Sewing Project

Alexa's first finished product from her school sewing class!!!

Happy Birthday to: ME!!!

I woke up this morning to notes from the kids and Stephanie brought me yummy maple bars!!
I chuckled a little when I read Alex's note...I mean I knew I had some good lovin' going on, but "the best?" He cracks me up!!!
That was the perfect way to start my day!!

Rich arranged for all his sisters to meet at his mom's house for lunch. He bought everyone pizza and we ate outside. He even bought me a cake!! It was very nice of him and I was glad that his sisters could all come to help me celebrate. I opened gifts from them and they spoiled me as usual!!!

After work we headed up to Bountiful to meet my family at...
yes that is right...it has become quite a tradition and one that I hope sticks!! Most of my family was able to make it (minus a few bro-in-laws, we missed you)!! Dinner was yummy as usual and we stayed for several hours as usual!!

Then we headed outside to open gifts!!!
we missed Brooklyn's birthday so she opened her present from us first!
My parents missed Rich's so he opened some gifts too!!!

 

It wasn't the best place to have a party...people had to sit on the ground but I think it worked out ok. The little boys had fun running around and Jason was a good sport and kept his eye on them!!
A birthday kiss from Max!!!

You know we had a photo shoot!!!

 

We took a great shot with just the "Oliver" girls.
Then people felt left out so some of the kids jumped in. They never like to get left out of photo shoots!!!
Jason felt really left out since he was the photographer and so he left me this awesome picture on my camera!

I had a fantastic birthday and I felt so loved and special!! Thanks again to everyone who made my day PERFECT!!!

Heading Home

This morning we got up and had breakfast and the Duvall's were ready to get home so they took off. We weren't in that big of a hurry so we hung out a bit and Sule and Kalysa who happened to be in Vegas for a wedding came by for a quick visit!
We checked out of the condo and went back to the strip one last time. Alex loves Caesar's Palace and so we stopped there to watch the show thing and look at the aquarium.
Max was afraid of the talking statues and the fire but he LOVED all the fish...and one in particular LOVED HIM!!!

 

This giant string ray swam past Max a few times and then he decided to stay for a while. It was so funny. He would just slide up and down by where Max was standing and he stayed there for like 15 minutes. We had a huge group of people standing around us watching. Max had a great time watching all the fish swim by.

We stopped in St. George for lunch at In-N-Out and got home around 6pm. We have to take the rental car back to Provo tomorrow. Now we have to decide if we want to re-build our engine ($2000) or get a brand new engine ($3500) or just get a whole new car!!!

Day 3

The day was beautiful and so we were off to hit the strip and see what sort of fun we could have!!
I love this picture of Max. He was the only one who would pose for me!!

Alex was dying to go on the "New York, New York" roller coaster so that was our first stop. We learned a new trick from Jeff about valet parking and that made getting in and out of the hotels really easy. We had to wait about 15 minutes for the roller coaster to open. Jeff, Alex, Parker and Harrison were all in line so the rest of us were just hanging around the arcade games. few minutes later they came and found us and Alex was crying. He wasn't quite tall enough for the ride and they made him take off his shoes to measure...WHAT, I have never heard of that before...luck was not on our side this trip!!! So after trying to console him by telling him that we could go to Circus Circus we hung out in the arcade for a bit and played some games!
Alexa played Dance Dance Revolution. She is really good at it and it is fun to watch her.

 

Max had SO MUCH FUN playing Ski ball. I loved watching him play, he got so excited every time he rolled the ball up there. He played several times and it was hard to convince him it was time to go.

 

Here are some other random shots. Jeff and Parker shot basketballs and the kids played on the motorcycles. We all had a pretty good time, even Alex smiled a little bit, he was still really disappointed!

We decided to go to Circus Circus and bought the kids an "all day" ride pass. That wasn't part of the plan but nothing was going according to plan so we just rolled with the punches (so to speak).
Alex LOVES this ride and he was so happy!!! The bigger kids kind of took off with Jeff and they were gone for a while so I didn't get many pictures of them.
I did make Alexa pose with Spongebob and she wasn't that excited about it. She followed a boy around and went on a ride with him. It was cute!!

