Post-Thanksgiving

After our day in Thousand Oaks, we packed up the car and headed down south to my parents house in Riverside.  The first order of business was letting the kids have some fun at the golf course.

In the afternoon, we headed down to Newport Beach to eat at my favorite restaurant, The Crab Cooker.

Thatcher ATE

and ATE

an IMPRESSIVE amount of food!

We rode the ferry over to Balboa Island and then headed over to Fashion Island.

Sam sat in some crazy, expensive car

And this is after we lost Samantha for what seemed like the longest 2 minutes of our lives, running around screaming her name frantically.  She is crying because she was wondering why we were all so upset with her since she had no idea she was ever lost....

Since I don't have a program to erase people out of my images and cropping the photo didn't look right, ignore the two non-Fallon children in this picture.

and in this picture too. ;)

Waiting in line to meet Santa Claus

Samantha LOVED Santa!  Thatcher, on the other hand, was not as excited.  He wasn't scared of him, in fact, he ran up and gave him knuckles, but there was a display of toys next to him that excited him more.  I was too focused on getting a picture of Santa so you can't see Thatcher off on the side completely ignoring the jolly man in the red suit.

I am hoping she was not ignoring his advice to "be good".   She asked him for a princess.  Later I asked her which princess doll she wanted thinking she would say Belle, Sleeping Beauty or something of that nature but instead she said, "I don't want a doll, I want a REAL princess." I hope a certain someone isn't disappointed Christmas morning....

Later that night Grandma and Sam made yummy cookies.

And then both kids read themselves to sleep after a long day of fun with no naps.

The next morning we got up and had breakfast at the golf course.

Waiting semi-patiently for his food...

A Mickey Mouse pancake seemed fitting for our upcoming adventure.

"Why isn't my breakfast shaped like Mickey?!"

After breakfast we went out on a little adventure.  We tried to go to the Jurupa Mountain's Discovery Center where they have dinosaur exhibits because Thatcher is OBSESSED with dinosaurs, but we got there and it was closed. So, we went to the Louis Rubidoux Nature Center and collected pecans, not quite a dinosaur adventure but close, right? Okay, not really, but it was still fun.

Pecan nuts fall off these large trees and for $3 you can collect as many as you want.  The kids actually had a really good time.  It was sort of like an egg hunt.

After some much needed naps, we had a little birthday celebration for Samantha.

How happy is she that she FINALLY has a big girl bike!

She made a wish just in time before her hair caught on fire...

And then off to bed in anticipation of her big birthday trip!