Our Lines Legacy

Christmas Eve we spent at Jonathon's house for a delicious dinner. At the end of the evening Santa showed up to give all the kids candy canes and Elyssa a new puppy for Christmas. Connor was so excited to see Santa! This was perfect to get him excited for Christmas morning!

I am here to report another successful Christmas for 2009! Mike and I stayed up till after 1am putting Connor's train table together. I think because of all the Christmas excitement (not really for me, mainly to see the boys' reactions in the a.m.) I didn't sleep till after 2am. But thanks to adrenaline and sugar, I was wide awake, happy, and excited for most of Christmas! We spent most of the day at my parent's house (mostly because we live in the basement!) and opened presents, played with presents, and had a big delicious breakfast. While the boys took their naps, we went and saw Sherlock Holmes-what an AWESOME movie! We then came home and my mom and I made Christmas dinner. Ate another big delicious meal and then headed over to Lines' to visit. We couldn't stay long because Ryan was calling from the Phillippines at 8pm, so rushed home to talk to my little brother! Here's some pictures to capture some of my favorite moments.

Jakie riding his new rocket with his blankie
This gun was Mike's present to me. I think Connor enjoyed it the most!

Jake was scared of this toy at first because of all the sounds and lights it made. It took almost the entire day till he warmed up to it!

Connor now has a new obsession. We had to pull him away crying from his train table to eat and for potty breaks. If only I gave this to him sooner.....

Rees trying out our plamsa car (thanks for putting it together for me Rees!). It's not as fast as we thought, but its still fun entertainment for the boys and the adults!

Mike got The Office season 5! YAY! I think I was more excited about this one.

Jakie boy playing with his favorite person

Still playing......

Momma opening presents with Jake

Jake was too cute opening presents. After watching everyone do a couple rounds he figured out that after you open it there's a lot of Ooh's and Aah's and began making his own sound effects. I died laughing watching him.

The boys enjoying the plasma car

I got all the boys and my dad some Air Hogs helicopters at 75% off at the end of summer. They were a big hit. After playing games Saturday night, the boys decided to go for some more flying time at 11pm. Boys.....

What a wonderful Christmas this year filled with fun, family, traditions, and reminders of our Savior!

If you were planning on getting up at 3am this Friday to fight the crowds to get those items on your shopping list, let me give you a piece of advice. Right NOW Amazon is already selling their black friday deals. Some deals are going all day, some deals are at certain hours of the day. I've compared these to other stores deals and they're matching other's low prices! Also, sign up for their Prime Membership for a free 1 month trial (details here http://www.commonsensewithmoney.com/2009/11/update-amazon-free-trial/) to get free 2 day shipping on everything you buy! Plus, this link shows you how to automatically cancel your trial after 1 month, so you don't ever have to worry about being charged for it! There were a couple DVD's I wanted to get at Target, but instead I bought them on Amazon at the same price with free shipping! There was a Toy Story Woody doll I was going to get at Toys R Us' Black Friday, but instead got it on Amazon at their same price with free shipping! Get the idea? Check out the deals here: http://www.amazon.com/b/?ie=UTF8&node=384082011&tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=3451119149&ref=pd_sl_36030tx8xv_e and check every day to see what's on sale! Also, if you haven't heard of CYBER MONDAY, you're missing out! It's the Monday after Thanksgiving and is basically almost all the Black Friday prices but online and most stores have free shipping codes or sales to take advantage of!

Anyways, I just wanted to give some advice for you guys in case you wanted to avoid all the Black Friday madness! I know I'm sleeping in and will join sisters-in-law for breakfast after they fight the crowds! :-)

Because we have an entire cd with pictures from our ziplining and rapelling adventure in Puerto Vallarta, I decided it needed its own post. This was by far the coolest and funnest thing I've ever done. Once we got off the cruise ship, we took a speed boat for about 30 minutes where the rainforest mountains were. We loaded into big army trucks and headed up the mountain on crazy small and steep roads. We then hopped onto some horses and kept heading up the mountain. After that, we hiked some MORE and then were finally at the top. I think there was a total of 8 ziplines and rapell lines (I may be off by a couple). But they were all very high, very long, and very fast! The first one my heart skipped a beat when I looked down and saw how high I was and realized that rope holding was the only thing saving me from falling to my death! But after that one, I relaxed and had the time of my life.

This was actually our last line and we got to race each other! They let me get a head start and Mike still won!
Us and the Stuarts

I was freezing here, it was after the zipline that dove you STRAIGHT into a river, you get completely wet!

Freefall rapelling, an awesome feeling!

These pictures don't do justice to show how high up we were and how long of a drop we had!

Once again, Mike and Clint were like little boys on these things!

Isn't this gorgeous?!?

What a stud!

Yep, "He's mine"!

Standing on one of the platforms

This was my first zipline and I was concentrating my breaking and footing to get it just right so I didn't smack into the guys that helped us!

Getting our instructions before we went on our first line.

We couldn't take our own cameras because we got completely soaked, so one of the tour guys had a professional one taking pics the whole time and you bought the cd in the end. I thought it was worth every penny, these pictures are priceless-I know there were a lot here but I had a hard time picking my favorite ones to put in this post!

