A few summer happenings

It's been a long summer. School is keeping Mike and I very busy. With his new job, we are not having a lot of time to do things. I haven't taken very many pictures at all this summer. We spent the fourth of July at my sister's house. She lives right by BC, so we get a nice, free show. This year we walked down the street to a friends' grandparents home and the show was even better! There was a really nice breeze, and it blew the fireworks right over us. At the end of the show it rained ash on us. A few of us even got hit by some large pieces of exploded cardboard. It was fun. We spent the day making bottle rockets out of old water bottles. Here is Alexis holding hers.
My bro-in-law Eddie made a "launching pad" to shoot these off. They are powered by water and air. They shoot pretty high and you never know where they are going to land. I couldn't catch a flying one, but here is one ready to go, I think it might also be Alexis'.


Dustin wanted a "faux-hawk" but his hair would not co-operate, so he ended up getting his hair cut into a real mo-hawk. It looked cute for a while, but now that it is grown out, it is looking a little shabby. Here he is on the fourth. I tried to get pictures of the kids playing with the sparklers, but most of them turned out all blurry. I did not have the camera on the correct shutter speed for night. This is the only one that kind of turned out. Alexis had her fourth birthday on July 10th. We ended up accidently having three parties for her. It's a good thing I made a cake and a ton of cupcakes. The first party was a little girls only party. Alexis invited over a few friends and they dressed up and played a few games. I painted all of their fingernails while they colored princess pictures. They also all made necklaces with beads and filled them with sand. I let the girls decorate their own cupcakes. They had a lot of fun. Here are all the girls dressed up. We were supposed to have one big family party that night, but it didn't work out. Alice and Eddie had taken the day off of work and were leaving for a weekend trip, and Mike's sister and her kids couldn't make it until late, so we had two separate family parties. That's okay, then the house wasn't full all at once. I think Alexis had a really great day. Thanks to everyone who came and for the nice gifts.

Dustin's kindergarten graduation

I can't believe this school year is over already. Dustin had a great time in Kindergarten and is eager to start first grade. He will really miss Mrs. Ramey. (He's absolutely gaga over her, but don't tell him I told you) She was passing out the diploma's so fast and so many parents were around taking pictures that I didn't get a really good one of them together. Oh well.

Here he is in front of the cute backdrop that they made.

And a close up of him and his diploma. He doesn't know how to smile for pictures. This is his fake, picture smile. (I hate it, he has such a cute real smile) So, now on to summer time. I am going to have to think of some busy things to do or they are going to drive me nuts. Emily will be in the fifth grade next year, and Alexis is going to start pre-school two days a week. That's going to be nice. It will allow me to actually get my own school work done without any interruptions. WooHoo! Oh, by the way, in case I didn't mention it before, Mike and I have both gone back to school. We do two classes at a time, and they are nine weeks each. Tomorrow is the last day of our second set of classes. It has been interesting. I think that the first couple of classes are to get you used to how things work at the school, and then they are really going to start laying the hard stuff on us.

Mike also (finally) got a job. He is working for T-Mobile. It seems to be going good so far. They just gave us the benifits package to fill out and it looks like it's pretty good, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper per month then we have ever payed. I am still trying to adjust to him being gone, and now the kids are here! So, if anybody is planning any little one-two day getaways and want some tag-a-longs let me know! (I meant me too, not just the kids)

The logic of the little one.

Mike will probably kill me for this one, but it was so funny that I have to share. Mike wiggles around a lot in his sleep and his pants always come down a bit by morning. This morning he was sleeping on his stomach with his arms up under his head. It was warm so he had nothing over him. Alexis came in to wake him up. She climbed up on the bed and patted him, then got this huge look of concern on her face. "Daddy!" "What?" "Your butt cracked open!"

I really needed a good laugh!

Happy Birthday to me!

