Look Who's Four!

At the beginning of the year we started Aliyah in gymnastics.  We had watched gymnastics on the Olympics and she said she wanted to try it but the day of her first class she was crying and didn't want to go.  I started to wonder, maybe she thought she would be high up on the beam or flying across the bars like the Olympic gymnists?  Nick and Noah went along to show her it wasn't scary and after the first few minutes she was fine.  Now she LOVES gymnastics and usually around Wednesday starts asking how many more days until her class on Saturday.

We decided to have her fourth birthday party at her gym and she had a blast.  She got to be the star for the day and do all of her favorite things at the gym.  Four is starting off to be a great year for this very special little girl!

Sunny San Francisco

I finally got around to downloading pictures.  I love this shot of Noah and Aliyah.  They really do get along great and with Aliyah, Noah gets to be a little kid for awhile longer rather than always trying to follow in Nick's foot steps. 

 

Three kids all looking at the camera and smiling, success!

Anniversary

It's hard to believe that ten years have gone by since we lost our first child, our sweet Jack.

Every year right around the anniversary our Magnolia tree blooms.  Those first blooms and signs of life on our otherwise bare tree in the cold of winter always bring a smile to my heart.  The tree was a gift to us by our dear friends and it is absolutely the most meaningful gift we have ever received.

 

But as sad as the anniversary is as a reminder of the son we never got to know, we feel so blessed to have the three always energetic, usually sweet, sometimes thoughtful and occassionally downright frustrating children that we do.  When we lost Jack and our house felt so empty, what we have now, with all the chaos and noise, is what we longed for.  Sometimes it's hard to remember that in our day to day crazy lives so the anniversary of Jack's birth and death is a wonderful reminder to us of how truly lucky we are.

Snow Weekend

The boys school had a random Monday and Tuesday off for teacher collaboration days so we decided to take advantage of the four day weekend and head to the snow.  We rented a condo in Bear Valley and were very pleasantly surprised to find some school friends in the condo right next to us.  The kids all had fun playing in the snow and building a great snowman together. 

Nick and Noah took two full days of ski lessons and by the end of the second day were skiing really well.  Aliyah took one half day lesson and had great balance and on the other ski day we had a baby sitter so Pete and I were actually able to ski together for the first time in years.  It was a great trip and hopefully the first of many memorable ski adventures as a family.

Christmas

The kids are at that age where Christmas is really exciting for them and therefore really fun for us as parents.  Nick was in on the santa secret this year but he did a great job keeping the magic for his younger siblings.

 A rare out hair style.  What a pretty girl in her Christmas dress :)

Catch Up Time!

We do things.  I take pictures.  I'm on the computer all the time.  So why don't I manage to blog more?  Downloading the pictures.  So simple but it's that one little extra step that makes me put it off another day.

Anyhow, I have now downloaded pictures so it's catch up time! Here are some pictures from our fun annual SF trip right before Christmas.

Noah

It seems that Noah is making a lot of new friends in Kindergarten including his friend Olivia who gave him this picture that she drew for him.  Cuteness abounds :)

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving on the beach, it doesn't get much better than that!  For Thanksgiving we headed down to Southern California to see Pete's family.  We rented a house on the beach so that we could take Buffy with us and we were blessed with beautiful weather.  And the best part about going to the beach in winter is that there is hardly anyone there! 

 

I thought the water was pretty cold but I don't think the kids even noticed.

 

Aliyah and I practiced running on the beach to get ready for the big Thanksgiving day Turkey Trot.  I love the determination on her face!

 

Getting ready for the turkey trot with the cousins.  Aliyah ran the entire 1k and earned her first medal and Nick came in sixth of all of the children running. 

 

 

On Friday we went to Disneyland and although it was crowded for the holiday, somehow we managed to not wait in a line longer than 15 minutes all day thanks in part to planning and good use of the Fast Passes.  We stayed long enough to watch the parade which was extra special since Santa made an appearance. 

 

Noah got a little upset when the Princesses started to make their way through the parade but Nick comforted him, what a nice big brother! 

Beach, turkey trot, Thanksgiving with the family and Disneyland definitely made for a memorable holiday!

Little Girls

Sometimes our house can get a little crazy with all the boy stuff so it's nice to stop and have a tea party every now and then :)

Apple Hill

Tis the season ... for apples!  Two weekends ago we went to an area near us called Apple Hill.  We were experiencing our nice Indian Summer so even though it was Fall it was still really warm! 

We visited four different farms and one brewery.  We fed farm animals apples that had fallen off the tree...

 

and Aliyah went on her first pony ride (she had a death grip on my  hand!)

And of course we picked lots of apples.  I thought thirty pounds of apples was a lot but apparently that's enough to last two weeks in our household!

 

A rare picture of all three actually smiling.

 

This was at the last farm of the day where they had a little pond.  Boys, pond, sticks, life doesn't get much better for them :)  We definitely hope to make this a fall tradition!

Whale Watching

On our last day of summer before school started we wanted to do something really great to celebrate the change from summer to beginning of a new school year so we went whale watching!  Unfortunately, our camera battery died so I only got these few shots with my phone but we had a great time.  We went out of Santa Cruz on a three hour tour, a three hour tour.  We didn't end up shipwrecked, but we saw dolphins, sea otters, sea lions and a beautiful humpback whale.  We saw the same humpback several times as it would surface for a few minutes and then dive.  When it would dive we would get a wonderful view of the tail coming out of the water and then going straight down.  It was a gorgeous day on the ocean and a great way to celebrate the last day of summer break. 

Beach Fun

Right after school got out we headed down to the beach for a long weekend where Nick was playing in a soccer tournament.  We were blessed with near perfect with weather to play in the sand and surf.

  

Noah demonstrating his skills with the Asian squat while digging for sand crabs.

 Aliyah enjoying playing in the sand.  Every once in awhile I am able to capture her "true" smile rather than her "mom is taking a picture so I'll say cheese smile."  I must say though that getting the sand out of her hair was a major undertaking!

 Pete and Nick playing baseball in the sand between soccer matches.

Nick playing in one of his three sand soccer games of the weekend.

Cooling off in the waves after the last game.  It was a perfect weekend to kick off our summer fun :)

Memorial Weekend

Hey, I'm only three weeks on posting pictures :)  Memorial Weekend we had no games, no birthday parties, no plans... and it was great!  We did what we love which is just get up and go wherever sounds like fun for the day.  For that particular weekend that included cherry picking...

Hiking among beautiful Redwood trees..

And checking out the WWII airplanes that were visiting our local airport.

I LOVE this last picture of Noah.  He'd had enough of the camera filled weekend and was ready to do something else (can you guess what?)

We are trying to keep summer relatively low key and unscheduled so we can enjoy more days like these.