OKC

last thursday we surprised the kids with a weekend trip.

we picked them up from school and took off to oklahoma city and boy were they surprised!

it was absolutely freezing so when we went swimming at the hotel, the kids opted for the hot tub even though the pool was heated. still florida kids through and through.

we knew ahead of time that the temple was closed for maintenance, but we wanted to go walk around anyways. it was so incredibly tiny! i couldn't believe how small it was! not to mention how cold and windy it was too.

jack and ellie thought it was the prettiest temple ever. ok, maybe not florida kids through and through because everyone knows the orlando temple is the prettiest ever. its a fact.

 we went to the Museum of Osteology and it was awesome!

charlie has told me every morning this week that he wants to go to the museum for his birthday... i guess even he really liked it! and, bonus: it had fantastically clean bathrooms. which is great for a newly potty trained charlie (finally!) who felt the need to go poop THREE times in the hour and a half  that we were there. whew.

it was very hands on and had so many types of skeletons.

with jack's love of marine animals, he was fascinated by the humpback whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling. this skeleton was featured on the show Dirty Jobs and they had it playing on a tv to watch the cleaning process. very cool.

ellie's favorite skeleton kept changing from the rhino to the giraffe to the flamingo to the... you get the idea.

charlie liked the shark jaws but his favorite was the gorillas. he's going through a gorilla stage right now.

they even had some cat skulls on display that were being cleaned by maggots. so so so neat!

we walked around downtown, had lunch at a pretty tasty mexican place, visited bass pro shop (of course), and saw the movie Frozen. 

we had no idea that Frozen was an animated musical. not chris or my favorite thing in the world :) i also wasn't thrilled with how they made the queen "sexy" in her looks. c'mon, its a disney movie, can't they leave that crap out?! but besides those two major things, it was fun!

ellie and charlie  really enjoyed it. 

afterwards jack said, "man, there was a lot of singing in that movie. and it was all about loOoOOove" he said with a roll of his eyes. haha!

 

then, for the main reason for our trip, we headed to...

the OKC Thunder vs LA Lakers NBA game!!!

we've never taken the kids to something like this, so we bought pretty crummy seats just in case it was a disaster, but it was still awesome! and the kids did pretty good. ellie had a rough patch where it was just "too boring", but then daddy got some ice cream and all of the sudden it was fun again!

charlie was fascinated by the blimp and the hot dogs, ellie liked the lights, and jack LOVED cheering along with the crowd. 

"let's go thunder, lets go!"

gotta love the fans!

and lets face it, had this been a miami heat game, i would have been this guy...

despite all the fun things we did, the kids still managed to fight constantly. why? why do they do that? and why does it have to drive chris and i crazy instead of being able to ignore it?

 i don't know. 

but it might be a little while before we splurge and take another weekend trip anywhere. 

luckily, when we look back at trips like this, we will remember all the fun we had and great memories made. we hope ;)

snow snow snow

friday morning we woke up to snow!!!

I'm sure our neighbors hated me, but i let the anxious kids out to play at 7:15 am.

jenna, dani, and brynn came over friday afternoon for some fun.

when the smiths tried to get out of our driveway, they couldn't!

it took some shoveling and some kitty litter to do the trick.

daddy had an epic snowball fight with jack and ellie on saturday afternoon.

we have big, beautiful icicles all around the roof.

church was canceled today "just to be cautious". chris thinks they are a bunch of wussies here in arkansas compared to idahoans. but i'll take the break :) we had a nice little devotional around our fire. we talked about faith and how we know that jesus christ truly lives and is our savior. i know the spirit was felt.

apparently this was quite a storm and we most likely won't see this much snow again this year. we might get one or two more snowfalls, but not this much. we have at least 5 inches in our backyard. thats a ton for these parts.

christmas is in the air!

ice, sleet and snow.

that is our weather forecast for today and tomorrow.

should be an exciting weekend around these parts! school has been cancelled today in anticipation of bad road conditions due to the big storm, or as my friend steph has dubbed it: snowpocolypse. the kids are beyond thrilled and i am a little nervous. not about power outages or food shortages. no, I'm nervous about having the kids cooped up inside for a whole weekend. if they can't go outside, I'm going to pull my hair out by the end of the weekend! 

i went to walmart yesterday to get some bread (yes, i said walmart. i grocery shop at walmart now. those of you who know my love for publix realize the difficulty i had in admitting that) anyways, while at walmart yesterday i realized this is very much like preparing for a hurricane. food, water, and batteries were flying off the shelves.  luckily most of our things are gas rather than electric, so we should be all set. fingers crossed.

but with this winter weather comes the exciting part of the season: christmas!

creekmore park has a great holiday tradition of lights, hot cocoa, popcorn and, drumroll.... a steam engine ride! we went for FHE, which happened to be opening night. it was just a little busy. and when i say a little busy, i mean stand-in-line-for-2-hours-while-your-kids-play busy. it was fantastic! seriously, i am more than happy to stand in line for two hours while chris runs around with the kids. everyone was happy!

this was our longest outing with charlie in underwear and he did great! no accidents! hallelujah!

in other news, this cute girl lost her first tooth about a week ago at church. she's now the proud owner of a little lisp when she starts talking really fast.

our little family was hit with the flu bug. it hit ellie, then a week later it hit jack. then a few days later it struck charlie. no bueno.

and, speaking of charlie, he has turned into the family comedian. he's always trying to make us laugh, especially at mealtimes when he has the biggest audience. sure love this silly boy and all his silly faces.