San Diego Love

While Jon was home last week we were able to sneak in a magical day down in San Diego. San Diego holds a very special place in our hearts and every time we visit we ask ourselves why we don't just live there. I took the kids down to the cliffs while Jon surfed. They were so amped to run around the tide pools searching for fish and crabs; and how is it that we were in our bikinis in Dec??? Afterward we headed to Sea World to enjoy it all lit up - it was a wonderland of Christmas, and a very special night out for these early to bedders. (:

Both of these are Eden pics, I think she has quite the touch with a camera.

 

Fire Truck at Mommy & Me

The Fire Truck came to mommy and me on this week. Zion was in heaven! His favorite part was going up in the ladder which he begged to do over and over again.

Christmas Tree

Eden and Jon decorated the tree together this year and I think it turned out to be my favorite one yet. 

Christmas Train

I feel like I have been away from this blog for years. We returned from Kauai 1 week ago and got right into the swing of Christmas. Well actually we got right back into the swing of work and mostly that was on Jon, but he was off for the past few days and we were able to do all things Christmas. He is calling it the Four Days of Christmas. We got a tree the first day, went to Sea World to see the lights on the second day and the Christmas Train was our third day. A special treat from Mimmi, with all of the cousins. It was very special and everyone had such a great time!

Love this shot Tracy got of the little guys.

And of all the boys with Mimmi

Tracy Pic (of little Jonny jumping??)

Jon's not a fan of these pics but I think the look like paintings.

Lights in Motion

Tunnel of Lights

Eden SUP

Eden got what we call the sushi board (pictured below) from Mimi and Popi for her birthday this year. Almost as soon as she got it she started using it as a SUP. The first time she did it I was blown away. I never would have imagined she would even think to use it for that, but it ended up being such a break through for her because she could go faster and have so much more control than she ever had before with our giant 200 pound boards. Up until last week she has never ventured out of the shallows with it. In fact, during the summer I would swim out to the buoys to coax her into taking the board out to deeper water. Then, out of the blue, last week she decided to paddle it to the other side of baby beach staying just outside of the buoys. That, in and of itself, was such a shocker to me; but once she was done she excitedly proclaimed that she wanted to paddle to the far jetty. We ended up going down to baby beach three times this week to practice this feat. Needless to say, Eden is hooked. 

On the first day, Eden is admiring the pirate ship and contemplating paddling out to it. This was in the wee moments prior to her deciding to go for it.

We came back the next day and as you can see from her expression she is amping to get back out there.

Tara's 11th!

We celebrated Tara's 11th birthday right around Halloween. A few cute pictures came out of that evening that I have been meaning to post. I especially like the two of Poppi and Zion...

Halloween at Mommy & Me

More pics from Halloween that I am just now getting around to posting. As a side note, I can not begin to express how much fun this class is with Zion. He has so much personality it is incredible and I love to see all of the different aspects of that personality come out in this setting. Much of his time is actually spent with the dolls. Codling and nurturing them, and taking them for walks around the class room. I'm not quite sure how to explain this except perhaps the fact that he has two girls that dote on him all day long.

 Don't they all look like dolls??