Whatcom Falls Fishing Derby!

Aaron and Grandpa Rick took Alex and Emily to the annual fishing derby at Whatcom Falls Park. Last year Emily won a Tent and Alex won a fishing pole. This year they both won sleeping bags.

Our Trip to Disneyland!!

For spring break this year I decided it would be fun to take the kids to Disneyland. After a lot of research I booked our trip. This would be our first trip without car seats or strollers. We started out on Wednesday April 9th with my mom dropping us off at the Bellingham Airport. We had three suitcases and three backpacks. Alex and Emily each had their backpacks full of activities, food and extra clothes for the plane and then we had our backpack with the laptop food and some magazines. Both flights the one down to Seattle and the one from Seattle to Orange County, CA went better than I had hoped and I was actually bored, but not complaining. I had packed my book in my suitcase thinking I would need to be "tending" to the kids the whole flight. Come to find out they were very entertained with their puzzle books and coloring.

We arrived at the Orange County airport, which is about 30 min away from Disneyland, at around dinner time and a shuttle took us to our hotel, The Anabella, which was very nice. Our room had a king bed, a queen bed in a little niche around the corner from the main room and a sofa bed. We also had a flat screen T.V. on the wall and a refrigerator.

On Thursday we walked from our hotel to Disneyland and arrived about 40 min. before the park opened. So, we waited in line with our plan of attack called "Dumbo or Die in a day" from The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland and we also plugged the rides into RideMax which gave us an itinerary of when to do what. For those of you who haven't heard of it RideMax it's a subscription service that you can get which guarantees it will save you time waiting in lines. You put the rides you would like to go on while at Disneyland and it tells you what time and in which order to go on them. It also tells you when to go and get fastpasses for rides. It worked extremely well for us and we were able to get most of our rides for our whole trip done on Thursday. We were also at the park that day from 9-5. On the other days we would leave and come back and at different times throughout the day.

On Friday morning we went to Disneyland for a few hours. The kids decided that they didn't want to do Splash Mountain which was on our schedule for the morning or the Haunted Mansion. So, we went in Tarzan's tree house and over to Tom Sawyer's Island. Then we ate some lunch and watch the Jedi Training Camp show for the second time. This time though Alex got picked to be a youngling or trainee. He had a lot of fun and got to practice his new moves on Darth Vader. The Jedi Training Camp Show was the highlight of the kids trip. Emily was sad not to be picked so went went for a third time on Sunday and Alex and her new Mickey light saber made the Jedi Master sensed that the force was strong with her so she got picked.

Friday afternoon we went to visit Kevin at his place in Marina Del Ray he is staying there while attending USC. It was beautiful and the kids got to go to the beach and put their feet in the Pacific Ocean. It would have been nice to spend more time there. It was a beautiful day and we got to meet Kevin's classmates at a barbecue that they had that night. Alex and Emily played in the pool almost the whole time. Just coming out to eat a few bites and then getting back in. I must mention that the weather was very hot the whole time we were in California. On Thursday it was just right about 75 or so. But then Friday it shot up into the 90's only to peak at 102 on Sunday and then come back down to mid 70 on Tuesday when we left.

We didn't get home until late Friday night and Emily had fallen asleep on the way home so we just decided to go to bed. We slept in the next morning and went to the park for a few hours in the morning but Alex was not in a very good mood, so we went back to the hotel and relaxed, went to the pool , took the ART ( Aneheim Resort Transit) to Target and Red Robin. Then that night we went to the Fantasia Light Show and the fireworks. One the way back on the ART both kids fell asleep and we carried them into the hotel room and went to sleep.

It wasn't until the next morning, Sunday, that we realized that we had forgotten our backpack on the ART. The most important stuff that it had in it was our digital camera and my wallet. I ended up having to file a police report so I could fly back to Washington without my drivers license. We never did find the backpack but did feel lucky that our Disney tickets and ART tickets weren't in it.

We went to Disneyland again on Sunday and purchased some souvenirs. Then watched some show and went on some more rides. That night we went to the light parade at California Adventure and on Monday we spent the day doing things at California adventure. We went and saw Crush the talking Turtle. Saw the Playhouse Disney Show and went to the Bugs Life Area. The kids played in the water park at the bugs life area and went on some of the rides. Their favorite was Heimlich's ride.

Tuesday we got up and got ready to head back to Washington. On Wednesday we were back to normal with both Alex and Emily going to school and Aaron going to work.

Spring Snow!!!

It had been snowing on and off for the past few days but hadn't stuck until we woke up on Saturday. Here is Alex and Emily pausing for a photo op while working on their snowman. We ended up getting about 3-4 inches which started disappearing almost as fast as it came. This wasn't before Soccer was cancelled and Wendy spent over an hour trying to dig out her driveway to get to Emily's recital.

Here is Emily and her friend Amelia in their dance recital outfits. They were purple tulips and did their dance to Tiptoe Through the Tulips.

Here they are again after their recital on Saturday. We were encouraged to bring flowers to the Saturday performance, so I thought purple tulips would be appropriate for the occasion. They had dress rehearsal on Thursday afternoon, a recital on Friday evening and and one Saturday afternoon. By the end of it all we were all tired.

Early Easter

Easter was early this year and kind of snuck up on us! It reminded me of the year Alex was born because it was in March that year too. I've been told that this year it was almost the earliest that it can be. We had a great time.

