What is wrong with this picture?

No, it's not that I've taken the term "soccer mom" to the extreme....
What's wrong is that this is Jacob's soccer uniform!

They only had mediums left...it's going to be very interesting to see how a bunch of 4 and 5 year olds play in these huge uniforms!  In the meantime, soccer has been going great and Jacob loves it so far.  This is a big step up from the city run activities that we've participated in before.  We have practice a couple times a week and then Opening Day starts September 9th when he will have games every Saturday through November.  With Preschool starting next week, we have now really and truely joined the ranks of all the other families planning their lives around their children's schedules and commitments.....that, I don't think, will end for oh....16 years or so! 

A funny story....when we got Jacob's team info for soccer I told him his team was the "Bears."  He then said, kind of sad like, "So I'm not a Grasshopper anymore?"  It was cute because in all the city activities EVERY kid is a grasshopper and wears the same green shirt.   Welcome to the real world of competitive team sports Jacob!  (Well maybe not quite yet, but it's getting awfully close!)

Day at the lake

We had a great day today and spent the day at the lake on a patio boat with Grandma and Uncle Jeff.  I think we all got way too much sun!  Jacob got to do a little of one his favorite hobbies, fishing, that is until he accidentally dropped his pole into the lake.  After Aaron and Jeff spent some time attempting to find it and dive down and get it (about 20-30 feet underwater!), we resigned to take the loss.  Ella even got her daily nap in...I don't know how she possibly can sleep in some of the conditions she does! 

Travels around the county

Party On!

Saturday we got together with some friends and did some river rafting down the Sacramento.  Tons of fun and very cold water...I got first hand knowledge of that after going kamikaze on a secret mission gone wrong and ended up fully submerged underwater.  Oops! 





Thanks to the water canons we all got soaked and didn't have a very peaceful/relaxing float down the river, but I think we'd all do it again!

Afterwards we did a BBQ at our house to celebrate Aaron's birthday.   (Helpful tip...an underwater disposable camera is not good for taking indoor photos!)

Happy Birthday Aaron!!

Hey Aaron, hope you have a HAPPY, HAPPY birthday today!!  Unfortuantely you have to work but we'll celebrate it big this weekend (Surreal Neal was fun last night too though...LOL!)!  And don't worry...don't let all the gray hairs fool you, you're still young to me.   We love you Aaron! 

A new fav

Thought I'd share one of my new favorite things!  Having one diet soda a day is a treat (well actually a necessity now) for me.  While at a grocery store in Santa Cruz last week I saw a display for this new Diet Pepsi called Jazz that is Black Cherry Vanilla flavored.  I had to try it and now I love it!  I've already stocked up on 2 cases of the stuff...just in case it's a temporary summer release.  There is also a flavor called Strawberry and Cream.  That one is OK, a bit too sweet for me as a daily soda though.  If you get a chance try it and let me know what you think!

Young love

Here is Ella and Josh.  So cute.  Josh was so concerned that Ella might hurt herself walking along the rocks that he insisted she hold his hand.  She was happy to oblige him. (Photos courtesy of Karen)

Kinda crazy photos

We had fun hanging at the Sundial Bridge late last night playing around with the camera...


 

We're back home again!

Our last trip of the summer is now over!  We got back from Santa Cruz last night and we had a wonderful time.  The weather was beautiful, we had wonderful visits with family and experienced all the fun Santa Cruz has to offer.  I've gone through the 500 or so photos we took and uploaded some of them here....

San Joaquin National Cemetary  Our first night we stayed in Santa Nella and visited Grandpa's burial site in Gustine.  The grounds, while very dry and a bit barren were still beautiful and peaceful.

Santa Cruz Pictures We hung out at the beach, played on the boardwalk, had BBQ's and campfires at our campsite, visited with family members....Jaime, Elissa, Mason, and Morea came up from Southern California; Cindy from Sacramento; Diane, Hayley, and Marissa from Magalia; and Uncle Brad, Aunt Peggy and Great Lee at home in Santa Cruz.

Monterey Pictures  After visiting Grandma and saying good-bye to the SoCal Lee's (guess we're the NoCal Lee's!) we took a drive down to Monterey.  We checked out the Monterey Bay Aquarium and took a mini-tour of some of our old memories.  We lived there for 2 years over 6 years ago and while so many things change, so many things stay the same.  It was odd. 

