Annual Pumpkin Carving Party

We were sad this year that we live so far away from the Waddoups because for the last 4 years we had invited them over to carve pumpkins, eat dinner and watch a scary movie.  We had our party just with our family this year though, and we had a good time.  We ate pizza and watched It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown with Kennedy.  Our pumpkins turned out wonderfully too!  I'm really proud of mine.  Usually I just do your typial triangle eyes and smile, but I opted for something a little different this time and it turned out great!



Brett's is always extremely intricate and takes him hours and hours to clean and carve.  This year it was just as intricate, but I think he's speeded up a little bit, which is good, because we had time to watch a movie afterward too.  Here's his rendition of Frankenstein's monster.



Kennedy picked out the ugliest pumpkin in the whole bunch when we bought them.  It looked dirty because it's skin was more like a cantaloupe than a pumpkin.  She requested that a ghost be carved into hers, so Brett freestyled one.

The best part about her pumpkin though was that we let her color it with Sharpies.  She used purple and green, and somehow managed to color it for probably 30 minutes straight without getting a fume headache.  She is very proud of the end result and had a great time carving pumpkins.

Ocean World

We went to Ocean World this morning to have a fun day with our kids.  I know that Kennedy looks terrified in this picture, but I assure you she had a blast.  This aquarium in Crescent City, CA is small, but for how little it had, it was pretty cool stuff.  Our first stop (after the gigantic gift shop where Kennedy stuffed toys in the stroller while we weren't looking) was the tide pool where we could pet the animals in the water.

Kennedy loved petting the starfish.  She was even brave enough to touch an anenome!  The other little girl on the tour screamed every time she saw anything, so I was pretty proud of Kennedy.  Although Noah didn't pet anything, he did try to eat a starfish.

Then our guide asked for a brave volunteer.  After seeing what this guy had to do, I'm really glad it wasn't me.  He was asked to feel the sting of an anenome, but because they can't sting through our skin, he had to put his tongue on it.  And he did.

Yuck.  And just so we could take his word for it that his tongue got tingly.  Do you know how many people's tongues have been on that thing?  I'm sure it's clean, but I won't be licking an sea creatures any time soon.  Just so you have a better idea, he licked one of these.

Once again, yuck.  We went to see the actual aquarium part of the place next, which was definitely limited.  They had some fish, and a bunch of manta rays, including a baby which was really cute.  They did however have TONS of sharks.

There are 7 in this picture, and that wasn't anywhere near all the ones they had.  We even got to pet a couple of sharks after looking at them in the tanks.

I caught the fin on this one, and it was a lot harder than I expected.  They didn't feel very slippery either like you would expect.

Even though Kennedy had no problem touching starfish and anenomes, she wanted nothing to do with the sharks.  I think her face sums it up pretty well.

We had to take the obligatory picture in the shark's mouth.

There were also two harbor seals and a sea lion who did tricks.  She impersonated a shark and a dolphin, went down slides, jumped really high, and did double back flips.  Afterward, Kennedy wanted to ride on the jet ski ride out front, and she actually let Noah sit with her.

And of course we couldn't leave without getting a picture of Noah surfing.

Have You Heard About the New Pirate Movie? It's Rated AAARRRRR!

On Saturday Brett surprised us by taking us to Pirate Island, a new theme restaurant in Orem.  While they were building it, I was expecting something close to Chuck E. Cheese, but with a pirate theme instead.  Boy was I wrong.  Even just walking in, we knew they had done an awesome job.  The front of the restaurant had a huge rock waterfall with a pirate skeleton in the middle surrounded by jewels, a palm tree with a parrot, skeletons in cages hanging from the ceiling, and more.

From time to time a skeleton would raise out of the waterfall, and the pirate in the middle would talk.  Kennedy was entranced by all of this, but was too short to see over the wall.  She compensated by getting on her tip toes.

When the pirate started talking, she even pushed her way through the crowd so she could watch.

They had some awesome maps on the wall too.

They seated us in the bayou section of the restaurant which had trees hanging down and some really cool lanterns.  We were right next to the huge ship in the middle of the restaurant.  Periodically there would be a thunderstorm and the skeleton captain would talk, and sometimes the cannons would go off.

There was an arcade in Skull Mountain, which actually was a huge rock skull you had to walk through.  It was awesome because all of the noise was hidden while you were eating.  They also had a play area for kids.

The food was good, the atmosphere was awesome, and Kennedy had a blast.  We loved it!