Easter 2011

I am sure that I have mentioned this before, but Easter is by far my FAVORITE holiday. I love Easter because:

You get to paint Easter Eggs. I love painting Easter Eggs. I always boil a ton so that there is enough for me to color some too. The boys also had a blast painting their eggs. Kade made his into monsters and Tyce was thrilled with his superman egg.



The Easter Egg Hunt's this year were also fun. The first one we went to was at the local grocery store (can I just say AWESOME!!!). The kids all came home with bug juice, string cheese, donuts, rubber band bracelets, soda's, and tons of other fun things. It was a hit. The next one was at the city park. We got to take our picture with EB himself.....the hunt was well.....ok.

Chase, Kade, and Tyce ready for the BIG hunt

On Thursday we headed out on the desert for our annual Easter camping trip. In all my 28 years, I have never not camped for Easter. The best part about camping is that my kids play and play and play until they are exhausted. Here are Kyle and Tyce gearing up for a 4-wheeler ride.

Jess was also a great sport. He is a great little camper (a very handsome one as well).

Tyce

We played a really fun game of baseball. Kade is becoming quite the little athlete (he gets it from his mom...... J/K)

The Easter Bunny always finds us out on the desert and this year he brought Kade and Tyce a basket full of fun things like this little paintball gun.

The EB also did a great job hiding their eggs, here we are at 7:00am looking for them.

Jess did a great job hunting for eggs too

Here are my cute little boys posing with their Easter baskets. They were so excited. Tyce said that he saw the Easter Bunny come into our trailer and leave treats (he is always full of stories).

For our ride this Easter, we drove down to "The Jump". Each year we take a drive somewhere cool....thankgoodness it wasn't the dinosaur quarry again.

Our next camping adventure was another Easter Egg hunt. When we were all through finding eggs, Tyce sat himself down in this little spot and "had a picnic". We weren't even close to camp, but he wasn't about to move from his special little spot. He cracks me up. (EB did not give him those shades, it was a treasure that he found on his hunt)

Finally, it is also our tradition to "roll our Easter Eggs".....well or throw them, but it's all the same. By the time we were all done rolling eggs, the hill was all sorts of fun colors.

I am sad that Easter went by so fast. I already wish that we were back out camping! Happy Easter everyone!

Our Awesome Vacation

I have been wanting to take my boys to Disneyland for such a long time and we finally did it! We decided to fly to California first of all because Tyce LOVES airplanes and has never actually been on one.....well lets just say it wasn't his favorite part of the vacation......he HATED it. Anyway, we flew into San Diego, rented a car, and started our trip at the Maritime Museum:

Kade and Tyce loved the submarines and the pirate ships

After the museum, we checked into our hotel and then headed to the beach. The boys loved playing in the sand and running in the waves....until they got really cold.

Kade sporting his roo's on the beach

Our next stop was Sea World. We spent two days there and the kid loved it. Their favorite part was the sharks. We had to go and see them quite a few times.

We ended our little trip with a few days at Disneyland. We all thought that the buzz lightyear ride was the coolest. Tyce wasn't much of a thrill seeker, so Kade and I had to ride a lot of the rides without Tyce and dad. Here they are in toon town.

We left Jess at home with Grandma Jo. We missed him so much and we were so happy to finally get home to give him kisses. Here are the mickey ears we bought for him. He is so cute isn't he!!!

Now that we are home and getting back into the swing of things we are getting ready for Easter and Kade's birthday.

Wrestling and Lovin the Outdoors

Can I just tell you that I have the cutest little wrestlers in the WHOLE world! Kade and Tyce have been wrestling for the past month now and I have had a blast watching them. Kade does so good and never gives up. He always looks up to the audience to make sure that we are all watching him take down his opponent. Tyce cracks us all up. He gets out there ready to wrestle and then he starts running.....it is so funny because usually the person that he is supposed to wrestle starts chasing him and it becomes quite the game. Last Thursday was their last big tournament where they got their hoodies and their medals. They thought they were pretty neat stuff with those medals......well I thought they were pretty neat myself.

Here they are getting ready for their big match

This is what Tyce spent his time doing.....well that and running around and doing cartwheels Look at my tough little Kaders Receiving their medals

We have also been spending A LOT of time outdoors....usually out on the desert to check on the cows. Here is Jess loving being outside. He is such a cute baby and is always so happy. This little man melts my heart every time I look at him.

Two of a kind aren't they?

On one of our trips out to the desert, we fixed a fence around the covert by the water trough. By the time we were done fixing fence, Kade and Tyce were soaked from playing in the water trough.

