Happy Birthday Mom!!

It's my mom's birthday and for her sake I will not tell you her age! She looks wonderful and I feel so blessed to have her as a mother. I miss you Mom and wish we lived closer. But since we don't, my kids wanted to sing Happy Birthday to you a special way this year instead of over the phone. So here it is... push play! Happy Birthday Mom! We love you and can't wait to see you and Dad in July!

Love These Girls!!

April, Julie, Susan, Kelly and me

We had such a relaxing girl's night out the last week. (I'm just getting this post up today because I forgot my camera and my sweet friend Susan just sent me this picture and a cute card in the mail today.) We try to get together every few months with our original "Bunco" group girls since we don't play bunco anymore but we still need a night out with each other. This month we went to Bella Terra and ate at Pasta Pomodoro - Yummy! Then we just talked and walked around the shops that closed a bit earlier than we anticipated. Oh well... it was still a night out with no one to worry about but yourself! I feel very blessed to have such a great group of friends... we missed the ones that we not able to make it!

5 Things We Are Grateful For This Week

So I forgot to post this last night... but here we go. We decided to each do one per family member since there are 5 of us.

Brandon is grateful he was able to spend ALL DAY with us on Saturday. (It's very rare we get him all day Saturday... usually Sunday is our family day.)

Michele is grateful for lots of chocolate this week - I needed it. Didn't work so well for the weight watchers, but it was one of those weeks. I am also grateful Brandon was home with us. Love him!

Taylor is grateful she was able to attend Grandma's 60th B-day party and to spend the afternoon with her friend Gabby on Friday.

Jack is grateful he could play with his new hockey stick and puck Dad bought him.

Nate is grateful for his binky!! (At least that what we think he's trying to tell us.)

Happy 40th Anniversary Mom & Dad!

Today is my Mom & Dad's 40th Anniversary!! I love this picture of them - my mom was only 17 (3 days away from being 18) so my Grandma & Grandpa had to sign for them to get married! No way they would of done that for me - huh Mom? I love you Mom & Dad and hope my marriage is as wonderful as yours - thanks for setting such a great example! Happy Anniversary!

HB 4th Enrichment Night

We had such a great enrichment night this past week. The theme was "Turning Our Hearts to Our Fathers" with classes on personal/family history and creative journaling ideas. Our dinner consisted of family recipes which were wonderful and they had the recipes of every dish printed out for us to take home. After dinner, they had a family of 4 generation women get up and tell why they love their mother/grandmother and what they taught them to help them in their lives. It was very touching. I could of listened to their stories all night!
But the reason I was so interested in this particular enrichment is because of starting this blog. I write on this blog as part of my journaling and I love it. I'm definitely not a creative writer so this blog just lets me write a few lines about my day or funny things my kids say, add a picture (or not) and be done. At the end of each year I'm going to have this printed out into a book from a website I received in one of the classes www.blurb.com/create/book/blogbook. I've always wanted to keep a journal and have tried many times with not much success until now. Another great idea I heard in the journal class was a "Gratitude Journal" where you write down 5 things you are grateful for each day. I love that idea and thought that would be great thing to start with my family, but everyday is a bit much for my 3 little ones so I talked with Brandon and we decided to do it weekly. So a new entry on our blog will be "5 Things We are Grateful For this Week" starting this Sunday. Stay tuned...
Quotes from Presiden Spenser W. Kimball "Those who keep a personal journal are more likely to keep the Lord in remembrance in their daily lives".
"Your journal should contain your true self rather than a picture of you when you are 'made up' for a public performance... The truth should be told, but we should not emphasize the negative."

Fun in the Sun

We love living in Huntington Beach! When it's sunny and warm outside you have to do fun stuff, so we did alot this past weekend. It actually started Thursday... I took Jack and Nate to the beach with some friends. This was Nate's first time this year to actually play so I wanted to get some pictures of this outing. Well, I thought I was taking pictures but some little munchkin decided to play with my camera and put it video. So all the pictures turned out to be videos and I've included the two that came out best but they are only a few seconds long! Oh well.

Then Friday we got out the triple slip n' slide and baby pool for Nate. Taylor had a friend over so I took pictures of them racing. Fun!

THEN Saturday we went to one of our friends house that has a huge blow-up waterslide (the $499 one at Costco) - Superfun! I, of course, forgot my camera that day so you don't get the see the injury Jack received after get knocked into the bushes after one of the crazy Dads slid down after him during the watergun fight!!! But the fun didn't stop there... after that we went to another friends house for a BBQ pool party! Yummy food, total entertainment and not one problem getting the kids asleep by 7:30 that night!

Fishing with Grandpa... again

This weekly fishing trip was successful again for... Jack! Not Grandpa! Jack caught a baby Shovelnose Shark this time, which he calls a Shovelnose Stingray and don't try to argue with him on the name because you won't win.

Mother's Day

This post is for my mom... she wants to see the picture frame Brandon bought me for Mother's Day which I just adore. I hope all of you beautiful Mothers had a wonderful day!

I also have to post the most recent pictures of my kidos... my father-in-law took the kids down to the beach so we could have new pictures of the kids for Mother's Day presents.

Kids are hilarious...

I think this is sooo funny... I hope you enjoy it too.
Taylor and I were making breakfast yesterday and she says "Mom, why don't Grandma and Grandpa ever kiss?" I said "Ummm, I don't know, why?" She says "Well, I just wondered cause you and Daddy kiss ALL the time!!!!"
Gotta love the honesty!

Fun with Grandma & Grandpa...

Taylor, Jack and Nate has some fun while we were on our little vacation... Taylor had 2 birthday parties and a sleepover (and somehow scored another Webkin as seen above) while Jack and Nate went to see the trains out in Fullerton with Grandma and Grandpa. Grandpa loves trains and is pretty darn happy his Grandsons love them too. Jack and Nate have just about every Thomas Train they make along with the train table and track. He tried really hard to get Taylor to love trains but it just didn't go over so well.

They also got to see inside a fire engine (below).

Happy Anniversary - 11 years

So it was our 11th anniversary on Saturday, May 3rd and Brandon surprised me with a trip up the coast to Cambria and Monterey for the weekend (without kids!!!). This is what we did on our honeymoon 11 years ago... Of course we started out with the famous "You take my picture and I'll take yours!"

We left on Friday morning and arrived in Cambria around 1ish. We stayed in a cute little place called the Creekside Inn (pictured below) which actually had a creek behind it that Brandon spotted from our balcony.

We love this little town because you can walk around and browse these cute little shops (The Dirty Laundry was our favorite - those of you who know Brandon, PLEASE ask him about his experience!) and they have the best steak place around called Sow's Ear which is were we ate at 11 years ago on our honeymoon... that was fun! The next morning we drove up the coast and saw the Elephant Seals, the only waterfall that runs into the Pacific and many more gorgeous views of PCH - it was really fabulous.

You have to make that drive if you live here in Cali or if you ever visit - it's amazing! We finally made it to Monterey 3 hours later and had so much fun browsing the shops and buying all the candy and fudge we could find. We were going to go kayaking in the bay like we did on our honeymoon, but it was 54 degrees and a bit windy. So after a long day, we decided to grab a pizza and watch a movie in bed... then break out the candy and fudge to make ourselves sick!


We really had a great time and I feel so blessed to have such a great husband... (more pictures to come)