Trip to Aquarium and Wild Animal Park

We had a trip to the Aquarium yesterday! It was lots of fun! One of the best parts were all the touch pools they had. It took Shelly a while to get used to the idea of putting your hand in water to touch animals, but once she got the hang of it we had a hard time pulling her away!

Yea, she's a little wet. Katie took off her sweater and gave it to Shelly to wear while her shirt pretended to dry off... Shelly got tired of the way too big sweater before her shirt was very dry though...

Jason obviously heard some music from somewhere and started dancing his heart out! I missed some of the best of it, but he and Shelly sure loved that touch pool!Mark and I took advantage of some left over tickets from Matt and Sabrina's honeymoon [oh yea, they got married on the 20th! Welcome to the family Sabrina!] and went to the Wild Animal Park. Mark doesn't quite measure up to a gorilla...

My belly helps me out a little, but I think it's mostly the scowl that did it for me! :-)

Let it Snow!

We finally got to enjoy the snow! We got to go up and visit the Schofields in Utah. There was supposed to be a storm on the Saturday we were going to be driving up, so we drove up Friday instead to miss the adventure. Turns out we wouldn't have gotten hit too bad. The big storms waited until later in the week to hit! It was so fun to get to be able to enjoy the snow and make snow angels and watch Ethan and Mark sledding with the 4 wheeler. I'm sure G-ma S got some good pictures, but I didn't remember to pull out my camera in time... Oh well. Here's what I did get!Here's Aunt JB helping get the kids ready for the snow storm that didn't really come! It did fall for about an hour, but it didn't stick where we were. I was quite disappointed! No worries! More came later!

Jason on the swing in the snow...
Shelly walked quite a ways from the house, then sat down [she was wearing thin sweat-like pants!] and dug out the snow with her shoes. I didn't notice until quite a bit later that she had pulled her hands inside her coat to keep them warm. She sure was walking funny!

Jason's favorite things was to go see the 'Moo!'s. He got sick while we were up there and it was about the only thing that calmed him down. Those cows sure thought he was weird! :-)

Misc Pictures

Here's several random pictures...

I'm not entirely sure why they thought this was comfortable... They were watching some TV show and both on their bellies on the couch. Jason was the most random though.
Shelly helping Daddy make Bubble Loaf. She was in charge of spreading the sugar on top of the 'bubbles.' We quite enjoyed it for breakfast the next morning!
I have no clue what he was eating, but he must have enjoyed it! He will often try to lick the bottom of the bowl... It makes a mess when he tried that...
When the fam came down to visit for Thanksgiving Aunt Becca painted Shelly's finger and toenails (and Jason's toenails since he asked so nicely!). Shelly decided she wanted to help Becca paint her nails. I think she did a pretty good job! [good/funny - they're like the same word aren't they?]
While shopping on Black Friday Becca and Doug found a Santa - they took my camera for a picture. Ignore the brown mess on Doug's face. Apparently there's such a thing as 'no shave November' and he decided to do it! We were glad when December rolled around! [just kdding Doug - you can grow quite a good beard for being in High School!]
Aunt Katie apparently needed help decorating the front windows. Personally I think she could have done just fine without help, but she was a good sport anyways!
Mark and I took this at the fair back in August - but I only recently got it scanned in. Man, we're nerds!

Here's Jason playing the piano! He's practically Beethoven! :-)

Jason was so funny with this toy! All you have to do is blow into it and it makes the fan inside spin and it makes a great noise [I'm sure you've seen them]. Jason didn't quite get the concept! He'd put it in his mouth and then groan to immitate the sound. I didn't get a good example of it, but it was still funny!

Trip to UT to enjoy the rain

My Grandpa G passed away at the end of September and we went up for a funeral at the beginning of October. It happed to rain one of the days we were up there and the kids had a blast playing in Aunt Becca's backyard (it was technically out Uncle William and Aunt Danielle's door, but since they're moving and Becca is still there - it feels more like Becca's house...) It almost never rains down here in Southern Ca - so to have it raining all day long was quite a treat for the kids. Us adults were not quite as impressed... ;-)

Yup, they were pretty much soaked by the time they wanted to come in!!

