Vacation!!!

We are leaving to go on vacation very early in the morning tomorrow. Jeff has a conference in Ventura, California next week. He thought it would be a good idea to have all of us go with him and leave a few days early and take a little vacation. Not one to say no to a vacation, we started making plans. We will fly into LA tomorrow and then drive to our hotel in Anaheim. Then we will spend Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at Disneyland and California Adventures. On Sunday we are going to head about an hour and a half north to Ventura for Jeff's conference. The hotel we are staying at there is practically on the beach so while Jeff is working, the kids and I will be able to tour the harbor town and check out the ocean!!! It won't be warm enough for them to actually swim in the ocean, but they will get to walk in it and look for shells. We will stay there until Wednesday when we fly back home. The kids (and Jeff and I) are super excited!!!!!! When we first told the boys, I think they were more excited about the plane ride (it will be their first) and the hotel (they LOVE staying in hotels) than actually going to Disneyland. Until we told them it was like World's of Fun only a million times better. =) Then they got pretty excited. It was so funny that they really had no idea what Disneyland was. =) So, we are all packed and ready to go. When we get back I am sure I will have tons of pictures to post!!!

Playing Outside

Last week was BEAUTIFUL!!!! We spent a lot of time outside playing, so here are some pictures of the fun we had. Lily likes to wear her sunglasses. Here she is sporting her shades.

Riley likes to blow on dandelions and make wishes, so here he is making a wish. He wished his Mommy was his best friend. =) He is so sweet!!

Riley got this ball you bounce on for his Birthday. Lily likes to sit on it. She really can't bounce on it because her legs aren't long enough, but she thinks it is fun anyway.

Riley and Lily had fun using Ri's new bubble blower.

Riley got a lot of new outdoor toys for his Birthday and he is gracious enough to share them with his brother and sister. Here they all are "golfing".

The boys think these giant tennis rackets are so fun to play with!!!

T-Ball is another favorite, but they don't actually play the game, they just hit the ball and then chase after it......

This is how Lily likes to "hit" the ball.

Lily has discovered that she no longer wants to sit in the baby swing. =(

She is growing up so fast!!! She LOVES to have Zach swing her on the glider swing.

Here she is being such a big girl in the regular swing. We finally just took the baby swing down this weekend and put the regular swing back up. I don't think we were going to get her back in it again. =)

We can't wait for more outdoor fun!!!!

RAIN

Rain, rain, and more rain. Now, I like rain, I even like thunderstorms, but it has been raining HARD off and on all night with more rain to come. These are clouds over our house at about five this evening.

It was raining so much that this little frog (toad..I don't know the difference) decided to take refuge on our front porch by our door.

So when I saw how much rain was in our street out front, I thought I should check out our backyard. We have lived in this house for a little over two years. The backyard has always flooded (the city is supposed to fix it this summer) but it usually doesn't get too bad. The biggest pain has been that under the kids' swing set takes forever to dry out. When I looked out into our backyard at about 10:15, this is what I saw:

I went out to get the kids toys that were floating in the water, while I was out there, I put one of their bats at the water's edge to show how far up it came. Our backyard slopes really bad at the bottom, so the water is really deep by the swing set. The water came all the way up to the bottom of the glider swing!!

We have a slide that is out to the side of the swing set. It floated over to the swing set!!!

Hopefully all of the water will be gone by morning. Otherwise I will have two little boys who will be begging to go jump in it. =)

Dive-In Movie

We went to the Drive-In to see Monsters Vs. Aliens last night. It was a really funny movie. We haven't been to the Drive-In since I was pregnant with Lily and the boys have been wanting to see Monsters Vs. Aliens, so I thought we should go again. For an added bonus, the Drive-In was having ten dollar carload night!!! So, we put the kids in their jammies, got some snacks, invited Aunt Amy, and headed on over to the Starlite. Here are the yummy snacks we had while watching the movie (although the boys ate most of this before the movie actually started...)

Zach and Riley settled into the back of the truck with their blankets and snacks and waited for the movie to start.

Lily thought she was missing out on something, so she got up in the truck too.

Here she is in Daddy's chair...turns out, all she wanted was popcorn (and to try to jump out of the truck...)

When it got dark, they started the cartoons for the concession stand. These were the old ones with the dancing pickle!!

