10 Word Catch Up

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Here's what we have been up to, 9 pictures, 10 words or so a picture....  These are all out of order, I tried to rearrange, delete, start over, but it's not happening.  

#1  Celebrated Birthdays 13, 10 and 4.  Happy girls, lucky mama.
#2  July: Yosemite: Breathtaking - Paige and Ashlee were airplanes on most downhills.
#3  Yosemite in early July - retire here?    Yes please !!!!!!  Breathtaking.
#4  More Yosemite, every stream was overflowing, water everywhere!
#5  More Yosemite - snowball fights in July, on this walk/hike Paige kept yelling "Quick, get more ammo."
#6  Later in July, trip to Seattle to see Chris's brothers.  So good to see everyone and have the cousins meet!
#7  May- down to San Diego, Sea world with entire population of city one day.  Fun trip - lost one set of keys in the Pacific.
#8  End of year events: choir concert for Maggie, looking so grown up.
#9  May - trip to Long Beach Washington for me with my sisters and mom.  So fun, so relaxing, also the scariest bridge I may have ever been on!


So, that's pretty much it.  School has started - not sure I took any pictures, Paige is in pre-school 3 days a week and loves it.  She is still the best buddy to have around and I'm going to miss her next year when she goes every day (but still only half-days - yay!)  Ashlee just finished soccer, Maggie finished cross-country a few weeks ago (no pictures)  But I did manage to take one picture of Halloween when everyone was dressed up and ready to go - so I'll have to download that and post it later.  Now on to Thanksgiving - maybe I'll try and locate a camera sometime this week!

Spring Break

 During Spring Break this year we made the trek to UT - we had a late break this year - Maggie got Good Friday off and the week after Easter.  Spring Break Highlights:
• We got to be there "THE" Easter Egg Hunt.  My Aunt Tina puts an egg hunt together every year for willing participants - everybody has an assigned color and certain number of eggs, and then we got to hide eggs for each other (younger "hunters" have to wait inside)  The older participants were sure to have some extremely difficult/hard to reach/hard to find eggs. And, it was surprising how easy it was to forget where you put the eggs. It was  so fun, and I was  happy to be there with the girls to participate in this  tradition that we have only ever heard about over the phone.

• We used real eggs to stuff with candy this year, it was fun.

• We did some stuff - children's museum, Thanksgiving Point, BYU for the Karl Bloch exhibit, seeing cousins, grandma, etc. etc.

•After insisting, getting grumpy, insisting some more, my dad still flew out to help  me with the drive and then helped me drive back and flew home again.  I'm thankful for great parents.

 Our eggs, I thought they were so pretty this year.










Beckam - he wants to live outside.

Ashlee had almost the whole month of April off - our elementary school is on a modified year round schedule.  In fact, Maggie is done with school now (her last day was Friday) but Ashlee will be in school until the end of June.  Paige is in HEAVEN when her sisters are home.  That last picture is one day that Paige and Ashlee spent the morning making mud food - behold a mud ice cream cone.  Our dirt is so full of clay, it feels like you could just throw it on a wheel and make a lovely mug... :)

Updating

 My parents came to visit in April - the first weekend of the month.  Some of our activities included: April Fooling - plain glazed donuts covered with a mix of cocoa powder and olive oil.  We almost had both girls, but the "icing" was runny and they licked their fingers first.  Ashlee is doing a re-enactment for us.

 We went to the Beach - I just want to note for the record once again that I really want to live near the beach, like really near, close enough to bike ride/walk near (I need a few more years to work on Christopher for this to even be a possibility) - that bottom beach shot is with my dad's fancy camera, and even though I can't imagine carrying something so big around and taking it out to snap pictures, I covet the kinds of pictures that you can take with it. 

We also went back to my mom and dad's old apartment where they lived with 3 small kids - and then 4.    It was really cute still, I would live there now.   Like always, my parents really lifted my spirits (sometimes I get low, low, low when Christopher is gone) and did lots of projects - pulling weeds, about a million of them out  of our mostly clay dirt, and sewing a bottom panel on the curtain in our kitchen. The trade-off of not living close is that we get un-interrupted time with them when they come to visit.

Nice . . . .

Paige likes to dress up and accessorize - some looks are better than others.  But, as she says to me if I do something of which she disapproves "I still love you."

Derek

Paige has lots of Barbies - a ragtag collection that she has inherited from her older sisters. I think we have only purchased one Barbie for her - the rest are all hand me downs.  Among those dolls is one boy - Ashlee thinks that he is from a Disney movie, I can't remember which, but at our house, he's Derek.  Christopher plays the role of Derek - and for about two months right after he got home from his short summer deployment, he was Christopher's constant companion whenever he was home.  I wish that I would have written down more of the things that Paige had him doing in the name of Derek, but some that I remember are:
• One Sunday at Church (Derek's last appearance there) I looked down the aisle to see Derek karate chopping Odette (usually that's the girl Barbie's name, but not always) all up and down, it was a little bit loud.  When I asked later, Paige said that Odette had died and Derek was helping her.  Odette used to die once every 2 or 3 minutes.
•  Derek spent about an hour one afternoon throwing up into a plastic cup - he was really sick.
• One day when Christopher got home from work, Paige came running down the stairs with Derek in one hand, Odette in the other, saying "Oh Derek, guess what I'm wearing?" It was a ball dress.

