California

At the beginning of March (yes, I am a little behind!!) the four of us took a break from the Oregon weather and headed for sunny skies! At first, our plan was to go to San Diego and spend five days at the beach, Lego Land, and SeaWorld. Basically, we were looking for the best weather we could find in the continental US...However the week before our trip when we saw cloudy weather and possible RAIN in the forecast for Southern California, we decided to take a look at a forecast map and reevaluate our destination......Palm Springs it is!!!

Palm Trees, 75-80 degrees, beautiful resort, yummy dinners, a lazy river and even a prenatal massage....That was exactly what we were looking for. Palm Springs (actually we stayed in Rancho Mirage) was so peaceful and relaxing we almost didn't want to leave to go to the second destination on our itinerary.....(Most of our pictures from this part of our trip are on Brian's phone so they will be coming later!)....Disneyland!

Disneyland is magical:) This year we stayed close to the park at the Grand Californian so we could spend the morning at the park and the afternoons swimming at the pool then back to the park for dinner and shows. It took us a few extra days to see everything but it was worth it to not be rushed (not to mention the short walk for tired feet at the end of everyday)! We had a great time and made some memories as a family of four that we will have forever!

Hopefully this slideshow will work!

Once again, many of our "candid" pictures of the kids swimming and at the park are on our phones. These are mostly character shots:)

Maren's Party

Maren's party with her friends from school was at Inflatable Kingdom this year. I had never been there and I was really impressed! The kids had a great time.

Maren's Birthday

Maren had a great day today. Along with getting all the attention and getting spoiled from both grandparents (I think this is the first time she has had all four of them together for her birthday!!) she got to find out that she was having a little sister. We told everyone by giving Maren a present with a size 6 shirt and 0-3mos. dress in the same print....Everyone was a little confused at first but finally realized that one was for her sister and not her doll;) Maren is going to be such an amazing big sister to this little girl. Luke will be a good big brother too, although at this point he didn't really care what "it" was (boy or girl) he was just confused that he couldn't call it Eddie anymore...:{

It's A Girl!!!

With both sets of grandparents coming in to town for Maren's Birthday we REALLY wanted to be able to find out early what we were having so we could share the news in person. On Thursday afternoon I called and got an appointment for the next day! We were THRILLED to find out we were having a girl. I think we would have been just as excited if she were to have been a boy, but just knowing was truly amazing!

The place we went to was really great. We went into a huge room with a screen covering half of the wall. We got 15 minutes to watch her move, wiggle around and show us her "stuff". We didn't pay for the $300 4-D session, good ole 2-D was good enough for what we wanted to know so the picture is a little fuzzy...But the three lines are there!

Valentine's Day

Maren and I had fun this year putting together her valentine's for her class! They turned out pretty cute too!

Weekend Fun

This past weekend we took the kids to the "airplane museum" in McMinnville. It was pretty cool to see all the historical airplanes. Luke loved the helicopter, Maren was pretty excited about the new water slides that are being built, Brian loved it ALL (who knew he was so into aircraft!!) and my favorite part was the stop at DQ on the way down there;)

Inside the Spruce Goose

Beach Weekend

We managed to get a beautiful weekend at the beach in JANUARY! We stayed in Rockaway Beach which we really liked. It was nice and quiet without major crowds and it had miles of sandy beach to play on!