While Lily didn't quite enjoy the movie, the boys, Amy, and I had fun watching the movie. (Jeff walked around with Lily a lot) It was a perfect night. It was a little windy at times, but it was cool, and there were not a lot of bugs. (yeah!!) We could have stayed to watch the other two movies, but I think that one movie was enough for us. Maybe in the future. =)

DUCKS

In a shameless attempt to win Lily's love, my brother Bill bought her ducks. To clarify for those who have no idea what I am talking about, Lily is not fond of Uncle Bill. Until recently, she screamed (and I mean screamed!!!) whenever he would come over. After bribing her with candy, she doesn't scream anymore. She still would not get too close to him though. I have no idea why she is so scared of him, but Bill has been trying to win her love back ever since she started this a few months ago. So, when Bill found out how much Lily loves ducks, he set out to buy her some. I thought it was going to be just one, but we got two. He did buy all of the stuff that goes with the ducks too and he promises to keep them until after we come back from vacation. He called last night to say they were at his house, so we went over there to check them out. Lily thought they were great!

We had to be careful, because Lily liked to pick them up by their heads.

Not too scared of Uncle Bill here.....

Even though I wasn't too crazy about this idea, I have to admit they are pretty cute.

Riley wouldn't hold them but he would let one sit on his lap.

Zach really liked the ducks!

Yep, I think she likes them....

Although she stuck with just letting Aunt Tonya hold her.....

Lily did let Uncle Bill kiss her!

Thanks Uncle Bill!!!

(and Aunt Tonya!)

Earth Day

Today is Earth Day. Yesterday, I found this cool art project where you color a coffee filter blue and green....
then you drip water on it (you're suppose to spray it but I didn't have a water bottle) to mix the colors.....

let it dry, and you get a cool earth!

When Zach saw Riley's, he of course wanted to make one. Here is Zach's. He decided to add some stars, the moon, the planet Saturn, and the sun to his picture!
Since we were talking about Earth Day, I asked Zach what he liked the most about the earth that we could find around the outside of our house. His answer: BUGS! He wanted to find a ladybug (he had found one at school earlier) but we couldn't find one, and then he saw a bee that he wanted me to take a picture of, but I vetoed that bug. So, we ended up taking pictures of these cool bugs:

Rolleypolley

Spider

Butterfly

Today, Lily, Riley, and I went outside to see what they like most about the earth. Right away, Riley chose flowers. So, we walked up and down our street looking for the prettiest flowers, and these are the ones Riley chose:

I asked Lily what she saw outside and she said, "Bird!" I tried to get a picture of a bird around our house, but couldn't get close enough, so we headed over to Grammy and Granddad's house where I knew we would find birds. The first bird she saw? DUCKS!!! Here she is chasing after a duck trying to feed it. Apparently it did not want her help finding food, because it (and another duck) kept walking away from her.

Granddad said there was a robin building it's nest in a tree in their backyard, so we went to check it out! Lily & Riley thought that was pretty cool.

One of my favorite things that we can see around our house are these two little bunnies that visit our backyard. You can see them out there almost daily, but most of the time, they run off when you open the sliding glass door. Yesterday, they let me get fairly close before they ran under the fence.

My other favorite earth thing is the sunset. (Even though it is not actually on the earth.) Here is a picture from our upstairs window.

Happy Earth Day!!

Riley's Party

We had Riley's party with all of our family and some friends today. Riley started out the day putting on his new Scooby-Doo shirt.

Then at 8:30 in the morning, this showed up at our house:

We booked a Scooby-Doo moonwalk for Riley's party. The company we got it from set it up about two and a half hours before the party, so the kids would have a chance to jump in it before all of the party guests arrived.

Then my sister, Mary, came a little before the party to deliver Riley's cake. She made this Scooby-Doo cake. Isn't it awesome!!!

At about 11:00 people started coming. All of the kids couldn't wait to get their shoes off and start jumping!

We dragged the kids out long enough to eat pizza and open presents.

My sister Amy found these Scooby-Doo action figures!!!

This is a picture of the mass chaos going on when Ri was opening his presents. It didn't phase him though, he just kept right on opening!

We all sang Happy Birthday to Riley and had cake and ice cream sandwiches!

Then it was back to jumping!

One by one, our guests began to leave with reluctant children. We invited the neighborhood kids who were looking over at our yard longingly to jump, since we had the moonwalk all day. It was supposed to leave at 5:00, but they didn't come until 6:30 to pick it up. Which was nice for the kids. They had been jumping all day, so we thought they would not be too sad when the guy came to pick it up, but when they deflated it, Riley was very sad. His words were, "This stinks!" Here is a picture of his face after they took the moonwalk down.

So SAD!! =(

But, he quickly bounced back when he found out he could help deflate it by jumping on it. =)

What a good day!!