Flower girls!

Anamarie and Hayden were the flower girls for Leslie's wedding last weekend in Seattle. Leslie is a good friend of our family, and started babysitting Hayden when she was about 6 months old-- until we moved. Leslie still comes with us to babysit on our winter vacations. She looked beautiful- it was a great ceremony, and the girls LOVED walking down the aisle and throwing the flower petals! I took them to Claire's the day before the wedding so they could choose some bling to go with their outfits-- we were in there for an entire hour! Claire's is a little girl's paradise-- I'll make sure that I have no other errands I have to run next time I go in there with my girls!

Thankfully, Dave had some business meetings in Seattle on Friday so we got fly up Thursday night and have a day to explore our old digs a bit before the wedding stuff started. Unfortunately, Hayden did not remember anything or anyone-- not even when we snooped around our old house and looked in all the windows! After the wedding, we got to stay with the Doyle's for the next day in their new house on the hill. :) Thanks Kristin- we miss you guys tons!

Alex stayed in San Diego with grandma and grandpa and was completely spoiled. He didn't want to come home and still keeps asking to collect the eggs from the chickens and drink chocolate milk.

Other pics include: Carmen and Calista Shupe wearing their matching outfits and Alex, sleeping on the couch.

How to catch a leprechaun

We try our best to catch a leprechaun every year and make a fun trap together. This year we made a trap and hope to trick one by having him break the rule on the sign (leprechauns like to break rules) and climb up the ladder to reach the shiny paper but, as he does he'll fall right through hole in the the lid and we'll CATCH him! At the very least, we're hoping that he wont make the water in our toilet green or leave green kiss marks on our faces or footprints in our kitchen! Those tricky leprechauns...

Caught her!

London calling

My favorite parts of our busy London trip include: Keia and Michael's wedding (of course!), Stonehenge, Salisbury, Dave learning to drive a stick on the opposite side of the car and road, the London eye, being a tourist in London for two days, seeing Wicked, and meeting up with the Becks for dinner. We LOVED the 13 hour plane trip because we didn't have to worry about any kids-- just ourselves! Thankfully, most of the kids waited to get sick until we came home (dang it Ana!) and my mom was smiling the day after... I figure that's a good thing, right? Enjoy the pics!

Narcolepsy, daddy daughter dance, and other moments caught on the iPhone

Thank goodness for the iPhone so that we always have a camera on us. We've had some pretty memorable moments in the past month. Our favorite thing to do is to laugh at one of our kids' ( or Sammy's!) expense... whether it be Carmen tooting at ALL the most embarrassing times (like during my character ed lesson at kindergarten), Sammy running full speed into our sliding glass door, or Alex falling asleep in the grocery cart at Vons.

Dave had one of the funnest times he's had in a long time at the girl's school Daddy-Daughter Dance last night. He had two dates of course (he's always been a ladies man) and I heard that he totally ripped it up on the dance floor! Ice, ice baby... Check out the girls' corsages. So sweet...

The other horribly-lit picture is of Carmen and Alex at the greek restaurant. They LOVED the warm pita bread-- and Dave loved the under $20 bill at the end-- kids eat free there on Monday nights! And they didn't even pay me for that pitch.

The last picture is Alex having a light saber fight with Darth Vader at Disneyland. Poor little guy, he's one of the shyest kids around-- completely uncomfortable (and in tears) in front of a crowd but he held his own against the dark side! All he had to do is freeze with fear and the other Jedi pictured next to him helped him out. :) It's so funny hearing him talk about the experience now, that he was the bravest one and cut Darth Vader's arm off...

We're heading off to London this week for Dave's sister's wedding and leaving the 4 kids and dog with my brave mom. It'd be a smart idea to leave the iPhone with her so that we don't miss out on any of the funny memories that will happen with them this week! Good luck mom!

Whistler

We had SUCH a fun time at Whistler, B.C., last week! We flew to Vancouver then drove to the mountains for 5 days. We had three days of snowboarding for Dave and Jen and lessons for Hayden and Anamarie. We had one day of playing in the snow and tubing down the big runs with Alex and the girls. The last day I took all the kids to an indoor pool while Dave gave the babysitter (Carina) snowboarding lessons. Our BFFs from Seattle, Luke & Kristin & Connor & Easton, came up to play with us for a couple of days and we LOVED seeing them. We were not ready to come back at all! Here's a few of our favorite pictures, all taken with Dave's i-phone because it was too cold for him to take his gloves off and use a real camera! (Yes, that is me trying to teach Anamarie how to cop a squat in the snow! The fun never ends... :)-

our little all-star

Hayden made it into the all-star team this year, and her team got 2nd place in one tournament, and 1st in another tournament. It was a lot of practices, a lot of games, but Hayden absolutely loved every minute.

I'm just so glad that soccer is finally over... only for softball to start for the girls in 3 weeks!

Final score: Girls 3 Boys 2

I love looking at those license plate holders that say "final score" with a boy/girl tie or whatever... if I did it, it would be girls 3 to boys 1... but with our new BOY puppy, Sammy, it's not as big of a blowout! Here are pics of Sammy on Christmas Day. Santa left a note in the tree, telling the kids to go look on the front porch-- where Sammy, a Labradoodle puppy was waiting there in a box! We brought Sammy on the airplane home with us from Atlana, as a carry-on, and he is a full-fledged family member now. He is actually a really clam, well-behaved little guy, but he does have quite the bladder!! We are all surviving well, except for Carmen who is incredibly JEALOUS over Sammy. She can't handle being in the same room with him, unless Dave or I are holding her, and then she keeps her eye on him the entire time. I didn't know that 7 month olds could experience jealousy, but Carmen is going to have to get used to sharing some of that attention! Oh, yes, and one pic of Alex with his light saber stuffed in the side of his pants. He LOVES to have light saber fights with Dave (though it's hard to tell which of them is having more fun!).

Tampa and the great grandparents

During our stay in Atlanta for Christmas, we travelled to Tampa, Florida to visit Dave's grandparents (his mom's parents) for a few days. During walks around their retirement community, we kept the kids interested by having a contest to see who could find the house with the most lawn ornaments!...We all loved being spoiled by Nana and her cooking. There were better pictures of the kids with Nana, Papa and Mumu... but I LOVED Anamarie's pose in this one, and couldn't pass it up. Reminds me of my poses in all of my pics growing up. :)

We went to Ybor City one afternoon for lunch, where Dave laid claim to his Cuban-Italian heritage and we tried to figure out which building Dave's grandfather (his Dad's father) rolled cigars in years ago. We loved our visit to Tampa!

Santa Tats

For Dave's Christmas business mailer this year, he created these really cool cards that centered around these tattoos he had made... and sent the cards to clients. The illustrator that he used for the tattoos, Kako, requested pictures of our kids wearing the tattoos as payment. Here the kiddos are, trying to look tough with their tats. Funniest thing was how Alex started crying during the photo shoot because he couldn't look mean enough. :)