Memorial Day Weekend

We had a pretty mellow weekend. We did some kayaking, bbq'd with Amy, Dave, & Keira, planted some new trees in the front yard, bbq'd again with Mindy, April, & Braeden, and mostly just laid low and spent time in the yard.

Gardening is very thirsty work!

Still smiling, even after just being sprayed with the hose by SBK.

Our new cute little trees. We still have to lay the brick edging, but it's such a huge improvement. Now we are on to picking a house color for the big paint job this summer.

The OC, Baby

Mark and I spent 4 days in Newport Beach, CA last week BY OURSELVES! We had a great time, even though the weather did not cooperate. I went with visions of sitting at the beach or pool with my books, soaking up the sun, drinking fruity drinks and just relaxing. It rained, it hailed so much the local kids used their boogie boards as sleds, and there were three tornadoes while we were there (in the same county, but not directly where we were). We did have about a day and a half of good weather and we went to the beach, Balboa Island, did some great shopping and walked until we were about to drop. We tried our hardest to sleep in, but were still up by 6:00 every morning. We ate great food and had some really good wine. Funny how we easily take 200 pictures on a weekend at home playing outside, but on our entire trip to California, we only took 41 pictures. Here are the highlights:

The hotel pool

Us

Us again...

And more of us... (if you don't already know the story of our self portraits, just ask. We literally have hundreds and hundreds of them. Some may say they all look the same with just a different background, but we love them!)




This is the great little ferry we took as we pulled into Balboa. It held three cars & cost $2.00 to drive on, $1.00 to walk on.

The Pacific Ocean, California style

What We've Been Up To

Enjoying the sun

Rowing in Polly - both in the water and in the yard


Hitting some balls

Doing some kayaking

Building Lego Star Wars figures (Joshua's new passion)


Eating pancakes with strawberries & whipping cream (Malia's ongoing passion)


Celebrating Linda's birthday


And just monkeying around...

Monkeys 1, 2, & 3

Our well rounded girl

Kaylie picked her own outfit this day and couldn't get enough of Braeden's tools. A tutu and tools.. now THAT's a girl who knows what she likes! Thanks for the picture, Auntie April!

Wahooooo! It's Linda's birthday!!

May 14th is a very special day - Mark's mom's birthday. We have all sorts of fun plans to celebrate her and the wonderful mom, grammy, and friend that she is.

Happy, Happy Birthday, Linda! We love you with all our hearts!

Mother's Day & More

We had a great Mother's Day this year and celebrated all of our family moms: Judith, Linda, Melinda, April, Nicki, Camerin... and me! The monkeys made me a wonderful breakfast in bed and gave me wonderful flowers and planters. Thanks, wonderful Monkeys and wonderful Monkey Dad! You're the best!

My beautiful family!Malia and Avery "rowing" in Polly - our new rowboat thanks to Mom and Dad! Polly will be much loved and appreciated especially since our last rowboat was stolen from the beach over the winter.
Me, Mom, & Cam


Kaylie tormenting Joshua

We put a squirrel feeder out about a year and a half ago. They just found it last week!


The fog came to Dyes Inlet.. I think this was last weekend.

Mark and Kay napping in the hammock

Malia's tooth came out on Saturday - she was so proud and the tooth fairy left her $2.00 and a little note. Messy fairy though... she left fairy dust all over Malia's bed!

Gorgeous Malia and her Grandpa Ken (Mark's dad)

Malia's World

She is up and blogging! Take a look at one of our favorite writers.

http://maliadhughes.blogspot.com/

We're in trouble with this girl...

Me: "Kaylie, what do you want to be when you grow up?"

Kaylie: "A tooth."

Me: "A tooth? You mean, you want to be a dentist and work on teeth?"

Kaylie: "No!! I want to BE a tooth... or maybe some hair."

umm.... ok.... let's try the question another way

Me: "Kaylie, what do you want to DO when you grow up?"

Kaylie: "DRINK WINE!!!!!"

Oh dear...

Please send help :-)

Late Friday night, Kaylie got sick. Not kind of sick - really sick. Barfing every 15 minutes kind of sick. Barfing until 5am kind of sick. Barfing in her bed, barfing in Malia's bed, barfing in MY bed kind of sick. Now, it's Sunday night and Mark has it, too. Currently, I'm watching "What Not to Wear" on TLC and they just made horrible fun of the woman with newborn spit up on her shirt. Can you imagine what they would say about me right now? I smell like puke. I don't have sweet newborn baby spit up on me, I have three year old girl carrots and chicken nugget VOMIT all over me. (OK, I have changed, but the smell and the vivid memory is still there.) SBK came down from her bedroom, (I was on the couch, just sitting down to eat my "poor me dinner" of an entire plate of French fries and a big old glass of cheap wine), she laid her head on my shoulder, snuggled her head into my neck, belched like a sailor (I would know), and threw up all over me. Mark is currently curled up and sleeping on the living room floor, Kaylie is curled up sleeping on the non-barfed on couch, and I'm sitting here just hoping upon hope that we're done for the night. (Done washing the vom out of Kaylie's sweet curls, the dryer lint trap, and set after set of sheets.) Hope that my wonderful man and baby girl feel better, and (in all honesty) that I don't get it.