Happy 15th Anniversary! Quebec City, Quebec (Cananda)

This July 10th marked our 15 Year Anniversary!  It had been a while since Chris and I had gone on any trips with just the two of us so we planned on a big trip for our 15th anniversary for years now.  

We decided to go on a cruise but had no idea where.  So while looking through random cruises we spotted one that stopped in Prince Edward Island and I was SOLD!!!  When I was young, I had a slight obsession with L.M. Montgomery's "Anne of Green Gables" series (which are books and movies).  I watched the movies and read the books countless times over the years and always dreamed of going to Prince Edward Island to see where these fantastic stories took place.  So a HUGE check off my bucket list!  

So our 7 day cruise took us through:

1-Quebec City, Quebec (Canada)

2-Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island (Canada)

3-Sydney, Nova Scotia (Canada)

4-Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada)

5-Bar Harbor, Maine (U.S.)

6-Boston, Massachusetts (U.S.)

We were gone for a total of 10 days--HUGE thank you to our WONDERFUL Grandma Donna!!! 

Chris and I flew directly into Quebec City, Quebec (on a TINY plane:).  It was like a step back into time!  This is a 400 year old city in Canada that was founded by Samuel de Champlain.  It is still a "fortified city" with a wall that goes around the entire "old" part of the city.  With cobblestone paths and the primary language French, it felt like we were in Europe.  We flew in a day early so that we had extra time to see this amazing place.  It was funny because we apparently came in during a "heat wave."  The temperature was 81 degrees!  Since we had just left 115 degree weather, 81 was feeling pretty good to us--I almost needed a coat:)  We had the best time walking all over this beautiful place!  We arrived in the middle of "The Festival of Summer" so there was LOTS going on!  We had fun watching concerts--heavy metal French bands--and shows--the Cirque de Soleil!  

Beautiful old hotel that marks the center of the "Old Town"

Statue of Samuel de Champlain

Fun festival stuff!

AMAZING Circus show!

View from the highest part of the "Old Town"

I LOVE the window-flower boxes!

Wish I could grow these in AZ!

Beautiful artwork

Our cruise ship waiting for us!

On our boat!

Quebec City at night!  Breath-taking!

We LOVED our stay in Quebec City and we LOVED our cruise ship!  We went with Holland America Cruise line and we were thoroughly impressed with the cleanliness of the boat.  Every time we got on or off the boat we were required to wash our hands--they had crew there with hand sanitizer making sure of it.  They even had these really cool hand-washing stations on board where you put your hands into a car-wash type thing.  Your hands would be sprayed and lathered and then rinsed again and you were asked to do this before you ate.  We were also not allowed to serve our own food at the buffet meals for the first 48 hours to ensure that there would be no germ-spreading:)  I really appreciated all of the precautions and we remained 100% healthy the entire time.  So no cruise nightmare stories for us--only AWESOME ones:)  More AWESOME stories to come:)

Sleeping Beauty--June/July 2013

Oh my gosh!!!  WHERE to even begin!!!  This summer has been my BUSIEST summer ever hands down!  My blog posting/reading has suffered big time!!! 

So we found out in May that Carlie once again landed a lead role--the Princess Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty) in Sleeping Beauty.  Ethan was also cast as "the shy faerie" Alroy.  So we hit the ground running again.  My husband, of course, has an unexpected trip to France and so it was me and my 4 kiddos running this show!  (Chris did make it back for the very last show:)

This play was an original play written and directed by Andrea.  So this was NOT the story according to Disney:)  The Princess Briar Rose was actually an elf in this play that was betrothed to marry a human prince to end the "Race Wars" between the humans, elfs, & faeries.  The show was extremely clever and HILARIOUS!!!  Seriously have never laughed more at a play!  Carlie & Ethan had a fantastic experience with the whole show. 

I was VERY involved in this show--more than what I meant to be:)  I was asked to help out with the faerie make-up and since my son was a faerie, I quickly accepted.  SUPER fun!  There were only 25 actors cast in this play--12 of them were faeries so there was me and one other mom using every ounce of creativity we had!  So for 10 nights, me and ALL my kids were to the theatre early doing makeup:)  The first picture is Ethan PRE-faerie makeup--just the basics.  I had to take a picture because he looked like a young Billy Idol to me!  Of course Ethan has NO idea who Billy Idol is so it was for my own enjoyment only:)

The Young Billy Idol

This is Ethan in all his Faerie glory:)

Faeries!  Faeries!  EVERYWHERE!!!