Last week Mike and I were able to go on a cruise for a vacation and a week of sanity to ourselves. The last time we did this was 3 years ago when I was about 5 months pregnant with Connor on a little 3 day one. After months and months and months of scraping and saving to pay for it, it was WELL worth it in the end. After 3 days I missed my boys terribly and I tried my best to stay happy and enjoy my vacation time alone with Mike. We did the Mexican Riviera cruise on the Sapphire Princess and visited Puerto Vallarta (where we went ziplining through the rainforest and rapelling through waterfalls and rivers-we ), Mazatlan (the boys went parasailing, we ate at Senior Frogs, and walked on the beach), and Cabo San Lucas (we went kayaking and snorkeling). Our shore adventures were a BLAST and I loved every second of them. We had a total of 4 days of being on our ship in the middle of the ocean and on these days we relaxed, ate, slept, read, exercised in the gym, ate, watched shows and movies in the theatre, went to magic and comedy shows, ate, and relaxed some more. If you are thinking about a nice and relaxing vacation, can I just recommend a cruise! I added up the amount it would have cost us to stay a week at an all-inclusive resort on a few different beaches, the airline cost, and souveniers and excusions, the total was way more than double the total cost of our cruise.

Enjoying the beach in MazatlanMike taking off on his parasail

Formal night (this was the first, there were 2 formal nights). We're posing with Clint and Breaunna Stuart, who went with us. We actually went on our last cruise with them too! It was a blast hanging out with them and we've never laughed so much in a week!

We're taking a boat to a private island to go snorkeling and kayaking at Cabo. Here's our ship in the background!

Cabo San Lucas, I can't remember the name of these popular rocks

Mike and Clint hanging out with their favorite bartender. No they didn't drink any alcohol drinks but they had their fill of every version of non-alcoholic drink they could! This night Bre and I were upstairs in the jacuzzi chatting with an old lady till about 11pm. Wondering where the boys were, we went downstairs only to hear them laughing their heads off with this bartender. Bre and I were only reminded that men will always stay little boys-no matter what.

I had a blast and it was definately a joy to be home safe with our little boys. After 2 days with them I'm ready for our next cruise! My mom watched the boys and they were sick most of the time we were gone. They still are and its not fun taking care of sick kids! Most days I just have to keep reminding myself that they're worth all the sleepless nights, throwups, tantrums, fights, messes, and disobedience! We missed our little boys terribly, but everyone needs a little R&R time with their spouse!

We've sold our house and are now moving to.....my parent's basement! We're just grateful our house is sold and can start saving saving saving for our next house. I've been packing a little every day for the last couple weeks and its nice that I can take loads to my parent's and slowly settle in! Here's Mike and the boys today loading boxes into a truck to take to the shop where Mike has a box truck to store all our stuff.

Connor did great holding Jake around on the dolly while Mike pushed them around, until he stopped for them to get off. Connor just stood up and let go of Jake letting him fall to the ground.

This is poor Jakie afterwards!

Connor is obsessed with tractors and construction trucks. So, of course for his birthday that's what we had: a construction party! Here's all the kids except Addison Smith, who just barely got cut out of the picture on the right.

Here's Miss Addison playing the ring toss.Brandon Adams throwing the bean bags into the truck.

Grandma Lines gave this airplane to him and he actually went to sleep with it that night- I figured it's his birthday, why not? Like his Kool-Aid mustache?

The kids liked playing in the sandbox....a lot. And I was actually impressed because none of them ended up covered in dirt (like Connor and Jake do almost every day)!

I think I have the world's best mom. I don't know what I would do without her and all her help!

I've decided this is Connor's future wife. She's such a cutie pie!!

My little happy camper, like always-he had a blast chasing all the older kids around!

Connor got a lot of help opening his presents!

Whenever Connor plays at Brandon's house, this is their favorite thing to do-shoot Nerf guns, so naturally that's what Brandon got him-his first Nerf gun! Waiting for us to stop singing so he can blow out his candle! His "cake" was a dump truck with chunks of brownies piled to look like dirt. We had a blast as always because both Connor and I were surrounded with friends and family!

Since Connor's big party wasn't actually on his birthday, here's his little family celebration we did on his actual birthday.

He got some trucks, which we used to play with in the sandbox (I got them all 75% off at the end-of-summer clearances!)

A little about our Connor boy: he has energy like none other! He's not bouncing off the walls or crazy, he just loves to play and play and play. He rarely walks because he's got things to do and places to go! He still loves to take everything apart and figure out how it all works. He loves all things boy: trucks, trains, guns, dogs, dirt, water, bubbles, etc. His favorite person in the world is still Grandma Colvin and gets very jealous when she pays attention to Jake. His favorite songs are his ABC's, Popcorn Popping, and the Wheels on the Bus. He's very social and when meeting new kids automatically goes up and says "Hi, I'm Connor, wanna play?" He's growing like a weed and is almost too big for his 3T shorts! He's my mini-Mike to a T and we love him dearly!!!