Famiy Night

 We took the kid to te skating rink this past Thursday night. ever since they found my skates a few months ago, we have had skaters all through the house. Santa brought the younger 3 kids skates for Christmas, and we all decided to go to the family night skating they have in Ponchatoula. It was lots of fun! Poor Adalie doesn't quite have the hang of it yet, but the other 3 took to it like a fish to water. Even Brett had some pretty good moves in there. I like being able to do things with all of us, despite the whining that ALWAYS seems to occur. A ten minute car ride can feel like an eternity with this crew. Loos like this is another fun thing to add on our calendars for family nights in the future!

 New year...same ole Sorensen's! Well, lots of things happened in the in between of the years, but we made it our goal to at least start with the family blogging again. Brett got me my others blogs and put them in o books for me the kids have loved looking back a all the pictures and entries, so we are going to try and keep tis family journal thing going and keep making some books for our family to enjoy!

So, the holidays is where we will start! Christmas was great. it was just our little family this year, which i didn't mind at all. I like the low key Christmas with just us. even though we missed our families and wish we could be closer, it was a special thing for it just to be us. See, I've been...let say sick..(more about that on a different day in a different post) these last few years and haven't been here mentally at all for my family. This is was the very welcomed difference - i was home - body AND mind. kids got lots of good things and everyone was happy. Cason even got a dirt bike this year and has been running up the roads in our neighborhood with it. it was definitely the big hit gift this year for him. it was a very blessed Christmas day for all of us. i am so grateful we have what we have and grateful for the family we are.

New Years day was a lot of fun to. we took the kids bowling, Brett and I went on a little date and stopped and got the kids some fireworks too. Brett started up the fire pit, and we had lots of fun playing with fire haha. Enjoy the pictures! No one really made any kind of resolutions, but some of our goals include being healthy and more peace in or home.....fingers crossed!!

And we ofcourse made egg rolls amd black eyed peas for th Nw Year!! DELICIOUS!!

Our Trip to Universal!!

We finally did it, we took the kids and went to Universal Studios. Lydia and I got to go a few years ago just the two of us for an anniversary trip (yep we ditched the kids and went to an amusement park) and we loved it sooo much, it was amazing. So we have been planning ever since to take the kids and go as a family. We finally did it this year. Lydia just made it home from Pinnacle Recovery in Utah just in time to make the trip, it was so great to all be together and go this awesome vacation. We drove to Orlando and of course had to stop at Buckey's while on the way.

We Love stopping at Buckeys and getting all sorts of snacks, drinks and treats. My favorite is the chocolate covered sunflower seeds. I love the Brisket breakfast burrito but we got there a little too late in the day for that. On this trip however, I wish we would have just drove right on by. Trying to get out of the parking lot at this Bucky's took us literally an hour, the traffic out of the parking lot was not moving! And when you are already on a nice long trip the last thing you want is to sit an hour in the car not moving. Still to this day not sure why it was so bad, but eventually we made it out and back on the road. We ended up staying the first night in a Hotel in Florida a couple hours from Orlando, got some pizza, kids got in a good swim in the pool and got some sleep.

We stayed at a really nice Universal Hotel, unfortunately for some reason we didn't take any pics at the Hotel... weird huh. I wish we would have. We got checked into the hotel, got our tickets at the hotel and headed to the park. Walked up to the front gates, then found out they had gotten the dates on our tickets wrong and we could not get in, seriously things can never just go smoothly on vacation. We were sent to the guest services where we stood in a line for 45 minutes, eventually we got to talk to someone who got it all straightened out and we were again on our way. 

We loved the trip, kids want us to go back every other year but I'm not sure that is going to happen, the plan right now is to return for Adalie's Senior year trip. I think it has been our favorite family trip yet. The Harry Potter world is our favorite part overall, Hagrid's ride is great as well as the castle ride and Gringott's bank ride. It's like transporting to Harry Potter's world! We also love the frozen butterbeers, well most of us did. The kids each picked out their own wand as well. 

There were also other great rides like the velociraptor ride and Hulk ride. 

Then on the last day we went to the water park which was a lot of fun, however I think we were all pretty tired that day and by the end of the day were ready to start heading home. The trip overall was a blast and we can't wait to get back to Universal one day!

My first big home project!

Well a couple of weekends ago I got tired of going out to my garage and not being able to get from one end to the other because of all the mess. So I decided to do something about it. I'm not a big carpenter by any means but I don't think I did half bad!

For about $100 dollars worth of wood and tools I was able to bring some order to my chaotic garage. Now every time I walk out there I'm a little shocked that this is my garage, it's just so ordered, we can even get the van in there if we want to. I know crazy right? We'll see how long it lasts. Either way I'm pretty happy with my work. It always makes me feel good to get something done around the house.

Adalie's Choir

One of my favorite things to do is listen to Adalie sing. She takes after her sweet Momma with her singing voice. She seems to really like choir and I hope she sticks with it. She had a concert tonight, they were doing songs from musicals (broadway) my favorite was the song from the Greatest Showman.

