December 18, 2015

Benji's Preschool Christmas

I so love Benji's preschool! And luckily, he likes it now too :)
Today was their Christmas party and we had such a great time. 

Santa came to visit the class and they all got little goody bags.
Nora especially loves going to visit 'Ben-ne' school because she always wants to play with the toys there sooo badly.

Another thing I really like about this preschool is every Christmas they go on a field trip to a retirement home and sing Christmas songs to the 'grandmas and grandpas' there. Benji kept telling me the entire way there that 'we have to sing really loud because sometimes they can't hear us too good." I thought they did a fabulous job!
Here's Benji with his friend Ty before the performance.


And what can I say about this video besides my Benji's got moves!! His enthusiasm kills me!
After they were done, they passed out Christmas cards to all the residents and went around saying hello. You could tell it just made their day. Love this little man and his willingness to have fund.

December 6, 2015

Coming soon to a Christmas Card near you...

A few weeks ago we got all the kidlets together and went down to Vasquez Rocks to take family pictures. It's been quite some time since we had any nice pictures taken and I was pleasantly surprised with how well they turned out. Which isn't really saying much since my expectations were quite low, but it's always nice to be surprised.

We got a few really good ones of the kids:


Little Miss Cutie Pants

Peter looking oh so grown up all the sudden


This is such a Benji face!


And then, on the very last family shot of the day, we caught this: 
Everyone looks human! Everyone is looking at the camera!
Success!!

Also, my family is adorable.




November 14, 2015

Halloween 2015

Better late than never, right?

Halloween was super busy but lots of fun this year. Peter dressed as a spy

Travis was a sushi roll
 And Benji was the cutest little knight you ever saw with his shiny silver pants.
("Not GREY pants Mom! I have to have SILVER pants!)
 Nora was a kitty even though she really, really didn't want to wear her actual costume that night. In fact, she didn't even wear it for the church trunk or treat because of the massive tantrum that occurred when I tried to get her dressed that night. Luckily she at least wore it for a bit of trick or treating.
Although she quickly rubbed off her cute kitty whiskers and took of her ears, she still looked adorable.

 All three monkeys
 And yours truly went as a fish. 
 by the way, it's salmon not pink...
 Get it? I'm a fish...Travis is sushi!!
Happy Halloween!!

October 20, 2015

Remember that time Travis had a Kickstarter Campaign?


So, somehow Travis' last project got a little out of hand and ended up launching yesterday as a KickStarter project. KickStarter is a crowdfunding platform where people can back projects to help them come to fruition. 

You can find a detailed story of the project on my KickStarter site:


If nothing else, you should check out the project's Lego stop-motion mini-videos featuring everyone's favorite inventor, Travis!

If you want to help you can share your project on your social media (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc). You can share the project by going to the project page and clicking on one of the 'Share' buttons on the top of the page. 

Wish us good luck!

October 9, 2015

Evenings & Soccer

We're back to spending most every evening outside again thankfully. For so long it was too hot but not any more. The boys especially like to pull out Benji's bow and arrow and Travis captured Peter taking this great shot the other night.

Some nights we just hang out on the front porch while the boys ride bikes. Peter also finally learned to ride his bike without training wheels! All on his own! We were so proud.

I seem to have lots of pictures of Nora. Probably because she is a goof. And a doll.

One day, I caught her running outside carrying this blanket and piglet. All she wanted to do was come sit on the wall and watch her brothers.

Sharing her snack with the kitty one day.



