Another family surprise

I love the family surprises!!! Here's another one...
A Open Horse Sleigh Ride!!!!

We told Dayton that he had a surprise and we went down the day after Thanksgiving to give the kids a Carriage Ride!!

Dayton all bundled up!

And Amara!

I love how much Dayton loves his sister!!!

Here it is!!! The horse and carriage!!

Here's Mommy and the kids in the carriage!

And Daddy and the kids right after the ride! Thanks for the great idea Daddy!!!!

Thanksgiving at the Malo's

The second part of the day we spent at my Mom's house with my side of the family.
After eating, we hang out and play games. This year we played a couple of mean games of Taboo, man that was fun! Dayton kept the timer and buzzed us when our time was up.
Here are some pictures from the day.

Here's the lady's of my family... left to right, my niece Erika (she was born on my birthday), my mom, my niece Nicole (Dayton was born on her birthday), my sister Kim, and my sister Dana

Here's my Aunt Darlene and Amara. I just love my Aunt Darlene, she would always sit and talk to me during family gatherings. I just love her!

Here's Amara all giggles!

So here we are playing Taboo... we had so much fun!

Dayton keeping track of time!

The guys were in the garage for the first game, but they came out for a 2nd round!

Thanksgiving at the Williams'

Thanksgiving was a blast at the Williams! We usually get there @ 10 AM, but we were pretty late this year, but it's Jerome's favorite tradition to watch the Macy's Parade before we eat. We watched and the kids played. There are some traditions that we MUST have and there are pictures of those too! We need to measure the kids and Grandma always gives them pajama's. The kids LOVE these traditions, and it really means a lot to us, thank you Grandma for keeping the height boards and giving us the traditional pajamas!
Here are some pictures of the fun time there!

Dayton dancing in front of the TV "getting his sillies out". Yo Gabba Gabba is a kid's show that Dayton likes and they sing silly songs like "There's a party in my Tummy" and "Getting the Sillies out" Dayton likes to be silly sometimes!

Yeah! Aunt Katrina and Cousins Samuel and Micah are here! Dayton is greeting them!

I love this picture, Amara and Micah hanging out (actually Micah was helping Amara stay out of the dirt... Thank you Micah!)

Here's the family ready to eat... Michael was able to join us too!! There's Katrina, Dayton, Samuel in the back there, Grandpa Buddy, Jerome, Shai, Amara, Michael, and Micah... Grandma was taking the picture (thank you Grandma)!

NEXT THE TRADITIONAL MEASURING OF THE KIDS!

Samuel

Micah

Dayton

Amara

The traditional pajama picture!!!

Christmas Tree Train

So 2 years ago, we went on a Christmas train to get our Christmas tree. Now you can get 4 train tickets AND a tree for the price of a tree here in the Seattle area, so we weren't sure how the tree would look. But much to our surprise, the trees there were AMAZING. It was one of the fun experiences. The train goes through the forest (much like most trains), but then goes through a tunnel and you get to see Santa! They have free hot cocoa and cookies and all the kids get to see Santa and get a little gift. You get to pick out your tree and then load it onto a box car and you ride back. They sell tickets for the covered car and then you can also ride in an open car. It's really fun and has become a tradition. It is an all day event since it takes about 3 1/2 hours to drive down. The train ride is about 2 hours long and then there is the 3 1/2 hour ride back. We went last year when Amara was only 4 months old and we've got to go this year too! The first year, it poured on us, but we had so much fun! The next year Jerome's parents (Grandma and Grandpa Buddy) got to go and it was drizzly, but still very fun. This year it was just the four of us and it was COLD, but dry! It was so fun!
Here are some pics...

Amara, Daddy, and Dayton

Amara on the train

Dayton all smiles on the train ride.

And Daddy's all smiles too!!

Mommy, Amara, and Dayton in the open car during the train ride

SANTA with Dayton and Amara!

Here is the family getting ready to leave the train station!

Surprise for the family...

Well, this actually happened a while back, but I haven't had a chance to blog in a while (seems like it happens that way, I don't get to blog for a while, then I post a few at a time.
Anyway, we were able to surprise the kids with tickets to Disney on Ice... We originally got tickets to surprise Dayton, but we were able to bring Amara too and both kids just absolutely LOVED it!!!
Here are some pics...

Lighting McQueen from the movie Cars

Ramon and Flow

Here's Amara and Dayton at the show

Here's Rafiki, Pumbaa and Timon from the Lion King

Dayton smiling during intermission

Amara watching the show

Dayton pointing out something he liked

This was the last show, Tinkerbell with the Mother fairy flying

Here's another family photo of us before the show!

The family at the show with their hats, aren't they just cute!

The kids after the show, it was a great family time, I just loved it! (what a sucker, huh?!?)

Happy Halloween 2009

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!
Well, with Jerome's back, we have been laying low for a couple of weeks, so we relaxed today and carved pumpkins during the day, but it was the evening that was extremely busy (but fun... we'll explain down below)
Here are pictures of the day...

Some pictures of carving the pumpkin. Dayton is ready with his spoon to help Daddy scoop out the pumpkin stuff. Dayton actually asked me if we could make pumpkin pie out of our pumpkins. Since I've never even baked a pie, I told him, let's try the pumpkin pie stuff in a can first and see if I can do that before we try on a real pumpkin!

