A good ol' surprise......

My parents celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary in Sept. and both turned 65 in Nov. I knew I wanted to do something big and fun for them. I don't think there is anything they like more than when they can get all their kids together in the same place at the same time. It's been a couple for years since we have all been able to be together. There are 9 of us so it's quit a task.

About six weeks before there birthdays I called all my siblings and asked if they would all be willing to come here (for the ones out of state) and meet at a restaurant to surprise my parents. All were in so then the fun began. Two of my sisters and my youngest brother all drove down together on Thursday and got here Friday about 3 am. Then my brother Eric just happened to have to come down for a work function and brought my other sister who had just moved up there weeks before. We met up with him before he got to my parents to pick her up so they wouldn't know.

Eric and his wife told my parents they wanted to take them out to dinner when they got here. We were all waiting for them at Bucca di Beppo. My mom says to Eric as they walked in "Man Kevin would sure be jealous if he knew we were here." It was soo much fun to all be together and I'm so glad all the siblings and a few spouses were able to make it!!

Here is everyone ready to snap some pictures as they walked in.

What is going on??

Oh! Everyone is here!!
Here we all are waiting for our dinner.
Blowing out their birthday candelabra.Kevin was excited to have some of that cake:) (love ya Kev!!)

Here is all of us outside the restaurant.
Theresa, Ron, Kevin, Natalie, Melanie, Dad, Mom, Me, Jeff, Eric and Scott!

For those of you who have wanted to see everyone in my family here or some of them. We are missing 9 spouses and 23 grand kids.

I had my three sisters and my youngest brother stay with me before they headed home EARLY Monday morning. We had such a blast all being together! Kevin might have been a little shocked with the girl talked but we loved having him here!!

Kai's Muscles......

Trying to get Kai to eat is quite the task. Until recently when the gastroenterologist (?) told me not to do to much coaxing as it will have the opposite effect. She told me in all her years of practice she's never seen a kids stave himself to death although we do need to continue to work on get to the bottom of the problem. Anyways, I told him if he want to get big muscles like daddy then he has to eat. Now he is very into showing us his muscles after every bite of food he eats. So on Monday we were at Carson's baseball practice and after his snack he needed to take his shirt off and show us how much bigger his muscles got from eating some chex mix.

Kamden of course then had to show me his as well.

Then after snapping picture of the little boys Riley wanted me to take a picture of her so Kai says "come on Riley take off your shirt and show mom your muscles"as you can see she thought that was pretty funny and totally embarrassing since the people around us heard what Kai had said. He just didn't understand why she wasn't going for that.

Riley's singing workshop

Riley did a singing workshop with a group of kids from our ward. She was a little more into acting than singing. But still cute.

Halloween

My brother had his annual Halloween party. The kids had lots of fun playing with cousins, dressing up, eating yummy food and checking out the cool fire barrel Uncle Scotty made.

Klara, Zoe, & Riley

One very tired Buzz...I don't think we had even left the driveway yet.

Kam is hopped up on goofballs.

Dead tree

This tree has been dead since we moved into this house. With all the other yard work that needed to be done we just got to cutting it down. We borrowed my brothers chainsaw but could never get it to work. We decided to try and cut it down with a hand saw (I would not recommend this method)

Justin is done! (this sucks!!)

Thankfully when I was taking my kids to a birthday party shortly after this I ask a guy in our ward if he had a chainsaw. He just happened to have one in the back of his truck and headed over and had it down in about 5 minutes!! Can't get luckier than that. I'm so glad that tree is gone. We kind of. If anyone needs any fire wood I know a good place to get some.

Sea World

So our Sea World trip goes along with the beach pictures I posted a few posts ago. I figure before I do anymore blogging I needed to get these on here. The kids were so excited to see the Shamu show. We had to sit and wait about 45 minutes till it started and we all got so sun burned. Kai is not a very patient kid so this wait about killed him.....and us.

There was a vendor selling swords at one of the shows we went to and Kai is obsessed with swords (I'm pretty sure most little boys are) so Justin and I waited and watched his face when he spotted them. It was classic. After he and Carson got their swords this is all they wanted to do.
This is what Kai did with grandma and Kamden while the rest of us went on the rides.

I couldn't believe how high this dolphin could jump. This was my favorite show there.