Off to finish the many loads of laundry.  That campfire smell is in EVERYTHING...even my camera believe it or not!

We're here in Santa Cruz!

Here we are at a REALLY kid friendly campground in Santa Cruz and we’re having a good time. We left early Saturday morning for Sacramento. We attended our dear friend Karen’s Mom, Celebration of Life Ceremony. It was a very beautiful service. That evening we headed further south on I-5 and found an RV park in Santa Nella to stay the night.

Sunday morning we went a few miles to the San Joaquin National Cemetery to visit Grandpa Lee’s burial site. The grounds are beautiful and it was very peaceful and though provoking. We then headed west to the Monterey Bay area to find our campground. We’re staying at a KOA just south of Santa Cruz. There are so many fun activities here and lots of kids for Jacob and Ella to play with. They have theme weekends here and offer tons of theme related activities, this weekend it’s Fiesta time. There is also a heated swimming pool, hot tub, mini golf, train rides, climbing wall, mechanical bull and surfboard, jumping pillow, game room, ping pong, etc., etc.!! We will definitely be coming here more often with the trailer!

That afternoon after loading up on goodies at our favorite grocery store, Trader Joes (we so need one of these in our town!), we went to visit Great Grandma Lee. It is so good to see her again. We then headed to the local drive-in theater to see Talladega Nights, the Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Real fun movie and love the drive-in! We need to start a revival and bring back the drive-in movie theater! So fun and perfect for families.

Right now we’re having some breakfast and planning on heading to the beach to do some Boogie boarding. I wish I could share some photos but Internet service is very slow and intermittent and I’m lucky to even get this posted. Until next time….

Just cause and a bye for now

Here's a couple of pictures I took today that I thought were cute and so I wanted to share....twice today, someone asked if they were twins.  I'm even starting to wonder myself!

Early tomorrow morning we're heading to Sacramento for the day and then down to Santa Cruz for the rest of the week.  We'll be camping while visiting family down there.  Odds are pretty good we'll have Internet hook-ups so I'm sure I'll be back soon!

Ahhh....friends and a getaway

Last night I got back from a much needed, great 2 day break with 2 great girlfriends, Stephanie and Kim.  We headed to San Francisco to see what kind of trouble we could get into.  It was a beautiful time to go and we saw so many interesting things.  We checked out Chinatown,
did some window shopping at the 'spensive stores, some laughing at the crazy fashions in the kooky stores (H&M--still saying, huh?), and some buying at a favorite standby (Old Navy, yeah!).  We ate lots of food and drink in Chinatown, Blue Mermaid, Rain Forest Cafe, a cute little breakfast spot near Fisherman's Wharf, PF Changs, Starbucks...gosh we fit in a lot of food for less than 48 hours!  We also saw some beautiful sights and interesting homes and people.  I couldn't have asked for a better couple of days away!

Here's a link to the photos I took

Here's some of Steph's photos

Birthday party Sunday

We spent the afternoon at a friend's 3rd birthday party, it was a swim party and so much fun.  We so need to work on getting an inground pool into our future landscaping plans!  The kids and us had a blast and truthfully none of us wanted to get out of the water. 

Ella and I hanging poolside:


Aaron taking the big plunge:



Jacob coming down the slide...how cool is this pool?!    

Happy Birthday little one!!  Thanks to your parents, for throwing a great party! 

Tomorrow I'm heading to San Francisco for a little getaway.  I leave bright and early, like 6:30am.  Don't know why I'm on here at almost midnight!!  Good night....

Ella's dance class

For the last month Ella has been taking a weekly dance class.  It is a combination class of ballet, tap, and acrobatics.  It has been an interesting experience to say the least!  The dance studio has a kind of cruel and unusual type of punishment in that the 2 year olds have to go into class alone and the Mom's can only look in on the class through slats in the blinds of a rather small window.  Not sure who it's harder on, the kids or the Moms!  In our case though I think it was hardest on Ella, she DID NOT want to go in there alone the first couple classes so I had to go in and hold her hand throughout the lesson.  The 3rd class we tricked her and had Grandma take her and push her into class.  She did really well until she had to come out to change shoes and then got upset going back in.  The last class went much better and she went in alone and participated well...that is until she noticed the small window and me peeking in!  Fortunately that wasn't until the last few minutes of class.  All in all I think it was a good experience for her but I think her dance career will have to wait....she is only 2 afterall!  I'm just so excited to have her involved in her own activity.  It seems there is just so much offerings for Jacob but not a lot for her.  She seemed to really enjoy the acrobatics portion of class so we may look into a gymnastics class for her this fall.  Here's a sampling of the pictures I managed to get through the slats in the blinds. 

