Is Santa Real?

This morning Kate asked Eric if Santa was real or if was just the parents that bought the gifts, he replied with, "time to get dressed." I don't think he knew what to say, stuck between not wanting to end the magic of it all for her and not wanting to lie. Let me know if you have any advice on how/when you tell your kids the truth about Santa or as we call him in England, Father Christmas. On a side note this is how my counter has looked in the kitchen for the past few weeks:-

I keep joking with Eric that I am amassing weapons of mass crafting, got lots planned for the countdown to Christmas for the girls, it all begins tomorrow, I love the holidays, especially Christmas because us Brits don't have Thanksgiving so Christmas is extra special fun.

Thanksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving this year was fun, we headed out to Arizona. Now we are in Utah the drive is a lot longer but the girls did amazing in the car. I actually didn't take any pictures at all I've just pulled a few from Eric's phone. We went to Arizona for a family reunion for Eric's mom's side of the family, it was fun to get to know everyone. These pictures pretty much sum up our trip.

Cute pilgrim girl.

Meat lover. This was a smoked turkey, seriously the only way to go.And a visit with the Jesclards, so fun to catch up, I told Eric on the way home that if we were stranded on a desert island and had to pick friends to hang out with us there the Jesclards (and Everitts, both sets) make my list, awesome people.

Dolphin Tale

Dolphin Tale finally came to the $3 theater this weekend and so Eric took the girls on Saturday, he said it was one of the best movies he's seen in a long time. Kind of fun because over the summer we went to Florida for a week and we went to the aquarium where Winter is, we got to see her and watched as she had her prosthetic tail put on. Amongst the other things we did it was a really fun trip.

We flew into Tampa and spent our 1st day re-united with the beach which is one of the main things we have missed since leaving CA.

Our 2nd day we went to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, see Kate's face? we were all hot but Kate doesn't do hot very well at all, good job the aquarium is small and so its easy to get to see everything in just a few hours. We saw the Winter presentation where they talk about her rescue and rehabilitation and then browsed the other exhibits they have, all of their animals are rescues, its was a fun place, they have movie props and some of Winter's older prosthetics.

After the aquarium we headed over to Honeymoon Island State Park, Kate was still feeling hot and wasn't so sure about this but we got out of the car and collected some awesome shells.

Then we wanted to hit another section of the beach there, we had to convince Kate to get out of the car and good job we did, we spent the rest of the day at the beach playing in the water and digging in the sand, the girls loved how warm and shallow the water was, this beach was awesome as there was a sand bar that created a little pool that the girls played in for hours.

The next day (pics on Eric's phone) we went to a place called Big Cat Rescue, anyone that knows Kate knows she loves big cats and its a sanctuary for rescued big cats, its quiet and you go around in small groups and can get pretty close to the cats. After that we headed to Orlando for the main reason for our trip, to see the cousins! My brothers girlfriend was there with her parents. The girls spent the afternoon getting re-acquainted with their English cousins and playing in the pool.

The next day we went to Daytona Beach, another day filled with sun, sand, sea and cousins. It ended with the loudest thunder storm I have ever heard in my life.

Our last two days we spent at Sea World, the girls had a great time there watching the shows, seeing the exhibits and spending time with their cousins. We had a fun time, it was great to get away and Sara asks me about every other day now about going to see her cousins again.

Halloween roundup

In my feeble attempt to keep my blog up to date I should probably post about Halloween even if it is a week (or 3 late:) We went to Cornbelly's and met up with our friends the Francois', they had lots of fun things to do

Among the favorites were racing the ducks, bouncing on the pillow, Kate loved laying the huge volleyball game, Sara liked these go cart things and of course the corn maze was fun too.

School parade, Kate the magician and Sara as Ariel. I liked the way they did the parade here, in the past at Kate's other school it consisted of the parents cramming around the area where the kids paraded and you couldn't really see anything. Here they put the chairs around the edge and in about 4 rows down the middle of the auditorium and the kids parade up and down the rows so no matter where you are you get a good view.

And trick or treating. This wasn't Kate's best night, she did about 1 street and declared that she had enough candy, was cold and thirsty and wanted to go home. So we went home, I think maybe next year she's going to skip the TT'ing and just stay home and watch a Halloween movie.