California 2012 : Disneyland

With all of our birthdays clumped together in June and July and baby girl due the beginning of June, we decided to forgo any birthday parties this year and celebrate early Disney style. We had been telling the boys we were planning a birthday surprise, they didn't know what or when it was going to be, but it would be fun. Little did we know we could have gotten away with putt putt golf or a trip to Seattle and they would have been satisfied. I still think our surprise surpassed the previous options. We planned our getaway, packed up the van, picked Sam up from school and were on our way. The boys were ecstatic! Jackson would look out the window and ask if we were there yet, because he didn't see a castle anywhere.

We were lucky enough to have Grandma and our friends the Gehrings join us for the adventure. It was all of the kids' first trip to Disneyland and the adults' first time back in years. Our first day at the park was on Valentine's day. 

dormans and donald

Sam was our little navigator through the park. He would lead us from ride to ride and was surprisingly really good at it.

big thunder mountain : sam's favorite

Tom Sawyer's Island

what a cutie : love his guts

Tarzan's treehouse

Sam was one of the lucky kids chosen to be trained as a padawan. The kids got their training and then helped fight the dark side against Darth Vader and Darth Maul. Sam fought against Vader.

max was wide eyed at all the rides and characters : he would scream and cry when it was time to get off the rides

Our special Valentine's Day dinner included some of our favorite characters. Sam and Jackson included. We went to Goofy's kitchen and were joined by Pluto, Minnie Mouse, Belle, the White Rabbit, and Mad Hatter. The boys could barely eat, because they were constantly watching out for our next table guest. Minnie was Max's favorite. He couldn't keep his eyes off of her. Mickey better watch out. He gave her the biggest hug and even a kiss on the nose.

really? don't you see that we are all standing around a stroller with a baby in it?

 Then just a couple more rides before heading home. 

California 2012 : Ossolas

After Grandpa's we headed down another three hours to stay with the Ossola family for a couple of days. We hadn't visited Dean, Amy and the boys since before we had Sam. While we were there we enjoyed a lot of relaxing, good food, Downton Abby, legos, hockey and a little hot tubbing.

Brandon was able to give an assembly at Luke's school for some of the students on Monday morning. I stayed behind with the chicklets and let everyone else enjoys Brandon's presentation. {Dean and I were playing around with our cameras and my new dream camera the night before. In the process, I think some of the settings on my camera got played with and that is why most of the photos on this post are really grainy.}

 

 

a friend, spencer, brandon, luke and hunter 

grandma, brandon, luke and amy

  max was in love with the dog and followed her around everywhere

luke and the boys had so much fun : there were lots of tears when we left

luke testing out his drawing skills

California 2012 : Ponies and Turtles

Our first stop in the trip, was to visit Grandpa Fred and Donna May in Santa Maria. They have a small farm in their backyard consisting of a pony, Lonesome Dove, four dogs, a cat and over 60 turtles. The boys were in heaven running around the backyard after 16 hours in the car.

grandpa fred and grandma

sam loved searching for the turtles favorite hiding spots

Broken

This little guy is a climber. He scales anything that he can get close enough to and out of mom and dad's sight. We hoped that the climbing would come to a crashing halt, or at least slow down, after he took a tumble off of the ladder in the garage. A bump on the head and a few scrapes on the arms, {which I found out later were the result of him falling on the sidewalk} so we thought we would just watch him for a little while to see if a ER trip was necessary. Brandon mentioned that he wasn't using his right arm the same, but we didn't know if it was broken or just sore. A couple of days later, things hadn't improved, so I took him to the doctor. After a quick exam and loud screaming during an x-ray we found out that he had broken his collarbone. Two to three weeks of taking it easy and he should be as good as new. No braces or casts necessary.

It did slow him down, but only for a day or two. He is now back to his climbing escapades.

Playmate

dad is the favorite playmate of the house : hands down

Ice and Timber

Our winter wonderland melted and froze overnight, leaving us with the beautiful, but very destructive ice coating on everything outside. 

 

 

Our neighborhood was hit pretty hard with all of the mature trees. We lost power early Thursday morning, so naturally the boys and Brandon took to their favorite no power required activity of wrestling on the futon pad. Sometime in the loud chaos at our house we missed the crash of our big tree landing in the driveway and right in front of the house. 

you can see the van in the neighbor's driveway behind the trees : brandon moved it 30 minutes before

 

close up of our split tree trunk : the big tree coming down : neighborhood trees and bushes : jackson was so intrigued with the icicles

 

Life is getting back to normal, though we still have a lot of clean up on the yard. 

I didn't venture out in the cold too much, so some of these photos are courtesy of a neighbor.