Family Fun in Dallas

Last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, we went with my family to Dallas.  We had a blast!  We tried 3 new things and LOVED them all!!!  If you haven't been to the Indoor Safari Park in Southlake and you have little kids, you've got to go!!!  Thanks to my blog friend, Debra, at A Frugal Friend, I was able to purchase $10 tickets for only $5!  She posted a link to a "Juice in the City" deal and I snagged it!!!  Thanks, Debra!!!

A little note.... Juice in the City is a COOL site!!!  It's a site that offers daily deals in your area.  If you sign up, you'll have a daily deal come into your email each morning.  If you want to see what Juice in the City is all about, please click my link HERE.

Now, back to the trip.... We hit the Indoor Safari Park on Thursday after lunch.  The kids played and played and played!!!  Oh, what fun they had!!!  Here are some snapshots from the Safari Park...

The first activity was riding a robotic safari animal!!  Here they are waiting their turn to ride.

Macy, Jack, Mallory, Micah, and Gavin

Jack got to ride first and chose the elephant!!

Mallory chose the zebra... 

Micah chose the Cheetah... 

And Gavin rode the elephant... 

Each animal made it's sound as it walked... it was hysterical to watch!!

Macy wasn't quite sure about it all, so she chose not to ride!  :-(

After the robotic animal ride, the kids played limitless games of miniature golf...

Jack and Brad 

There was even a special play area for the little ones to play... Gavin especially loved it! 

There was a padded jungle gym with a trampoline, slide, and ball pit!!!!

And then they rode the train!!

Then more fun in the ball pit!!

There were tons of little playhouse towns and villages set up to play with.  They explored all of these, too!

And another train ride... this time only Micah and Mallory chose to ride.

Sweet Macy!

It was SUPER FUN!!!!  And with the crazy Texas heat we've had lately, it was WONDERFUL to be indoors!!!

That night we headed to Fuddrucker's for dinner and then swam in the hotel.  Mallory did her 1st cannonball and was so proud!!!

Mommy's not the fastest finger on the camera trigger!  HA!

Friday we went to the Sea Life Aquarium that just opened at the Grapevine Mills Mall.  It was really neat!!!  We stood in line for at least 30 minutes WITH our tickets ALREADY purchased!!  It was crazy!  There were so many people!!!!  If you decide to go, I recommend you buy you tickets ahead of time, too.

I love this picture of the kids... finally one with both Jack and Mallory smiling!  :-)

There was one area where you could walk out onto a glass floor that overlooked a big tank of fish.  Macy laid down and watched them swim beneath her!  :-) 

Mallory was not all about the glass floor, but I did get her to smile for me...

There were several little bubble areas that the kids could crawl into and see the fish.  Jack loved this!!

Isn't that cool?!?! 

It was an amazing place... so many beautiful sea creatures!!!

This tunnel completely freaked Mallory out!  It was completely surrounded by water and a glass floor. She was terrified of the sharks!

I love these next couple of pics of Jack.  He's looking at himself in a mirror!

And this one is just adorable... so sweet!

That night we went to Pappadeaux's to eat.  It's our favorite "out-of-town" spot!

Mallory stealing a kiss from brother..

After Pappadeaux's we went back to the hotel, got the kids their baths, and piled into Josh and Amy's room to watch the fireworks over the Gaylord Hotel.  Their room had a perfect view!!!  And, the fireworks were incredible!!!  While we waited for the fireworks to start, we sang songs, watched for airplanes, and giggled a lot.  The kids have so much fun together!

And then Saturday, we went to the new Legoland at the Grapevine Mills Mall.... and it was AMAZING!!!

It was probably my favorite activity of the whole trip.

We had our tickets pre-purchased, but still had to wait in line.  They had tubs full of legos for kids to play with while we waited... genius!! 

Getting ready to go inside... 

In the holding room!  :-)

Once inside, we were told how legos are made and the kids got to participate in the demonstration...

After the demonstration, we were invited to explore Legoland.  After a fun Legoland ride, we headed to a 4D movie!!!  It was cool!!  During the movie we were sprayed with water, spit on by a monster, and snowed on!!!!  It was so FUN!  :-)

Then, we went into Lego's Miniland.  WOW... it was incredible!!!  Every landmark in Dallas was represented with a miniature lego version.  Every so often, the lights in the room would dim and fireworks above the miniature Gaylord would appear and all the mini town landmarks would light up!!!

Arlington Stadium where the Rangers play 

SO COOL!!!  All made out of Legos!!! 

Southfork Ranch... at night! 

Mallory and Jack in front of the Gaylord Hotel replica... 

Jack in front of the DFW Airport replica... 

Cowboys Stadium... unbelievable!!! 

