Andelin Adventures

Remember all these cherries?

Well I turned them into this!

Yumm! I canned some whole cherries with the pits and some whole cherries without pits so we can see if there is a big difference. It’s faster to can them without pitting them, but other than that I don’t think there is a huge difference in the quality of the fruit. I also made cherry pie filling, some cherry rhubarb pie filling, cherry jam, cherry rhubarb jam and cherry sorbet (not in the picture). Oh and I froze some whole pitted cherries so that I would have some for smoothies or whatever else we might want them for. 🙂

My parents are in town for a visit and so they took us to the planetarium today. I believe one or two of the kids have been to the planetarium as a school field trip, but most of us have never been. We decided to take the train, since the planetarium is pretty close to one of the stops, and it’s just fun to take the train once in awhile. 🙂

The car that we were on was loaded with missionaries. The girls sat at a table across from some sister missionaries and talked with them the whole way.

We got off the train and walked to the planetarium. The walk wasn’t very far, but being July it was hot. Once we got inside the planetarium we found out we couldn’t take the strollers upstairs, so we had to leave them in the stroller parking area. We went upstairs and wandered around for awhile while waiting for our movie in the dome to start.

It was interesting to see a movie projected onto a dome shaped screen. I think the big kids, especially the boys, liked the “Exploding Universe” video. Adam and Lydia did not. They happened to fall asleep during the beginning of the movie, considering it was naptime and they were sitting in a cool dark place doing nothing. But when things started exploding that woke them up really fast, and they were not happy about it.

When the movie was over we went out and looked at more of the exhibits.

There was a set up to show what the landscape of Mars looks like:

My cute little Martian:

They also had a “Lunar Landscape”:

Hey look! That Martian is a moon walker too!

This camera was pretty neat. It could sense the heat of the people and objects in front of it and projected it in colors onto the screen.

We finished up our time at the planetarium watching a 3d movie called “Flight of the Butterflies”. Dad thought the girls would like that one. And so they did. The butterflies appeared to be flying right in our faces. I saw several of the kids reaching out to try to grab them. Adam and Lydia however, wouldn’t leave their 3d glasses on for long. They just wanted to play with them.

When the movie was over, and we had everyone use the bathroom, we got to walk back to the train station. This time we picked the WRONG car of the train to get onto. We just happened to pick the “bike friendly” car, and it was LOADED with bicycles and their riders. So most of us had to stand the whole way back to our stop. And each time the train made a stop, there was a huge shuffle to let people get off with their bikes and to let more people on with THEIR bikes. It was madness and it was impossible to keep the aisle clear. The employee working in that car of the train encouraged us to complain to see if we can’t convince the train line to add more “bike friendly” cars so they won’t just have one car jam packed with bicycles.

As we got closer to our stop, dad had me text Kyle to have him meet us at a restaurant for dinner. We ended up going to Texas Roadhouse, and they had to put us at two tables. That place is not very “large party” friendly. We were told they couldn’t make one big table for us, because of fire safety rules. Other than that, dinner was good, and everyone had a good time on our little adventure.

Liesl is in town today for Granny’s birthday so we all went to lunch at Los Hermanos.

After lunch Liesl took lots of pictures out front of the restaurant. Here is one of all my kiddos spelling out USA

Like all of their patriotic outfits?

When Liesl was done taking pictures, and we finally figured out what the plan for the rest of the day was, we headed back home for a bit. We weren’t going to be able to be home for very long because we were supposed to be going to the Psuik’s house for the evening. Liesl and Ian and Granny stopped by our house on their way to the Psuik’s to check out our new bedroom furniture. Then they headed out and we rounded up the kids to head off too.

The Psuik’s had hot dogs for everyone to roast in their backyard fire pit, and there was a bunch of other food to eat too. Ethan found a loft in their large shed with a stash of legos to play with. Once he discovered that he was pretty much not to be seen for most of the evening. The kids had a good time playing with their cousins and making friends with the kids that were there that they had never met before. After everyone had had a chance to finish eating they got out a huge pile of pool noodle “light sabers” for the kids to play with. My girls were NOT good at batting at water balloons.