 

Max and Pieper had a great time going on rides together. Me, Rich and Steph just found a bench to sit on and they would get off the ride and run to get back in line for the same ride over and over!!!
We were there for several hours and all the kids had a good time. We were all hungry so we left and headed out to Olive Garden for an early dinner.

 

It was delicious as always!!!
The whole reason for this trip was because Jeff had tickets to a truck race. After lunch all the boys piled into the rental car and headed for the race. All the girls went shopping!!! It was fun but we didn't have a ton of luck. We did find a few fun things. We shopped for a few hours and headed back to the condo to wait for the boys to get back. They got back pretty late but they had a lot of fun!! Max really liked it and Rich bought Alex and Max race cars that they thought were pretty awesome!!

Weekend Getaway (Days 1 and 2)

There is no school on Friday and the Duvall's invited us to go with them on a little trip down south. We left Thursday night for St. George. We stopped at Taco Time in Nephi for dinner and by the time we left it was around 8pm. We hit the road and headed for their condo. I had to stop for a potty break and when I got out of the van I noticed a new noise that I hadn't heard before. I didn't really think much of it. We pulled into the condo and the noise became more apparent and I asked rich what the heck it was. He thought maybe a belt or something was loose or broken, he said he would have to take it to a mechanic to have it checked out.
We started unpacking the car and the only bag in the back was Mine and Rich's, which had Max's clothes in it too. Alexa and Alex had packed a bag together but neither one of them brought it upstairs so it didn't get put in the car. i had all teh swimsuits in one bag so that was all they had! Alexa and I made a late night run to WalMart for some necessities, ie: undies, socks, toothbrushes, pj's, new outfits. That was when we should have just taken our chances with the van and turned around and gone home, but we had no way of knowing that at the time so we didn't think to do that!
Rich decided to do a little work while we were here so he made some appointments to meet with some people. After his appointments he took the van to a garage to see what the problem was. IT WAS NOT GOOD NEWS!!! Rich called us for a ride because they told him it would take 2 hours to diagnose the problem (they had ruled out all the quick fixes already), and had to rip into the engine which is never a good thing. We still held out some hope that it wouldn't be TOO bad. We went shopping (for more new clothes Alexa and Alex didn't really need but at least they were cheap) then we ate lunch at Chuckarama and that is where we got the phone call saying that we pretty much had to get a new engine, probably...there were still a few possibilities but it would take more time for them to figure it out. We were supposed to leave for Las Vegas and now we were stranded but even worse the Duvall's were stuck with us too because they were TOO NICE to just head on with out us (we told them they should).
After about an hour of trying to figure out the best thing to do we ended up renting a car and continuing on with the trip because we didn't see any point in going back home without our car and there was still a small possibility that it could be fixed just maybe not til Monday.

We got back on the road in our rental and tried to make the best of it!! We arrived in Las Vegas around 5pm so me and Steph took the kids to the pool and Jeff and Rich went to the store to get stuff for dinner...they also made the dinner!! They made spaghetti and garlic bread...it was really yummy!!

 

 

The kids had a great time swimming and playing together for a couple hours. That is always the best part of the vacation for the kids!!

 

We ate dinner and watched some TV and then it was bedtime.

Tepee

Here is another school project...I decided it was a good idea to document all of these because eventually Max will be in 4th grade and I will have something to reference!!!

Alex really wanted to do something "cool" for his Native American dwelling project. I remember for Thanksgiving we would always make these Tepees. They are fun and pretty easy to do. I thing Alex was happy with how it turned out!!!

Max...Posing it UP!!!

I just HAD to post these...I LOVE this outfit so I made Max pose for some pictures for me!!!

He isn't very cooperative most the time but I think I got some pretty good ones!!! He cracks me up!!!!