Berry Picking

I took Maysen up to Bountiful to see Dr. Hadley. Maysen is officially done with accutane. Woohoo! This was her second round, so hopefully she is done for good. Jorja is having fun up in Oregon except her laptop keeps crashing during her Step2theU classes, that's not good. She sent me some pictures from her berry picking adventures today.

Giselle & Jorja

Jorja

Good-bye Preston and Jorja

Jorja got up early this morning to go to the temple with her friends. Preston got up early to go to youth conference. I dropped him off at the church. Mike came back later with Bear. Preston is going river rafting down the Green River. He will be camping two days. I hope he has a great time!

Bear & Preston

Jorja came back later than expected and had to hurry to get ready to go to Oregon. She was supposed to have her room clean before she left and failed miserably. One of my biggest pet peeves is Jorja will not put the lid on different pill bottles. Who does that? I have talked to her about it several times. I sent her this picture while she was at the airport. She just laughed. But really???? What is she going to do when she has kids? Super dangerous. Not a good habit to have.

Jazz won Game 2 against the Clippers. It was awesome! I loved it! In boring news, here are my juice pictures I sent to Rachel. I'm getting pretty good at this.

Mallory's Birthday Party

We lucked out with our timing on this trip.  Mallory's 4th birthday is tomorrow!  We won't be there for her actual birthday, but we got to go to her party!  Cassie had the party in the clubhouse where they live.  I went over an hour early to help her.  It took us awhile to unload things and we were just starting to really be able to work when a mom showed up with three kids.  She was more than a half hour early.  She said they came to help.  Her idea of helping was sitting on a bench while she watched her other three kids drive Cassie crazy!  They were bouncing around her asking, "Can I do the balloons?  Can I do this?  Can I do that?"  I couldn't believe the mom just sat there and watched and let her kids harass Cassie.  Cassie would say things like, "Why don't you girls go play outside?"  The oldest girl would say, "No!  I don't want to go outside!"  Cassie had only invited one of the girls.  The other two were siblings.  The mom guilted Cassie to letting the other girls come. They were all in party dresses, what was she going to do?  Cassie told the mom that she was worried because she didn't have enough stuff for all three of them.  The mom hadn't even RSVP'd for the one girl she invited.  The mom told Cassie to not worry, that her girls would share. The mom left once the party started.  Long story short, her girls did not share.  Tears were shed when the older girl didn't get a blower.  She also successfully defeated the little 4 year olds at the party games.  Oh man, so annoying!  The rest of the party went great.  John did a fishing station and Maysen helped by using her loud voice to get the children to listen.  It was pretty funny.  Cassie was exhausted by the time the party was over.  I don't miss the little kid party days!  The only picture I have of the party is of Stockton holding Brandon.  I thought I had taken more, but I think I took the pictures with Cassie's camera.

Brandon & Stockton

 Jorja, Trevor, Mallory walking home from the party

We gave Mallory a Belle dress and tiara.  By we I mean my family, Bubs' family and Matt's family.  The dress was on sale, I was so excited. I remember wanting to get these for my girls, but I could never justify it.  They just didn't love princesses/dress up that much.  Maybe they would have if I had got them some of these?  I guess I'll never know.

Mallory

 Mallory opening Grandpa Millburn's present

 Frozen figurines.  She loved them!

 Bubs' family gave Maysen a birthday card.

 Maysen

 Stockton

 Mallory, Stockton, Preston, Jorja playing a flower game

 Trevor, Mallory and Jorja eating ice cream

Our plan was to sleep outside and leave as early as we could.  Again, we wanted everyone in the motorhome so we could just leave.  We weren't sure what we should do with Anne until Mike came up with this genius plan.  That crib was sturdy!  Mike seat belted each leg in and the entire crib didn't budge.  The crib is where the table usually is.

The rest of the day was spent watching the BYU game - sad - and playing Dominion.  Matt stayed up really late with John and Cassie to play Ticket to Ride.  They started about 11:30, but I didn't think I could do another game.  Both Maysen and I were tempted though.  I'm not sure what time Matt got in, but he was there when we drove away in the morning!

