S is for Sista!

Before I had kids, when my sisters would come out to California to visit me it meant time to play hard! We would hit the beaches, go to theme parks, restaurants, and do some serious shopping. Now that we have kids our sister visits have changed quite a bit. Since small children do not love shopping, don't do well in restaurants, and have to take naps, we adjusted our agendas. Our motto for Sarah's visit last week was Mother's by day, Sista's by night!

During the day we planned fun activities for the kids, museum visits, kid friendly food joints, apple picking, etc... Then at night, Taber would stay with the kids and we'd go out for ladies night fun! We managed to fit in a couple late night movies at the theater, hit up some great restaurants for appetizers and dessert, enjoy haircuts and manicures at the spa, and get in some good shopping! The whole week was extremely theraputic and I can't thank BOTH of our husbands enough for making it possible! Here are some of the highlights of our week together.

MOTHERS BY DAY:

First I introduce you to my sister's cutie bug Noa, he is 4 weeks younger than Brinley so it's kind of cool that we were pregnant at the same time.

And now on to our week! We took the kiddos to the Minnesota Children's museum on Wednesday. They played so hard that on the drive home all three of them spontaneously burst into tears and wailed all the way home. It was so crazy and funny at the same time, all we could do was laugh. When we put the kids down for naps we attempted to learn the Beyonce Single ladies dance. haha! yeah...

On Thursday we had a kid friendly lunch with a some of my friends and then met up with Taber at his work so Sarah could have a tour of the headquarters. I was so glad we brought the kids because Teya was THRILLED to see her Daddy at work and clung to him the entire time.

On Saturday after some girl time in the morning we put the kids in their Halloween costumes and went to the Mall of America to do some trick or treating at the theme park.

We met up with our friends, Cameron and Wendy and their cute little lady bug, Miley.

It was great to have our friends there to take a picture of all of us together! The kids weren't really feeling the photo op but we'll take what we can get : ) Sarah got some shopping in and we hit a couple roller coasters with Cam and Wendy. Teya also rode the some kiddie rides all by herself for the first time!
On Sunday we went to church and then took the kids on a walk to the little jungle gym by our house. It was cute seeing Noa and Brinley play together.

On Monday we went to our favorite apple farm for apple picking, fresh apple donuts and cider. Some of the apple's had frost damage from the snow earlier in the week, but most of them were still good and we got a pretty decent loot.



SISTA'S BY NIGHT!

Taber is THE MAN and happily stayed home with the kids every night so Sarah and I could go out and par-tay! It was the most liberating thing to put the kids down, change out of our mommy clothes and go out at night. I forgot how fun it can be to just drive around in the car when you don't have to wrestle kids into car seats or throw snacks into the back to pacify fussy children. It was also so awesome to plug in my iPod and BLAST my own music while we drove. I used to love rocking out in the car but Teya isn't a fan of my music and definitely doesn't like it loud. We usually just end up singing kid songs till my voice box is swollen and my brain has turned to mush. So yeah, rocking out to my own music was blissful liberation.

One of the best parts about going out later was that we weren't battling any crowds at the restaurants or theaters. On Tuesday night we saw My Sister's Keeper at the dollar movie and had the whole theater to ourselves. It was like our own private viewing and we definitely got a little hyper ; )

On Wednesday night we hit a big sale at Kohl's and stayed there till they closed at 10pm, then we went over to the Theater to see the 10:30pm showing of Fame. Once again we had the whole theater to ourselves and took advantage of the chance to stand up and dance to the music, boo and cheer out loud, yell at the characters, and just act like nerds. I know I'm getting older but hanging out at night with my sister made me realize that I'm not THAT old and that I can still go out and get a little crazy. Here are some pics of us in the empty theaters, we couldn't resist ; )

Friday we had a spa day and Sarah cut 8 inches off her hair. With our new matching hairdos we got dolled up to go to Biaggi's for appetizers and dessert.

It was funny to see people react to how much we look a like. The guy pouring our water looked at me and smiled, then he looked at Sarah and did a double take to look back at me and said, "okay, I'm confused now." Then our waiter asked us if we were twins. We said, "No, just sisters." And then he said, "Oh, so are you the same age?" We were laughing pretty hard at that one.


Later in the trip we went to Redstone, my favorite restaurant for fondue, and we also stayed up a couple of the nights to play Pounce and watch some chick flicks at home. By the end of the week I was definitely tired from all the late nights! But it was soooo worth it to feel so girly and to have such great bonding time with my sis. : )