Happy Birthday Lucas!

We had a fun birthday party for Lucas - our 7 year old! Wow. How did that happen? I'm enjoying each year with my Lucas more and more. Here we are at the cake and icecream time - and I decided I didn't want to spend the money on paper goods so I got a $5 rain gutter and lined it with tin foil and then put the icecream, whipped cream, chocolate sauce and peanuts up and down the "pigs trough". The kids loved it. And I'm sure there were absolutley no germs spread at all.

And here we are with our "Mad Scientist - Mr Vazquez". We did some fun experiments with the kids and they enjoyed the science experiments for the most part - until my dear husband got a little too excited and went into a little too much detail about molecules and atoms and their eyes started to glaze over ...

Time for some games! ...

It's kind of hard to out hop Lucas ...

And here's the birthday boy on his actual birthday eating pancakes on the "You are special" plate. I'm looking forward to journeying with him the next 7 years! Here are a few words that describe Lucas: energy, movement, friendly, legos, reading, soccer, extravert, wiggly, fearless ... that's my Lucas!

Next topic - New Soccer Season!!

Marisa joined the soccer ranks this time and is proud to be a "Bumblebee!" It is hilarious watching a bunch of 4, 5 yr old girls playing soccer. They clump together in one huge group with the ball somewhere in the middle of the huddle. They push (or at least Marisa does) and move the huddle up and down the field and the ball kind of moves along with them. Marisa is more interested in making friends with the players on both teams then kicking the ball, so unlike her brother, her shoes are unscuffed when she comes home.

Go bumblebees! :-)

I'm a soccer mom now!

Where to begin?

Finally! It's only been a month since I've posted! I didn't realize summer vacation could be so NON relaxing. We had a great week vacation of tent camping. (Yes, great and tent camping can be used in the same sentence.) We packed in a lot of sight seeing. Here are my twins at Mono Lake about 30 minutes north of Mammoth.
We spent a day at Yosemite hiking with the twins. What an amazing view! The altitude about killed me, but I did the 3 mile hike! I'd like to say I lost 10 pounds hiking ...

The beauty of the great outdoors!

And the camping food! Victor is a great camping chef. Bacon, eggs, toast and grits never tasted better!

And of course what would camping be without smores and smore and smore and smore!

We liked our camping spot. A rustic campground by a little river we waded in one afternoon. Actually the water was so cold, Victor used it to soak his sore knee in inplace of an icepack.

And we can't go on any roadtrip with Victor finding some offroad trails to check out his 4 wheel drive.

We were very thankful for the chance to go on vacation. Victor just started working mid July, but they gave him a week off because of all the probono work he did for them in June and beginning of July.

Miscelaneous Summer Fun!

Beware this is a long post! This is what I get for not blogging more often.
Marisa was thrilled to be a twin with me this morning at our "aloha meal" at church today. I'll enjoy it while I can - that won't last! We had roast pig and other Hawaiian fixings. It was wonderful! Here's the pig!

Lucas and Marisa got all kinds of prizes from doing the summer library reading program. One of them was a free "Messy Sunday" at Sammy's Woodfired Pizza. We devoured it in about 3 minutes.

Lucas' favourite activity this summer so far has been Mandarin Camp. Here they are at the end of the first week showing the parents what they learned. Amazing what kids can learn at this age!

Face painting at a birthday party! She meowed all evening.

Legoland! We've tried to go every other week. Marisa was THRILLED to be chosen as a volunteer for this show. She got to shoot a pretend bow and arrow at the "jester".

Legoland! Lucas and Marisa LOVE legoland. I don't mind it either!

This is our new traditional "beginning of summer" dessert. A mud pail with worms. I found the jello "sand pail" in the grocery aisle by the puddings. It's chocolate pudding with cool whip and crushed oreos on top and in the middle. On top put gummy worms and the shovel. Yum!

One of Marisa's favourite past times - painting. She's calm and quiet for usually a good hour or more. This particular painting disturbed me when she told me what it was about. She asked me if I thought the brown flower she painted was ugly. Of course I responded "No, Marisa, its very beautiful." She said "No it's not. It's ugly and the other flowers are laughing at him because he's ugly." Hmmm, what's going on inside her little head? We had a little chat after that about beauty and being mean etc etc.

What child doesn't like to help daddy dig and plant flowers? New rose bushes are being planted here. Notice the two wheelbarrels. :-) Lucas' little red plastic one, and the other larger black one.