Ahhhh . . . Hawaii!

A strolll on Wakiki Beach after dinner at Dukes!
One of the sunsets we got. Notice turtle and tracks!
Birthday dinner for Jodi and Jamie
Nice little swim hole at Chun's cove.
More turtles- about 3' diameter

Funny

I saw this on Pinterest and it made me laugh....

Anyone Have A Time Machine?

I am finally posting our girls trip pictures, that bad thing is it makes me want to rewind time and do it all over again really badly! It was such a fun week. Haley and Parker definently stole the show with their cuteness.

Parker loved the ride on the cable car. What didn't that boy love?

Too bad I didn't get a picture of Ricky Mitchell. Was that his name? I still think about him :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

I loved the tradition growing up of finding a big heart sugar cookie- decorated just for me!- on my pillow on Valentine's Day. (which is reason #7892 why we have the best mom ever) So we continue this in our house. They're not quite as big as the ones mom made us, but they are just as wonderful to find on your pillow! The other clever thing mom did that I loved was using up frosting in between graham crackers for a yummy lunch treat. My girls LOVE these!

I'm just now beginning to realize that if I have to be a mom who "does it all", I'll go crazy (well, MORE crazy than I am now). So I made this after-dinner chore wheel. With some paint, paper, and mod-podge, it was a lot of fun to make, and even more important, it got my craft-ninja girls to think it's super awesome and they love spinning it and helping out after dinner. And I don't have to do it all! Even though they're little, when everyone helps it makes a big difference! (and no, we don't make Haley do her chores- we're picking up her slack now, but we're already planning ahead for when she can carry her own weight!)

I made a dinner Rod hated. Well, strongly disliked. Tofu burgers. Even with delicious grilled mushrooms, and bacon to boot, he hates tofu. And really, it's not bad. Grilled and smothered with bbq sauce, it's pretty yummy I think!

A few Sundays ago, I realized Haley is outgrowing this dress and that made me VERY sad so I had to take some pictures! This dress was a present from Jenny Foley when I had Caitlin and it's been my very favorite baby girl dress ever since then!! So I'm more than a little sad that it has to go back in the box for a long time...or maybe forever! =( (Not sad enough to go have another baby right this minute, though....)

Haley is the happiest baby. She's into this tongue-clicking thing right now that's pretty darn cute.

A sick baby!

This is Parker at the doctors office a couple days ago.
We found out he has a double ear infection!
on top of a cough and runny nose... poor baby!!

December...

So I thought I blogged Christmas already, but apparently I didn't. Here are a few pics from December, from our holiday in California.

My kids just loved Parker. It was fun watching them interact with a baby, especially Alex who is the only one to grow up without one.

And of course, Jimmertime. The boys were so excited about this. We surprised them with a Kings game in Sacramento. I have a video of them when we told them, but for some reason every other video I take won't upload to my computer, and of course that is one of them. I'm still working on it.

This was the sunset on I-5 on our way to Benicia. Isn't it pretty?

Even thought we weren't going to be home for Christmas, we still wanted to get a tree and deck the halls. I think this may have been a record year in that no ornaments were broken during decorating!

Cameron's Robotics

I am way behind on blogging, but back in December Cameron had a robotics competition. Lego has a program for schools to get kids involved in building and programming robots. It's really cool. Cam's team, the RoboHawks's had 5 kids. They spent about 2 months programming their robot to do certain tasks. It involved a lot of problem solving and teamwork. Anyway, this video is so cute. His team took first in the Robot Performance portion, and he is so excited in the video. His team was one of two to advance to the state competition. I think he loved it, but was kinda glad to have it over with since it took up a lot of his after school relaxing time :)