She is such a sweetheart, I don't know what I would do without her in my life. She is the rock that keeps this family sane sometimes in a storm of craziness!

Spring Break 2019!

Well here goes my first attempt at a blog post. Recently I have been thinking back at all the good times we have had as a family over the years and realized we have not been keeping up on recording these memories. I was reading through Lydia's old posts and decided to restart the blog so that we can continue our family history for our kids to have and look back on when they are older. I don't have the wit or pizazz of my better half in writing so you'll have to bear with me a little. I also plan to go back in time and catch up on some of the bigger happenings in our life over the years we failed to record, hopefully I am up to the challenge. Maybe Lydia will chime in again once in while as well, she has the better sense of humor and flare for writing anyways.

Last Week was our kid's spring break and we had to get out and do something. There is no way I wanted to leave Lydia at home alone all week with the kids driving her nuts, so I was able to take a few days off and we hit the road to San Antonio for an adventure. You may be thinking to yourself "is 8 hours in a car followed by three nights in a hotel and long days of dragging kids around San Antonio really any better than staying cooped up in the house all week?" Great question, one that I had as well, but we decided to chance if for a family adventure. The last time we all went to San Antonio to Sea World was right after Adalie was baptized and we took Grandma and Grandpa with us, it was a blast and this trip often made me think back on my Dad since he was with us the last time we were there.
 
That was a few years ago now, but I was really looking forward to this trip as well. So we headed off on Wednesday morning, got up early packed and we were on the road. We made a little stop in Vidor to have lunch with Grandmama and Grandpa, they cooked hot dogs and hamburgers. We dropped off Cooper for a little adventure there and then we hit the road again. We reached our Hotel around 6 PM, got checked in and ordered some Domino's to the room for dinner. Got settled in and got ready for the adventure of day 1 in San Antonio.

Day 1: Lydia and I went back and forth as to what we should do on day 1. We wanted to go to the Alamo and River walk but wondered if it would be too boring for the kids and thought maybe we should just take them to the San Antonio zoo. Our kids always love the zoo and we do as well, however we couldn't pass up the Alamo and decided to teach our kids a little history, so we chose the Alamo and river walk.

Here are the kids in front of the Alamo. Cason by this time was in a bad mood and wouldn't take a picture with his brother and sister and Braylee was about done as well, that will teach me to take pictures at the end of the visit when everyone is done already. We had a great time though, besides a couple of hiccups with some fighting and not listening here and there. Kids seemed to enjoy it more than I thought they would and Cason had a lot of questions about what was going on with the war and the battle that happened here.
 


After the Alamo we walked down to the River Walk, however the kids didn't last long by this time. It didn't take long for them to begin whining that they were tired of walking, bored and wanted to go back to the Hotel to swim. I was so close to getting a nice German brawt wurst at one resteraunt, alas it just wasn't meant to be, we had to get out of there before the kids drove us off the edge! At least we got a couple decent pictures.

And then it was back to the hotel for the day (it was only 2PM...) but that's what the kids wanted, they were all about the pool at this point.


For the record I did get in the pool with them for about an hour, Lydia on the other hand chickened out and said it was too cold! Just sayin'. After the pool we took a trip to Olive Garden (the one place everyone in the family enjoys when we eat out). We went back to the hotel and watched a movie together and had some popcorn before bed.

Day 2: So on to day 2, the big day we were all waiting for, Sea World!


I really enjoy sea world, it has the rides of six flags (maybe not as many but still some pretty good ones) plus you can take a break and watch some fun shows in between. We all had a great time. Cason and Adalie were now big enough to go on all the rides in the park (Cason had to stand up straight and they measured him two or three times, but he passed). Brody could go on all but one (The Great White). And Braylee had a fun time in the kids area, plus got to go on the water rides (the one that is like a raft on the river and the one that goes straight down and splashes everywhere) She took full advantage of going on the "big kid ride" and went about 8 times, by the end of the day no one was there so her, Lydia and Brody just stayed on the ride over and over again while I took Cason and Adalie on the big roller coaster.


After Sea World we drove back part way towards Vidor stopping before Houston for the night to sleep, then continuing on the next morning to Grandmama and Grandpa's house where we stayed Saturday night and left Sunday to come home. Grandpa cooked some delicious beef stew and the missionaries were over for dinner. They taught a nice lesson on the importance of the Savior in God's plan for us, it was a nice way to end a long and exciting week. Then it was back to the grind come Monday, kids were back in school and I had a full day of clinic and surgery awaiting me at work. I'm glad we can get out and have these great trips together, at times on these trips when the car rides get long, or the fighting and bickering starts I wonder if it is all worth it, but I know the answer before I ask it because when I look back at these experiences I don't remember the fighting or the bad times, I only remember that we were together as a family, and I believe the kids will do the same. I hope that these times together, both the good and the bad only bring us closer together in the end. I love my crazy family, with all the noise, yelling and everything that comes with it and am happy to spend these times together on vacation, I wouldn't trade the time for all the money in the world. Already looking forward to our next crazy adventure!