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.

Busy Spring

If you are wondering why I've been such a bad blogger this Spring, here are some pictures to demonstrate what almost every weekend looked like.  There were soccer games...

Baseball games....

Looking for bugs on the sidelines...

Trying to find shade on hot days ....

And then every Sunday night for about an hour and a half, I am doing Aliyah's hair.

The last few months have been really busy, a little too busy for my liking in fact.  Both boys were playing baseball and Nick started playing competitive soccer.  In addition to sports Nick also had first communion classes once a week and then had his first communion at the end of April along with both his birthday and mine. Those pictures are on the old camera but hopefully I'll get around to downloading those soon. 

The sports are all wrapped up for Spring and we are looking forward to lots of unscheduled weekends of summer fun!

Mothers Day

For Mother's Day in addition to wonderful handmade gifts from each of the children, Pete got me a new camera.  I wish I was a better photographer and I wish I was interested in getting a great camera and learning how to use it but as much as I want to be that person, I'm just not.  My dearest husband realizes this and bought me a camera that will hopefully take pretty good pictures without me having to do much except point and shoot.  I could look up what kind of camera it is or I could say that it's pink, it's got a long lense, it's heavier than your normal compact camera and I like it a lot.  Here's the first shot we took (and yes, I'm in my snuggy that Pete bought me for Christmas.)

Snow Day

Aliyah's birthday is March 5 which is a perfect time to go to the snow!  Now if her mom could just get around to posting birthday pictures in her actually birthday month...

Tide Pools

Recently we went to one of our favorite day trip places, the tide pools!  We had a nice sea food lunch and then had fun exploring all the critters of the ocean. 

Daddy Time

Pretty soon after we came home from Ethiopia it became clear that Aliyah was bonding with me more quickly than she was with Pete.  We figured this made sense since she'd had all female caregivers in Ethiopia.  Plus, everything we've read indicates that it's normal for adopted children to bond with one parent more than the other. 

Fast forward a year and Aliyah still clearly prefers mom over dad.  With the boys, if one of them gets hurt or is sick, they are just as comforted by dad as by mom.  Pete wants that same relationship with Aliyah so he is working to improve their bond.  One way he's been doing that has been putting Aliyah to bed and getting her up most days.  It's really helped to strengthen their bond and one night recently, when Pete was at basketball practice so I put Aliyah to bed, she requested that I read her bedtime story on the floor because that's how "daddy does it". 

California

Gotta love winter in California!  We've had some great spring like weather lately.  Last weekend we went for a bike ride and to feed the ducks.  It definitely felt more like June than February.