Flowers

A year ago this week my dear friend Shari passed away from lung cancer. Shari was known for her beautiful yard, especially the roses and irises in the front yard. Last fall, just after we moved into the new house, I called and asked her family if I could come take some iris starts for my new yard. Never having had a yard before, I was pretty clueless in the where and how to plant department, so I just dug some random holes and hoped for the best.

It has been fun watching them grow this Spring. Since they were no longer blooming when I took the starts, I had no idea what color I was getting. Shari had a wide variety, and I took from various locations in her yard. Here is a photo of what is currently in bloom.


Aren't they pretty. I love coming home every day, seeing the progress of growth and thinking about Shari. It's been such a fun memorial to her and a way to think of her and smile on a regular basis.

California

Summer has officially begun. The boys had school until Thursday and Rick had school the following Monday so we decided we better take a quick trip with the little break. We had the boys miss the last day of school and left Wednesday right after school. We arrived in Fountain Valley Thursday early afternoon and headed right for Huntington Beach.


Zane and Isaac with Huntington Beach Pier in the background.

We buried Isaac in the sand.

Rick and Isaac helped me harvest shells for my shell garden.

A fun afternoon in the sun!


Friday we spent at Magic Mountain. Online tickets were only $33, so we opted to that instead of Disneyland. We enjoyed some seriously scary roller coasters. Good times!!

Saturday we headed to LA to take in some sites. The boys have never been to Hollywood. Here they are outside of Grauman's Chinese Theater.

Zane was stoked to find Robert Downey Jr. It was just added a couple of weeks prior.

We stopped to see the La Brea Tar pits then walked to a letterbox near a turtle pond. Hidden with the box was some food to feed the turtles. I was hoping to do a lot more letter boxing on the trip but we couldn't find the other one we looked for, and didn't have time to look for others.

Turtle pond.


We ended our LA excursion at China Town. Here we are having a little snack at the Phoenix bakery. I've been to SF and NY China Town and have to say LA was a little disappointing.

We ended our evening at the Holbrook's (who were excellent hosts the whole week) playing Rock Band.


On our drive home we stopped in Las Vegas and went to the M&M store (4 stories of M&M paraphernalia)

We also went to the Coke Museum. For $7 you can taste Coke products from all over the world. Rick was happy we all got to sample the icky, bitter Italian drink; and I was happy my favorite Fanta from Central America was included. Vegas was insanely hot though and neither Rick nor I enjoy it as a destination. An hour or so was plenty to stretch our legs enough to finish the car trip home.

Thanks my fun family for a great trip !

Ready for Summer

We are officially ready for summer. It has been a crazy week. The last full week of school. The boys actually have to go to school for a couple of days after Memorial Day. So weird since they seemed to have a bunch of random vacation days through the year. It seems like they could have saved a few up and just been done at the end of this week.

We had something going on every night this week and multiple things many of the nights. Isaac finished Spring soccer. We are so proud of him for getting out and trying something new. He made a goal (which is great since he mainly played defender) and his skills and confidence really improved. Most importantly, he had a lot of fun. Here are a few shots from a game.


My camera has a big delay so it's hard to get a good action shot.







Zane had both his play performance and choir performance this week. Zane, who seems to like a lot of attention everywhere but from his parents, surprised us with a speaking part in the play. When I asked before, he said he just was a guy in the background. His role was small but he was the comedian in his scene and very funny.

He also had a solo in the choir concert. They did a rock concert which was fun. It was mostly a Beatles tribute, and they had a rock band accompany them. Zane had a verse in Paperback Writer. We are proud of him and his talent.

I can't believe we have a full school year behind us in our new house. I think the change was good for the boys to get them out of their comfort zone, even though the transition was a bit rocky. Isaac told me this was one of his favorite school years. That made me happy. I've been impressed with his school and teachers this year. He is changing schools again next year to be in the accelerated program. He is excited about it and really wanted to be in the program. (My only problem with the accelerated program is that they often put the programs in the poor-preforming schools; apparently it brings up their test score average. His new school is in sort of a ghetto neighborhood. Isaac is the most pure and innocent kid ever so I worry about him and the affects a harsh environment could have on him.)


And finally- we couldn't be ready for summer without Glitter Toes! I held a party at my house last week and Stephanie came over to sparkle us all up. It turned into a kind of mother/daughter evening. Avalon and her friend got matching red sparkly toes and silver sparkly nails.





If you're interested in a glitter toe party- see Stephanie's blog here.

Bring on summer!!

Finally moved in

While we still have a long way to go until all the moving-in projects are done, we finally unpacked the last box this week. This is thanks to Rick, Ikea and Craigslist.

First Rick: After building the sturdiest shelves in the world in the garage for practice, Rick spent Spring Break building these shelves in our family room for all of our games.

It was so nice to be able to unpack the boxes of games sitting in boxes in the room. It inspired us to get on the rest of the shelf acquiring.

After scouring the internet for inexpensive, attractive shelving for the movie collection, a quick trip Ikea solved the problem. We were so exited to find DVD depth shelving at a very reasonable price.

I guess officially we aren't completely unpacked because some of the actual shelves are out of stock so we can't fill up the final case.

Rick has cataloged all of our movies on an on-line data base that you can view here. Rick has edited most of the rated R movies to family friendly versions. We need to do some work on the categories as I see 101 Dalmatians listed under Action/Adventure movies. I'm guessing many are listed in more than one category as the movie total is at least double our real collection. Minor details.

Finally- my favorite. Our bedroom. We've had a corner full of boxes in the master bedroom since we've moved in. We donated our bookcase to Isaac's room and put a new bookcase for our room on the wish list. I wanted something large and semi-nice (i.e. not Ikea) for the bedroom. Rick found this on Craigslist.

It is the perfect size for the wall and our books, not to mention the color matches our other bedroom furniture quite well.

It's funny how happy it makes me to walk into these rooms and see things organized instead of stacked in boxes. Progress on the new home is slow but steady. We spent all of yesterday in the yard. I'll post some pictures once everything starts to bloom (which hopefully- with my brown thumb they will).

A Saturday in Spring

Ah, finally, warm weather. Right now all the windows are open in my house and I'm loving the fresh breeze. My feet are a little better so there's hope for hiking, tennis and biking this season.

Yesterday we took advantage of the great weather and went to watch my brother fly radio controlled airplanes. A few years ago, he got with a couple of his flying friends and starting an annual "Civil War". It has grown to a pretty significant event. Yesterday they had at least 30 planes and a number of different events. Here are some photos/videos.

First they did the "Limbo" event. You earned two points for flying between the two strings, one point for flying below both strings. First person with 10 points wins. This was really fun to watch. (The video only stays sideways until they launch the planes)



Zane and Isaac each got their first try at flying. Here is Darren helping Isaac.


Here is Zane with the plane he crashed. It was beautiful- he went into a dive and part of the wing broke off. Then the battery starting smoking. It spiraled to the ground smoking the whole way. Definitely the best wipe out of the day. Zane was famous as everyone came over to see the plane ruins.


Darren's flight of his newest plane.


Mom brought lunch for our family.


Just a few of Darren's planes. My dad also brought his fleet.



As we were leaving they had just started this event. Someone was flying a regular plane and all the smaller planes were trying to either rip part of the streamers off or knock the plane out of the sky. Someone took it down just as we were leaving.


The event went all day. We only stayed for a couple of hours. They also did some contests to win planes. It was really fun. We'll definitely be at the next one.