February's quotables and randoms

During nighttime prayers...
Austin:  "We are thankful that God sent Jesus down to earth rather than Satan."
Elise:  "I'm thankful to be lucky to have parents and birth parents."  awwww....
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Me:  So boys, what should we do today while the girls are at school?
Austin:  Let's play games!!!
Cole:  Let's do bottom bombs!!! (and that's exactly what he did)
Don't know what that is?  Here's a video (please ignore the cries of the poor neglected baby)...

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I bought Geo tickets to the Jazz vs. Miami heat game.  They were $5 a piece and I was so proud.  No surprise they were on the top row.  Actually, the top row was filled.  We were on the row BEHIND the top row - sitting on added folding chairs.  ha!  The place was packed, the Jazz won, and we had a great time!  I'm not a Heat fan, but I did snap a couple pics of my relative Norris Cole :)  What? You can't see him (and his cool hair) in this picture?  Guess you'll have to take my word for it.

Cute boys!

Valentine party at gma's and gpa's.
Elise ticked off about something importan, I'm sure.

Kids visited primary in gville and got snowmen from
Bro and Sis Mouritsen.  Score!  They also heard
some good stories about Geo.  :)

Jake gave the girls tickets to a U gymnastics meet for Christmas!  What a great gift!  The girls were counting down the days...

They told me they had lots of fun - dinner, the gymnastics meet, late night Tinkerbell movie and breakfast.  Big party!  The only downer was Swoop (the Ute's hawk mascot).  When Jake came back from a restroom break, he saw Lucy but no Elise.  She was hiding under the chairs, hoping that scary hawk wouldn't come near her!

gma Liz was there too!

Cole pulling Jake's armhairs at lunch the next day.
This is one of Cole's favorite things to do
(while sucking his bottom lip of course)

The girls went to a Princess Party as a fundraiser for the Morgan Troyettes.  They got all dressed up, painted nails, did make-up, learned a dance, colored, ate dinner... so fun!  Meanwhile, Geo and I took the boys to Taggart's Grill.  YUM!  We tried the carrot cake this time...lived up to it's reputation of being "the best in the world".  :)

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I talked Geo into doing a little bedroom re-do with me.  I painted.  He did the trim work.  It took us about three weeks because we only worked on it a bit at a time.  Mostly when the kids went to bed.  I think it looks great!  Only thing left is to figure out what to put on the walls.  And a lighting change.  And nightstands.  Are projects every really over?  :)  I didn't take any good "before" pictures.  But here is a "mid-project" one when I was trying to figure out which bedspread to buy.

mid project

with the trim, paint, and new spread

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Cole:  "Look, it's a temp-o!" (every time we see a building with a steeple)
Cole:  "Look, I buiding a temp-o" (with magna-tiles)
repeated often throughout the day.
Cole loves to look for temples during our drives.  Lucky that Utah has a bunch to see!

Florida: All the other parts

And now... the random stuff that we did between all the amusement park stuff.  Are you wondering if these Florida posts are ever going to end?  yeah, me too.  Last one.

We celebrated Grandpa Ed's 60th birthday!!!  He was pretty surprised when the cake came out.  And even more surprised to see the FIRE on top!  :)  Yeah Grandpa!  We are sure glad you decided to come with us!  Grandpa was a great sport with hauling kids, pushing strollers through mobs of people, driving with a poor navigator (me :), and patiently putting up with the chaos that comes with little kids.  Love you, dad!

 After church on Sunday, we stopped for a stroll around the Florida Orlando Temple.  Beautiful!

whole crew minus sleeping Erik
No, Geo didn't wear that to church.  He had to get back into shorts asap.

Cole, Elise and I walked all the way around the temple and admired the beauty.  (More about temples and their significance here).  Cole counted the "waterfalls" (fountains).  It was a beautiful day and so peaceful.
 
 And then... lizard catching began.

Hey... where did he go?!?

got him!

 And then... they found a snake.  No more posing for pictures for Geo.  Snake hunting is serious business.

 We stopped on the grassy area below and couldn't get Cole to leave.  Nothing like throwing rocks in water.  I started wondering if it was maybe it was sewer water.  But temple sewer water... that's got to be cleaner.  :)

Can you see us relaxing under the shade tree?

Cocoa Beach day... these girls are excited to hit the water!  Our boys stayed with Geo at the condo for some pool time.  I admit after HI, we were kinda spoiled with our beaches and they weren't that excited.  But the rest of us had a good time!  The girls jumped waves. Elise, Halle, and I built sand castles. Greg and Gav played football in the ocean.  It was nice.  And there were lots more shells on the beach than our regular favorites in HI.  Our castle looked pretty fancy by the end.

Lucy spotted a "turtle cloud".  Not bad, ya?

