Throwing money at the holiday spirit

After a great thanksgiving and several moments spent pondering the wonderful blessings in my life and the lives of my family, I was thrilled to get into the Christmas season. I sing Christmas songs throughout the year (just ask Lisa), and it's fun when I'm actually in the same season as everyone else. Many people have commented lately that they are so excited that thanksgiving comes before Christmas so they're in the right mood. This being said, I've been quite amazed how differently we act. I was so humbled while listening to the radio the other day while going to help someone with a computer problem. They said they'd never had more money and goods donated than this year and we're just starting the Christmas season. In a time of a financial crisis, what a statement.

On the other hand, I wish "budget" wasn't just a rental car company. Be conservative in what you spend, so that others may enjoy just a portion of what you have. The biggest failure as carnal beings is looking at what others have that we don't. Why can't we spend more time looking at what we have and others don't?

What are we celebrating at Christmas? Christ's birth. True, it's not the right time in the calendar, but if the event is what we're celebrating, it obviously doesn't matter when we celebrate it, as we should be constantly celebrating it. If we celebrate the birth and life of the King of kings and Lord of lords, we celebrate who He is, what He did, and what His example should lead us to be.

Especially in a time of financial crisis, to have the true spirit of Christmas, we must have the two traits most connected to the season: sacrifice and service. No one sacrificed more and gave more than Christ. How can we repay Him more than by following his example? The exact opposite of sacrifice and service is selfishness. Find ourselves giving of our time, our talents, and donate to those in need. May I suggest, just as we fast every month and donate that money to those in need, maybe we could give up one or two gifts this year and donate that to those in need. I am always saddened to think of those without the gospel, without food, shelter, fuel, employment, and what I can do to help. But the greatest happiness I've had in my life is in sacrificing things of myself to bless the lives of others.

The Moores

Beaches

Okay, I'm finally blogging about our beach excursions from our recent vacation. I only had about 600 pictures from the beaches to sort through so it's no wonder it has taken me so long. We visited three different beaches on this trip. Our first was on Balboa Island. I assumed the beach is called Balboa beach, but I'm not sure. We weren't planning to play at the beach this day. We just saw it while we were wandering around the island and decided to rest there for a bit. So this is twins' the very first time at the beach and I didn't take very many pictures of them. It was a really steep beach and had fairly large waves.

We didn't stay long because Sydney got a little too brave and a big wave soaked her. A great big wave came and we could all see what was going to happen. I started screaming "Run Sydney!!", but she didn't. So she and I spent the next little while in the restroom trying to ring out her wet clothes.

Tanner and Natalie love their Grandma. Natalie is giving her lots of slobbery kisses.

A few days later we checked out Laguna Beach which turned out to be our favorite. This time we were more prepared with things like swimsuits and towels. My Dad and Adam went diving this day so they were not with us for this one.

Tanner is wondering if I'm coming or what.

It was a little difficult to tell with Tanner if he was having a good time or not. He looked pretty concerned and worried most of the time. We knew he enjoyed it though because when you tried to walk him back up to the towels his legs would suddenly stop working.

It was a little easier to tell that Natalie loved it because her legs started working really well. She is still not walking on her own, but she put forth a pretty good effort on the beach.

The kids didn't have many sand toys so my mom and I pulled together whatever cash we could find (neither of us brought wallets) and went to the beach toy store. Sydney came up with all sorts of jobs for herself with these toys.

Then we decided it was too sunny and we didn't have enough cash for an umbrella, so we made Josh go back to the store with his handy credit card and get one for us. It was so nice to have. You just can't find many beach umbrellas for sale in Utah.

Natalie is waving good-bye to Laguna Beach.

The next day we visited Huntington Beach. This beach was slightly inferior to Laguna Beach for two reasons. 1) It just doesn't have quite the beauty of Laguna beach. And, 2) It cost $10 (cash only) to park and I'd already spent all our cash at the previously mentioned beach toy store, so my Dad had to come back to the entrance to give us some cash.

This beach had a lot of surfers which were fun to watch. That's what were are doing here. Tanner was a little more cautious this day and insisted that both Grandpa and I hold his hands.

Here, Tanner is almost smiling. He and I are on the same page - the ocean is awesome and fun and something to be feared.

Sydney and Daddy went our searching for seashells. We didn't see any signs that said "Don't take the seashells" at this beach.

And here is proof that Adam was with us on this vacation. He spent most of his day laying on the beach working on his tan.

Disneyland

I think the kids thoroughly enjoyed their first trip to Disneyland. We got 3-day park hoppers for Josh, Sydney, and I during our vacation to Newport Beach. We decided to go to Disneyland the first day we got there because the weather was supposed to be the coolest that day. My parents and my brother Adam joined us on this trip and offered to take the twins for Sydney's first day to Disneyland, so we could do all the "big kid" rides that the twins wouldn't be able to do.

Josh traditionally rides the Matterhorn first every time he has gone to Disneyland. I was a little worried that this ride would be a rough one for Sydney to start out on and Sydney insisted that she was brave enough.

Here's her face after the ride was over. Disneyland was not feeling like the happiest place on earth at this point.

So her first ride was not her favorite. But she loved almost all the rides we went on with the exception of Pirates of the Caribbean, Splash Mountain, and Space Mountain. She was really insistent that she wanted to do Space Mountain even though I told her it was going to be scarier than Splash Mountain. There was a point in the ride I worried she might die of fright. I've never heard her scream so loud. All the kids loved the rides in Fantasyland though.

My parent's rode Alice in Wonderland with us on our last day. They took Natalie so they looked like they had a reason to be on this ride.

It was a great time to go to Disneyland. Very short lines for almost everything. I think the longest we ever waited was 20 minutes for a ride. We met a lot of characters on this trip, including all the princesses. It did help that we went to lunch at Ariel's grotto on our day with Sydney. We got Ariel, Belle, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White right away. This lunch was the highlight of her day. I wish we could have really captured her reaction. She was practically bouncing right out of her seat when the princesses starting coming in.

I won't include all the pictures of the characters since there are a lot of them. I think meeting the characters was Sydney's favorite part of Disneyland though. She was always reading with her autograph book and pen. Here are some of our favorites.

This one is at the beginning of Tanner and Natalie's first day. They aren't quite sure what to think of the giant Mickey next to them.

Natalie was pretty brave on everything. She's so small that I don't know how much she could really see but on every ride you could hear her going "Ooooh, ooooooh!"

Once the kids were sick of standing in lines and sitting in the stroller my parents and I took them to Tom Sawyer's island. Josh and Adam went off to enjoy some of the thrill rides. I think this was the highlight of the day for the twins, especially Tanner.

Tanner loved having so much freedom to explore everything.

Sydney and Natalie really loved this big pile of pirates' gold.

Our trip overlapped with Rich (Josh's brother) and Wende's family vacation to Disneyland. I still think it's so funny that we both planned trips there at the same time. We ran into them quite a lot in the parks.

Here we are waiting for the parade to start. As you can see my dad is especially excited for the parade.

Natalie danced to all the music throughout the parade. I've never really gotten into the parades before but my kids sure loved them!

Josh's favorite ride of the trip may have been at the half-way point coming home. We stayed over in St. George Saturday night and my cousin Jeremy let Adam and Josh test drive his new Lamborghini. Nothing like driving a car that costs more than your house!