Disneyland Throughout 2009. I miss you!

Last Christmas, we received the BEST Christmas present ever from my parents: an annual pass for our whole family to Disneyland! We had so much fun throughout the year with this. We loved taking the kids out of school to go. Some days when Jeremy was off, we would decide to go the night before and most of the time, Kirsten would load up her kids in our van which we dubbed "The Disneyland Express", and head down for the day. So many fun memories. I think we went at least 12 times. We were even able to take Cozette and Atalie individually on dates. Jeremy and I even got to eat at the Blue Bayou for an anniversary date. I miss our passes so badly! Every time I look at pictures, I want to go so badly. We decided not to renew them this year, but take a year off and get them again next year. Thanks Dad for the fun present! We will never forget them! Love you!

Every one who came on our first trip to Disneyland, Jan. 2009
Cozette fighting Darth Mal in the Jedi training on her date with her Daddy (Sept. 2009)
I think this was from our second trip. It was even fun in the rain!
Cute girls. They went around and took pictures and got autographs of as many characters as they could find.
Scotty after a nap.
Wyatt was the only one who got to go on his birthday since it wasn't blacked out.


Our second to last trip there. We usually were lucky enough to have one or more of my siblings come with us.

Backyard Projects

Before

For awhile now, I have been wanting to have out backyard be a little more functional/beautiful. It started with Christmas when Santa brought the kids a cool fort. Since then, I have wanted to do something else, but didn't really know what. Thanks to several people for their ideas of planting, patio, etc...we now have a nice quartz flagstone patio in our backyard! Jeremy took two days off from work, at first to go to the desert, but since the weather was supposed to be windy, he was unselfish enough to help me with the backyard. He got a rototiller on Thursday and we rototilled our little yard in about 1 hour. There was some thick layers of clay that would make the rototiller jump! Pretty crazy. Bottom line, we should have done this right when we moved in, before planting grass. I guess we were just to lazy. We added some bags of good dirt that is supposed to break up the the clay.

After rototilling, we took out about 4 inches of dirt close to our fence, where we were going to put the flagstone. That was a lot of dirt. now it's sitting on the other side of the yard, waiting to go in our yard waste bin. We picked out our stone that same day and it was delivered the next day!

With all this hard labor, we sure slept well at night! We got the gravel and sand in, which was pretty labor intensive: filling up a wheel barrow at a time and wheeling it back. Jeremy and I took turns doing that while the kids and our sister in law Emily helped level and rake! Thanks Emily! It was so nice of you to help when you came to visit!

Once the sand was in, we filled up our wagon with the stones. The kids were such good workers and enjoyed seeing the progress. Stephan was such a huge help in putting our "puzzle" together. That was interesting to try and make every stone fit! We eventually had to "cut" some which meant breaking them, hopefully in the places we wanted, but usually not. Any time Stephan would try and make a cut, it would break some where else!

With the stones in place, we tried to get rid of the ones that wobbled, but we are hoping that will go away with time. I've put back some of the plants and planted the grass seeds, which we are now waiting to come up. Hopefully that torrential rain we had last Monday didn't ruin them! The rain was helpful as well to see where we needed to do some further leveling.

I was so anxious to have it finished, that I even bought some patio furniture before I even put the grass seed in! I do love doing projects. They help me to be patient and realize I don't need to hurry and get it done as fast as possible, but that I can enjoy the growth and development of it, steps at a time.

It looks great and we are all really happy with it. We had Jeremy's parents over for a BBQ and backyard campfire the other night. One of the things I bought was a fire pit. It was fun to do smores and to try and keep Scotty out of the fire. He's pretty smart, though. At one point, he saw us all putting or skewers in the fire with marshmallows, so he went and found his own stick and tried to roast his own. He's so cute! I'm glad he didn't get burned!

The Great Race!

We've been pretty busy these last three months! Jeremy's brother Brian got married to Suzanne in Arizona, then we had a reception out here for them. Both events were wonderful and we're so happy for them both! Jeremy had a dirt bike race in California City that was three laps in the desert for a total of 150 miles! He did great! It was fun for me and the kids to be there to watch him start and finish. I'm glad he has a hobby that he enjoys and he's really good at.

