Too Cute Not to Post

We check in on the kids every night on the way to bed. I opened the door to Miss Bailey's room and this is what I found. I started laughing so hard. To think that she did all this and in an "oraganized" way and we did not hear one thing. This little girl cracks me up.

Happy Halloween

The day after we got home was Halloween. The kids and Tommy woke up to candy buckets from me. We had cinnamon rolls with orange frosting for breakfast and then we got Caleb ready for school. Caleb was having his Halloween Parade first thing in the morning so Tommy was able to go into work late and come watch the parade. It was so fun seeing all the kids decked out in their costumes. Bailey and I went back to Caleb's school in the afternoon to help with his class party. Bailey was so excited that Caleb's teacher allowed Bailey to come along for the party. It was a lot of fun and as always I loved being in the classroom helping out. After school we watched Nightmare Before Christmas and I made some homemade chili. We ate and then headed over to my parents for their trunk or treat. Afterwards we headed over to go trick or treating with our friends and her sister's family in her sister's neighborhood. It is just a couple blocks from our house and it was such a fun neighborhood to go trick or treating in. So many kids walking around and so many of the houses were completely decked out. The kids had a blast and were not tired at all. We stayed out until about nine and they got a good amount of candy. It was so fun watching the kids run door to door. This was really the first time both kids went out together door to door and it brought back alot of memories. It was a fun filled day.

It's So Hard to Say Goodbye...

Sunday was a rough day. The kids said their goodbyes Saturday night because we had to get up early to get to the airport. It didn't really register to my kids because they were upset when we woke them up to leave and their cousins were still sleeping. When my sister came out Caleb crawled up into her lap and hugged her and did not let go for quite sometime. It was hard to say goodbye. Caleb made us drive down to the end of their street and shine our lights into the greenbelt one last time to see if we could see a lizard before we left :) I think it hit Bailey a little more when we were at the airport checking our luggage. She started to cry and say how much she already missed Emmie and Tammy. Caleb was also sad and kept saying that he wished we were still in Texas. The kids were tired and little Bailey slept all but a half hour of our 3 hr flight. Once again we had a great flight. When we landed I turned to the kids with a smile and said "We are back in Utah." They replied with "I wish we were in Texas." :) We got home around 1 and spent the rest of the day relaxing and preparing for our normal routines on Monday. We had so much fun and I miss my sister and her family so much!! The kids played so well together. Smith Family thank you so much for literally rearranging your whole house to accomodate us. We had so much fun and made so many memories with you all. We love you all so much and miss you all!!! Til next time Texans!

Dallas Cowboy Stadium

We were so excited to finally make the trip to the "famous" Dallas Cowboy Stadium. We went straight over from the zoo with my brother Kyle and his family. We were wanting to get their early and take it all in. Bailey took a little nap on the drive over which was nice since we had been at the zoo all day and it was a late game. It was so awesome to see the stadium from the freeway. It was huge! It was also cool to see the Ranger baseball stadium which was right across the street. It felt surreal to be outside the Cowboy Stadium and see how big it really is in person. We were all a little giddy :) Parking was on the expensive side, unlike Utah there is no free parking or even "cheap" parking. Since it was all the same price we parked right across the Stadium which was nice. Walking inside those doors, was AMAZING!!! It is the coolest stadium. You walk right in to seeing the giant TV screen. It is massive and crystal clear. The kids could not believe how enourmous it was. We went to our seats took some pics, let it soak in a little and then we walked around the whole stadium. Have I mentioned how unreal it is??!!? They started to open the roof while we were there so we were able to see that and the kids thought that was pretty cool. As you walk around you walk through many glass door areas that have full on bars and resturants. They even had a buffet line with Chefs cutting meats. On one side they even had 3 Ford cars stacked on each side of the portals since they are a sponsor and those cars looked tiny in that stadium. It was by far the coolest experience to get to be there in an NFL stadium. Our seats were asweome too, second level and on the fourth row. We grabbed some food (again a little more on the pricey side but dang good) and headed back to our seats to wait for the game to start. My sister Tammy and her family and my parents arrived shortly after. I had brought out pom-pom hair bands for Bailey and Emmie and Y eye stickers that the boys wore under their eyes. They were all so excited and looked so cute all decked out. We had several other BYU fans from TX ask where we got the stuff and were bummed when we said Utah. The game did not pan out the way we would have liked, in fact we played horrible but having the oppurtunity to be at that stadium was priceless!!! The kids all did so good too. They loved being with their cousins and being at a BYU game together. We should have all felt a lot more worn out considering the fact that we walked for over 5 hours before and then were up til 10:30 at the game. We got out of the parking lot fast and when we got home we all got the kids down and the adults stayed up for a bit sulking over the game :) It was such a fun fun day though! The next morning we headed back to my sister's. Hit Buc-cee's again on the way home and went out that night to Saltgrass Steak house. Yummy! It was sad to know that our trip was ending and that we were flying home the next morning :(

