Musicals and Trees

Last week Mady was in this Christmas musical at church. She sang in the choir and was one of the narrators. She did amazing! We had so much fun watching her.

Singing her great big heart out!

We also got our Chrsitmas tree last weekend. I love Christmas and love decorating our tree. We had the Christmas music playing while we dug out all of our ornaments. The kids love going through their stash of ornaments and remembering when they got them.

It's amazing how many ornaments we have collected!

Family Photos

We are so lucky to have an amazing friend who is a photographer. For the second year we have been fortunate to have her take our family photos. We had such an amazing time and laughed so much. Scott does not like having his picture taken and said he enjoyed it so much we could do it again anytime.

Here are some of my favorite shots she took. Let's just say she took so many pictures that she ran out of room on her memory card!

I love this one of the kids.

This makes Brandon look so grown up and handsome!

This is the perfect shot of Mady. She always has a smile on her face.

She captured so much happiness that day.

I am so proud of what Brandon is becoming!

This one is hanging in my dining room.

I can hardly believe I have been blessed with such a beautiful daughter!

This one shows how much fun we had.

Sea World - October 2009

I love Sea World. I love the fact that we have been able to go back so many times this year. I just happened to stumble across a special AAA was offering....buy a one day pass to Sea World and get in for the rest of 2009 for FREE! That is the type of deal I am always looking for.

We decided to go back in October as the entire park was decorated for Halloween. It was a gorgeous day in San Diego. The temperature was in the mid 70s (one of the perks of living in Southern California). This was probably one trip to Sea World where we all had so much fun and laughed so hard. I love that the kids are getting older and yet I'm sad. They are so much fun to be around and make me laugh every day!

Our first stop was the Atlantis ride where we all got very wet. Then we watched a few shows, looked at some amazing animals and ventured over to the jungle gym type structure. We decided this day that each person got to pick one thing they really wanted to do and everyone would go along and enjoy. Well....Brandon picked the jungle gym. Let's just say those things are not designed for grown people to climb through. I had bruises on my knees for days after from all the crawling we did. I don't think I have laughed that hard in a long time. I sure don't know how kids do it. I guess they just don't think about the pain!

We ended our day trick-or-treating through the park. They had stations set-up around parts of the park where kids could trick-or-treat. It was a really cute idea. They also had cupcake decorating. Mady was all over that. No surprise there since she wants to be a pastry chef when she gets older.

Note to anyone climbing in one of these things....

grown feet get stuck in the holes of the net very easily!

Scott and I laughed so hard while attempting to keep up with the kids in the jungle gym.

Here's what the kids looked like after the second time on the Rapids ride. Apparently the first time they didn't get wet enough. Let's just say on the ride home they had to strip down and wear blankets in the car because their clothes were so wet!

I just love my crazy family!

Pumpkin Carving

The kids love to carve pumpkins. I remember several years ago when they hated cleaning them out and Scott and I would have to do it for them. That's all changed. Mady loves pumpkin guts. We usually have to get her moving along because she'll just sit and squish the pumpkin goo between her fingers.

This year the kids went for simple designs. Sometimes they choose very difficult ones which do not always end up working for them. Brandon opted for a text message emoticon while Mady chose to do a text message saying; LOL (laughing out loud). I guess that's a sign of the times we are living in! It was most entertaining though and we all had some good laughs.

Brandon helping Mady get her top off.

I often wonder where the goofiness of Mady came from!

Everyone gutting and scooping their pumpkins.

"Got Guts"

The Chase pumpkin family!

Halloween 2009

Halloween left as fast as it came this year. I still find it hard to believe another one has past already. We did make the most of it though. We started our evening off by taking a walk to a local Mexican food restaurant. It was such a beautiful day for Halloween this year. Low 80's made the evening quite comfortable. After dinner we took a short walk to church to their annual Halloween bash. This year they did "trunk-or-treating." It was so much fun. The parking lot was filled with cars all decorated. The kids walked from car to car to "trunk-or-treat." They had music and bouncy houses and all sorts of other activities. The kids really enjoyed the night.