Best buds

This Saturday we took the four wheelers and rode out to cupcake rock to carve Jess and Bodee's names in the family rock. The weather was perfect, and the ride was a blast. Jess did really well on his first 4-wheeler ride.

I just hope that this warm weather sticks around so that we can continue to enjoy the outdoors. I have really enjoyed seeing all of our baby calves and can't wait for our next adventure.

Aloha

What a vacation! Hawaii was definitely the vacation of a lifetime which I will always remember. My mom took me and my sisters for a week and what an adventure we had.

It all started in Las Vegas where we stopped at Hooters to kill a few hours before our flight to Honolulu. They had this promotion going on where you signed up for their rewards and they gave you $100 to spend in a special machine. Well long story short, Jamie ended up winning $209 so she bought us some really expensive cheesecake and we were on our way. Here she is with her winnings....it was pretty funny!

We took a red eye flight to Honolulu so we got there at about 6:00 am. Our first stop was Pearl Harbor which was pretty neat, but kind of blah.....definitely not the highlight of our Hawaii trip.

Across the bay is where the USS Arizona sank and where the memorial sits.
On the memorial

After exploring Pearl Harbor, we found some much needed breakfast and then we headed to Hanauma Bay to try out our snorkeling skills. We had SO much fun checking out the sea turtles and the gigantic fish in the bay. One thing we learned real fast is that you shouldn't laugh while snorkeling because your masks fills with water (it happened to us A LOT).

Yep, we snorkeled down there!!!

We were some SEXY snorkelers!!!

After snorkeling we went to Waikiki beach to our hotel, showered, and then headed back to the beach. Here we are posing in front of some pretty green stuff.

Waikiki Beach

We also took a drive down the North Shore. The beach was so pretty and we were able to stumble across this cool little blow hole.
One of my favorite parts of our trip was our snorkeling tour out of Ko Olina. Our captain was hilarious and made our trip so awesome. As we started out in the ocean, we ran into a few whales. February is the best time to see whales because they come to Hawaii to mate and give birth, then they go back to Alaska. Anyway, we got really close to these two whales and it was AWESOME. You have to remember that humpback whales are the size of a school bus......our boat was 1/4 that size.

After watching the whales for a bit, we were finally able to get out into the ocean and do some snorkeling. The water was so clear and we were able to see some really awesome things.

Here we are feeding the fish

After a few minutes of being out in the water, our captain hurried us back onto the boat because he had found the dolphins. He said that it had been a while since anyone had been able to swim with them, but he thought we would give it a try. He gave a strict instructions to not move once we "ninja pencil dived" into the water (while the boat was moving). We all followed his instructions perfectly and were able to swim with the dolphins. It was amazing!

This picture is my favorite.

We are all looking like HOTTIES! We belong on the beaches of Hawaii don't we?

When we got back to the harbor, our captain took us to see this Pirates of the Caribbean ship. It used to the be black pearl, but in the new movie, it was called something different. It was really cool and the detail was crazy!!

After getting off our snorkeling tour, we jumped through the outside shower and headed to the Polynesian Cultural Center with our hair soaked. It was pretty cool. Here is a sexy Polynesian climbing a coconut tree.

Yeah....we're funny!

So every time we had to pose here they wanted us to make the "hang loose" sign. Well my mom could not do it......it was hilarious. She finally gave up and just didn't even try in our pics.

Luau

The next morning we woke up and went to the swap meet and then headed to the airport to fly to Maui. When we got there we attempted Hana Drive. The drive was insane, but the scenery was beautiful. Here we are in some bamboo.

The waterfall we hiked to

Hawaii was just pretty EVERYWHERE!

You can REALLY swing from these vines, I didn't try, but Jamie and Jasa did

We also went and saw the Iao Needle. It was really pretty there as well.We spent one day down in Lahiana where we toured front street and went on a whale watching excursion. I didn't get very many pictures because I was to amazed at what I as seeing. We saw a whale that was ticked off splashing his tail like mad, we saw a few whales actually breech (come clear out of the water) and we saw three whales fighting for a female (blood and all), you wouldn't believe the amount of whales we saw. It was so cool.

The next morning we left at 4:00am to go and see the sunset on the Haleakala crater. It was beautiful. We drove from sea level to 10,000 feet to see the most amazing view. I am no photographer so my pictures don't give it justice.

Another one of my favorite parts about the trip was ziplining through the rain forest. We had a really funny instructor for this tour too, so we had a blast. We went down 5 ziplines, each getting steeper as we went. It was so much fun and we laughed the entire time.

Our trip was amazing. I am forever thankful to my mom for taking us on such a fun getaway. Kyle did so well with the boys and it was so good to see them after a week. This was definitely a vacation of a lifetime and I was so lucky to spend it with my very best friends.