Our Lines Legacy

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!!!

We went to Disneyland this past weekend before our annual passes expired (only to find out Mike's had expired the day before) and to be there for my dad's "Disneyland Challenge". We didn't participate in the challenge because there was no way we'd get anything done with the two boys by ourselves. But we did have fun riding the kiddie rides with the boys (we enjoyed it a lot, partly because we went 2 weeks ago for my b-day and got to ride all the big kid rides by ourselves!) and seeing their reactions to all the excitement. All week Connor had been asking in the mornings, "Are we going to Disneyland today? Let's go find Buzz Lightyear!" and I had a countdown going every morning until I could finally say, "YES! Let's get ready to go!" So, the first ride we went on was Buzz Lightyear! Connor got super shy and awkward when he first saw Buzz when waiting in line and he had a blast shooting the gun!

There weren't many rides Connor liked. His favorites were Buzz Lightyear and the Toy Story Mania. Here he is on the teacups looking at my mom. He wasn't so sure about this one. He hardly smiled the whole ride and he kept looking at all of us like, "Why are we on this?" Jakie or course loved every second. There wasn't a ride he didn't like!

I love Jake's cute little grin before he shows you his buckteeth!

Here's Connor's other favorite ride, Autopia. The whole time we were in line he kept trying to push past people and cut to get up front. He just didn't understand why we didn't get to get on the cars NOW! He was so excited he FINALLY got to drive a car by himself!

Driving all by myself....it was actually really relaxing!

Jake with Grandma waiting till we got off the ride

Connor was so excited to get his first license! Of course he had no idea what we were talking about, his smile is so big because we're finally getting closer to the cars!

This is the first picture of him where I can see some bits of him that look like me! I usually call him my mini-Mike!

Here's Jakie on the teacups trying to hold tight to Mike

So, in all the excitement to GET to Disneyland I forgot our double jogging stroller in the garage....right next to the car. So, we had to rent one of their strollers and they didn't have any double ones. This is right after we checked it out. The boys were only happy for about 2 minutes....till Jake head-butted Connor and both were crying after that.

I love when I can get a picture of BOTH of them happy!

Posing in front of the pumpkin! When we got there Connor kept saying, "Momma! Momma! Look at that pumpkin! Oh! Look at that pumpkin!" But when he saw this one he was speechless.....for once.

We couldn't get Jake to turn his head around because we were facing the sun. Plus he kept watching the people behind us. I'm glad we got a couple good pictures where everyone is smiling and facing the camera this trip!

This is riding Peter Pan. Connor liked this one because that's one of his new favorite Disney movies. He doesn't really watch Nemo, Cars, Incredibles, etc anymore. He's into the older ones now like Peter Pan, the Aristocats, Cinderella, Little Mermaid, etc. I love watching those with him and having total dejavu!

This is riding It's A Small World BEFORE the ride. No one was smiling after the ride. As soon as we were outside Mike turned to me and said, "I think I just got stupider after riding that one" and then a minute later Connor turned to me and said, "I don't like that ride". I died laughing, me and Jake enjoyed it! The whole time he danced to the music and looked around!

Connor didn't like this ride either. I think he smiled twice. He's such a funny little boy. I think when you just leave him alone and let him soak in everything instead of constantly looking at him and saying, "Isn't this fun! Isn't this so cool? Do you like this? Are you having fun?" he likes things a lot better. I noticed when Mike just sat back and let him observe without us saying anything, he was a lot happier. At least I'm figuring out one thing with this kid! He's as complex as his father and mother together!

These guys were in California Adventure Park and were the army guys from Toy Story. They looked so strange because they were covered in green paint and had these vinyl looking uniforms on. They had to be so hot!

Last year we got a picture of Connor on the C. I wanted to get one this year to compare the two, but Connor finally fell asleep right before we took this picture. Till Jake hit him with the water bottle 5 minutes later.

And here are my sweet angels before we even got on the freeway! Connor took 2 bites of his doughnut and fell asleep with it on his thumb. Jake fought it longer and squealed and screamed at Mike and I a little longer and then suddenly conked out.