Chillaxin' at the Beach!

Oh, how I love the ocean!

On Tuesday, we spent the day relaxing at the beach house.

Well, the women and kids played at the beach.  The men went deep sea fishing.

My brother caught this scary lookin' fish.

I wasn't feeling well, thanks to one of my "gallbladderless attacks", so it was the 

perfect day to take it easy.

After the men returned from their fishing excursion, the whole family went to 

Ruby's Diner, on the pier, for "Linner". 

Watching for Dolphins

At sunset, we had family pictures taken on the beach.  I haven't gotten copies yet, but 

you can see we had a beautiful setting!

I realized through looking at the pictures how much my Dillon loves the beach!

It's been a couple weeks, but I should probably go check his ears for sand :o)

Disneyland!

On Monday morning, we were up bright and early and made it to Disneyland before they opened.

Ah, Disneyland.  We've missed you.

 Meeting Mickey.  

We're missing a few in this picture...some of us are afraid of mice, I guess.

We learned in a Disney trivia book that the lavender teacup spins the fastest,

so of course my boys, their cousin Sam, and Uncle Jon had to test it.

 Well, most most of my boys.  Dillon was perfectly happy in the orange teacup.

Justin loved meeting the characters this year, and gave Tigger a high five.

 Caleb and his cousin Josh were chosen to fight Darth Maul at the Jedi training academy.  His cousins Sam and Jacob got to fight Darth Vader. It was fun to have four different Padowans to cheer for.

Splash Mountain is still my favorite ride. Between these three pictures, you can find all of the original six.  Mom, Dad, Me, Tyler, Ben, and Charlotte.

 After playing hard all day, we went to the Downtown Disney District for dinner at Tortilla Jo's.  All the kids got balloons from a balloon artist.

 Brayden got this monkey in a banana tree, and my niece Alivia got Ariel!  Who woulda thunk you could make a mermaid out of balloons?

A huge thanks to Uncle Ben for collecting our tickets and running around to get fast passes throughout the day.  Because of him, we were able to do as much in one day as we got done in two days last summer.

California, here we come!

I can't believe how long it's been since I last blogged!  Perhaps someday I'll go back and fill in the past two months, but if I don't post about this trip soon, I know I'll never catch up.

Earlier this month, we had the opportunity to spend a week in California with my entire family. We celebrated Mother's Day, my brother Ben's graduation, and my Dad's birthday while we were there. My dad rented us a house on Newport Beach and, despite the fact that we had 21 people sharing 2 bathrooms, it was an amazing time!

Here we are, acclimating and entering the wifi password into our devices.  First things first, you know.

We stayed in the beach house with the red umbrella.  Notice all the windows.  I absolutely LOVED waking up and opening those blinds every morning to watch the ocean waves while I had breakfast.

 The view from the back patio.  We were literally ON the beach.  The kids and their cousins were in heaven. The day we arrived (Saturday) was very crowded with people playing volleyball, surfers, and sailboats.  Every day for the rest of the week looked like this:

 I've had to vacuum sand out of my washing machine twice, but it was totally worth it. I love the ocean.

"Help, Mom! Quicksand!"

On Sunday morning we got up early and went to church in Ben and Carrie's ward. Not sure how, but amazingly we all made it to 9AM church on time.  I don't miss the California traffic.

 After a wonderful Mother's Day lunch at my brother's house, Grandpa took our boys to the Huntington Library gardens.  I'm sad that I missed this, but Todd and I weren't feeling well so we stayed behind to take a much needed nap.

Later that evening, we attended Ben's final recital at USC. The performance was wonderful, and for his encore number, he played a Mother's Day song from the Primary Songbook. What a Mother's Day gift!

Next up: Disneyland!

s"P"ring Break

Our sPring break is brought to you by the letter "P".

We had a Picnic at the Park

We Played Pickleball

(the kids took Pictures with my iPhone)

 We hit the Pool

~I don't have a Picture to Prove it, but we saw a Prophet when Elder Bednar 

walked behind our van while we were Picking up our Pizza for dinner~  

We got free Popcorn at the RV Resort Parade

After arriving in a shiny, black Honda Odyssey, the Grand Marshals sat on a leather couch under a tent.

 Grandma standing while they played "Anchors Aweigh"

The Bike Brigade

(or should I say the "trike troop"?)

What's a parade without a horse?

These water aerobics gals are wearing their suits over their clothes.  At one point during the 100 meter parade route, they got out of their golf cart, and showed us their exercise moves!

It turns out that people with gray hair throw good candy.  

Like chocolate. 

It was a very entertaining and fun parade if I do say so myself.

 I didn't get a picture, but we also Pulled a little Prank on Grandma for St. Patrick's Day.  While she was at church, we decorated her trailer with shamrocks, hearts, a rainbow wind sock, and a sign that said, "We are Lucky to have you for a Grandma!"

Today, the kids are back in school, and I am enjoying the Peace and quiet!

