San Juan Capistran Mission Field Trip

In the 4th grade in California we study California Mission history. I always loved studying the missions as they were such a place of refuge back in the day. Last week Owen's class went to the San Juan Capistrano mission which is abut 45 minutes from our house. It was a fun field trip to be able to go on - just Owen and I. We had a fun time and since I drove my car with one of his friends, I was able to get them a Starbucks and make it a special time.

Some of his class- Owen is the third from the left.

A student took this picture of us

Our guide explaining the lay out of the mission

San Juan Capistrano is an absolutely beautiful place!!

Not sure what the horse was all about but had to get a picture with it.

Another Owen and Mommy picture

The bell

Checking out the Koi pond fountain thing

The graveyard

Sorry, my history evades me-- not sure who this guy was

Overall a nice time for Owen and I!

Mall~ Gymnastics~ Delay

First off, I have to apologize for the delay in posting. I swear this week just got away from me. I have so many pictures to post that it has become overwhelming to think about going through all of them so I am burying my head in the sand and just using pictures that are on my tiny camera that are easy to upload. Kim-- I promise I will go through all Nick's grad pictures soon-- I have just been so overwhelmed and busy that I have not been able to take that on yet-- but I will-- promise!!!

These first pictures are from when we went to get Mia's 3 year old pictures taken at the mall. We did not do pictures in this outfit (it was the outfit she changed into after pictures) but she still wanted to play the piano so I let her and took these. Her 3 year old pictures came out really cute and I will post those as well, but that is another project to scan those in and post them-- and you know how well I am dealing with projects right now-- horribly-- uggg!!!

My mom and Kevin's mom came to the mall with us and after we went to Cheesecake Factory to have lunch. I looked back while we were walking and saw them both holding Mia's hands and thought that was a great picture.

My mom Julie in red jacket and Kevin's mom Mary in black sweater.


Mia is now old enough to start gymnastics at our local gym now that she is 3. There was a waiting list but they just had a cancellation a couple weeks ago so we just started this past Monday. At first Mia was a bit tentative but she warmed up quickly.


Climbing the rock wall

Waiting while directions are given

Jumping down the long trampoline

Mia loved this part. She loved holding her body up with her arms and kicking her legs in the air.

Helping Mia do a push up

Not sure what she was doing here

Having fun!!!

Sliding down the slide back into the preschool room.

Overall, Mia had a great time and is looking forward to her next class!!!!

Where is my camera and Disneyland

I'm a little freaked out right now because I have yet to be able to find my nice Nikon camera. I had it last at Nick's Marine graduation and now I cant find it. I know we took it with us but not sure what happened from the car to the house. All the pictures of the graduation are on there and I would be crushed if I lost those pics as well as my nice camera. Anyway, this is my first day off this week so I will look everywhere and if and when I find it I will post all those awesome graduation pictures.

I wanted to do a quick update. We redid our stairs. Our home was built in 1994 so it has many of the lovely 90's furnishings. We have changed most everything but the stairs were one thing that we thought would be very expensive to change so had put it off but we checked into it recently and decided it was cheaper than we thought so we should go ahead and do it. We had the rails painted and the big room painted and then Kevin removed all the wood spindles and then replaced them with iron spindles we bought online. It ended up making a HUGE difference as our staircase is a very prominent feature in our house right when you walk in. It looks awesome. These are pictures I just had in my camera after the project was complete. They are not good pictures but gives you an idea of what it looks like.

This is the before. I searched for a good picture of the staircase but could not find one. This is a picture from my grandparents 75th wedding anniversary last November 1. You can see a little bit of the staircase but you get the idea-- honey wood- screaming 1990's

The bottom little caps were not on yet but you get the idea. There are little feet that go on the bottom of the spindle- they were not on yet in these pictures.

After the graduation last Friday, Kevin dropped Mia and I off at Disneyland on our way home and I met up with my sister to do Disney at night.


My dorky 11 year old-- he was acting like a total dork for these pictures!

Me and my boys

Me and my kids

Love this picture. I think Mia looks so darn funny! We are on the Peter Pan ride.

My little twerp!!


We had a nice time. Pray I find my camera as that would be quite a loss. Today I have Mia's 3 year old pictures-- a little delayed. I will post them when I get them back.

Happy # 3 Birthday Mia and Halloween!!

Since Mia's birthday is October 29, I have a sneaky suspicion that her birthday is often going to get lumped with our Halloween party but we will see. I have some great pictures from my pal Kim's son Nick's Marine Boot camp graduation but there are tons of pictures to go through so I will do that post a little later in the week. So this post is Mia's birthday party and Halloween. We did a little cake party on Mia's actual birthday but those pictures are on the other camera so I will post those later as well but we did her actual birthday party with a jumpy and big cake on Halloween. We usually have a little family get together so we just combined the two parties and it became a Halloween/ Mia party.

Our crew before we went out trick or treating.

This is a horrible picture but I had to show how busy our streets were this year. Remember that scene from ET when the streets were filled with people all dressed up -- that is how it was this year. We just get tons of trick or treaters- tons!! The streets were just full!!

Ethan, Tanner and Mark

Mia and Kaitlyn trick or treating

Kacy, Kas and Owen

On our stairs- the younger cousins- Nathan, Mia, Savannah and Haileyanna

Mia and her cool Dora cake - wow did she love it!!!

