Everyone probably wants to have my sister in their family, especially since she was the reason why we went on a cruise.  My sister is known for finding great deals…and that is exactly what she did for all of us (Larsen, Hansen, Farley) to go on a cruise together.  Thankfully we all have terrific friends in our church who watched all of our kids so the adults could be together for a week.

Getting ready to board the ship

Matt giving Freddy, the Carnival Tail some love

Antoine Dawson does kareoke on Halloween Night

Girls sing kareoke

Mini golf on the cruise ship

Playing some doubles volleyball on the ship

ice cream 24 hours a day

2nd formal night

Matt as the Carnival Legend Sir Elton John

Beautiful sunset

We spent time together eating, dancing, singing, sleeping, talking, playing and eating again!  View more of our photos on the ship here.

For the past 18 months I have been the activities chairperson for our church/ward.  And let me toot my own horn and say that I have planned some FABULOUS parties!  Kalani told me that I have the best job at church…that I am the party planner, so she is the luckiest kid at church since I am her mom.  We had the normal trunk-or-treat last year.  But for Christmas I wanted to do a luau so that is what I planned.  I taught everyone a dance and made Kalua pig and had some fabulous decorations.  I think that we had around 250-300 people show up.  Then in May I threw a Talent Show.  Really, if you give people (or maybe just the Farleys) an opportunity to be on stage with a microphone there will be fun times had by all!

Halloween 2009 at the Trunk-or-Treat

Christmas Luau 2009

Looking at the calendar I saw that Halloween would fall on a Sunday this year, so I knew I wanted a really fun and BIG activity so the kids wouldn’t feel like they missed out on anything.  I had a great committee and we really out did ourselves.  There was a photo-op area when you first arrived in the foyer to set the mood.  And then you followed the mice down the hall to find the food.  Each table was covered in black with cobwebs over it and different table decorations.  The food was served out of 3 coffins that my uncle made for me.  Ghost milk jugs lined the stage and some ghost hung from the ceiling.  Oh and the ceiling!  I bought table cloth rolls from oriental trading and dropped the ceiling with the table cloth and fishing line.  7 hours later and we had one fabulous cultural hall.  Strangers (to me) came to clean the building in the morning and then returned later that night just to see the decorations again during our party.

Dropped Ceiling

Ceiling and tables

Follow the mice to find the food

Food inside the coffins

After dinner we had a pie eating contest, got to know our bishopric a little better and then had a dozen various activities that the kids could do for an hour.  Games included: “candy” walk, BINGO, milk jug throw, pin the tail on the donkey, marshmallow throw, marshmallow guns, face painting, haunted house, etc.  And then to finish the night the kids went to the different classroom doors to trick-or-treat and could take home their own freshly made kettle-corn popcorn.

Trick-or-Treat ... decorated classrooms

It was so much fun to get it all ready and then to see the children and adults completely enjoy themselves.

Hide your kids, hide your wife ... and hide Sleeping Beauty too

A lady from a homeschool group I belong to arranged a field trip to the BAYOU WILDLIFE PARK in Alvin, Texas.  It was a good 90 minute drive from our house, but Kalani and Mason had a GREAT time.  Our first encounter with the wildlife was with an ostrich as we were driving to the parking lot.  This bird came right at me and then to Mason…I had to quickly roll up the windows!  And then an emu also tried to get into our car…you can hear Mason crying in the background of this very short video.

VID_20101020_094851

We saw alligators, cattle, goats, giraffes, antelopes, camels, bison, lemurs, deer, peacocks, pigs, etc.  They even had 2 ZONKEYS … donkey and zebra offspring.  Most of the animals came right to the tram that we were riding and the kids had a fabulous time feeding them.  Mason had a great time petting the deer that roamed free.  The weather was great, the company was wonderful and it wore my children out.  The only bad thing about this field trip was that Matt couldn’t be there with us.

ZONKEY

Kalani and Mason making friends with the wildlife

This deer became Mason's best friend

One of the many animals Kalani fed during our tram ride

Back in March 2008 I made the dumb choice of listening to a timeshare spill and dragging Matt along with me.  I wasn’t too worried about us purchasing one since Matt usually says NO to things like that.  But, this time he surprised me and said OK.  It was mostly because of the RCI perk…travel anywhere in the world and stay for a week and only pay $200 for the week.

Well, in June 2008 we moved to Scotland so we never went to our timeshare for a year.  Yet, the people with the timeshare kept calling us.  Scotland is 6 hours ahead of Texas, so you can imagine what time we were receiving calls from SilverLeaf (timeshare).  We asked numerous times to be placed on a “Do Not Call” list, yet every couple of months we got another phone call.

And now I just got off the phone again with Silverleaf…which I wasn’t going to answer but Kalani heard my phone ring and went to answer it.  The first lady was friendly enough and wanted us to go to a meeting to learn about the “new changes.”  I told her that we are trying to sell our timeshare and we only bought one for the RCI benefits.  She then quickly transferred me to another lady.  I told her the same things and she was telling me “how could I sell something if I didn’t know all of the changes?”  I told her I didn’t really care and whoever buys it will have to deal with it.  Maybe that is dishonest, but I am fed up with these people.  I told her our past 2 year experiences with them and their continuous phone calls when we asked to be taken off the list.  She told me that they do not have a buy back policy, but another lady said that they could if I didn’t bank my week with RCI…so conflicting information.  This lady’s grammer was poor, she was raising her voice and cutting me off, etc.  I just about  hung up on her since I was just getting more and more frustrated.    She told me that she could not take me off the “Do Not Contact” list, that only a manager could…so of course I asked for her manager.  I must have been labeled “irate” for the manager was defensive while she talked to me.  Finally she told me that, “I will not be allowed to use their resort on the years that we did not purchase and will be turned away at their other locations and will not be told about any new incentives or perks.”  My response, “FABULOUS!”

So, now we are stuck with paying the maintenance fees for something we don’t use, but want to keep our credit in good standing.  Live and learn…and hopefully others can learn from our mistake.  So, now the real question:  Anyone want to buy our timeshare?

My sister celebrated another birthday this past year.  She is 21…again and I was able to help her celebrate it.  I found this yummy chocolate cake a few days before her birthday and really wanted to try it out.  So, her birthday was the perfect excuse to bake it.  And boy was it yummy.  I didn’t like the buttercream that the recipe called for, but I really liked this one I found online (and I used heavy cream instead of milk).   I also made the Pioneer Woman’s cinnamon rolls.  I was quiet the baker last weekend!

Can you really have TOO MUCH chocolate?

We had a family party for her on Sunday and then went to Red Robin with friends on Monday.  Later that night we had a date with our husbands and watched Salt.

Thanks for being my sister and letting me celebrate your birthday with you!