Spring break highlights

Aubrey helped me make some sugar cookies for Aaron's class. I wish I would have taken some pictures of the bunnies. They turned out really cute. I love my little bakerella. She is totally a hands-on kind of kid. Aaron's classmates were happy to see us. Aaron was especially keen on giving a sugar cookie to his friend, Malina who is in fifth grade. Aaron's class has fourth and fifth graders in it. The fifth graders weren't in class when I was there so Aaron went with his teacher to wait for Malina at the bus pickup. Yeah, he's a got a bit of a crush. It's so cute.

Egg hunt before pictureEgg hunt after picture.Aubrey's before picture.Aubrey after the egg hunt. Notice that she only picked the pink and purple eggs. She even traded with the boys to get their pink and purple eggs. Can you say fashionista?

On the hunt...the pink egg up in the palm was the last one to be found. The boys must have walked by half a dozen times.
La Jolla Shores...we had some most enjoyable weather during our week off. Seth, Hollie's son, sent us his Flat Stanley so we took him along for a few pictures at the beach.

Aubrey loves collecting shells. I spotted a small sand dollar and felt like I won a million dollars. I remember my sister Hollie always finding the sand dollars at the beach when we were kids.

SD Wild Animal park. We could never go there enough. Mike took a few days off and joined us for some fun. We enjoyed the Frequent Flyers show. Seeing the condor wing span was a definite highlight.

Here's a little shot of the baby African elephant born on Valentine's day. Even from far off, he's so cute!

Havin' a rough day?

Sometimes we all just gotta have a good pout!

A fun little favor...

Here's a fun paper crafting design that I discovered on www.splitcoaststampers.com. It's a great online place to find fun ideas for cards, favors, etc. For my birthday, I went to the Ghiradelli store with a few friends and I had come across the tutorial for these cute little Ghiradelli boxes the week before. They fit three Ghiradelli chocolate squares perfectly. So when I saw these boxes I just had to make one for everyone as a little favor. The tutorial suggests using a ScorePal, which I didn't have so I just used the scoring blade on my paper cutter. I did look up the ScorePal online to find out just how much they were and it looks like they're around $40. A little pricey for a paper crafting gadget but I can see how beneficial it would be if you were mass producing a bunch of favors. Unfortunatley, I'm unable to paste the direct link to the tutorial. Maybe because you have to be a member on the site. But if you're interested in checking it out, just search for Ghiradelli boxes under resources. Beate is the name of the gal that made the tutorial so that may also be useful in your search.

March Card Exchange

Here are the cards we exchanged in March. We had a smaller group this time but still had some fun designs with plenty of florals. Can you guess mine?

Mine was the "sending baskets full of warm wishes" card.

Easter Surprise

Well, we had a little Easter surprise yesterday. A 7.2 earthquake from Baja California. We went on a family walk in the afternoon and we were just standing on the sidewalk when it hit us. It sort of felt like my legs were giving out. Connor was riding his razor and didn't even notice. A few neighbors came outside. Mike was in the middle of the street and I was standing next to Aubrey. She was on her bike. We've felt much stronger quakes but it definitely gets the blood pumping for sure.

Seriously, what happened?

Well, actually I'm quite surprised how easy it was to drop off of the blogging planet for a while. Three months just flew by! We've been busy with the same old hussle and bussle of daily life. I've gotten back into reading and cardmaking. And I admit to going through a phase of playing several BBC miniseries shows on my Netflix queue. (Bleak House, North & South, Wives & Daughters and a few of the Jane Austen classics to name a few.) Still keeping with quilt group, book club and card exchange group and volunteering at the school. The boys have started Little League and it's been busy keeping up with their schedules. Aaron and I are still going strong with Webelos. Aaron just placed third in the Pinewood Derby this month. We were thrilled for him. He missed second place by .02. Crazy how close it was. We've had some fun visits from friends, the McCurdy's and the Christensen's. And my mom came out to visit us over my birthday. She stayed for the weekend and we had a great time! Here's a few highlights from January and February.

Connor has become an accomplished bicycle rider.

Yet another phase...breadmaking. Mike still wants me to be in this phase.

I kind of got burned out but I'll be making more again soon.

These are the cards from our January exchange. Mine is the pink cupcake card. I haven't taken a picture of our March cards. I'll get on it.

We've had many a bird land on our backyard fence. This one has by far been the biggest that I've caught on camera. (It's some sort of falcon or hawk.)

We've also admired plenty of doves, hummingbirds, and more.

Aubrey and Mike buddies with Darth Vader at the Lego shop in Downtown Disney.

Some friends of ours came down to spend a few days at Disneyland during their winter break and we came up to meet them for dinner. It was a short but very sweet visit!

Ella, Andy, Big Aaron, Little Aaron, Connor, Aubrey (so cooperative) and Mike.

Michelle and Jen

Joe Cool. I totally caught Connor in this pose one afternoon after school.

Hanging with the cousins at the Wild Animal Park during our school break in Feb.

Connor posing with yet another Flat Stanley.

I guess that's what we get for moving around so much. ;)