We started the festivities on Saturday with the traditional coloring of the eggs at my parent's house. On our way home the kids were talking about how the Easter Bunny was going to be bringing chocolate bunnies to them at our house. I didn't plan on the Easter Bunny making a stop at our house since he usually stops at Grandma and Grandpa's, so I needed to hop on over to Fred Meyer that night to help the Easter Bunny out. The kids woke up and amazingly had chocolate bunnies in their baskets along with some other little things. That bunny also got crafty and purchased some zero gravity eggs. These plastic eggs had the candy in them already and had different types of hangers. Some had suction cups, others string, there were even a few that glowed in the dark. The kids had to get use to looking up and seeing eggs stuck to windows and hung on hooks.

Then we went over to my parents house. The kids found the 23 eggs that the Easter Bunny had hid and found their Easter Baskets overflowing with candy and other presents and of course another chocolate bunny. My mom left for church with us and my dad was off to work.

After church we picked up a breakfast casserole that was cooking at our house and dropped off my mom at her house and we were off to our friend Stef and Jamie's house. They had a nice Easter gathering with a bunch of our friends and their kids and an Easter Egg hunt outside.

We came home and relaxed after our busy morning and then went over to my parent's house for Easter dinner. We had yummy ham.

Thank you everyone for sharing Easter with us!

ALEX IS 6 TODAY!!!!

Here we are keeping up with tradition and going to Red Robin on Alex's actual birthday!

Second one out, 18 to go....

Well Alex's second tooth was hanging on all weekend. I finally said to Alex that I was going to try to get it out. Luckily, he allowed me to try and on the second pull it came out. Here he is showing off the growing gap.

One tooth gone 19 more to go......

It's official Alex has lost his first tooth! Now he is waiting for the tooth fairy.

Science Fair

Alex participated in the Science Fair at his school this year and received an award for Excellent Research. He is really into playing with LEGO. His "question" was how is a LEGO brick made? He was lucky enough to see some LEGO bricks being made on Aaron's friends, Bill's, FDM Printer. The two LEGO bricks that it made were actually able to snap together just like a regular brick. Alex also helped to make a LEGO brick out of Plaster of Paris and Soap. We also picked up some candy LEGO bricks at Haggen. We all enjoyed doing the project.

Vancouver Half Marathon

So, I've been training and talking about doing this for the past few weeks but it is now official. I just entered my first half marathon. It will take place on May 4, 2008 starting at 7:00 a.m.

Alex's 6th Birthday Party

This year was all about LEGO. Including his LEGO cake! Thanks for helping us celebrate!

Emily is Riding Her Bike!

We took Emily and Alex over to Geneva Elementary this weekend to ride bikes and Emily wanted to practice riding her bike instead of riding her trike. She was soooo close to riding all by herself that I told Aaron it wouldn't be long until she was riding by herself. Then today she wanted to practice again and she did it. She is now riding a bike. This opens up new doors for us just like most of the kids accomplishments. I took this video on my phone. All Alex said was now you have to learn how to go up on the curbs.

Emily's an Angel

Emily had her Christmas program for her preschool today. They sang some songs and then recited some lines. Emily was one of many angels. Her line was, "Glory to God in the highest and peace to the people on earth!" She did a great job making sure everyone could hear her and said it a few times for good measure. It was a lot of fun listening to the kids sing.

After party

We went out to Red Robin that night for a little more celebrating.

Emily Turns 4!

The birthday girl decided on a Princess/Superhero dress-up theme, hosted at Emily's Castle. Everyone came dressed up--we had a variety of princesses, super heroes, and more.

Emiliy's Grandma Lori made an awesome castle cake complete with four dancing princesses.

Snow in December!

The first of the month provided a little (VERY little) snow. Just enough for sledding. We spent a few hours in our cul-de-sac racing down the hill.

The snow made for great sledding and snowballs, but terrible for making snowmen. Emily persevered and made up this tiny snowman with a little help from Dad.




Emily also made a number of snow angels although we didn't get any pictures.

Here she is, hamming it up for the camera.

Bowling Party

Alex had a blast at Jacob's bowling birthday party.







The bowling pin cake was made by Jacob's dad.

Aaron's 30th Birthday

A small family gathering to celebrate Aaron's 30th.

Effects of the wind storm

After the wild wind storm, most of the fences in our neighborhood were damaged, including the one in our backyard. This deer took advantage of the downed fence and sampled some of our plants.

Happy Halloween!

Aaron was back in town for the weekend!!! Just enough time to carve up some pumpkins. Here they are scoopin' the guts out.

Alex designed his own pumpkin this year. First he drew the face on paper. Then Aaron helped him tape the paper on and punch holes into the pumpkin. Then Alex cut it out. I was impressed, but I'm his Mom I am suppose to be. :)

Here is Emily's pumpkin. She just wanted a cat. I ended up helping her with most of it. But she was very happy how it turned out. You can't really tell in this picture but she taped "hair" on the top of the pumpkin just for another added Emily touch of flair.

THE COSTUMES

Alex and Emily are kind of funny when it comes to costumes. They just pick whatever costume we have around since they have a lot of dress up stuff. Here are some pics of some of their costumes for this year:

Emily wore Simba to the Country Club on Saturday, the Highland Care Facility on Friday and my parents on Tuesday.

Luckily they never wore the "many cowboy hat" costume anywhere.

Emily was JoJo the Clown for an event on Monday at King Mtn. Church.

Alex ended up being an Elephant on Halloween because he couldn't find his Batman mask, but he was Batman for all other Halloween events this year.

Emily ended up being a witch for Halloween and she wore it to her party at class on Wednesday, out for Trick-or-treating that night and then to our sibling parenting class today.

Whew!!! I am glad Halloween is over. Now on to the next holiday.