American Airlines Center and Downtown Dallas... 

Downtown Dallas... 

Southfork Ranch in the daylight... 

And finally, a life-size replica of Dirk Nowitzki!!! 

The kids played in a play area and Mallory and I rode a ride before leaving Legoland. 

It was an incredibly fun vacation!!!  We made some wonderful memories!!!

Hope you enjoyed the pics!!!

Winnie the Pooh

Yesterday, my mom and I took the kids to the opening of Winnie the Pooh!!!  It was a precious movie!!!

I used the camera on my phone to take these pictures, so they're dark.  :-(

Jack and Mallory each took a blanket and stuffed animal for the show!

Fortunately, we were lucky enough to get on the very back row, so Jack stood for the majority of the movie.  It was so cute to watch him giggle, point, laugh at loud, and shout "Look, Mama!!".

Such precious memories!!

Bedtime Snack Silliness

The kids had waffles for their bedtime snack tonight.  And they giggled non-stop!  The sillies kicked in and so I snapped some pictures of their fun...

They enjoyed getting silly for the camera!

All right... let's try to have a serious one...  :-)

My sweeties... oh how I love them!

My Little Superhero

Check out my little superhero...

If he's not the cutest little thing you've ever seen, then you don't know cute!  HA!  :-)

Grrrrrrrr.... this is my tough guy look!  LOL!

Playing Catch Up

We are staying SUPER busy this summer.  I've loved it and have thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.  But, I've neglected my blogging, so here's a little catch up post!  :-)

Here are a few things that have kept us busy lately...

Playing in the backyard pool

We celebrated Father's Day with my incredible Daddy at Double Dave's Pizza.

The very next day our beautiful niece, Eden, was born.  Here are Macy, Jack, Mallory, and Micah in the waiting area.

Papa took Jack, Grant, Scarlett, and Mallory for a walk in the hospital.

Mallory started swimming lessons and is doing GREAT!  We're so proud of our little fish!!

There she goes!!!

We had fun and acted silly in Fuddruckers!

We visited the public library for the first time.  Mallory loves to read so this was so fun for her!!

Jack, Nana, and Mallory at the library... 

We saw the Chick-fil-A cow at the mall!

We shook hands...

And gave high-fives!

We had coke floats and watched fireworks.

Here are Jack and Micah...

And, we ate snacks!!!

And all at the same time, I started making these "Toe Topper" bows along with my other bow orders.

CrAzY FuN!!!  :-)

Last week, we got Jack a "big boy bed" and so I'm in the process of redecorating his room!  It's turing out really cute!!!  I'll post pics as soon as it's all done.  Whew!!!  :-)

JULY.... here we come!!!!

The Challenge... how are you doing?

Back in January, I wrote this post and challenged you to join me on Swagbucks and see how much free $$$ you could earn by Christmas.  Well, it's then end of June and our challenge is half way over.  It's time to evaluate how we're doing.  Last year I earned $75 in CASH!  If you'll remember, this year instead of buying paypal cash, I'm spending my swagbucks to buy Amazon.com gift cards!  As of today, I have $45 in Amazon.com gift cards!!!!  WOO-HOO!!!  Not too shabby for doing absolutely nothing but using the Swagbucks toolbar when I get on the internet each day!!! 

I'd love to hear how you're doing.  If I've learned one thing through this process, it's that you MUST use the swagbucks search engine or you won't earn the swagbucks!!!  I've been lazy a few days and didn't use swagbucks to get online.  Well, obviously I didn't earn any swagbucks those days.  Keep using Swagbucks!!!  The more you use it, the more swagbucks you'll earn and more often!  And, download the toolbar!  It's a wonderful reminder to use swagbucks when you launch your internet browser.

If you aren't sure what Swagbucks is all about and want to see for yourself how you can earn FREE $$$ just by using Swagbucks for internet searches, see my post HERE and get started today!!!

Cars 2!!!

Although you're probably expecting this post to be about the new Cars 2 movie that just came out, it's not... not quite.  We plan to see the movie soon and I can't wait!  But what this post is all about is looking sharp while AT the movie Cars 2.  I have created some new novelty bows over at Mandy Jane.  And one of them is this precious CARS themed bow!!!

Isn't it adorable?!!?  Mallory plans to wear hers with some little black shorts and a red shirt.  But there are so many options!!!!  Right now, this bow and ALL the bows at Mandy Jane are 25% off when you use the discount code SUMMER at checkout.  That means this bow is only $6!!!

The other new novelty bows include Toy Story, Disney Princess, Minnie Mouse, and Texas Longhorns.  I have a post about all of these at my Mandy Jane Blog.  Get them while they're hot and while you can still apply the 25% off code!!!