tool time

Alicia helped pitched in the other night while we were putting together our new bedroom dressers. She did a great job finding the pieces we needed and even tried to assemble part of dresser! Too bad Pat (the blue Handy Manny hammer) and Felipe (the yellow Handy Manny Phillips head screwdriver) didn't work the greatest or else Alicia might have been able to finish parts of the dresser herself! ;-) great helping hands, Alicia.

Goebberts Pumpkin Farm

We managed to sneak in our fall pumpkin farm visit to Goebberts this year while the weather was still really nice out. In previous years, it had either been really hot or really cold, but this year, it was just about right. We went with the Haney family and enjoyed our afternoon trip to the pumpkin farm. The kids really enjoyed running around checking out all the different characters and asking "take our picture" and "this is cute" by all the "cool" characters they liked the most. Of course, they had to pick out a few pumpkins to take home for souvenirs, too!

Sam and Alicia posing with all their favorite cutouts! Even Everette joined the fun with the girls and got in for a some fun pictures too.

Look how they've grown!
Alicia and Samantha - 2008

Alicia and Samantha - 2010

birthday wrap-up

This fall we had a bunch of our "big kid" 4 year old birthday parties! We celebrated Lucas, Carl, and Kaylee's 4th birthdays! Such a flurry of activity in just a few weeks kept us on our toes! Thanks everyone for such a nice time at all the parties and being such good hosts and hostesses.

I would have to say this picture below is one of my favorites from the recent parties... Alicia just has this look of cute and innocence, while her buddies Carl and Ben are rolling around being goofy boys. haha... boys will be boys and girls will be girls.



While going through the party pics, I was showing Alicia a few pictures for this blog and she said this one was her "favorite" of her and Carl, so I'm posting Alicia's pick too :)

Outdoor Birthday Bash 4 Lucas!!

Jumpin' Fun 4 Carl's Birthday

Fall Fun 4 Kaylee's Party

final vacation recap

Finally the last vacation post, haha! We just had so much fun and took loads of photos in California we had to keep sharing some with everyone. The last day or so, we spent them mostly by ourselves at Disneyland. This was nice to be able to have some time for the 3 of us together, as we have a feeling this will be one of our last real family vacations for a few years until baby 2 is old enough for traveling, unless we have additional vacation helpers, haha. :-)

Disneyland is definitely different than Disney World, as you can see quite a few attractions in just a few days. It is much more centrally located, so you aren't spend half your time traveling between parks. So that was nice for us since we only had a few days left to spend there, plus in the heat, I was all about enjoying mini breaks we could sneak in and relax back at our hotel. I think we only didn't get to one or two sections of the parks that we would have liked to be able to see, but I think we hit our must-haves and favorites over and over to make it a very successful trip!

Alicia obviously loved meeting the princesses and being able to have breakfast with them all was a real treat for her. I just loved watching the look on her face each time a new princess would stop by our table to say hi, as it made it all worth the wait and money. Other highlights that Alicia seemed to really like besides meeting her favorite characters, were the Its a Small World ride, Dumbo, the tea cups, and the carrousel. One of the other cool rides was the Nemo submarine ride, where you got to ride in sub-like boats, which showed clips from Nemo, while talking about marine life. It was interesting, as you each got your own little portal hole to view the underwater adventure.

In the evening, Alicia was surely not a fan of the fireworks yet, so that was an experience by itself... however, we did make it through most of the World of Color show there that featured lots of cool lights, music, fire, and a water show over the Pier area at the California Park at Disney. We were able to get tickets for two night shows for the World of Color, since our hotel on site was privileged to get early passes, we took full advantage of that. The one night at the World of Color show, mommy and daddy managed to get to watch the entire show, as Alicia fell fast asleep in her stroller for almost the entire show. I guess we wore her out that day running around ;) You can see some pretty cool World of Color pictures in this album here.

Like I mentioned before, we had a great time and it was really nice to be able to get away from the crazy and busy schedules at home to have some nice mommy/daddy and Alicia only time before the next big chapter of our family begins.

Another Alicia Disneyland Favorite

A Special Princess Moment at Disneyland

California vacation - part 1

Not sure where our fall has gone, but wowsers, this blog entry is WAY overdue. In late September, we went on a family vacation to California! We went out to visit some of mommy's family that lives in the area for the first few days and then we made a stop at Disneyland for a few more days before heading home.The first leg of the trip we stopped out at our cousin Marci's house in Lancaster, CA. Marci & Todd graciously opened their house to us for a few nights; during the day we ventured off to visit a few local spots and went sightseeing in the mountain and desert areas. We hit Apollo Park, the Musical Road, Devil's Punchbowl Park, and took some road trips through the Los Angeles National Forest Desert area. One of the evenings, my other cousin Rob and his wife, Debbie, and family stopped in to visit us all as well. Alicia really enjoyed visiting with her cousins and had a lot of fun playing with them all. It was nice to see her jump right in with them and watch how much fun she had with them all, despite some of them being several years older :) thanks guys for welcoming us into town!

The second portion of our family stay trip was down south, near Arcadia, CA, at my cousin Kelly's. While visiting Kelly and Jeff's, Aunt Ronna came down from Oregon for a visit too since we were in town. It was great seeing them all, as the last time I think we all were together was about 10+ years ago at Kelly and Jeff's wedding out there. The first day visiting, we took time to just relax at the house and the kids were having fun playing in the backyard and chilling in the pool. While visiting the Arcadia area, we hit Huntington Beach the other day, and started part of our Disney adventures, too. At Huntington Beach, Kelly and Jeff's kids really liked to use their wake boards in the ocean, while Alicia was cool with just chilling on the beach with mommy and Kelly while the big kids went out to play in the water with the dads.

We had great fall weather the first few days there, but then it got HOT. The last few days when we spent it at Disney, were outrageous. We were out there for one of California's hottest fall days on record. yippe.. yeah, not really.. luckily we stayed onsite at Disney at the Grand Californian Hotel where we could easily sneak back and forth from there to the park to get some needed rest and relaxation in the air conditioning and pool time. Best ever decision for the trip to stay onsite, note to others, if pregnant and visiting Disney, do yourself a favor and spend the extra money for the close proximity and convenience of being able to rest and relax when you can sneak it in the few moments of free time.

Disneyland was less than a hour from Kelly and Jeff's place, so the one evening we met up with my girlfriend from high school, Kristina, and her family at Downtown Disney. By the way, Kristina, thanks again for the Jazz Kitchen suggestion to meet up, as I really enjoyed the beignets there in Downtown Disney.. yummo.. gotta love great deep fried powdery goodness.

Well that brings us up to about the first 3-4 days of our family trip to California. To avoid complete overload in one blog post, I will post the last half in the next entry.

To occupy your time, please enjoy our pictures from the vacation, here, here, here, and here :-) enjoy!