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.

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!