Here's Amara getting ready to help Daddy. This will be the first time Amara put her hands in a pumpkin... :o)

She didn't have her hands in the pumpkins long, she wiped them off on her pants... very quickly!! LOL! Here she is watching Dayton and Daddy clean out her small pumpkin. I like this picture with her crouching down with her hands on her knees... she's really watching the festivities. :o)

Here's Dayton in the house in his Transformer's costume... he was Optimus Prime.

Here he is posing outside. Here we were on our way to St. Lukes. Grandma and Grandpa (Jerome's parents) were watching the house for trick-or-treaters, so they watched Amara for us as well while we took Dayton to St. Lukes. I'm really glad we did, it was busy!We were going to head out there before heading back home and going through our neighborhood.

I brought the camera in at St. Lukes, but I didn't get any pictures. I think I was so overwhelmed over all the activities there, I didn't even think to get pictures! (Darn). Anyway, we had so much fun there, I can't believe it... it was really an amazing time.

We got there and they were having hay rides and "trunk-or-treating" outside. There were volunteers that decorated the trunk of their car up and had candy where the kids could trick-or-treat out of the trunks... it was hysterical! I've never done that, so it was a fun experience.

Then... we went inside! OH WOW!! The place was PACKED!! I went in and talked to them, I didn't know what to do. They had tables set up to eat dinner. They gave us tickets for the dinner (this was free). It was a hot dog, baked beans, chips, and apple juice. I think that was it, we ate before hand, so we didn't eat, that's just what we saw. Then there was a bouncy for the kids to jump. They had numbers all over the floor so they a version of a cake walk (no music, you just stand on a number when they do the drawing). WE WON!!! Dayton actually was standing on the number two (on purpose) and I was talking to Kaitlyn's mom when they called out that they were going to draw again. SO... I went over to stand by Dayton and they called out number 2!! Dayton picked out a plate of cupcakes!! It was awesome!!! I also saw an old co-worker I've known for about 10 years. We used to van-pool together and I remember him when they were trying to have a baby... their baby was there too... she's 9!!!

I stayed to catch up with them a bit (I haven't seen them for almost 2 years) Jerome took Dayton upstairs to play the games. Brooke and Kaitlyn went too... Dayton came back and told me how much fun he had!! We were there longer than we had planned, but it was an amazing time!

Here's Amara and Daddy getting ready to go out and trick-or-treat in our neighborhood! (We didn't have a pail for Amara for 2 reasons. 1. She couldn't carry a bucket and walk and 2. She's too little for candy, it felt weird taking candy from people... it would just be more candy in the house we really don't need so it worked out great).

Seriously... she was so dang cute. Since she didn't have a bag, she would be in the back of the kids and when the kids would get the candy, she would go to the front and say "Hi" and then turn around and walk away. It was funny!! I was saying next year she'll be confused when she has a bag and people try to give her candy. She was so happy just walking around and saying Hi to everyone. It was awesome!!

Here's the back of her costume!

Here's a picture of Brooke, Dayton and Amara getting ready to go out and trick-or-treat. Ryan also came along, but he came after we had left, so I didn't get a picture of him (sorry).

Anyway, we had tons of fun, it was a great Halloween!!!

Puyallup Fair!

So we were able to go to the Puyallup Fair on opening night and we had so much fun!! Our friends Carey, Jay & Brooke were able to come with us!

Here are pictures of the fun!

Baby bunnies!! Oh, they were so cute! I've never seen baby bunnies before!


Jerome loves the chickens and roosters... he loved the color on this one
(hope you can see the color).

I loved the funny hair on this one!! :oD

Dayton getting a train on his arm.

Brooke and Dayton showing off their paintings.

Brooke had a dolphin with sparkles on her cheek!

Brooke and Dayton at the petting farm.

Amara enjoying the day too!!!

Dayton and Brooke on a ride together!

Here they are getting ready for a roller coaster ride... looks like Dayton is jazzed!

Its so hard to take pictures when they are on rides, but I was able to get this one... Dayton has his arms up!! :o)

(sorry Brooke, I cut you off there)

Here's Dayton and Brooke on another roller coaster. Again, Brooke is hard to see because she's behind the boy in red... but do you see her arms are up in the air!!! :o)

Dayton was just tall enough to ride the big ferris wheel (he was actually about 1/2 an inch too short, but they let him ride. I got to ride with him!!! (Thank you Jerome for giving me that ride with Dayton). Anyway, Jerome asked Dayton to take a picture of what he saw up there and this was Dayton's picture. :o)

We had split up from Carey, Jay and Brooke and here's Dayton "milking" the cow!!! (it was a plastic cow, but there were utters that you could really milk although it was water that came out.

Oh Dayton had tons of fun!!!!

Here's a cool story here! We stopped by the dog area and here's Dayton petting a St. Bernard. Now here's the cool story... both Jerome and I had St. Bernard dogs growing up, weird huh!

Dayton really liked them.

This one really liked Amara too!!! Amara thought the St. Bernard was pretty interesting and didn't blink an eye when this one stole one of her fish crackers!! LOL! :o)

My favorite family picture right now!! We had this done on a fabric poster and I took a picture of it. We don't have many family pictures, so I just love it!!

Ah... the end of a long night... Amara sleeping on the way back to the car.

What a fun night!!!!