Storm came rolling in and we had to get going...fast!  We played 20 questions with a category on the way up and back.  It was about 1.5 hr drive so we had plenty of time.  The one that had us laughing the hardest was Lucy's choice.  The category was animals.  She picked a "pink and purple unicorn that can grant all your dreams".  Wow!  Shocking, but no one guessed that one.  :) Grandma guessed unicorn on the 5th or 6th guess, but it wasn't good enough!  We laughed pretty hard when she revealed what it was.  I was pretty impressed when the girls guessed my "pelican" after only three tries!

 We stopped at Hillsborough State Park and looked for alligators.  The sickies stayed home.  Sadly, we got skunked on the alligators, but the river was beautiful!

George lost at Old Mexico.
Loser had to cannonbomb.  Lucky he already had his suit on!

The last half of our stay was at the "Hidden Mickey" condo.  The kids LOVED the theme rooms!  Sad I didn't get pics when the Cole kids were there.  Puke fest kinda threw that off.

We had a wonderful time in Florida and were so happy the Cole fam and Grandpa and Grammy could join the party.  I loved how easy-going everyone was.  It sure made for a great trip!  (Yes, the Florida posts are finally over...back to real life!)

Florida: The Universal Part

The place I was most excited to visit was Universal Studios.  I think Erik was excited too.

First thing, the very brave people (Geo, Greg, Gav and Lu) went on the Hulk rollercoaster - huge and green and crazy.  That was Geo's favorite ride of the whole trip.  The rest of us headed to Dr. Seuss land.  The carousel and the one fish, two fish rides were favorites.  The fish one randomly spouted water - always fun for the kids.  Then we went to the Cat in the Hat ride.  I asked the worker guy if it was fine for babies.  "Sure!"  Once we get to the front of the line, they say the babies can't lap sit.  They have to sit in between people.  ok.  odd.  All along, we were thinking it was going to be the same as the rides at Disney where you casually ride through the story.  Well, we did ride through the story but with spins, sharp stops, tips, bright flashing lights, etc.  Poor Lawson and Erik were bawling their heads off.   Oops.  We ended our time there by standing in line for a super lame train ride thing.

 Next stop was the land of Adventure.  Again, we picked a lame one highly recommended by the staff - Sinbad the Sailor show.  Honestly, terrible.  However, one of the things we were especially impressed by throughout the park was the decor.  It was amazing!  One-upped Disney on that one.  In general, Universal was way better than any of us expected.




The next stop was what I've been waiting to see...
... you guessed it, Harry Potter land!!!

Erik doesn't care about the butterbeer...
he wants the glasses!

standing in line for the hippogriff rollercoaster-
I think Lu and Gracie rode it 5 times!

The "set" design was the coolest.  I was so impressed.  We went on the big Harry Potter ride and it was incredible.  You sit in one of those gondola things and it goes back and forth between a screen and "real" stuff.  We felt like we were flying with Harry and Ron, the walloping willow took a swipe at us, back to flying, dementors tried to kiss us, etc.  So cool!  And just the walk through the castle was cool in itself.  It looked just like Hogwarts in the movie.  Ron cast a spell that made it "snow".  The fat lady wanted a password.  All the photos moved.  Just amazing.  I could have taken 100 pictures in there (but left my camera with the non-riders).  The lines weren't long (so nice) so we kind of zipped through the tour of the castle, but it was still really incredible.  We traded with Greg, Linds, Gav and Gpa Ed.  

And then...

... Cannon threw up (all over my mom), followed by Gavin (in line for the ride), Halle (who hadn't been feeling well since Sinbad show).  Then Gracie.  Then Lucy.  Then Lawson with a double whammy that was bad enough they threw the stroller away at the airport.  All five of Greg's kids and one of mine within a one hour time frame.  Had to be a record!  Harry Potter land is at the back of the park, so we wandered through some of the other stuff (dinosaur and superhero land) on our way to leave, stopping at garbage cans along the way.   

Geo and I rode the Spiderman ride with Elise and Austin.  The effects were, again, amazing. Our "car" shook when Electro pluged electricity into us, a bomb from Hobgoblin explodes over our heads, we fell off a big building and spiderman saved us right before we hit the ground.  It was nuts.  But too much for Elise.  She took off her 3D glasses pretty quick.   Lucy left with grammy and grandpa.  I found out later they carried her part-way to the car because she "couldn't walk another step." (oh, honestly. embarrassing.)   

We went back to Harry Potter land for some souvenirs and more looking around for me.  We made little stops at The Three Broomsticks, Honeydukes, and Zonko's Joke shop.

Cole's souvenir -
Bertie Bots every flavor beans

 Here is Lu (top) and Grace (bottom) sleeping with garbage cans.  Poor little sickies.  The night was especially long for Greg and Linds.  :(