I had my own race this last Saturday in Agoura. It was a 1/2 marathon, partly on pavement and partly on trails. The trail was pretty crazy. I was looking down a lot to make sure I wasn't going to trip over any rocks or anything. Some parts were like climbing up stairs. And some parts were single track, so everyone was walking since they couldn't really get around the slower people in front of them. I started out with Else and I'm so grateful we could run together for the first five or so miles. I hope I didn't annoy her! It was also a wonderful experience to do it together and to train together. We took turns during the week trading babysitting so we could get our three runs in. As I got ahead of her on the trail, at one point, I was climbing this huge hill with switch backs around mile nine, I could look down the trail and see her in her green shirt! I'm so grateful to be close to my sister and that we could accomplish this together! I know my other sisters would have done it too, had they been close or not just had a baby! :)

I think the hardest part was pushing past mile 11. By that time, we were back on the street and I just had to stare at the ground so that I wouldn't get discouraged at how far I had to go still. That was a nice thing about the trail, I just kept running. Since I couldn't see too far ahead, it wasn't discouraging. One of my goals was to finish in 2 hours and 10 minutes. I did it in 2 hours 18 minutes, but I'm still so happy with that, considering the terrain. My other goal, in all honesty, was to beat a certain person, who will remain nameless. He got ahead of Else and I at the beginning with his wife. They did awesome, but when I came upon them around mile 9, just as I was going up the big hill, I was soooo happy! Maybe that's what kept me pushing on the trail, as well, knowing he was up there and me trying to catch him! When he did see me catching up, his face fell! Yes! I thought, I've got you in my sights! By the top of the hill, I passed him and then didn't look back once. Thankfully it was down hill for the next mile or so and I was really able to have some speed and get a few minutes ahead of them.

When I got to mile ten and was still on the trail, I started to wonder when I'd be off of it! I pushed through the last three miles and thankfully Jeremy and the kids were waiting for me at the finish line! My parents were there, too, since they had finished their 10k, which I'm so proud of them! Haans also came up, too, with Charlotte and we all got to cheer for Else as she came across! It was great and well worth the effort. Hans also did a mile fun run for kids and did great. I would do it again, too! Thankfully my left IT band on my knee held up, although it was bugging my since mile one. The thing that hurt the most was my right pinkie toe, since it had turned into one huge blister! All is well!

Later that day, my dad treated his grand kids to the jolly jumps at the post race party and then we went to Ola's for lunch. Erik had flown down from Tehachapi and took us all for rides in his friend's airplane. It was a beautiful day and everything is so green right now. Thanks Erik!

Scotty and poop!

So Scotty has a new infatuation with zippers and taking his diaper off. The other morning, Jeremy and I go in there only find him in his crib with no diaper on and poop going down his leg inside his jammies! Yuckkkkk! Then the following morning, I come back from my run to find him standing in the living room, again with no diaper on and a pile of poop on the carpet! Poor Cozette, who was babysitting, thought she had it all under control since she thought he pooped in his diaper and she had that. Little did she see the several smear marks on the carpet and the pile on the floor! Thank goodness for folex and my mom's carpet cleaner!

One week

After one week of planting our seeds, they are now about 3-4 inches tall! This picture was taken yesterday morning, but they are even taller now! It's so cool to see them change so much day to day. I hope they will survive when we transplant them outside!

We love the beach!

We had rain most of last week which was actually quite nice. But Saturday was so beautiful and our friends invited us to go to the beach with them, so we went! I wore my big clunky rain boots that were very helpful to cross the creek, but since it wasn't cold, I could've just worn flip flops. The tide wasn't super low, but the girls still found some interesting creatures in the pools. One of them was a spiny star fish. I can't remember their name. Hopefully the poor thing survived after being dumped out of the bucket at least twice by the babies. We had a great time and missed Jeremy being there. Next time, hopefully.

Bean Facial

This is Scotty after we had tostadas the other night! Jeremy and I were just laughing!