Another iphone photo dump

Justin had a great time with his clearance valentines.  

It turns out toddlers don't care when they celebrate the holidays, as long as they get to be involved. 

It was 75 cents well spent.

 Almost every night, Justin wanders into Mom and Dad's room and sleeps on the floor.  This particular morning, I found him sleeping with his beloved "bee-yoon".  It may have survived a little longer if his brothers hadn't used it as a punching bag.

The annual "painting of the derby cars"

 When a toddler visits Chuck-a-Rama...

 For Dillon, who washed down his dinner of carbs and sweets with a slushee, 

it was more like "up-chuck-a-rama".

By morning, however, he was back to his usual self.

 With spring coming, I decided it was high time I put away our Thanksgiving decor (don't judge)

and painted the front door red (while Todd was out of town).

We hit Wally World during a slow time (is that possible?) and the gals at the checkout

thought Justin was cute and gave him stars...or are they dots?

 Scooter City

 Boys (and cousin Gabe) crowded around the computer.

Caleb has been giving them computer programming lessons.

 Todd's birthday came around again.  As you can see, it took every candle in the house, 

but if you add it all up we did make it to 39.

 For his activity, Todd chose to have dinner at a Japanese grill.

The first daffodil of the season!

 I'll never get tired of this tree in bloom.

Our families were here a week too early and missed the flowering trees.

 We came home from church last Sunday to a swarm of termites.

I had dreams all night of creepy crawly termites chewing (loudly) on my house.

Thankfully, they are only on our porch post, and our bug guy has it all under control.

I love having a "bug guy".

Dillon is 8!

Somewhere along the line, I became old enough to have 3/4 of my children old enough to be "accountable". I had a bit of a mid-life crisis in the weeks leading up to Dillon's birthday and baptism as I pondered whether or not I had done enough as a parent to prepare him for the world we live in.

My pondering took a back seat when March came along, because Dillon's birthday weekend was a big one. 

On any given morning, Dillon can be found sitting on or near a heater vent. He's done it for years,
and he's not about to stop now!

Last year we stopped our tradition of having theme birthdays, and decided to do a family activity of the birthday boy's choice.  Dillon chose to go to the park, and eat at McDonald's.  Since his baptism was the next day, we had all kinds of family coming to town.  Uncle Michael, Aunt Becky, Aunt Elizabeth, and their cousins Emily, Amber, and Lydia arrived just in time to meet us at McDonald's and participate in the birthday celebration.  Sorry for those of you who missed it. It doesn't get much better than a Friday night at McD's when you have a million things to do.  Grandma got a new trailer that day, so she was in the middle of "moving", and I still had plenty to do to get ready for Saturday.

On Saturday morning, we had a small tragedy when we found that Dillon's hamster, Roaster, had passed on.

He has been an excellent pet owner, and taken such good care of his little friend, but when your two year old brother "shares" a piece of chocolate cookie with him, there's not much you can do.

 With heavy hearts, we carried on with our busy day, where Dillon participated in his first Pinewood Derby.

 Dillon's car won first place overall, and both he and Caleb won in their age groups and received "Golden Tickets" to move on to Regionals.  

Yeah. You read that right.

Regionals.

We  have to  get to pay an entrance fee to go to Regionals.

I can hardly contain my enthusiasm.

By the way, did I mention that I was called to be a Webelos leader?  Without going into great detail, I'll just let you know that after I cried about it for a week, I decided to build the girliest pinewood derby car ever.

 If I must be a Webelos leader, I'm going to alternate "knot tying" and "catapult building"

 with rhinestones and glitter...for me.

 After the derby, Grandma and Grandpa, and Uncle Ben, Aunt Carrie, and cousin Gabriel arrived.

We had Dillon's 2nd choice "Hawaiian Haystacks" for dinner, because I refused to serve Ramen Noodles to all our guests.  

We were delighted to arrive at the baptism and run into our good neighbors from "the middle of nowhere", Newell and Gloria, who were there for their granddaughter's baptism. 

Somewhere between the party at McDonalds, the hamster death, and the Pinewood Derby, I managed to put together my talk on baptism (I was asked by the stake the night before Dillon's birthday!).  The highlight of the meeting was when Uncle Ben and Aunt Carrie played their recent arrangement of "My Heavenly Fathers Love" on the piano and violin, and surprised us all by having Caleb and cousin Emily sing "I feel my Savior's Love" in the middle.  It was absolutely beautiful, and I'm so glad it was after my talk so I could enjoy it!

My Great Uncle and Aunt, Mark and Joan, and cousins' Janalee and Gabe, who live near us, joined us at the baptism and then afterwards at our house for brownie sundaes. 

We failed to get a picture of everyone who attended, but we are so grateful for the love and support of our family during these special times.  It was a wonderful weekend, and I'll cap it off with one of our "best ever" family pictures.  Justin picking his nose, Todd "wearing" a wreath on his head, me looking pregnant (I'm not!), and Brayden looking like he has better things to do.