Derek has come with us to the movies, to church (no longer), to the grocery store etc. etc...

It was my favorite thing to watch Paige play with her Dad and Derek.  He still makes some appearances, but it's not as frequent as it used to be, which of course makes me just a little bit sad.

January and February

January - back to school, lots of rain, Muir Woods, Stinson Beach.
February - school, winter break, no pictures . . .

 

 

And now we are into March, and I will try to be a better blogger for all my readers. . . hah!  I kill myself.  But, I will try to be a better blogger for my own personal benefit.

After looking at the pictures on the page, I'll add the following: The sunset on the beach was beyond beautiful, the picture doesn't even begin to capture it, and these sunsets are the only point I'm willing to give to CA beaches over the New Jersey shore.

The last picture is of New Year's morning - we all slept in the family room for New Year's Eve.  Christopher was on the floor with Ashlee and Paige and got the worst sleep of all of us.

Christmas Top 10

 
Above are some pictures of our Christmas - I sort of hate blogger right now - why is it so hard to put pictures in order?  I can't figure it out.  Anyway, now that you've enjoyed some pictures of our December - here's a top 10 list about this December:

1. Activities: Maggie sings with our Stake (local congregation) youth choir at our town's Festival of Trees, we visit the Oakland Temple to see the lights with Christopher's cousin Devin and his family, we also visited a few locally famous streets with lights, as an aside: everyone should take a three year old with them to see lights, it ups the excitement factor by about 5, we all attend a Messiah sing along - two of us love it, 2 of us think it is ok, 1 of us starts to cry shortly after intermission because it is "taking forever" and we have unfortunately obeyed the rules and finished M&M's in the lobby, we attend Christmas Eve service, which Paige blessedly sleeps almost entirely through.

2.  Gifts: this year, I used an idea from Design Mom and the girls made each other's  gifts: Maggie made pillow cases (pictured above) - on a day that Christopher was home for help with the machine, Ashlee made hair clips and headbands with flowers and Paige made glitter letters.  I loved this.

3.  Food: we had lots of yummy food and delivered treats to Primary teachers and neighbors.  My favorite this year was chocolate covered popcorn.

4.  Time: We had lots of time to spend together.  The girls both had the entire week before Christmas off and even though Christopher didn't have leave, he was able to be home alot.

5.  The girls let us sleep until 7:30 Christmas morning

6.  Ashlee loved that she got to stay in her PJ's all day Christmas day.

7.  We got a real tree this year.  As we are putting it up Christopher tells us a funny childhood anecdote about family friends who thought their tree was just really "thirsty" but really the stand had a leak and they rotted the sub floor.  The morning after Christmas, Paige retrieves her calendar from underneath the tree and it is mysteriously wet - turns out we had a little water issue also, not enough to rot the floor, just enough to leave a big red stain from the felt tree skirt.

8. Gorgeous California weather.  The hills are so green and beautiful right now - it reminds me of summer in our little German town HP.

9.  Christopher got another helicopter and it is a big hit with everyone (one of the pictures above with Paige wincing is her ducking from "Chopster")

10.  Shopping was like going on a date - I love that Maggie is old enough to babysit now, also Paige is old enough to spill the beans about gifts, so we stopped taking her with us.  The end.

November, Try to Remember

In November we: drove to Point Reyes State Park, the water was cold, the weather was gorgeous.  We had a picnic, walked down the 300 or so steps to the beautiful lighthouse, may have seen a whale breach (we caught only the briefest of glimpses, but the girls insist that's what it was AND, as if to prove the point the sign at the ranger's station, read on the way out,  noted that there had been some whale activity to the south of the lighthouse. It was really exciting.) We then walked back up the 300 or so steps and  drove home, stopping first above another beach to fight for the binoculars and observe sea lions taking their leisure far below in the dusk.  It really is a gorgeous spot and we hope to go back many times.  For a first outing, we felt it was very successful.  But then, we read our guide book (weeks after - when will I learn) and it seems we missed out on some world class culinary opportunities.  So, more exploring of the many hiking trails and food stops is in order.

In November,  Ashlee performed in her school play with the San Francisco Opera Guild.  That picture is so grainy, but so are all the others I took - I will figure out how to work our point and shoot better one of these days.  It was a thrill for me to watch and I think for her to perform.  My favorite parts of the whole play, after her performance of course, were: her phone call home to request permission to audition - I have it almost memorized - it makes me laugh every time I listen to it.  "Mom...or Dad...this is Ashlee.I was wondering if I can go to practice for the opera today, it's every Wednesday from 1:45 to 3:00..... thank-you ..... goodbye."  She was talking so quietly so no-one could hear her, and she is always so business like on the phone, it cracks me up.  And - one of the boys in the play went home after school and showered before practice - every time.  Ashlee says the teachers would tell him not to go home, but to go straight to practice, but he always went home to shower and then came back.  Ashlee told us about it because she thought it was funny and so do I, kids are just funny sometimes.

In November, we went to Utah for Thanksgiving week.  We had a really good visit.  All of my siblings were there, so that makes twice this year we have all been together.  I have a real affinity for UT. now, and it has nothing to do with the state, but just that so many people that I love live there.  I don't have that many pictures, I only remembered to get my camera out once while we were actually there.  The picture below was taken on the drive over, somewhere in Nevada, which was actually quite beautiful with all the snow.  So, that's it, next up December....