November Party continued....Thanksgiving in San Antonio

We drove over to San Antonio the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and picked up John, Melissa, and Maycee at the airport there.  Then we started partying!  We checked into this enormous, emaculate, amazing hotel/resort Wednesday night.   

Thursday we woke up and decided we wanted to skip our Thanksgiving dinner reservations and go swimming at the pools/lazy river/slides they had right there at the hotel.  We swam all day and then went to a fancy restaurant and had steak for dinner that night.  We put the kids to bed and went out for a walk around the hotel grounds.  They had Christmas lights put up all over, which were synched to Christmas music.  Such a fun atmosphere!

Jerz was so tired from swimming all day she fell asleep in my arms (after throwing somewhat of an embarrassing fit) at the restaurant and so when we came back to our hotel room, of course she wakes right up.  So here she is having her "Thanksgiving dinner" in our room, by herself.

The next day we went to Sea World.  It was even better the 2nd time!  It was all decked out for Christmas, so everything was different this time.  All the shows were different.  Probably even better than before.  We LOVED it!

Here's Jeter, Maycee, and Jerzi, being brave and sitting in the splash zone at the Sea Lion show!  Notice, they're the only ones down there.  Crazy kids!

The kids loved feeding the dolphins!      

This time they had a Sesame Street Christmas show.

And Grandpa and Grandma spoiled Jerzi with this dolphin that she is in love with!  She never let that thing go the rest of the trip!

Even though it was a little chilly outside, we all decided to do this fun ride called Journey To Atlantis.  I think it was the only ride where we all could go, thanks to Jerzi's big poofy pig tails that got her an inch or two taller.  The only problem was that it was a ride where you get wet.  We all tried to get in the middle seats so we wouldn't get wet.  Well, it didn't work very good!  I think we all ended up getting at least somewhat wet.  All the kids loved it and wanted to go again, and I was the only adult that wanted to go again.  There was no line for it, so me, Jete, Maycer, and Jerz went again.  After the 2nd time, no line again, so we went again.  They were still asking to do it again, but we had to leave cuz the park was closing.  This isn't what it looked like when we went on it.  This pic is from Sea World's website, so you can get a clearer pic of what kind of a ride it is.

We went when it looked like this outside, dark.  Which made it even more scary, and more fun!  We couldn't believe that Jerzi liked that big of a drop, but she was grinning from ear to ear when we would get to the bottom.

The crew

While the kids acted goofy and pulled faces while they waited in line to get on the Sea World Express Train, we received a phone call nobody ever wants to receive.  John's dad, Circle P (John Pocock Sr.) passed away.  I can't imagine how much John was hurting to not be there with his family at that time. It was hard, I think, for all of us to fully ejoy the rest of the time we had, but John was such a good grandpa and dad.  He played with the kids and was determined to still make sure they had a good time (we didn't tell them about it).

The train took them through a snowman village.  I loved the white lights and snowmen.  I secretly wanted to go on the little train with just me and Had through that cute little village. 

We also saw the stinky penguins, which we didn't see last time.  Penguins are cool to watch, if only you could breathe while you're in there, it might make it a little more easy to watch them.

I LOVED the candy cane forest!  I kept commenting on it, and nobody else seemed to care or even notice.  They had a little band in the forest playing and singing Christmas music.  I could have sat there with Had and listened to the music, sipped on hot chocolate,with all the lights surrounding us, for hours.  I'm not sure if he could have, but I would have loved it.  I don't know what it is, I guess I'm just a sucker for Christmas lights...and Had!

The Alamo

We went to the riverwalk, and this time there were Christmas lights hanging from all the trees, buildings, shops and restaurants.  They were everywhere.  I loved it!  We took a little boat tour, and our tour guide (the guy in the left with a Santa hat on) seemed so familiar to me.  I couldn't figure it out, or who he reminded me of, but he busted out a little spanish in the middle of his tour.  With that, and a few other things he slipped into his tour speech, we figured he had to be LDS.  We talked to him afterwards and yep, he went to BYU-Idaho, and he also said that I looked really familiar to him too.  We figured out we were there at the same time.  We probably had a class together.  Small world!

Have I mentioned I love Christmas lights?  And their reflection on the water....amazing!

I decided I love San Antonio at Christmas time.  This is just a regular street, with all the trees lit up.  Why doesn't every city do this?

Plus, they have these cute little carriage rides all lit up and giving rides to people everywhere you look.  Jerzi is really into princesses right now and about died when she saw this!  So fun!

With John's dad passing away, they went back home a little earlier than they were planning.  So we had the whole last day to just relax, explore, and have fun with just our little family.  This was the Christmas tree in the lobby of the hotel.  It was ginormous!

We had fun exploring the hotel grounds and goofing off. 

  What a vacation!!!

We feel very lucky and grateful to be able to do things like this with family, and create such fun memories.  Thank you so much for everything John and Melissa!

November Party

We are very spoiled when we do anything with family.  And November was like one big party month.  It was Hadley's birthday, my birthday, and both sets of Hadley's parents were able to come in November.  Blayne and Leslie came a couple days after Had's birthday, and were there for mine.  We had so much fun with them and got to do some really cool and fun things.  Beware, there's gonna be a picture overload here. 

