Pure Joy

We have been having fun on our quick and busy trip to Utah. Andrew has been a good sport running errands with us as we've been getting ready for my twin sister's baby shower.

I have loved these moments of pure joy. Things that make Andrew happy or excited are just so fun to watch. Here are a few of them.

Eating chocolate cupcakes from The Sweet Tooth Fairy while hanging out at Costco

Watching Grandpa open and close the garage doors over and over again.

Touching G&G's fountain/water fall and tasting the water (yummy! ;))

Going to check out the rocks at the empty lots

Throwing rocks into the rock pile (or at Grandma)

Picking up more rocks

Watering the flowers with Grandma

Playing in the water

So many beautiful little moments! I love trying to look at experiences through the eyes of a little toddler. Life is so incredible!

A little bit of family history

Each Sunday Kevin, Andrew and I go to this church building in Santa Clara. It was built in the 70s... can you tell? :)


Many years ago when Kevin's parents were newly married, they also went to this church building each Sunday. Exactly 37 years ago this week, the building was dedicated (May 21, 1972). Both of Kevin's parents participated in the dedication of the building. Shari was the organist and Allen led the choir. I thought this was a cool little piece of family history. Below is a copy of the program from that dedication, along with some other historical info about the church in our area (if you click on it, it will enlarge a bit).


It's kinda neat that several years later we are in the same place. We have gotten to hear stories from people that are still in the area about Kevin parents and how wonderful they are. We even recently discovered that one of our neighbors used to work with Kevin's dad at Amdahl. It was interesting for Kevin to spend some time talking with him about his dad.

I love the idea of keeping family records and journals (although I'm not great at it right now), so it is fun to discover little tidbits of history like this.

For My Dad

Hope these make you smile.

Andrew loves doing the air guitar during Regis & Kelli's Spring Wake Up Call... he drops whatever he is doing. It makes me laugh.

Goofing around with Banana.

Hope that isn't the block that he threw in the toilet...

Favorite new activity... I love it when he walks into the wall

Such a silly kid

Weekend Pics

We started off the weekend with a Friday afternoon trip to the zoo with buddies...
the boys were totally coordinated. It was too cute. Check out a better picture here.

The Bonds were also in town visiting, so we had a good time hanging out with them on Friday and Saturday! Wish they didn't live so far away!

Had fun at the pool with the Bonds and the Balenas... but not in the pool.
Gotta work on fixing this trend or it's going to be a looong summer!

Way more interested in the trash can and dirt around the pool than the water.

Had some fun shopping ALONE... still deciding if I want to
buy this cute skirt (it is on sale, which is always good)...
and I finally found some casual jean capris that I liked!

Little man loves the fridge. Recently he discovered the lemon juice. I'm afraid one of these days he's going to bite through the plastic lemon. In the meantime, it's a great teething toy.

Andrew's been hanging out with the teenagers too much... loving talking on the phone

and texting

Lastly, we tried letting him use a fork the other night for his hot dogs. He actually didn't do too bad and got the food in his mouth a few times. I also showed him how to dip the hot dogs in the ketchup. He loved it!

Sometimes he just dipped his fingers into the ketchup and ate them instead :)... the whole experience was completely disgusting to me, but they were at least all beef hot dogs and he seemed to like them.


We also survived the heat wave. Our central AC is awesome and I am so glad we got it fixed this year! Not quite sure how we survived last summer.

Overall we had a great weekend!

New Things

The little man has been a busy kid this week. I love his adventurous nature, but sometimes it makes me exhausted!

I am loving his new favorite sedentary activity: Building with his NY Yankees blocks. He will sit and stack the blocks for awhile. He is very careful as he stacks them and then cringes when they fall, laughs, and starts back over again. I love to watch the process. He picks the blocks up with his right hand, and then always passes the block to his left, and then builds his big tower.





Other fun things:

- One of his new words is "oh no!" Kev and I think it is pretty funny.

- When I show him his toy monkey he'll try and scratch under his arm pit

- He loves to do exactly what I tell him not to do... little tantrums have gotten louder... and even funnier... and he mellows out pretty quick when he realizes I'm not giving in

- He also has started saying "mama" or something similar to that in association with me... up until now he hasn't done that. Whenever I'd try to practice with him he would just ignore me and say "dada." It's still not totally consistent, but I love it anyway.

- He has always loved it when I would give him a kiss on the cheek or the forehead, but lately he'll randomly come up to me and give me a kiss on my cheek. It is so cute and always such a nice surprise!

- When I ask him to go get his shoes he usually listens. When he doesn't, I try and put his shoes on my feet... he laughs really hard and then comes and takes them from me. It is darling.

- He wants to be a such big kid. Yesterday he almost got trampled during the elementary school's "jogging club" and he didn't care one bit. He also charmed an entourage of 4th grade girls... they all ran around after him and wanted to play with him. He was of course more interested in running onto the softball field during a game.

I love this stage of independence and feel so lucky to have such a happy little boy!

One of those weeks

Ever have one of those weeks when you're overly critical of yourself, overtired, and sad for several good reasons (and way too many dumb reasons too)?

I've been having one of those weeks. The waterworks have been quick to come. Fortunately I have a very special twin sister who always finds a way to cheer me up and make me feel happy.

This beautiful flower arrangement was on my door step when I arrived home this afternoon.


I feel very blessed.

Counting down the days...

Um, maybe not?... more like hoping the weeks will just slow down :)

I'm going to be a unit leader at our Girls Camp this year. Typically when I think of camping, I think more along these lines...


I would love to have my own troupe of people show up in a caravan to pop open an enormous tent for me equipped with all sorts of good food, comfy chairs and a nice warm bed.

If I'd had my way... this is how camp fundraising would've gone too (I'm sure the girls are very grateful I wasn't totally in charge- and yes, this is the absolute best late 80s movie ever!)



In little over 5 weeks I will be leaving civilization. I am thinking that I should start preparing by sleeping out on my porch, "under the stars," like we will be doing at camp. I have never done that before. In NJ it was pretty hard to see stars... and I'm not what you would consider to be a "wilderness girl" either. If I recall correctly, we went out for fast food one year when I was at camp... and slept pretty comfortably (at least once my mom was put in charge)... we also had TONS of treats and good food (also thanks to my mom).


I am hoping to find a way to at least stash a week's worth of these special friends somewhere where the bears won't find them... but I might be returning to the dark side and resuming my diet Coke addiction if this whole camping week plays out the way I think it will.

Wish me luck as we start preparing for camp this week!