Shelly's 3rd Birthday

Shelly turned 3 this December. Grammy made her a 'Keithy Cake.'

She sure was funny trying to blow out the candles!
Nummy cake!

Naked baby enjoying cake!

Disneyland Trips

This is going to be a few different D-land trips all lumped together, but it's the theme we're going for here! :-)

I took the Kids to D-land alone [I've decided to be brave]. I had to fight to get Shelly to go on "Mr. Toads Wild Ride." We ended up getting on and she hid in my side the whole ride... They had fun on the car outside the ride though!

Jason and his mom...
Katie came with us and we had fun in Ca Adventure in the Bug's Life area.

Shelly and Aunt Katie

Wow - who knew kids could have so much fun getting so cold and wet?!

Becca the border enforcer: 'Jason, you shall not pass!'

Shelly trying to waving to the camera. She was way cute that day!!

Jason with Uncle William and Aunt Danielle

Shelly sured liked the carousel with Aunt Katie!

Aunt Danielle the enforcer! 'Jason, my legs were there first!'

Shelly waving at one of the bush animals on Small World [they carve the bushes into the shapes of different animals. It's pretty cute!]

This was stinkin funny! Jason hears any sort of beat and starts 'rocking out'. Here's an example from Small World (for real - it's Small World. It really doesn't take much for him!)

I'm pretty sure you can't see a thing, but I started laughing so hard when I watched it that everyone in the room told me I had to add this... It's Jason in the Tiki Room.

Halloween

We're starting with Halloween. Here are some fun pics from 2 months ago.

We spent the afternoon at 'Googleween' with Grandpa G. The kids spent the most time with the shuffle board...

Jason [aka Darth Vader] didn't quite get how to play the game...

The kids found our stash of Halloween costumes and wanted to put on some new ones
Jason actually trick-or-treated as an elephant, but Shelly really wanted to be a Lion again

It's way past time...

Ok, I've been getting quite a bit of slack for not updating this recently. I'm not sure why once a month isn't good enough! :-) I still have Halloween pictures I haven't put up yet! Man, I struggle...


So, it's an updating day. Hope you're up for it!!

I love this background!

You don't have to like it, but I love it! I've been missing the snow lately. I'm not even sure why... From what I seem to remember it was quite cold and wet. I did love curling up under a warm blanket watching a storm though. There were also the times when it would be snowing at night when Mark was supposed to be coming home soon, and I'd worry that something would happen to him while he was driving. His vision at night is weird - we're not sure if it the contacts or not, but lights at night do weird things to him, and it's worse in the rain. So it would be snowing, 11:00 at night, and I'd be up wondering if he was going to be ok. Let's not mention that he's driven in the snow a LOT more than I ever have or will dream of doing. Still, I'd fight the urge to call and check up on him, knowing that just about the only way to make things worse would be to have him driving at night, in the snow, and having to talk on the phone calming down an, undeservedly, overly worried wife... So, I'd think about sending him a text message - but that's not any better :-) Eventually I'd realize that if I just waited he would get home safe, and strangely enough he always did! I know it was my worrying that helped!! ;)

Despite all that (or maybe a little bit because of it) I miss the change in seasons. I didn't have it growing up. I didn't even know there were seasons. I remember the first time I experienced 'fall.' I looked outside the apartment one day and realized that all the leaves were on the ground. It was a strange experience! They used to blow leaves in Southern California, but it never occurred to me they didn't do it all year round, or that all the trees might actually lose all of their leaves!! There's almost always many trees around here with some type of foliage on them.

I also remember going into a store looking for a window air conditioner. It was probably March or April and the guy in the store said 'I haven't seen those yet this year.' I truly did not understand what he was saying. It had been months since the new year, did they really do such a poor job of stocking their shelves that it would take 3-4 months to get stuff in!?! I was in silence for quite a while why I tried to process that and realize what it meant. It's a good thing that my Mom was there to help - she grew up with seasons and knew what he meant... Of course I didn't want to seem a fool and actually ask - so it took a while to really figure out what he was talking about, but a good year and half later I did eventually catch on :-)

So, strangely enough, I miss the snow right now - knowing that any that I get to experience will be brief at best this year. The background is helping temper some of that for me :-)