31. There I said it. That wasn't so bad. This year for my birthday, I decided to take Disney up on their offer and enjoy a FREE day at Disneyland! It was a good day! The lines were practically non-existent. We walked onto almost every ride. Oh, by we, I mean my friend Alena and I. That's right, I went with NO kids. The weather was perfect. No sweater needed. Besides a nasty soaking on Splash Mountain (that took about three hours to dry from) I had an absolutly wonderful day. The only ride I didn't go on was the new Nemo submarine ride. That was the only thing in the park with a line, and it was a huge one. Everyone I know that has gone on it has said that it's not worth the wait, so I didn't wait. I didn't take a camera, so I have to wait for Alena to get me the pictures. I have to at least post the one from Splash Mountain. I don't know how good it will turn out, since it's a picture of the picture on the wall, but it's hilarious. It will have you laughing. I'm glad I can laugh at me and then share it so others can laugh at me too. Hopefully she'll get those to me soon! I would recommend Disneyland without kids any day!

Dustin's tooth

Dustin finally lost his first tooth! We've been waiting for this for a long time. Since he was about three years old we could see these huge teeth waiting under his gums on his x-rays at his dentist appointments. He has been complaining of this tooth hurting for about a week now, and I kept asking him if it was loose, but he was saying no. So there it is. It's too bad the tooth fairy is broke, Emily has lost two in the last few weeks herself.

Easter Sunday

I made the kids dresses again. This year I did not make them match because Emily didn't seem to like that very much last year. Alexis asked me for a "ducky color" dress. I found this adorable material with lady bugs on it, and made her a red jacket to go with it. Emily wanted a green dress. She's being anti-girly right now. No pinks or purples. So I found this material at my moms house with blue flowers and just bought a little bit of plain blue material to complement it. Mike hated it until she put it on. Then he said "That looks a lot better on her than it did just sitting there". Thanks Mike.

I also let Dustin pick out one of Mike's ties and cut it down to kid size. Mike has I think 55 ties, so I figured he wouldn't miss one. These are the only two pictures I got of them, I posted them both because neither one is that good. They were complaining about the sun and making funny faces, so I gave up. That and we really needed to get to church.

Spring Break

This year for spring break we stayed at home, cleaned the house and had a yard sale. On Thursday night, Mike suggested we go to the L.A. Zoo. I ignored him. On Friday morning, Mike's cousin Mark called and said he and his family were going to the L.A. Zoo on Saturday and asked if we'd like to go too. We agreed to if the weather stayed nice. We were expecting thunder storms. Well, it turned out to be a beautiful day. Not too hot, not too cold. Only a few clouds floated over, some of them were very dark and scary looking, but not a drop fell on us. The zoo was having some Easter activities, so we did a few that were not too crowded. We petted the bunnies. (Dustin is in this picture too, see the extra hand?) I let the kids each pick a giant egg to have their pictures taken in front of.

Alexis made some bunny ears. (Emily felt she was too old for this and as soon as she said that Dustin put his ears back)

We were able to make it around the whole zoo and see all the animals there. We were there a little over five hours and we took a nice long lunch break and several smaller snack breaks, so the kids all stayed happy. We didn't feel rushed, so that was good. The only animal the kids wanted a picture of was the flamingos. I'm not one of those people to take pictures of every single animal in the zoo, so that was the only animal pic I took. After we left the zoo, Alexis really wanted to go to the beach. Unfortunatly, we had not planned this, so we didn't bring any beach toys. She didn't want to play in the water, she wanted to play in the sand. We drove over to the Santa Monica Pier and got there just before sunset. So, we walked on the pier and watched the sun set, we watched some people fishing, we walked around the rides, then we went down in the sand and let her push it around with her hands for a little while. Once the sun had set, a very cold wind came in, so we didn't stay there for very long.
That is a monkey on Alexis' back. While we were walking around the rides, a lady walked up to Alexis and asked her if she wanted it. She was so happy, so I hung it around her neck and sat it in her hood so it would not get lost. Oh, and that's cotton candy on their faces. We didn't get home until 10:30pm. The kids had all slept at one time or another, so I had to force them to go to bed when we got home. I was so tired. At least our legs got a good work out!