When the water balloons were gone, the kids just went back to hitting each other with their light sabers.

We finished the evening with some cake and jello for Granny’s birthday, and we got to see all the fireworks their neighbors were setting off. We also got to watch fireworks all over in the sky on our way home.

Even though this trip to California, has been because of the death of a family member we felt like we needed to make sure to do something fun for the kids’ sakes. So we decided to go to Legoland. None of us have ever been, and Ethan being obsessed with Legos, has been wanting to go for years. We found some coupons that get kids in free with a paying adult, and so after we figured out who would be going with us I think we had enough adults to get each of the kids in free. And the littlest kiddos were free anyway.

The first thing ride we came to in the park, the four littlest kiddos (James, Adam, Rexton and Denzel) were too small to go on so Grandma and Grandpa offered to sit with them, while the rest of us took the older kids on the ride.

When we got off the ride we spent a few minutes looking for Grandma and Grandpa and the little ones. It turns out they wandered around with them and got some treats for the little ones while they waited. Next up we went on a ride that was very similar to Disneyland’s Storybook land boats, only all the story book scenes were made out of legos.

While we waited for the kids to be done having a potty break we hung out with some squirt toys and fountains where you could spray Lego displays.

Then we went into a building where we found the very table of Legos they used in the Lego Movie! Around the rest of the room they had it set up like the basement scene in the Lego Movie as well, it was pretty cool. The kids loved it because we have seen the movie. My parents haven’t seen the movie so it was all new to them.

After studying the map a little bit we decided to split the group up for a bit. There was an area where the younger kids could play, and the next area of the park was made up of a bunch of rides that only the bigger kids could go on. So I stayed with my parents to help watch Lydia, James, Adam, Rexton and Denzel, while Kyle, Jenny, Tiffany, and Debby took Ethan, Tyra, Tommy, Jeremy, Annaleah, Dinah, and Chloe to go on the rides.

In the play area for the younger kids there were several playplace type pieces of equipment for the kids to play on, and there were a couple of huts with these HUGE rubber Legos for the little kids to play with. The whole area in general was NOT designed by anyone with kids. There were too many ways in and out, which means that you can take your kids in one way and sit down to watch them, but there were several ways out that you had to be constantly watching to make sure your kids don’t escape without your noticing. I really liked the huts with rubber Legos. Those at least there was only one way in, so I could sit at the entrance and make sure that Adam and Jimmy didn’t escape, while Mom and Dad took care of the other little kiddos.

Aren’t those giant Legos awesome? I really liked this Lego Mariachi band too. 🙂

Jeremy with Lego Chewbacca:

Grandma with Lego Elvis:

Then it was snack time. We found this snack shack that sold apple fries. They were just amazing! Granny smith apples cut up like french fries and fried, served with lightly sweetened whipped cream. YUMM!

We were in the pirate themed area of the park and a princess was walking by, so the girls HAD to get pictures with her.

There was another playground for the kids to check out. This one pirate themed and somewhat resembling a pirate ship. At least this one only had one way in/out. But it took awhile to gather up all of the kids and get them out of there so we could continue on our way through the park. Next up were the pirate rides….which meant water.

About dinner time we came to the medieval themed area of the park. We had dinner at a restaurant that was offering free kids meals with the purchase of adult meals. Then some of the adults took the kids to go on a jousting ride, while the rest of us were changing diapers.

We were running out of time now, and there was a roller coaster that only the oldest of the kids could go on. So Kyle took them to do that while the rest of us continued on to find some things for the younger kids to do. We were able to take them to do a couple of other rides, and then Grandpa let them go fishing while we waited for Kyle and the big kids to catch up.

Kyle and the big kids finally caught up to us, I finished collecting smashed pennies for each of the kids (they have started a collection, but they only get to pick one each place we go that does them), and then it was pretty much closing time. The girls had to get a picture with the Lego Friends on our way out though: