Fourth of July and a Softball State Tournament, the Summer moves forward

 Happy Independence Day!

So this week was independence day. I got the day off of course (although I was on call but didn't get called in so that's a win). We had a good day just staying at home this year. We were going to go to Texas but Braylee ended up having a Softball state tournament this weekend in Alexandria so we ended up staying home and going to go to Texas next weekend. I smoked some ribs and we had the Missionaries over for dinner and after dinner fireworks. 

Then I was able to start marinating some jerky to put on early Friday morning before Braylee and I left for her Softball tournament in Alexandria.

We had a great time on the trip but unfortunately they lost both games to start and our weekend was cut short. Lydia was supposed to come up on Saturday afternoon and spend Sunday and Monday with Braylee and I was going to come back but they didn't end up making it very far, so instead the girls got to go out to lunch and hang out at the pool all afternoon Saturday and Braylee and I were home by later Saturday night. We had a good time despite the weekend being cut short. We got up there early on Friday and were able to go out to Chic-fil-A where Braylee got her favorite, fries and a chocolate shake. It was funny that I put the chic-fil-a into my google maps and it brought me to a mall, so we went into the mall food court for the lunch. Malls seem to be going out it's sad because they were so big when I was a kid but now walking through this mall half of the stores were closed and the mall was pretty dead. We had a good time though. After this we went and got checked into the hotel we stayed at and then headed to the ball park. The first game was a blow out, this team they played was good, really good. Girls were a little down after this. Braylee and I headed back to the hotel and got a good night rest and were back the next morning for game two, after stopping for some PJ's on the way to the park. This game was much better overall, they went down early 9 to 2 but then the girls woke up and started playing their game and came back to tie it up 10 to 10 and went into three extra innings all tied up. In the end it was sad the umpire made a questionable interference call the negated an important out and the girls lost 11-10 after 8 innings.

Jumping back in

 Well, here we go again! Needless to say, we have been quite absent in our blogging adventure. I am overwhelmed with all I feel like I need to catch up on in life, but we are just going to start with the here and now and see what happens

Its summer!! we have a had a few adventure so far, and have a few more planned. Braylee is in All Stars (takes up our weekends basically), Cason is in a basketball 3 v 3 league, Adalie is doing summer school, and Brody is addicted to video games.

We just got back from a family trip to Atlanta. We went to the aquarium, coca-cola factory, boys went to a braves game, and we finished the trip with Six Flags! We even got to see some old forever friends while we were there which was SO awesome!

Girls had a girls night at the hotel while the boys wen to the game!

Braves Game!

Aquarium

Coca-Cola!!

We LOVE Coca-Cola here in this house!!

Six Flags

Forever Friends, The Hillier's!

It was a quick fun trip, and we are gearing up for Texas and Utah in a few weeks to see family. Summer seems to be going by super quick

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!