Thanksgiving and the Monterey Bay Aquarium

Ryan and I have been wanting to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium with my parents ever since we moved to California 4 months ago, and this last week we finally got to go.  My brother and sister in law were in town so they got to come along too.  It was so much fun.  We started out the day with lunch at the Fish Hopper, which is fast becoming a family tradition for my parents.  It was delicious!  I rarely get to eat seafood since Ryan doesn't like it, so this was an extra special treat for me.  I ordered a crab and lobster ravioli dish with shrimp and scallops.  Yum!  Ryan got a turkey sandwich.  Boring!  While we were waiting for people to finish their food, my mom and I took the kids down to the beach to look at star fish.

Then we headed to the aquarium.  It was a really cool aquarium and Lucas had a lot of fun.  He LOVES fish so he just ran from tank to tank looking at everything.  They had this little kid area with fun stuff to climb on, and a tunnel to climb through.  Lucas loved playing with his cousins.

I loved playing with Charlotte.

Lucas loved playing with Charlotte too.  He was quite taken with her and followed her around watching out for her and trying to keep her out of trouble.  It was really cute.  Here he is taking her down the slide.

Lucas's other favorite was Sadie.  They were inseparable for the last half of the visit.

There was this cool waterfall room where the water would fill up and then splash onto the walls and roof of the room.  Lucas loved it in there and would have stayed in there all day if we had let him.

 After the aquarium we went to Ghirardelli and got some ice cream sundaes... and did some more Charlotte admiring.

Charlotte really was a such a cute little girl and Lucas was so good with her.  It was fun to watch him interact with her.  I just wish we had a little baby for him to play with all the time.  I almost took Charlotte home with us, but I decided I might get in trouble for that so I left her.  Too bad, look how darling she is!

 I didn't really get many pictures on Thanksgiving, but we'll pretend the dinner looked something like this.

Okay... it didn't look quite like that in real life, but it still tasted amazing.  Lucas enjoyed another day of running around and playing with his cousins.  Here they are hiding under the bed. 

 After dinner and pie, we packed up in the car and drove down to San Diego for an anniversary / family vacation, but I'll post more on that tomorrow.

We really did have a good Thanksgiving.  It was fun to spend time with family, and watch Lucas play with his cousins.  I was singing to Lucas the other day while I was putting him to bed and I decided to sing Count your Blessings to get in the Thanksgiving mood.  I love that song and I think its message is wonderful.  It was a good opportunity to reflect on the blessings we've been given this year.  I especially like the part where it says, "... count your many blessings; every doubt will fly..."  Sometimes it's easy to get discouraged and think that maybe you've gotten the short end of the stick in life; but when you take the time to be grateful for what you do have, you realize that you really are blessed and that Heavenly Father is looking out for you.

Teaser

We took some family pictures the other day for our Christmas cards.  We just took them ourselves with a tripod so they aren't what they could be and we only got about 5 pictures, but I like how they turned out.  This is just a teaser until Christmas when you get to see the whole family picture.

Oh, and this vineyard is like 10 minutes from our house.  You know you want to come visit!

Pomegranates

So apparently we have three pomegranate bushes in our front yard.  I had no idea what they were and then I noticed that the fruit on one of them had kinda split open and I saw pomegranate seeds.  They aren't as big or as sweet as the ones you get in the store, but they are free.  I had two with lunch.  :)  I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to juice them.

Thankful Banner

There's so many different Christmas decorations out there that I've been seeing and kinda wanting to try, but I felt like I should do some Thanksgiving things first so the holiday doesn't get skipped.  All my fall decorations work for both Halloween and Thanksgiving, but I decided to make a Thanksgiving banner for the fire place so that I had something special to add for this upcoming holiday.  It's pretty simple, but it was fun and easy to make and I like how it turned out.

While my friend and I were out on a walk the other day, I found some fun berries and seed things that I just decided to take home and see what I could make with them.  I might have to start decorating the table for dinner more often.

And finally after like two months of being jealous of everyone else's fall colors, we're finally getting some fall colors of our own in California.  I can't wait for Thanksgiving and family to come visit and all the yummy food.

New Church Pants

Lucas has really been growing so much lately, and we're just now realizing that some of his clothes look ridiculous on him.  His church shirt doesn't even tuck in anymore.  We definitely need to get him a new one.  He only had one pair of church pants too, and he's almost grown out of those, so I decided to make him some new church pants.  I have two pairs of pants that I never wear anymore and both of them are the perfect material for boy church pants.

I decided to start with the black ones, I'll post pictures of the brown ones when I actually get around to making them.  I picked apart the pants with a seam ripper to get the most usable amount of material as possible.  And I used these tutorials to make the pants, (MADE's Basic Pant, and Flat Front).  The tutorial includes the printable patterns shown here.

I decided to use the original back pockets that were already on the pants.  I just think they are so cute.

And here is the finished product.  They actually were not that hard to make, although a bit time consuming to pick apart the original pants.  I'm seriously in love with how they turned out, though.

I love the back pockets, and I used the top belt part from the pants too.  It's just for show, though, cause I actually just used elastic in the back.

Lucas loves his new pants.  He's been hating having his picture taken lately, though, so I had to convince him we were taking pictures of his cars.

Now we just need to get him a new shirt and he'll be such a stud for church on Sunday.

Picnic

Things have been kinda boring lately.  The weather is getting cooler and I've been sick in bed for the last few days so we don't have much to post on.  I was looking back over the pictures of the month, though, and I found some pictures I wanted to share.  One of the days in October I decided to have a picnic outside in an attempt to get Lucas to eat his food.  The tactic worked for like 5 seconds.

Apparently Lucas liked the idea of a picnic, though, and decided to let his cars have one too.  He seriously did this all by himself.