Tuesday, November 20, 2012

We're home and Grateful Turkeys!

Sorry for the million posts today!  I'm just trying to get caught up and this should be the last one!  After we got home we went up to my parents house to say hi (and to be in a warm house with real food!)  The girls had fun there and put on a little play for us.  Sophia even made Lilly this cute crown and wings!

We also got to meet Jeffy's friend George.   It was weird because whenever he was around we couldn't find Sophia.
Last night for FHE we talked about things we're grateful for and made our grateful turkeys with our handprints.  Sophia is thankful for Mom, Dad, Friends, Family and Heavenly Father.  Lilly is thankful for Mom, Dad, God and Sisters, Mabel is grateful for hands (we didn't get past the tracing her hand part), Doug is grateful for Memories, The Gospel Plan, his Kids and me and I am thankful for Fall, Friends, Family and Food.  After sharing what we're grateful for we made some turkeys.
Here's how Mabel's turned out.
And Sophia and Lilly's.  They were pretty tasty!
We hope you all have a great Thanksgiving!
 

Santa Monica Day 2

The second day in Santa Monica we headed to LA to go to the La Brea Tar Pits. It was pretty cool.
This whole display case was full of Dire Wolf skulls that they found in the area.
This thing totally freaked the girls out because it moved and made noise.  It was pretty funny.
We walked around outside a little and it was fun to see some of the tar pits.
After that we drove around LA a little more to see some of the sites.  Here's the famous Chinese Theatre.
And the Hollywood sign.
We also drove by this place.  I'm pretty sure I fit right in driving my mini van amongst all the BMW's and Mercedes'.
Here's one more shot we got of the temple on the way back to the hotel.
When we got back we waited for Doug to get back from his meetings and then headed to the pier again.  This place was right across the street from our hotel.  Totally my kind of place!
Here's the sign to the pier.
We totally lucked out and had a few hours of warmth and sun at the beach.  The kids totally ate it up!
This is one of my favorite shots at the beach.  I love all the little bird footprints you see everywhere.

Love this shot too.  They were so happy!
Here's Sophia and Lilly pretending to surf.
And here we are back at the hotel doing what we did best at night. 
Overall we had such a fun time on our trip but were so ready to come home!

Santa Monica Day 1

We had a great time in Santa Monica even though it was a little cold and cloudy. Our hotel was right across the street from the Santa Monica pier which made it nice and convenient!
This funny sculpture was on the pier.  It is totally Sophia's favorite food in the world so we had to get a picture with it!
Despite the fact that it was really cold and the water was freezing Sophia couldn't resist getting in.
The rest of us preferred to watch from the shore.
After we decided it was too cold to be on the beach we went to find some other things to do.  The first place we headed to was the LA temple.
It was fun to see it all decorated for Christmas.
We spent some time in the visitors center and saw some cute videos.  After that we enjoyed their miniature sculpture garden for a little while.  We took a picture of this one for Grandma Wilkins.
After the temple we went to the California Science Center.  It was huge and awesome and the best part is that it was free!  We spent almost 5 hours there and the girls loved every minute of it. 
The only downside was that there was tons of school groups there which made things a little crowded (until about 3 pm and then we pretty much had the place to ourselves).  They did have these nice little "discover area" on each floor that was for kids 7 and under.  They were nice and quiet and were great to retreat too when the rest of the museum was too much to handle.  Here's the girls doing s puppet show in one of those areas.
And here they are at the ice wall and riding a snowmobile in the exhibit about polar regions.
This was a cool little movie that had a 50 foot animatronic woman that talked about how the homeostasis works.
This was Sophia's favorite part of the whole museum.  There was a little island in the middle and you were supposed to try and get all these ping pong balls to it. There was all sorts of mechanisms to use on the outside (a crane, a paddle to flip them in their, shooting them with air) to get them to the middle.  Sophia seriously loved it.  She stayed there forever!
The section about ecosystems was really cool.  This living kelp forest was part of it.  It was pretty cool to walk through.
This was in one of the other discovery areas.  It was the cutest little play kitchen.  It's kind of hard to see but the cupboard below the sink behind Lilly was actually a display case with cockroaches in it.  It was kind of cute though because it totally looked like underneath the sink complete with cans of Comet and everything.  There was also another cupboard/display case that had mice in it. It was kind of cute.
The girls also loved playing in the little garden area outside.
After we left the museum we stopped at a little Rose Garden outside. 
The girls each took a picture by their favorite rose bush.
At the pretty fountain in the garden.
Mabel stopping to smell the roses.
This was Sophia's very favorite rose so we had to take picture of it.
The museum was right next to the stadium where USC plays (I think).
That night we went to Tito's Tacos that was recommended to us by one of Doug's friends. They were pretty darn tasty!