Sonoma Train Town

We all went to Sonoma for the long weekend and James' birthday. It wasn't the romantic weekend James and I think of when we think of Sonoma, but we had fun with the kids. We ate lots of cheese samples at the Sonoma Cheese Factory and had to go to Train Town. And James and I got to do a little wine drinking after the kids went to bed.

It's almost summer!

It is the end of the school year and the kids are doing nothing but partying. JR had a party on Wednesday for a couple of the kids last day, he had a party on Thursday for all the summer birthdays, and today he had a swim party at the local aquatic center. James went as a chaperone. Here's a pic of JR being silly in the water. Check out James' new face do.

Happy Easter!

We had a wonderful Easter. Of course we did the Easter baskets and Easter egg hunt at home. Then we headed to my sister's house for an Easter celebration with the family.

The kids had fun with all their cousins and all the candy.

Finding the Easter baskets.

Egg-cited about hunting for eggs

Tristan found there were yummy treats inside the eggs. (He is signing yummy)

Egg hunt at auntie Cassie's house.

Finding eggs at auntie Cassie's house.

The kids took time out from the water balloon toss to gather for a picture.

The boys in their Easter outfits.

DisneyWorld pictures

JR's back

JR got back from Disney World and he appears to have had a great time. We will get photos soon, but in the mean time here are a couple that were taken at the parks.

While JR was gone . . .

I thought I would be extremely distraught when JR was gone, but surprisingly we had a really nice time being a one child family for a while. Tristan got the undivided attention from Mommy and Daddy for almost a week and we got to do some special outings with just Tristan. It was nice.

I got to take Tristan to his "My Gym" class

Some daddy time at the park

We went and walked around a local pond and had a picnic lunch. Tristan enjoyed throwing rocks in the water.

Me and Tristan on one of the many bridges near the pond

Happy April Fool's Day

We decided to have a little April Fool's Day fun with dinner. I found this idea to do a meatloaf cake and thought it would be a great idea. James loves meatloaf and mashed potatoes and the kids like cake. So here it is.

The cake

Boys blowing out the candles.

It was surprisingly anti-climatic. JR seemed excited to have cake and even offered to set the table. We put candles in the cake and the boys got to blow them out. We cut the cake and put a piece on JR's plate. He started to take a bite but then inspected his cake and asked if there was carrot in the cake. We said yes. Then he asked if there was onions in the cake. We said yes. He seemed unphased and just started eating the cake. We waited a minute or two and he just ate. We finally asked him how he liked his cake and he said it was good. I wasn't sure if he really thought it was a good cake or he just knew it wasn't really a cake. The boy does have a strange taste when it comes to cakes.

We finally said April Fool's and asked him if he knew it was a trick. Of course he said he knew the whole time.

I got a video of it, but it is a pretty anit-climatic 4 minute video so I saved you all from posting it here.

Basketball

JR's basketball season has ended and we are now on to T-Ball, but here is a clip of JR's season. Of course I didn't get any video of JR making any shots, but he made a good amount.

Proud Mama

The picture is of JR with his science project board. He participated in the school science fair. I let him pick his project and let him be in charge of most of the work. As you can see from the title, he wanted to see which flower would grow the fastest. He picked out the seeds: sunflower, petunia, and poppy seed. He put the dirt in the cups, planted the seeds, helped me water them every day, and took notes in his notebook every day. When the data was collected, he put the data from his notebook in a chart and then graphed it, I let him type up info for the poster on my computer, and we colored the title and glued things on to the poster board. I was proud that he did all that work and it paid off. He won second place in the science fair. I am very proud.

To top it off, two days later he received an award at school for being respectful and then this weekend made a great rebound and two baskets at his basketball game. His certificate for his award at school included a coupon to go out to dinner so we went out to dinner to celebrate.

Tristan's 2 Year Pictures

We took Tristan to Kiddie Kandids to get his 2 year pictures taken. They got a few good ones and I bought WAY too many pictures. (Let me know if you want one!)