Ranger Stadium was across the street

The TV was HUGE!!!

Fort Worth Zoo

We drove out to Arlington on Thursday morning to stay in a house and hang out down there before the BYU football game on Friday night. It was about a 5 hour drive. It was a fun drive being able to see much more of Texas. We also would have gotten there sooner but we stopped at Buc-cee's on the way out and spent about half hour to 40 mins inside. Tammy and Craig always stop at this gas station when they head out in that direction because it is so nice and have super clean bathrooms. First off, it is quite big. There were 38 pumps outside. We were greeted with samples as we entered inside, yes samples. Bailey was in heaven because it was a sample of jalapeno cheddar summer sausage. And she ended up "robbing" the samples because she loved it so much and the lady let her take as much as she wanted. The bathrooms are in sane, so big and so clean and sanitary. I know it sounds funny but they are impressive. Then there is the rest of the convenient store. It is huge. There is a deli where you can order made to order sandwiches which we did and it was so good! They have a huge selection of jerky that you can buy by the pound. Which again we bought and the spicy teriyaki was yummy! We enjoyed samples at the homemade fudge station, and loaded up on Beaver Nuggets. Caleb LOVES these and would get a full bag if we let him. They are a kind of a mix between corn pops and carmel popcorn. They are so good and so addicting. We had to laugh because we spent more inside then we did on gas filling up our rental. We headed back on the road and got to the house around 6. Tommy and Craig headed out to the store to get stuff for dinner. We hung out for a while before heading to bed.

Friday morning we woke up and all got ready. We decided to hit up the Fort Worth Zoo before heading out to the BYU game that night. I am so glad we did!!! It was such an awesome zoo!!! We were there for 5 hours and still missed a few exhibits. We LOVED how every exhibit was surrounded by trees, bamboos, bushes etc. You felt like you were in their territory and not that they were caged up. We hit the monkeys first and we walked up at the perfect time. They had a fun little wood bar play area and one of the monkeys took off and just started swinging from one bar to the next, over and over again. He had a little "routine" down, it was so fun to watch him and he was going pretty fast. The kids loved seeing this, as did we. We walked around for a little while longer but we were all hungry so we stopped for lunch. We chose the Crocodile Cafe and had Burger King. We were going to sit outside until we went inside and saw that they had huge windows where you could see all the crocodiles, snapping turtles and fish. The kids LOVED this and it was almost hard to get them to eat they were so interested in watching them all. We spent the next several hours walking around taking it all in. They had a fun little Town inside the zoo that had restaurants, candy stores, games, a play area etc. It was so cool. It looked like an old western town. We let the kids play for a little while before seeing more animals. Caleb was extra excited that they had sharks at this zoo. We also went inside an exhibit that let the kids feel starfish and other living sea creatures. I think the highlight for us all was the bird exhibit. You could buy a popsicle stick that had bird food on it and walk inside to feed them. The hogle zoo had an exhibit like this years ago but it was much much smaller and my kids never experienced it. There were birds everywhere and many of them flew into our shirts and purses. We spent a good half hour inside. There were over 10,000 different birds inside the area we were in. It was awesome!!! This zoo was so much fun. I loved how many of the exhibits had waterfalls and the animals had so much space to roam. It was just a beautiful zoo and so big! I am so glad that we checked it out. The kids were all so good and were having a blast! In fact they weren't ready to leave but we had to head out to have time to get to the game.

Sorry for all the pictures but I want everything documented and I did not post them all :)

These monkeys were so fun. One of them swung around and around (had a routine down) for a good 10 mins.

Lunch at the Crocodile Cafe

Coolest little town inside zoo full of shops, playhouse, etc

The kids were so excited to see the Cougar since we were hours ago from the BYU game.