This is my favorite pic of them:)

Evil Faerie--Drusilla--was our most complicated make-up job:)

Duke Nico, Jasmine, Briar Rose, & Prince Adair--the stars of the show:)

Human Prince Adair and Elf Princess Briar Rose

Briar Rose & her BFF Jasmine

Alyssa, Tiresias, Queen Tearney, Queen Haude, Briar Rose, & Nuala

Kayleah worked backstage:)

Seamus:)  What a ham!

"Seamus!!!  GET OFF OF ME!"

The EVER hilarious Duke Nico--(thank goodness Kale's head healed quickly because we had to spray gold paint and glitter into his hair every night!!!)

Photo-bombed by Mitchell!!!  VERY stealthy!

Once again a celebrity!

Ethan's Best Friend Michael came!!!!

We LOVE our cousin Seth!!!

AND our red-headed cousins--Cali & Hanna

BFFs on AND off stage--Carlie & Savvy

The show was just AWESOME!  The cast and crew were just AWESOME!  Definitely mixed feelings of sadness and relief:)  BUT we're off on our next show that Carlie has once again landed a big part in:)  Stay tuned...

Carlie's 13th Birthday!!!

Well...I am officially the mother of a teenager now!  SERIOUSLY?!  Feels like she should be 6 at the most.  Oh well...bring it on!  

So for her birthday what Carlie wanted more than anything was her OWN room.  So we decided to give up our guest room to make our home work for our changing family.  It's funny because my boys LOVE sharing a room and will probably always share a room.  But my girls....let's just say they were both EQUALLY excited about having their own rooms.  So after girl's camp, this was our first project:

Well, bright and early June 20th, we had these 2 hoodlums show up at our door:)  Kayleah and her brother Tyler showed up and "kidnapped" Carlie.  They took there roles very seriously!  Carlie however was the MOST boring girl to kidnap--NO screaming or anything, just a little surprised and mostly sleepy.  They took her to IHOP for a birthday breakfast then back to Kayleah's home to watch a movie and hang out.  They brought her back to us around noon.  

Cute poster left for Carlie on our door by Lois:)

From there, Carlie and Ethan had Sleeping Beauty rehearsals.  Carlie took doughnuts up for everyone in the cast for her birthday.  She was surprised with singing and lots of cute gifts/cards from the cast.  And to top the whole day off, we went to Sonic for dinner--Carlie's choice.  Here we are enjoying the birthday feast!  A PERFECT day for Carlie!

2 days later, the REAL party happened!  We had 10 teenagers at our home from 6-11 pm.  Wow!  That was exhausting.  The party started with a HUGE surprise when Kale walked into my kitchen looking like this:  (seriously only 5 minutes into the party!)

So come to find out, Kale was "dunking" a basketball into our hoop in our back yard.  We have one of those hoops that is NOT anchored into the ground--it's weighted with water and sand but NOT meant to be hung on:)  He easily dunked the ball but hung onto the rim to be extra cool:)  The whole thing came down and hit him on the head!  So doing my best to stay calm, I was walking him into my bathroom to clean him up when he shouts, "HEY!  COME TAKE MY PICTURE BEFORE WE CLEAN IT UP!!!"  It was at that moment that I knew he was fine.  So there I was in my small downstairs bathroom trying to help this boy with 4 other kids in the bathroom with their Ipods taking pictures and immediately posting them to Facebook and Instagram--fantastic right?!  Once it was cleaned up, we discovered that it was a long but very shallow scratch that bled like CRAZY!  So I called his mom, before she had a chance to see the pictures, and as a mom of other teenage boys she asked to speak to her son, "Did you bring this on yourself Kale???"  "Yes..." says Kale.  Then all was well and Kale really was fine and wanted to stay.  

So here are some pics of these fantastic teens:

LJ, Tayte, Adam, Kale, Mithchell, Kayleah, Thommy, Lois, Carlie, & Savvy

Lois, Carlie, & Kayleah

And this was the beginning of a whipped cream fight!  

Our pool was DISGUSTING after they cleaned up!

Movie on the big screen!

It's kinda become a tradition that we always go to the park right down the street from us.  Every time I have any of these kids over, they just HAVE to go to the "Spiderman" park.  Hard to get good pics at night:)

So these teens went strong for 5 hours!!!  I could NOT believe the amount of energy they all had.  I think they could have gone for another 5 hours!  I'm pretty sure I was asleep before my head hit the pillow this night.  Happy 13th Birthday Carlie Mae!!!  We are sooooooo looking forwards to the teenage years with you:)