Our Little Poet

Tonight, G1 brought this to me and announced she had written her first poem. She told me she was interested in getting it published. I cracked up when she said that but after I read it, I was pretty impressed! (don't think I'll be calling the publishers quite yet though!)

Here it is, her spelling and all:

W****'s eys r blue

My eys r green

but we are a family

yes indeed

Hiking

We are so blessed to live in a town with so many outdoor opportunities. This summer, we've been hiking to burn off energy and explore nature. G2 is an animal and will hike for miles! G1 and W like to play in the creeks and find interesting tidbits in nature. Of course, this is only after W decides that hiking is fun. This picture is a visual of his response to me telling him that he is going to have a good time if he will only try a little bit harder.

Friends

We had a great time when our friend from high school, Mandi, and her beautiful family came to visit us last weekend. The kids are about the same age and had a great time playing. The biggest issue seemed to be the princess dresses among the three year old set. Ummm, looks like my three year old was winning the battle at the point of this photo. Great timing Little Man!

California

We recently enjoyed a family vacation to SoCal! We jam packed a ton of activities into our almost two weeks away and made a ton of great family memories.

We started with a day at Disney. After 900 miles of asking "Me meet Cinderella today?", W finally got to meet his special lady. There sure is a lot of love in his eyes for this Princess. What can I say, the boy likes pretty girls. After about 5 minutes of them hugging and kissing (this is not an exaggeration!) we headed off to explore the park, meet more characters, and ride some rides!
The next day we headed down to Coronado Island off the coast of San Diego. It was beautiful! Since Coronado is also the home to several military bases it was the perfect combination of beach, large boats to watch out in the ocean, and countless helicopter and fighter jet fly bys. The boys were in heaven! We also spent several days at SeaWorld. W is also a huge fan of Shamu (this love stems from a little killer whale bath toy he has). It was so awesome seeing how excited he was to watch the Shamu show. His jaw just dropped when he realized the enormity of the whale. G2 is now also a big fan of the killer whale and walks around the house saying "Shamu splash." We celebrated our 11th anniversary during our vacation as well. I must say, I am pretty proud of my family and so thankful for them every day. Amazing how much our life has changed in the past decade! I must also mention that we experienced an earthquake while on Coronado. Pretty crazy! G1 was pretty nervous as the shaking woke her up from sleeping and she wasn't quite sure what was going on. The boys slept right through it.

Then we headed back to Disney for four exhaustingly fun packed days. I must say, our kids are troopers! We were at the park for 12 hours straight for four days in a row! We planned on taking breaks during the day but the two older kids just had so many things they wanted to see and do so we just plowed through. They were awesome too so it made it a lot of fun. G1 is a maniac with the rides. She will ride anything she is tall enough for and at one point rode the craziest roller coaster there about four times in 25 minutes due to her Dad's expertise in obtaining fast passes. We met a lot of characters during our time at Disney too. G1 had a pretty cool experience where Elastigirl escorted her through the crowds and to the front of the line to meet Sleeping Beauty. W enjoyed interacting with the characters he met this time. G2 on the other hand was not so sure about them. Before the magic ended, we had to make one last trip to the Princess castle.
Already looking forward to our next trip back!!