We're Back from Nor Cal

We're back from Northern California where we got to spend 2 weeks with family and the kids got to hang with their cousins. We turned the living room into another bedroom with a pop up playhouse tent and the kids slept in there great. We visited the ocean a couple of times and brought home a few treasures. My favorite part about the trip? The pictures Anna took of my kids. So adorable. Here are my favorites (there are a lot of them). Which one is your favorite of each kid? I need to pick one to print out and hang in my family room. We're leaving Thursday for the cabin with Brad's family and playing at the lake. No rest for the weary, it's all worth it though for the memories we create each summer.

Oh and...Happy Birthday to me today! Yeah!

Spoiled

As soon as we got to my Mom's house Alex asked her where her girl toys were because Grammie always has lots of girl toys for her to play with. Since my Mom didn't really have any (because she had already given them all to Alex) my mom went out and bought her a few little girl toys to keep her busy this week. When I saw what she did I asked Alex if she knew what S-P-O-I-L-E-D spelled. I helped her sound it out and she honestly didn't' know what it meant. Really? I swear I've been calling you spoiled all your life. So after a brief discussion on what spoiled means I asked her what she says to her Grammie for getting her some new toys to play with. She looks at her Grammie with a smile and says sweetly
"Can you please open these for me?"
What?! No, what do you say when someone gives you something?
"Um...Spoiled?"
Ya, that's exactly what you are, what do you say to someone when they give you a gift???!!!
"Oh, Thank You!"

Happy Birthday John Boy!

Can't we all pretend the date above says

June 19, 2008?

We are still in California, we celebrated Johnny's birthday with Brad and our family in Idaho before we headed out here. Then his actual birthday was this past Thursday. So he got another birthday party with our California family and I decided to take him out for a Mommy and Me fun day. He was feeling a little lost with all the traveling going on and really enjoyed having some alone time with me at "Bouncerama". It's a huge room full of all different blow up bounce houses. We went early enough that hardly anyone was there so we had a lot of fun. Johnny measured in at 35.75 inches on his birthday. Exactly the same height that Alex was on her 2nd birthday. Sorry Johnny.
Here's his Idaho birthday cupcakes, he's confused by the frosting his Dad smeared on his cheek.
Blowing kisses to people for his gifts since he was too busy to get down and give them hugs.
California Birthday cake.

After Bouncerama (which is at the Eureka mall) I let him get a gumball out of the big gumball machine...

...Pick out a toy at the dollar store...

And ride the coin machines.

Johnny's favorite word these days? "Memma?" (Remember)
I hope he "Memmas" the fun we had together on his third birthday!

Viva Puerto Vallarta!

We are back! We spent 7 wonderful nights in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and arrived home at midnight Wednesday night, threw a birthday party for Johnny Thursday, then packed and started our drive to California on Friday. So here we are in Cali with my family and trying to get onto some kind of schedule and grasp some sense of what is normal. Putting all of that aside, let me brief you on our little second honeymoon. We are celebrating our 10 year anniversary this year and everyone we met on our trip thought we were on our honeymoon. Kind of nice we don't quite look as old as we feel.

We saw lots of fun animals roaming around like peacocks, parrots, crabs, iguanas and other lizards. Here's an albino peacock that lives at one of the resorts. He was very willing to pose for pictures although I'm told if you give him any trouble he quickly turns into "Diablo Blanco" (the white devil).

One of the first things we did and one of our favorites as well was a 50 min massage on the beach. The spa had a few canvas rooms set up on a peninsula that was right next to the ocean. I don't know why I've never had one of those before but I definitely know it won't be my last.

Here's one of us, exploring the beach near our hotel.

This is the view from our room. The windows in the middle open out for an unobstructed view of the horizon when desired.

Another favorite activity was swimming with the dolphins. We spent some time with "Apollo" and "Azteca" the dolphins our third day there. They lived at a water slide park where we spent some time one day as well. They showed us many tricks of their own as well as many that involved us like the foot push, where the dolphins push your feet with their noses until you rise out of the water like superman. They were lots of fun and it was interesting to see that this was for their entertainment just as much as ours. The trainer had to keep mixing things up or the dolphins would get bored and ask for something new. We'll be taking the kids to swim with the dolphins at Sea World next year. Highly recommended. The pictures of us with the dolphins are on a hard copy back at home that I need to scan into the computer. Of course you weren't aloud to take your camera with you anywhere so they could charge you an arm and a leg for their pictures once you were done.

Sadly, we don't have any pictures of us scuba diving or even in our scuba gear. But we did go 45 feet under the ocean surface along a coral reef and saw a few puffer fish, balloon fish, a moray eel, star fish and a few urchins. Apparently this is the wrong season for scuba diving because the water is just too murky to see anything further than 2 feet in front of you. We'll try it again in clear waters next chance we get. Here is a picture of us on the boat on the way back.

Another fun adventure was our Canopy Tour through the trees. Multiple zip lines from tree to tree, 100 feet above the ground and 80 foot repels. Not for those scared of heights although many in our group were. Lots of fun though!

Our last night we went to a "Mexican Luau" on a remote island an hour boat ride from Vallarta. It was the perfect ending to a wonderful week of boogie boarding, beach volleyball, reading under one of the many thatched umbrellas or sipping drinks at the beach side bar.

The evening consisted of a theatrical dance performance, candlelight dinner and watching the sunset on the beach with rhythmic music playing live in the background.

We were able to watch the sun set every night from our hotel and had fun watching the many different boats sail past our beach each day and night. My favorite was the pirate ship that would sail past each evening offering a sunset dinner for all on board. Well worth the ten year wait but I don't know if I'll be able to wait another ten years before taking off for a week with my husband to another tropical location.

Quiet Time

Since Johnny is done with daily naps we have instilled "quiet time" during the day so Mom still gets a block of time to regain her sanity and the kids can recharge their bodies for the rest of the day's activities. I set them up with a movie, the longer the better, and turn off their lights. If they're tired enough they still have the opportunity to fall asleep for a little siesta. Yesterday they were playing outside after quite time so I went upstairs to gather the DVD players and Johnny's was sill playing, apparently as to not be rude to Mr. and Mrs. Potatoe Head who were still quite captivated by the movie. My kids are never alone, they create friends where ever they go for every situation. I'm just wondering if they watched the entire movie with him, partly blocking the screen, or if they just stood in for him once he was done. My kid's minds are never boring. Today for lunch Alex was a cat eating fish and Johnny was a shark eating fish. For some reason fish was the food of choice although they couldn't agree on a similar animal. And here I thought I was serving up the same boring bowl of macaroni and cheese.