Getting ready to blow

Picking out the characters

Mommy cutting the cake with all my servers

Mia's big gift-- the Cool Costco Doll House-- gotta love Costco!!!



I will go through all the Graduation pics and get those posted ASAP. Have a great week-- I have a busy one--ugggg!!!

Piggies gone and Sunday, Bloody Sunday!

Well, we are almost all healthy and Kevin is the only one of us who did not catch the N1H1. We are all feeling better but the cough and headache is lingering. Kids are back in school and all is well but I must tell you about the calamity of errors that occurred on Sunday.

We had a busy weekend with a party on Friday night, an adult only Halloween party we love and look forward to on Saturday night and we were supposed to go to Disneyland on Sunday after church. Needless to say, everything was cancelled due to our unforeseen illness. Sunday we were all laying around like bumps on logs just trying to survive. Ethan and Owen were both feeling a lot better and were medicated so they were on the side yard playing hockey. They came in and Ethan wanted to re tape his hockey stick. I'm laying on the couch with Mia and Kevin is on the computer. All of a sudden we hear "oh no oh no-- it cant be--help help." When I hear that my stomach turns and my heart stops. Sure enough, I look in the kitchen and Ethan has his hand in the air, blood is everywhere and he is yelling. Being the wuss I am I sent Kevin into the war zone and sure enough, Ethan had literally chopped off the top of his thumb and it was flapped over-- holy cow it turns my stomach to type it--gross!! It was about mid thumb on the fleshy side cut in half but still attached. I never looked because I would have freaked but Kevin bandaged it and headed to Urgent Care (where he then spent the next 5 hours waiting for them to stitch the thumb back on). Turns out Ethan was attempting to cut the existing hockey tape off his stick with a very large and sharp Santuko kitchen knife-- always impressed with my sons well thought out plans-- holy cow!!! So Kevin and Ethan leave and I begin to clean up all the blood that has been spread everywhere. I finally finish the gruesome clean up and all of a sudden Mia comes running into the kitchen crying and she is literally covered in blood. It is all over her night gown, face, hands, mouth-- everywhere!! I'm freaking out because I cant tell where the blood is coming from but then I realize she was having her first bloody nose. My boys never had a bloody nose nor have Kevin or I so I have never had to deal with a bloody nose and the large volume of blood produced. I got the nose stopped and got her in the bath and then proceeded to then spend the next chunk of time cleaning up the blood from her nose. Holy cow was that a bloody morning-- As U2 put it-- Sunday, Bloody Sunday!!!

So we are fine now and back to work and school. Ethan, with his stitched up thumb, is at science camp up in the mountains for two nights until Friday with his 6th grade class. He was sooooooo excited this morning when I dropped him off with his suitcase and sleeping bag at school. Owen is good and looking forward to Grandparents day at school on Friday. Mia, Kev and I are looking forward to traveling to San Diego to see my blogger pal Kim's son Nick graduate from Marine Boot Camp on Friday-- Go Nick!!!

One more item-- guess who turns 3 tomorrow????? Yes you guessed it-- my little independent, never stops talking, strong willed girl-- Miss Mia June Fei!! October 29, 2006!! I am hoping to get some cute pictures of her tomorrow but not sure if that is going to happen so the birthday post may be delayed by a few days-- we will see. Here are a few pictures of Mia in her Sunday School Class a few weeks ago. I thought it was so cute the way they hold onto the rope- I had to take a picture of it!

Oink Oink!!!

Yes, as you can see from the title of this post that pigs are in the air. Our family is all sick right now with a wonderful case of swine flu-- ugggg!!! Owen woke up Wednesday morning with a high fever, cough and sore throat. He got worse on Thursday so I made him an appointment to see the Doctor on Friday. Friday morning all the kids work up sick with the same symptoms-- ugg!! We all went to the doctor and they did not test for N1H1 but they said that they fit the characteristics of N1H1 and that pretty much most kids who are sick with flu like symptoms right now have N1H1-- so that includes my 3 little piggies!! Anyway, we have been seeing fevers up in the 106.4 range which freaks me out but medicated they seem fine. The doctor did not prescribe tamaflu because she said the side effects are worse than the actual illness and since my kids are healthy they would just let it run its course-- fine with me. So I go and get all the over the counter motin and Tylenol Flu and all the lovely meds and get home and realize I feel horrible. Sure enough, I laid down and have been feeling horrible since. So Kev is the only survivor right now and I pray he keeps it at bay. Owen is feeling better this morning but Ethan, Mia and I are still not well at all. Pray we get better soon as I have a very busy week complete with driving to San Diego to see my blogger pal Kim's son Nick graduate from the Marine Corp Boot Camp. Kevin and I are sooooooo looking forward to that so we need to get better once and for all!!!

Hope all is well with you all!

TINK

My little Tinker Bell wanted to wear her costume her BFF Ava gave her. She put it on and wanted to wear her matching Tinker Bell clip that our good pal Kim gave her. As soon as she was in the costume she began to spin and leap and act like the "pwitty pwinsess" she is. Here are a few shots of her "modeling" session.

This picture cracks me up because I said to her that she had a smile just like the tinker bell on her shirt. She looked down and said "ya momma I do have a pwitty smile like Tinker Bell but I have pwitty black hair not yellow ones like her." Well said my little black haired Tink!! She then put her face down on her chest so she could smile like Tink.

Soooooo pwitty!!!!!!