First we went to an alligator park.  It's a park where we just walk along the paths that the alligators might actually be walking on or crawling across.  There's a whole bunch of swampy lakes and the gators are all over in them, and on the banks.  There are no fences or anything, so it could get a little freaky.  We were literally like 3 or 4 feet away from this alligator.  Blayne was wanting to go yank on his tail to get him to move.  Good thing he has a paranoid wife that wouldn't let him get near it.  :) 

Aww, look how cute this picture is.  We didn't even tell them to walk like that.

(Their clothes were not planned by the way.)

Look at that big dude that Ashton spotted, and the baby alligator we got to pet.

Blayne had some classes he had to go to in San Antonio for work, so we decided to make it a trip and go to Sea World while we were there.

(For some reason Had thinks its cool to look like he's mad in pictures.)

 

These three little twirps were so excited they could barely contain themselves.

Waiting for the show to start

All the shows were great.  I can hardly believe they train these creatures to do the stuff they do.  It's pretty amazing when you think about it.  I loved it when this huge walrus started doing sit ups in the sea lion show.  Hilarious!

They had a little alligator pond at Sea World.  Check out these alligators with their arms around each other in the top picture.  I think they're boyfriend and girlfriend.  They're so in love they don't even realize there are turtles on their backs.  We actually got to see something "that doesn't normally happen".  An alligator snuck up on the school of fish that they have in the pond with the alligators, and snatched one up.  Then, it took it up on the bank and started crunching on it.  Then another alligator started sneaking up to try and get a bite too, so the one that had the fish took it back down into the water to finish his meal.  We watched the whole thing go down.  The worker told us the alligators don't eat the fish.  HAHA

Feeding the dolphins was pretty cool.  The kids loved it.  I was happy to be the camera girl and not touch the smelly little mcnasty fish they were feeding them.  I did grab the dolphin's chin though.  Then the workers announced over the speaker, "DO NOT TOUCH THE DOLPHINS!"  Woops.  For some reason it doesn't seem as gross to me when they're huge and look like they're smiling at you.  I like dolphins.

Oh look, he can smile.

We also went to the wax museum.  It was pretty entertaining.  I've never been to one before this, and it was fun to see how real some of them looked.

 

The Last Supper was pretty dang sweet.  And I had to get a pic with Will Smith, because, well.... I love Will Smith.  Harrison Ford looked real.  And Michael Jackson, well, Jete's face says it all.

We went to a 4D movie.  That was also pretty sweet, and a new experience for me.  I loved it.  Jerzi said she liked when it snowed on us, but she didn't like the seats moving around cuz she thought it was gonna dump us out. 

Probably my favorite part of the whole trip.  None of us could stop laughing throughout the whole Alamo experience.  Here's a good shot of Had and how he really feels about going here.  Cheering with excitement!  Get a good look Fuller family, Had's at a historical site, smiling.

 

As we were walking down the street, right in front of the Alamo, we hear this loud cheer, "We're going to Hollywood!!!"  We looked over and sure enough, they are filming the kids that just made it to Hollywood on American Idol.  I ran over and snapped some pics and watched as they had to redo their cheer like 15 times for the cameraman. 

We also got to take a little boat ride down the river of the famous riverwalk.  It's a pretty romantic atmosphere.  And we had Jete, Jerz, and Ashton with us.  So....

we ignored our children, and let the grandparents be grandparents, while we pretended we were by ourselves on a romantic boat ride.  It was pretty fun.

After our trip to San Antonio, they came back to our house for the rest of the week and we played and ate and partied some more.  These three had a blast playing together.  It always makes me sad to see how well they get along, and how much they love each other, and yet we can't live close enough to see them all the time.  It's definitely hard.  But it makes the times we do have together so sweet.  We love our family so much!  Thank you Blayne, Les, and Ashton for coming out and partying with us! 

G is for "Good" Grass

I'll have to admit, Jeter's preschool is pretty fun.  They do lots of fun things.  I love to hear about the things they do when he goes to the other people's houses.  It always sounds fun.  He loves it.  They learn a little bit too while they are having fun, so that's good too.  When I had the preschoolers at my house, I knew we couldn't just play, I had to make sure I taught them stuff.  So I did.  Important stuff, like what real, "good grass" is like.  I miss good ol' Idaho grass.  (The grass here in Texas kind of feels like the weedy grass that we try and get rid of if it's in your lawn in Idaho.)   I had my mother in law send me some grass seed from Idaho and each kid was able to plant their own little "good grass" guy.  Then as their hair grows, they get to give them haircuts.  These grass guys were part of our lives up until now, so I thought I better post some pics.  Cuz they're about to get chucked.  (We had an ant infestation in our house, and they discovered the grass guys.  So now there's ants all over in their dirt.) 

Jeter's grass guy before his hair cut

Jerzi's grass girl before her haircut

Giving the haircuts

What great little stylists they are.

A sad farewell to the lovely grass of Idaho.  You will always be missed.