Birthday Weekend!

                Thanks to the Farrells, we had a fun time kayaking in Lake Tahoe Sept. 7th.
                                 when we were both ONLY 57 years old!

             We went from Baldwin Beach to Emerald Bay.   Here is a view  from the little island
                                                             tea house.

            

      Just a side note,  I felt really sorry for the hen that laid this one!  It was Ginormous!!

Calling All Superheroes!

My baby turned 5 this summer! We had a superhero party at the park. Dev and Cam helped out a lot which was really nice. They made paper plate bad guys and hung them around the park, and the kids each had a nerf gun and had to shoot the bad guy. I told the kids to be extra careful because a super bad guy named Skeletron had escaped from jail and was last seen in White Salmon. More on that later. He got two Captain America shields, you can't have too many of those if your a boy :)

 

 

He and his buddy Gunnar, who recently moved to Milpitas, so we'll get to see them once in a while when we are in CA.

 

We had cheese puffs in superhero cups, cupcakes and some sugar drinks. Lots of health food :)

 

I saw these incredibly easy superhero suckers on Pinterest.

 

Wait-is that Skeletron?! It is! Cameron dressed up as the bad guy Skeletron and made an appearance at the park. I gave the kids a can of silly string and told them the silly string was the only way to defeat him. They had so much fun spraying Cameron. He was a great sport.

 

They felt pretty cool that they had saved White Salmon from destruction!

Help

Hey, can anyone help me?  How do you browse and post pictures with this new format?

Camping

 

Continuing my summer blog catch up; we went camping with some friends in June. Camping is a very, very different experience for parents and kids. Sometimes it just is not fun as a parent! Bringing your kitchen with you, trying to cook and clean up without the amenities of a kitchen, not sleeping well, feeling dirty and tired....and as a kid just not caring about any of that, and why would you? It doesn't really affect them anyways! We DID have a good time, I'm just so glad mom and dad took us camping and gave us lots of good memories even though it had to really stink sometimes. (like vomiting kids in the middle of the night...)

 

We went to Panther Creek, which is abotu 45 min from our house. I think mom and dad saw it when they came up. It was very dense and pretty. We saw zero wildlife there. It was weird. No chipmunks, bugs, even birds. There was a really nice waterfall a few miles away that we hiked down to.

 

 

 

 

July

 

I'm tired and don't feel like typing much, so I will be brief! In July for the 4th we went to our friends house with some other families. It was a perfect day and evening. I love the Fourth.

 

 

Audrey and her friend Maggie posing on the tire swing. Why do girls love their pictures taken and boys hide from the camera? Each family brought a bunch of fireworks, which the big boys had great fun with. Our friend Tim is about to set one off with these munchkins looking on.

 

Our friends had a ping pong table, which also occupied the big boys.  There were some pretty intense matches! It was fun to watch.

 

Our House

So, it's official.  We're going to Reno.  And we are SO excited! But we've worked so hard on this house, so I have to show you all our projects!  I made this site on shutterfly for people to link to on Craigslist, where I posted it.  Ignore all the corny, trying-to-sell-potential-renters-on-our-house writing on the pictures! I just want to show you guys our house!

 

{if it doesn't take you straight to pictures, but to the shutterfly home page instead, type the address into your browser instead.}

 

http://forrentnlv89031.shutterfly.com/

June is for Audrey...

I am going to try really hard to do several posts to catch up over the summer. Audrey's birthday and baptism happened  way back in June. She kicked off the celebrations with a friend party. I moved our kitchen table out of the room (sort of a sunroom) and turned it into a girl party palace. They watche a movie on the wall and basically just ran around the house playing and screaming. So I really didn't have to do anything which was great. Audrey wanted to serve crepes complete with her favorite toppings; cinn/sugar, syrup, Nutella and pwd. sugar. We also had applesauce and strawberries. And lots of whipped cream that I had to confiscate once I realized they were taking turns spraying into their mouths. Yuck. We also had cherries and a veggie tray. I thought the crepes were dessert enough to stick a candle in them and call it good, but she was set on cupcakes. She had fun though, and wasn't mad at me for not throwing a good enough party, so that was a success! I also just noticed the pictures loaded backwards, oops. 

Audrey was in heaven with the kitten Troy got her. I found them both asleep one afternoon. Rosie is the greatest attention holder for Audrey, it's awesome. And she does take good care of her. As far as I know, there isn't any animal cruelty....

We headed up to Spokane the end of June since Troy had to go up for a conference. Bev came with her kids too, so it was a lot of fun to have them there. Audrey's real bday was in Spokane, so of course we had another cake and round of gifts. She loved it. I love the pic. above of Alex aka. Power Ranger. Apparently even Power Rangers need some rest.

The cousins made a little circle for Rosie to play in.