we SAVED so much money doing it ourselves!!!!
May 17, 2014:
Mileage on my 2006 Mazda 5
78,526

Florida - Beach Fun!

When we got done with the Easter Egg Hunt, Mike said that today would be a perfect day for the beach. We went home got dressed and loaded the car (it takes a lot to go to the beach) and away we left. They only live about 15-20 minutes from the beach. A beautiful white sand beach. Mike says that he thinks it is, or at least one of, the best beaches in FL. It almost felt like flour it was so soft...but it was still sand.

I was a big wimp and only went out in the water once. It was too cold for me:) But that was ok because I stayed with our stuff and did crowd control here. It was fun to be on the beach, and just relaxing, enjoying the beautiful weather. It was around 80ish degrees that day:)

 Garrett and Matthew

 Adorable Vanessa

I just LOVE her smiles

 Allison got salt in her mouth and wasn't a big fan of it.

 We all had lots of fun!

 Look at this beautiful white sand.

 Now doesn't this look like a typical Miami beach? 

There was also an NCAA college beach volleyball tournament going on but there were 6 little kids to watch, I didn't want to get sucked in to watching volleyball. Nobody would have seen me the rest of the day.

Here is the beautiful smile again

The Starfish Story

Have you ever seen a starfish?

I have always heard about them but have NEVER seen a real one before. I don't know anything about them besides the story of the one person walking down the beach throwing starfish back into the ocean.

Well, there was a lady that found a starfish. We went and checked it out. She was going to throw it back but we all (or they and the kids) decided that it was dead so it didn't really matter if it was in the water or not. It was completely hard and didn't move anything. (Then again I had never seen one so I would have no idea what moving was)

Matthew really wanted to keep it so since it was dead I said he could keep it for a little while. He got a bucket and put water in it and put the starfish in it. He left it there and then when we were getting ready to leave he really wanted to take it home and I said no. Allison went and looked at it and picked it up. She turns it over and some things, (I don't even know what they are called) were moving. She came running to me to tell me. I didn't believe her. She showed me and I told her to go tell Matthew it was still alive. We got the bucket and took it to him. I picked it up, flipped it over and it started moving again. It kind of freaked me out. I dropped it in the bucket and it kind of landed on one of its points, and kind of broke it, I started freaking out more just wanting to through it in the ocean and I picked it up to throw it in and that one point was kind of coming off of it. Totally grossing me out, I just let go and through all the water and starfish and sand all in the ocean. blah....it still gives me shivers just thinking about it. So we probably did kill that pour little starfish. I now know, if we find one, even if it seems dead, it probably isn't and I need to just throw it in the ocean.

It was cool to see one in real life though.

Florida - Easter Egg Hunt

Mike told me that Saturday morning they were going to do a little Easter breakfast, video and egg hunt at their church building if we wanted to go. I was more then excited to go. 

Their ward is kind of smaller so they were excited to see the four McNivens and a couple others show up. It was so well done. I loved all the decorations and it was YW themed. It was fun to listen to people say that Mike and I looked so much a like and that they knew immediately that we were siblings. I just really enjoyed the whole thing.

I loved all the pretty colors.

After breakfast we went into the Chapel and watched a video on Jesus Christ and the true meaning of Easter.

Then we went outside and let the kids start hunting.

They had actually hid around 500 eggs. There were many on the ground for the younger kids but they actually did a lot of hiding them for the older kids. It was awesome.

It was the only Easter Egg Hunt my kids were going to go to so it made it even more special for us.

I was so thankful the YW put this on.

 The cousins:)

They got quite the loot:)