MagiQuest

We hit the road about 5 am.  It was nice because Mike and I just climbed down from the overhead bed and drove away.  We got two or three hours under our belt before the others woke up.  We had run out of water in the motorhome, so flushing toilets was a little tricky.  Mike and I kept looking for somewhere we could fill up.  He even pulled off the road at two different places he thought would work.  No such luck. Then out of nowhere we came to this great rest area.  They had free dumping/water filling station.  It was great!  It also had a McDonalds, so we let the kids get breakfast from there.  Mike wasted no time putting on his Oregon sticker.  He was pretty excited about that.

Mike

 New map piece!

Mike talked me into driving for a bit.  This is the first time I have ever driven that thing!  It is so scary!  Well, not really, I'm just more worried I'm going to do something to ruin Mike's favorite toy.  I drove for a bit until it looked like we were coming to construction.  I did not want to do that!  I pulled off the freeway exit and Mike took my place.  We got back on the freeway and the construction was over.  It was just for that one exit.  Whoops.  I am glad I didn't need to drive through Portland. The roads were narrow and the streets were busy.  It was a little nerve wracking, but nothing like San Francisco!

Stephanie's first time driving

We got to Cassie's house around 1:30.  We dropped off Ange with her three kids and unloaded everything that didn't belong to us.  Well, we tried.  We ended up driving off with one of Bubs' pillows and Lincoln's headphones.  Mike took a quick shower while we were unloading everything.  We left as quickly as we could and continued our trip to Washington.  Stockton hasn't been back to Washington since we moved when he was 21 months old.  This is Preston's first time in Washington. Jorja went with me when she was a baby.

New map piece!

We got to Great Wolf Lodge around 3:00.  My kids were so excited!  We went to Great Wolf Lodge in Virginia about five years ago.  All of the kids have been begging to go back.  We are only staying one night here, but they let you play around the day you check in and the day you leave. This giant balloon spider was in the front lobby area.  Wow Jorja!  Try making that!  (Not really, please don't try....that would be a lot of balloons.)

There is a giant indoor water park that I think is amazing.  My kids are more excited about MagiQuest.  The kids each had their own wand from five years ago.  We also had been to MagiQuest in Myrtle Beach, so there is a lot of information stored in their wands.  Mike and I have had our own wands for awhile that Mike bought off the internet. Maysen changed her wand name from May to Yakima.  Jorja changed her name from Mario to Silver.  I can't remember what Stockton had his name set to, but Preston's was set to Mischief.  That name suits him!  Mike and I had our wands set to Lord and Lady Elsinore. Although they spelled Elsinore wrong.  I went back and got the right spelling on my wand.  Mike didn't get his changed.

Preston was so little the last time we played MagiQuest.  I followed him around and we did our tasks together.  He loved it!  These pictures are from our sun/moon/star quest.

Preston

These next pictures are of Maysen.  She is trying to slay the red dragon. Usually she likes dragons, but this one is mean!  Plus it is pretty fun. The podium in front of her has different ruins she has earned.  She uses the protection ruin while the dragon is attacking her with fire. Then she will freeze the dragon and the last step is to fire an ice arrow at him while he is frozen.  She will repeat this until she is victorious!

Maysen in battle.  Preston watching wearing wolf ears.

 The life is displayed on the corner things with the sphere on top.

 Maysen's life is on the left and the dragon's life is on the right.

Maysen has frozen the dragon and is about to shoot an ice arrow at him.  She wins this round!  Once you figure out how to do it, it is pretty easy.  The silver dragon is much harder!

When we decided to take a break from MagiQuest we headed to the pool.  Preston and I went down these tube rides over and over.  They were so fast!  It was great!  He was laughing so hard.  We were in a double tube and I would hold on to him with my feet as best I could. One time he went down the entire slide with his hands up over his head!  We were zooming and the ride was completely dark with random lasers.  So much fun!

Next up was dinner time!  It was pretty late and we were hungry when we finished with the pool.  The restaurant in the hotel was about to close, but they let us in to see what they had.  They weren't going to put any new stuff out though.  It looked pretty tasty and we were going to go for it.  Luckily I saw the price before we pulled the trigger.  $18 a person!  Yikes!  Especially for just the left overs.  That changed our mind quickly.  There was also a pizza place, so we did that.  Filled us up and most of the kids probably liked it better anyway!

We went back to our room to get in jammies and read scriptures.  Then we let the kids play MagiQuest until 10:00.  That is when they turn off the sensors.  It is so fun watching a ton of kids running around the hotel waving magic wands.  My kids are in heaven!