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.