Moving onto the boys... After loving preschool the first week, Benji started having meltdowns every single morning when I went to drop him off. I had no idea (and still don't) what was the matter and NOTHING I could think of would fix it. It got so bad he would run screaming after me in the parking lot as I went out to the car. The teachers said he usually was fine after only a few minutes of crying but one day he got pretty grumpy and sassy with his teachers and was sent to time out and was told he could rejoin the class when he was ready to behave. Well. Benji is sooo stubborn he stayed in that chair for the ENTIRE THREE HOURS refusing to get up and play! I was pretty upset with him that night and made him write an apology card to his teacher and we talked for a looong time about acceptable behaviors. 
Over the next week or so he started getting noticeably better at drop off, which was great. Some days were better than others until I had a great idea. Their preschool would be hosting a grandparents day that next week and so we started talking about it. A lot. Both sets of his grandparents live out of state, however, but we do have an amazing adopted grandma - Barbara - who agreed to come for Benji. I knew it would be devastating for our little man to be the only kid not have a grandparent come so I was so thankful she could make it. He kept asking me every day "Is Barbara coming to my preschool today?"  and "Will she really stay with me?" and "She'll really stay the WHOLE time??" 
Suffice to say, it did the trick. Knowing that she was coming, he started getting more and more comfortable at school until after that visit, we've never had a problem at drop off since! Thank heavens for angels in the guise of sweet friends!

A few weeks ago soccer finally started up. Benji was beyond excited to be able to play this year. He's in Jamboree - which isn't a team but a parent/child weekly practice/game scenario-thing combined. 
 HE LOVES IT!

 Benji is already quite engaged with the sport and shows lots of drive. I'm so glad we have something that is just where we can cheer Benji on because I think he feels left out quite easily and this is perfect for him!

Peter is also playing again this year. He lucked out and wound up with his best friend Noah on his team the Jedi Knights this year and we've really enjoyed watching him so far. While not the best player (by far) you can't fault the kid his enthusiasm. I can tell he's improving but he still isn't as aggressive as the other kids which basically makes snack time his favorite part of the game.
Oh well, this is how we learn.


And this is how we will spend every Saturday from now until November.

September 11, 2015

Big Bear for Labor Day

For Labor Day, we decided to take the kids camping. It's honestly been around 2 years since we've all gone together -- Nora has never even been before. That is probably the only reason why we attempted it this time: we had forgotten how hard it is to camp with little 'uns. 

Big Bear is about 2 hrs away from us, so we decided to leave as soon as Peter got home from school on Friday -- problem was, it was Labor Day and there was a detour to a two-lane road that we had to take to get up there. So it actually took us about 4 hours. Which was okay, we had a good audiobook. 
The main problem was finding a camping spot once we got there. Since it was a pretty spur of the moment trip, we didn't have a campsite reserved and by the time we arrived all the first-come-first-served spots were already filled up. It was getting close to dark by this point and since we knew we had to find a place pronto, we decided to pull off the road and make camp in a little clearing we found. Turns out this was the absolute best spot for us. Plenty of room to roam around and no one super close by that heard Nora crying all night. 
Because she did. CRY all night. Blerg.
Excuse the grainy-twilight picture -- but here we are trying to get the tent set up as quickly as possible.

We got pretty lucky actually, because the next morning we woke up to this beautiful sight.
 The kids were in heaven. One of the main reasons we actually went camping was so the boys could use their Swiss Army Knives (don't even try calling them 'pocket knives,' Benji will immediately correct you) we brought them back from Switzerland. Due to several injuries already, they currently reside in the safe but they probably ask us if they can get them out to 'whittle' just about every single day. I'm not even kidding. So the fact that they got to keep in their own knives, in their own pockets, the entire weekend, was a pretty big deal. I was sure we'd end up losing one, but the kids actually took really good care of them. Probably because they were taking them out of their pockets like every half hour all weekend for some vitally important task. So not kidding here.

 Despite not doing the best at sleeping in a tent (the boys did great btw!), Nora was all about camping. She was over the moon for exploring and picking up random sticks and pinecones to show us. She constantly cracks us up.
 Peter looking all official.

 I was freezing pretty much the entire weekend, but the boys tell me it was actually pretty good weather - despite us not being able to have a fire due to the drought and all the forest fires. Sigh. Marshmallows around a camp stove just aren't quite the same.

On Saturday, we went down to the lake and rented a kayak and got to see all kinds of fish while battling the choppy water.


After doing some hiking and exploring around the lake, we were all pretty exhausted that night and everyone slept much better. Nora only woke a few times, which was grand, comparatively. The next morning, we simply got up, broke camp and went to church (all smelly and dirty) and then headed back home. It was quite a fun trip and I think the kids all really enjoyed it, even if we were exhausted afterwards!