More spring stuff..

Andy had to work all weekend so the kids and I went with our neighbors (who also happen to be wonderful friends) to the annual Lemoore Pizza Festival. This was the first event that we attended when we arrived here in good old Lemoore. Can you believe that it has been a year already?! Wow, how the time has flown by!

Lainey bug on the way to the festival...she is impersonating Elton John:




Here are the kiddos LAST year:


Here they are THIS year:





Ethan LAST year:

Ethan THIS year:



Lainey LAST year:


Lainey THIS year:


What a difference a year makes!!




After the pizza festival we headed over to a park to feed ducks:



Lainey isn't in these pictures because she started to get sick..poor thing had the flu for the next few days. We are going to go and feed the ducks again because I know that she would love it.


Gotta love the baby ducklings!




These guys, well, not so much. They are UGLY!


The last pic of have is of Ethan and his crazy slide hair:

Spring time!

It is so nice to be able to go outside and get a little fresh air. I am so over winter. I know that all you Utahns (what a weird word) are probably rolling your eyes about now, but it is all relative people! It was COLD here for us Californians :). Anyway, back to my point....what was it again? Oh yeah, it is beautiful these days! It is still a bit chilly in the mornings, but by afternoon it is very pleasant out. The kids love to venture out back to play....here is what we do on a typical day:

Of course, Ethan is always skating...he and Jacob had me take these pics of them. They wanted me to print them out so that they could glue them into a skate magazine (so that it looked like they were in it). It was so cute! I told them after about 5 shots of the "tough" faces, they had to give me a least one smile pic!




While the photo session was going on the girls were busy picking flowers and what not to make "salads" for us. Lainey did her part by applying sunscreen for the dressing :).

Lainey is OBSESSED with sunscreen (not the cheapest thing to be obsessed with either). She will chase you down and douse you in it so beware! She literally CHASES the kids outside yelling at them "YOU HAVE TO WEAR SUNNNNNSSCCREEENNN!" Oh miss Lainey, what ever shall we do with you?!

Sequoia Afternoon

I gave Annie the afternoon off a weekend or two ago and took the kids up to Sequoia. They both love to be outside and didn't mind the 2 mile hike. Lainey was done by the end but she still did it without any help. We all had a great time and maybe we can go camping soon if I can get a day off (I have worked 140 hours in the past week and a half).


She thinks this is cute....it was the first time. This is the 1,000th time.


E..on the rocks. Shaken...not stirred.


Wandered up on a cool waterfall. Lain was a little scared of it....it was loud.

Indian pictographs. They were on Hospital Rock...mom, we had lunch there and didn't see these.....thought I was observant.


The kids


Me...bored.


He could have done this all day.


...would like to hike up there....The kids said no.

Herculain

Playing in the water and making dams. I used to love this. I have the scars to prove it...no shirt+wet road+running=fall on my chest and slide.

I hope they aren't pretending that I am standing down there...cause they throw hard.


Lain looks happy but she wasn't. She sat down as soon as I said we were close to the car. 4 miles is a lot for her little legs to walk!

Catching up...again!

My mom and dad have both told me that since I caved in and got a facebook account that my blog has gone to shit. Trust me, I know it has.
Facebook does account for some of the neglect, but I am also going to school now and that seems to take up most of my spare time! So, to try and redeem myself I promise to do a better job at keeping up on this thing. That being said, this post is for all of the grandparents who don't have a facebook account!

I showed Ethan and Lainey the art and fun of going down the stairs in a sleeping bag. I remember having so much fun as a kid doing this! Jayson and I would even put our heads in the bottom of the sleeping bag and go down that way. I didn't let Ethan even attempt that because as you will see from the video, he had a hard time just doing it the normal way!



Lainey tried it once and decided that it hurt her butt too much, but she had a blast pushing her brother down the stairs. Imagine that!


Here is a hug before she launches him down!



Andy got creative the other day while doing play dough with Lainey. I thought the pics were kind of cool:


Here Ethan is on his 8 year birthday!! He decided that he didn't want a party this year and instead wanted to have one of his best friends, Jacob sleep over. Wahoo for me! It was such an easy day! Hopefully I can convince him to do the same thing next year! We tell him that if he has a party that is fine, but if he just wants to have one friend that we can do something pretty cool since we will spend the same amount of money either way. The plan for the sleepover went like this:
Pizza for dinner
Cake that evening
Sleepover in the garage in a tent
Wake up and go to the skate park (but they got rained out)
So instead Andy took them up to Visalia and they went to the Adventure Park.
They came home and it was nice out so they skateboarded outside on Ethan's new skate ramp.
Easy peasy!!


We recorded the kids singing and Ethan blowing out the candles, but I forgot to get a before picture of his cake...oops! It was a skateboard cake...


Ethan and Jacob:


Andy and the kids being silly:






She was taking monstrous bites!


Again, I forgot to take pics of him opening all his stuff, but I did get two at least! I know, I need to step up my game in the birthday party department!


Here they are playing with one of his new toys...notice little tag along lainey. Now I know what my poor brother went through!




Chillin in the tent:

Next up are just some random pics:

We had to take this picture because this is the FIRST time in her entire life that she has fallen asleep anywhere but her bed. Poor tired girl, must have been a rough day at preschool!


Can I tell you enough times about what a good dog we have?!

Yay, the sun came out the other day and we took advantage of it!


This child loves to get dirty:


Andy had to do a uniform inspection at work so he had to put on his whites. I love a man in uniform! BTW, the pants he has on are the ones from boot camp. Not many guys can say that they still fit in their boot camp pants. I know that my pants that fit just fine last week are a bit snug right now so I can't imagine what a pair from 8 years ago would be like! Wait a minute, yes I can...I was fat then because I gained over 50 lbs with Ethan but you get my point!


And there you have it folks!