Gingerbread "Houses"

Christmas time is here, which means Christmas activities.  This week we started building our gingerbread "houses".

Laura had fun getting these ready.  In order to catch AJs attention she made him a truck to decorate.

AJ and his truck

Yes, those are fish in the bed.  It looks like a good catch.

A very happy baby.  Of course the candy doesn't hurt.

This is Emmy's house.  Complete with a cobble stone path, and a personalized roof.

Notice the Koi pond.

Hearts for Momma!

We have a surprise for Momma when she gets home tonight. 

Genuine Baby made (ok, with some help from Daddy)

Fun in the sun

We had our fun in a Southern California vacation recently. It was a daring (and fun) trip that took us on 1500 miles of driving, 2000-3000 miles of flying, through new allergies, crying babies, family, friends, and fun. If it sounds tiring, it was. We needed a few days to get back to normal life after getting home.

We took a trip to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium. It was big enough, and the children where finicky enough, that we only managed to see about half of the aquarium.

This little alcove is part of a tidal/wave simulator. Every few minutes a large wave of water would hit. Pretty neat. It also was a good place for every little person to congregate.

Nanna and Emmy

AJ really wants to play in the water.

Daddy, can I go play there. Please...

We also took a trip out to John Denver beach (the place where John Denver crashed). It is a pretty stretch of beach. There are lots of rocks to climb on and to make impressive waves with. There actually was someone surfing a hundred yards or so to the side, I hope it was sandier over there, the stretch we were on was pretty rugged.

Laura, with the waves crashing in the background.

This gave us some time to catch up with family. Aunt Kim has a drum set and karaoke that was popular with the young(ish) crowd. So many ways to make noise.

We also took a trip to Story Bookland in Fresno. It is a neat place for smaller children. The park takes you through several children's stories. At each spot you can use a 'magic' key to start telling the story.

Emmy is starting a story with her 'magic' key.

Emmy is on Captain Hook's pirate ship, in the Peter Pan area.

Let me in, let me in. The wolf will get us.

AJs favorite part was the train that goes around the pond. When we asked if he wanted to ride the train, he started running, full bore, to the train. Here we are with some friends, Crystal and Michelle, waiting for the train to start.

To be continued...

Fun in a winter wonderland

We had some snow recently. Not too much, but enough to cover everything. It was fun for the kids. Emmy really liked to eat the snow, almost every snow picture I have of her involves a little hand scooping up snow to eat somehow. AJ, well he likes to fall down in it.

Exploring

Emmy is piling up snow.

The snow tastes yummy.


This is AJs first time walking in snow. His first snow ever didn't even cover the ground.


A winter portrait of AJ

We saw a lot of this. He would take a step or two, but it was a little deep for him, so down he would go.

Here Mom is getting everyone ready for a ride on the sled.


Mom took them around the street, and I took them around the yard (real fast too, they liked that).

The snow was still falling while we played. I had fun trying to capture it.

For scale, here is about how deep it was.

A 2nd First

AJ's first piece of birthday pie.

Kermie and Mr Tumnus

We didn't have enough pictures of our cute kids. So we went off to the roomiest, comfiest, bounciest area that had simple background to take some pictures. What ensued was short of utter chaos, but it did involve jumping, climbing, eating, crawling, laughing, hugging, a few bumps, and not quite flipping around (we tried but it didn't work for us).

Arrr, yum, umm, ...
Food has always been important in our family. As you can see AJ diligently tries for large doses of non-dietary fiber at any and every opportunity.

Babies in Motion

We tried to get some with Emmy in motion. Flying, climbing, ...she loves to fly up.

Emmy is climbing Mt Daddy

We caught AJ as he charged across the bed. He can move really quick when he gets going.

Babies at Rest

I love this one, it is the 'hey what is going on here' face.

Emmy and Daddy together.

We think she could starting singing the song from Tangled, 'Flower ...'

Baby Masterpiece

This is one of our best AJ pictures ever. He is happy, smiling, and in motion.

This one is our baby masterpiece. Emmy loves her AJ and AJ loves his Emmy. What more is there to say.

2011 Fathers and Sons campout

We had the annual fathers and sons camp-out last month. It was fun. I almost took Emmy with me, as AJ is a little too young. But I was planning on going on a hike that would have been too much for her little legs, so maybe next year.

We camped on the Columbia, at Windust which is a established camp site. The country side reminded me of Scotland a bit.

It reminds me a little bit of Scotland.

Can you really call it camping when there is playground equipment, manicured grass, electricity, running water, and soap in the bathrooms? At any rate there were campfires and tents.

Our campfire, the morning after. I just like this picture, the colors, the contrast, the texture. I just like it.

Breakfast was provided, and see there where tents.


Peter made me retake this picture after he turned his smore upside down. So here is Peter eating a smore upside down.

There was a hike later on in the day. I took my car through this. Not bad, but I had the lowest vehicle in the group, so I scraped on everything. We also hit a spot that was not exactly level, it tilted to the side 20 degrees or so with dips. But my car made it. I only lost one piece.

We hiked a abandoned rail line. It was so abandoned the rails had be removed, so maybe it was a rail bed. In any case you could find a bit of old ironwork as you hiked along.

Some of the flora, it still reminds me of Scotland.

We hiked to one of the tunnels. Here are two of our group in a nice silhouette.


We spooked a few owls out of their nests. Here is one returning.

Watching the owls.

We hiked back on the road below. Here we are figuring out how to get down there. Really it is easy to do in principal. And in practice it wasn't hard either.

Here is our scoutmaster working his way down.

Another shot of Brian as we get to the road.