The Oldroyd Family

TAX SEASON IS OVER! We made it! And to celebrate, we headed down to the beach for a long weekend. We surprised the kids Thursday morning and checked them out of school around 10am. Spending 6 hours in the car wasn't the best birthday present for Daddy (Happy 37th birthday Sam!), but getting there made it worth it! We had a 3bed/3bath condo right on the beach and next to a great pool. Here was our view! Our first evening, we took a beautiful walk along the beach. I love these 5! Lincoln loved the waves Playing on the beach was a blast! Lincoln ate A LOT of sand. But he was happy! We even ran into some old friends, the Markwalters and the Palfreymans! The sky was so beautiful on our walk the second night. The pool was still a little cold, so we spent a lot of time in the {not too hot} hot tub. Lincoln loved it as much as the big kids! We even met some pirates at Pier 19!  It was a great trip and we all enjoyed some ...

This year, we decided to pack up and do Christmas at the cabin! And even better, the Walkers decided to join us. We headed out on Friday, December 19th and drove for 2 days to get there. The kids did so well! An hour or so before we got to the cabin, we stopped in Kanab for some groceries. The grocery store was darling and even had Mater's "cousin" out front! The Walkers got there late Saturday night and the kids were all so excited to see each other in the morning! Another fun thing that happened is that both of our family elves found us at the cabin! Christopher and Chester had a great time with all their shenanigans, like toilet papering the tree and ziplining from the loft!  We had so much fun making crafts...  Riding 4 Wheelers... (not enough snow for snowmobiles!) Playing games... And just hanging out and being silly!   Here we are on Christmas Eve Morning! For Christmas Eve dinner, Tiffany made the most delicious...

 We wanted to do something fun with the kids before the baby came so when we found a Groupon for the Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine, TX, we jumped at the chance.  And we were lucky enough to have the Walkers join us on the trip! The Great Wolf Lodge is a fun hotel with an indoor water park in it.  It was a BLAST!  Here are some pictures of the water park.  They had a fun kiddie area, lots of slides for people of all ages, and a wave pool.   Max's VERY favorite part of the water park, and where we ended up spending a lot of time was in the kid's hot tub! While hanging out in there, we had a lot of fun experimenting with the underwater feature of our new camera.  Silly kids! Keeping track of 6 kids & keeping everyone happy was no small task but we did it! Another fun part about the GWL was their nightly story time.  The kids had fun being in their PJ's with all of the other kids. The water park was fun, but our ...

We spent the last 5 days of our trip down at Grandma & Grandpa's cabin in Duck Creek - one of our FAVORITE places in the world!  Summer is the ideal time to be there.  The scenery is breathtaking & it is so peaceful. We took a day trip over to Zion National Park.  One of the best parts was that Aunt Vicki drove over from California & stopped to see us!  We talked her into coming with us & we had a blast.  (Daddy had to stay at the cabin - he didn't feel well!) We got a little hot from all of the hiking so Grandpa treated us to some ice cream! A very special event happened while at the cabin.  My babies turned FIVE!  We had 2 days of celebration.  We did their party on Saturday while Grammy & Grandpa Great could be there.  Then we celebrated a little on their actual birthday (Sunday) as well. Nathan & Alexa got some great stuff from our family!  One thing we've learned is that Alexa doesn't show much ...

I didn't do a great job taking pictures during this part of our trip!  We were too busy having fun celebrating Pioneer Day (24th of July), swimming in Uncle Rex's pool & playing with cousins. I did snap some pictures at the Bee's game!  And they won! We of course had to hit up Cafe Rio... maybe more than once! On our way down to the cabin we made some stops.  First one was lunch at In-N-Out. We stopped at the cemetery to see Grandpa Great's headstone & see my brothers.  It was neat to show Nathan who his name came from & talk about Uncle Nathan a little bit.  Very special!  I am grateful for my eternal family! Last stop before we headed down south was to Grandma Great Gines' house.  We love her so much!

We did it again... we loaded up all 5 of us in the mini van & headed on our summer car trip!  The kids did great.  We did stop a couple of times to play along the way but it was a good trip! Our first stop was to see the Walkers in Colorado Spring.  We loved the beautiful mountain air & fun time with our friends!  The highlight of the trip was going to Santa's Workshop.  Its a Winter Wonderland (Christmas music & Santa included) all year around!