St. Patty's Day

The kids had a lot of fun on St. Patty's Day. When they woke in the morning they found that a leprechaun had stopped at our house overnight to use their potty! They were determined to get to Daddy before he put his green on so they could pinch him so I let him in on their little secret so he could play along. They got such a kick out of that! We also made green eggs and green milk with breakfast, and green enchiladas for dinner and green rice krispie treats for dessert:) A leprechaun also visited Lily's classroom at school and made quite the mess but left all the kids pots of gold w/treats.

Jax is 4!

Our sweet, silly guy just turned 4! I can't believe how much he has grown up this past year. He makes us smile and laugh everyday and brings so much joy to our lives. Here are a few pictures from his special day:

Batman jammies from Auntie and Uncle Dennis:)

New bike from Grandma Linda and Grandpa Rich!

I tried...

Happy Birthday to YOU Jackson!

Snow and Such

You would think that living in Utah for 3 years would have cured us of getting excited about snow but...the kids were SO happy to wake up to a dusting of snow last weekend. They rushed to get on their snow boots and jackets, pink eye and all, and play in the "snow" for a bit.

Tilly enjoyed it too:)

I forgot to post a picture of the adorable Valentine's bookmarks Lily made for all her friends at school...better late than never I guess

We checked on our garden yesterday and to our surprise we actually had something edible!

Lily brought home a newspaper from school last week called KIND News that is all about animals and the environment. I watched as she began to read an article on how baby seals are hunted and saw her mouth open, her hand go to her heart, and tears start to well up in her eyes. We talked about it and what an awful thing it is that people do and it brought her to tears. This sweet little Angel of mine has such a kind heart and could not understand why anyone would want to do anything so awful. There were two addresses in the newspaper that you could write to and tell them how you feel and so she did:

I suppose that's all for now...

Time Flies...

Oh my...I am SO behind. I don't even know what has happened in the last month. I started nursing school and we are all trying to adjust to our new schedule. Everyone is doing well. Lily joined the running club at school and seems to be enjoying it (which makes me SO happy!) Jackson is loving school even though I had to switch his days on him and he doesn't get to see his best buds anymore:( He is still happy to go and moved up to the "Preppie" class. Jack has (finally) been busy with work and incredibly supportive of my schooling. He has picked up a lot of the slack I have left and takes the kids out on special outings on days after I've worked the night before so I can get some sleep/study time. I am so thankful for our families and all the awesome support we have while I start this new journey.

I will try to recall some of the last months happenings in the following photos:

Carlsbad 1/2 marathon w/the fam:)

The kids ran their first race! 1 whole mile!

Getting ready for Father/Daughter Dance

Jack took the kids to Coronado

They saw some pretty cool stuff!

A boy and his dog

Awesome hike in Santa Ysabel

I'm sure we've done plenty more but this will have to do for now. I am going to make an effort to stay more on top of this blog (because the whole point was to document the kiddos as much as possible!)

A little behind...

It's a New Year, but I haven't even finished thinking about the end of last year yet! So where did I leave off??? Here's a few of the things we did at the end of December:
We went to the California Science Center and met Grandma Linda, Grandpa Rich, Uncle Kyle, Aunt Jennie, Uncle Dennis, and Auntie Erin there. It was a crazy drive due to record rain but we all managed to make it from point a to point b and back w/out incident:)

We had to get creative with our gift giving this year due to severe lack of funds so we made bookmarks and t-shirts along w/some other goodies. Here are a couple of the shirts:

We had a really nice Christmas Eve at Erin and Dennis'. We started with a scavenger hunt that ended w/this new little member of our family:

His name is George Bigglesworth...the kids were so surprised and Lily is in heaven, she loves this little guy. Erin made a yummy dinner and we played scrabble and crazy 8's:) The kids got to open their gifts from Auntie and Uncle Dennis and had a great time

 And then there was Christmas morning...we had a nice little morning just the four of us and then we headed to the Riordan's for the rest of the morning.

With all the crazy rain we've had we had to check out the creek at Ramona Oaks Park. It was definitely movin'...

 I guess that about sums up the end of the year. Now on to the next right???
Happy New Year! I am determined to make this year better than the last, shouldn't be too difficult:)

December Fun

December has been a combination of emotions but we have done some fun things with the kiddos. Here is some of the fun we have had:
Picking out and decorating our Christmas tree:

Ok, so this isn't the one we picked but the kids liked the Charlie Brown tree:)

We had an awesome day at Smith Ranch in Julian where we rode a mining train, went in the mine, panned for gold, learned to pump water the old fashioned way, walked a rope bridge and busted open fresh chestnuts. The Smith's were so nice and the kids had so much fun, what a great experience!

We had an afternoon of baking w/Auntie Erin:

And Jackson was an angel in his play at school. The first picture is his reaction to seeing Lily and I in the audience. What a sweet guy! He did so well and sang his little heart and at the end of the evening a surprise guest arrived. And boy were the kids happy about it!

More fun to come!