Ella's first beauty shop visit

So the time has finally come.  I took the kids to get their haircut yesterday, for Jacob it's no big deal.  But Ella, I just never ever wanted to cut her hair.  But it was time, the tangles made me do it. She's had her bangs cut before, by me, which always resulted in choppy,
uneven pieces but the back has never really been cut before.  She has always had kinda curly, layered perfectly hair in the back.  I so did not want to cut the curls for fear they'd be gone forever so the hairdresser put them in foil for me to keep forever.  She did really well getting it cut, she got to ride a motorcycle and watch Dora.  And when all was said and done, it really doesn't look that different! 

Funny Jacob story

Jacob is obsessed with watching Cartoon Network whenever he is allowed.  I think he likes the commercials more than the shows however.  For instance, they have been having ads for the Bedazzler frequently (remember that thing from the 80's?  Yep, it's back!) 
Well he's been asking me if I want one whenever he sees the commerical on.  He's so thoughtful, isn't he?  Yesterday I was wearing a tank top with a printed on design that also had some little rhinestones mixed in with design.  We're sitting on the couch and he asked me if I Bedazzled it.  I said no, that I bought it this way.  He says, "You need to get the Bedazzler and YOU need to Bedazzle it, it's only 19.95."  OK, this isn't good...this child is a walking commerical. 

Day Trip to Dunsmuir

Aaron and I have been wanting to take a day trip North into Dunsmuir for awhile now and picked Friday to just go for it.  Great timing on our part...though it's been sunny and HOT for what seems like forever now, Friday morning was overcast with chance of isolated thunderstorms.  We decided to go for it anyhow.  Dunsmuir has some interesting areas we wanted to explore; hiking trails, waterfalls, and an inviting looking city pool.  After having lunch at a local pizza parlor in their VERY quaint downtown area, we went in search of the waterfalls.  After circling the town a few times and talking to some local folk, we found our way to Hedge Creek Falls.
It was a short hike through a little rainfall, we almost felt like we were in a rainforest. 

The next plan was to check out Mossbrae Falls, however it entailed walking along the railroad tracks for about a mile.  We didn't feel comfortable doing that with the kids.  We'll have to save that one for another time. 

Afterwards we decided to check out the community pool.  It has always looked so refreshing driving by and I've been wanting to take a dip.  It would have been much better had it been a hot, sunny day and not cloudy and sprinkling, but the kids still had fun. 

We then headed over to the city park and Botanical Gardens to completely wear the kids out before the drive home. Click here for some photos of our day

Trying to escape the heat

Late Wednesday afternoon we headed up to the lake to attempt to escape the heat.  We stopped at KFC for a nutritous dinner to bring with us and we were on our way.  We had lots of fun swimming and jumping off the platform.  We didn't head home until after 8pm and it was STILL 102 degrees! Click here for more photos at the lake

Pool Playgroup

This morning we hosted playgroup at our house with a pool party, both big and small pools. I don't think we've ever had so many little ones in our pool before!  It was a lot of fun and a great way to enjoy the 110 degree temps we have today.  Well actually what we're doing now is the best way to enjoy/deal with the temperature....staying indoors with the A/C cranked! 

Grasshopper Olympics

Saturday Jacob and Ella competed in the Grasshopper Olympics.  It is a city sponsored event which begins with the "Running of the Grasshoppers," which is a parade around a local park with all the olympians in their green shirts.  It is open to 2-5 year olds and is a series of 9 events that they must complete in order to get a sticker for their name tag.  At the end they have a little awards ceremony where they all get a ribbon and a prize.  This year's prize was a frisbee.  At the end we all headed over to the city pool for a picnic and a swim.  Ella was a little shy and slow to get going at this year's Olympics but once she got into it she really wanted those stickers.  Jacob was all about being the best and getting it done the fastest.