Mother's Day~

For Mother's day all I wanted was to go to the beach.  We haven't really been since September.  We tried to go about a month ago and it was cool and overcast and gloomy.  We went to Carpenteria and it turned out to be a beautiful day.  Sunny, slight breeze, and about 80 degrees.

Landen doing his best to not look at me and smile.  

He is just in heaven when he gets to play in the sand.

He even ate some sand this time.=)

Mikayla loving life!

Finally getting to use their new boogie boards.

I think I see a mermaid!

So fun!

She did it!

This is what happened most of the time.

He really didn't want to get salt water in his eyes!

The water was a beautiful shade of turquoise all day.  That was the color of the day.  Jeff and the kids got me a turquoise wallet, frame, and baking dish.

Landen kept singing over and over, "I'm making waaaaaater mud. I'm making waaaaaaater mud."

You can see how much he loves playing with his "sissy princess."

Zach and daddy trying to swim out to the kelp.  It was a little too far.

For some strange reason Landen kept saying  shouting, "My brother's going to have a baby!"  Then he pretended to pull the baby out of Zach's tummy.  We've been looking at Landen's baby book lately and talking about how he was born and for some reason this reminded him of it.  We were all cracking up and slightly embarrassed.

Jeff arranged for some dolphins and whales to swim by again this year.  So spoiled!

Channel Islands in the back ground.

There were actually three whales!

View behind us from the beach.

This sweetie made me a momma!

Looking very beachy, but I love my three and am so blessed to guide them through life.  Poor  Zach and his blue lips, he's still cold from swimming in the ocean.

Some pictures of the charred mountains from the fires last week. Hard to see but the ones on the left didn't burn and the ones on the right did.

It was a wonderful day!

Beauty and the Beast~

After 4 long months of rehearsals and hard work Zach and Mikayla performed in Beauty and the Beast at our church.  Mikayla was a cheerleader and also had small parts as a villager.  She had a lot of dialogue in a side show called 'Brittany and the Beast.'  It had scenes from a modern day high school with a moral message. Zach was a villager and had several singing lines in various songs.  

They both did so great!

Kill the beast!

As soon as I saw Zach I thought he looked like my dad when he was younger.

I dont' know where she got those legs!

Flowers for his princess!

A kiss from Jake!

So proud of my "big kids" who were sick that whole week.

With G&G Thiesen

With Papa & RuthAnn

With Grammie, aka Grandma Jono

With cousin Cameron

Mikayla with her BFF Hannah

Snugglin' with Brobro after a loooong day.  We got Zach a new book instead of flowers.

Like I said poor Zach got sick the week before the show and was mostly better by tech week, but every time he gets a virus he gets a horrible cold sore.=(  Mikayla got sick the week of the show, but the show must go on and she powered through somehow.  We are so proud of them both and they had a blast being a part of a show together.  I definitely think it helped them bond a little.  It gave them something common to talk about instead of arguing over who's going to sit in the front seat.  

My Creative Girl~

First let me just say I realize that all the names of the rides I talked about from our day at California Adventure were not the real names. =) We just didn't think the real names were very easy to say a million times throughout the day.  Also, Landen just named the rides what made sense to him and some of them stuck.  So if anyone was wondering, that's why you never heard of those names.  Mater's Tractor Tippers is actually Mater's Junkyard Jamboree, etc.  Anywho...

...So I don't think this is going to the year of the blog for me.  We were all sick AGAIN!  The 6th illness to sweep through our house I think.  It's hard to say when one starts and ends and a new one comes in.  Is it a cold or allergies?  Who got it first?  Virus or bacterial?  Gah!  I'm over it!  And Jeff went out of town again(New York this time).  There seems to be a pattern here and I am ready for summer to be here and to hopefully get out of this rut.  I don't say this to complain(maybe a little) just to explain my lack of blogging.  I am way behind so I am just going to jump in here with some of Mikayla's beautiful artwork she has in her room.  I just love it!  Makes my day and always makes my heart smile.

Chalk drawing

She's saving up for an iPod. (it says save $260 before my b-day)

Amen, sista!

Love the face!

Me too!

She's very good at chalk drawings!

One of her many paintings.  She did this one over spring break.

This last week was particularly weird.  Seemed like everyone was finally well again.  Then Landen started having a fever and then a strange, horrible rash.  Zachary has always been the king of getting every strange childhood virus, so I thought I would have figured it out sooner.  Even the Dr. was puzzled.  Once the rash got worse with sun exposure I realized he had a virus called Fifths Disease.  Starts with red cheeks which is why it's also called Slapped Cheeks syndrome.  We thought he just got too much sun.  Then he had what we thought was another cold. But after the fever the rash was just so horrible.  Poor baby was miserable!  But he is better now. Just has a little cough. Zach had this virus when he was 6 and passed it on to the rest of us then so thankfully it ended with Landen. 

 And as most people have heard there were fires in our area this week.  There is a big highway in between us so there was no threat of it spreading to our house, but we did smell smoke for days and had ash falling on us for a couple of those days.  There were also two small airplanes that crashed in mid-air and one crash landed in Calabasas and burned.  The other landed on the golf course across the highway from Mikayla's school.  Yikes!  Then on Sunday night Jeff found a black widow spider in our upstairs laundry room.  Eeeck!!!  So thankful for God's protection in it all.  Depsite all the sickness and fires and stress we are fine.  We are healthy and happy and blessed.