I think Brandon is officially past dressing up.

Mady...the candy corn princess!

This and That

October is one of those funny months; Madyson is off-track while Brandon is just getting through his first semester of school. I try and plan several fun things for Madyson to do while including Brandon as much as possible. Cooking is one of the ways I like to include everyone. We often do pizza night. It's usually a Friday night and we include it with our game night. This time I decided to have each one of us make our own pizza. We made the dough from scratch and had all of our favorite ingredients. Everyone enjoyed rolling out their dough and creating their own yummy pizza.

These were the kids pizzas before they were cooked. Mady opted for a heart shaped pepperoni pizza while Brandon created a cheese filled crust for his pizza.

Both kids enjoyed the idea of being able to create whatever they wanted. No one had to compromise on flavors in this pizza night.

While Brandon is in school, Mady and I have been able to find various little activities we can do together. Our first trip was to Irvine Regional Park. This park has a small zoo you can visit for $2! That's what I call a deal!

Mady enjoyed feeding all of the animals. Many of them wanted to climb out of their enclosures to get to the food.

There were so many ducks in this pond. When we stopped to eat our picnic lunch Mady was able to feed the ducks. She eventually was surrounded by more ducks than we could count.

Our next mini trip was to the Aquarium in Long Beach. We've been here several times before but that never seems to bother us. The Aquarium has so many amazing fish and different sea creatures.

Mady was petting the sting rays. These rays were tiny compared to the ones we swam with in the Grand Turks.

If you look behind Mady's head you can see tons of "Nemo" and "Dory" fish.

The month of October has only begun for us. We have several more fun adventures planned...pumpkin patch, San Diego Zoo, Sea World and the Wild Animal Park.

Hiking

Now that the weather is starting to cool a bit we were able to go on another hiking adventure. This hike took us to Laguna Beach. We thought it was going to be great considering we were only a few short miles from the beach but unfortunately it turned out to be somewhat of a boring hike. I think we are still a bit spoiled from all the amazing hiking we did in Yosemite in June.

We have never been to this preserve before so we decided to give it a shot. There was not much to see or experience. We did get in a good long hike but we all agreed it was not our favorite place to go. We are looking forward to going back to Murrietta in the next few weeks when the temperature really starts to drop. We are also going up to Mt. Baldy where we have heard there are some amazing trails to explore.

Mady was our navigator this time around.

Poor little snakey didn't make it.

Brandon showing off his talent...running.

Laguna Beach

I truly love the beach. Someday we hope to move back there. There is something so calming and peaceful about listening to the ocean and watching your kids play. We decided to take an adventure to a new beach spot; Laguna Beach. There are some really nice tide pools there we wanted to show the kids. Unfortunately for us, the majority of the tide pools were closed due to the high surf. The kids were not disappointed though because we were able to climb around some of the rocks and of course play at the beach.

It was a perfect beach day. The sun was out and there was not a cloud in the sky. It was in the lower 80's and the water was surprisingly warm. The kids ALWAYS have a great time at the beach. We packed up our picnic basket and enjoyed a fun filled day in the sun. The beauty of living in southern California is that even though Labor Day is the "end of summer" it's not really for us. We still get to enjoy warm days and sunny weather. We usually try and get a few more beach days in before it gets too cold.

Mady doing what she loves doing the most....building sand castles.

Brandon exploring some of the tide pools.

Exploring other areas of the tide pools.

Looking at the parts of the tide pools that were underwater.

Brandon's First Day of School

Today starts a new chapter for Brandon. He is starting his Sophomore year. I can't believe he is already in his second year of high school. I guess it's true what they say...as you get older the time goes by faster! He has been excited to get back into the swing of school. This should be a fun yet challenging year for him. He is taking several honors classes and jumping in to his second year of a foreign language. He's got a good head on his shoulders though and knows what he wants for his future.