Interesting Swine flu article

Paul sent me this link this morning. Read it over. It might help ease your fears a little bit. 

Take your kid to work Day

Last week Ashlyn got to go with her Daddy to the yearly "Take your kid to work day". She declared it, "The BEST day she has ever had". They got to see how 3D movies are made,  watch clips of new movies that even Paul hasn't gotten to see, color 3D pictures of BOB (from Monster's Vs. Aliens), have pizza with Daddy, and play lots of games. I told her I was jealous and she said, "what, do you wish you could go back and be a kid and go to work with your Daddy all day?" I said, no. I'm jealous that you got to spend the whole day with your Daddy. I wish I could spend the whole day with YOUR Daddy! She had SO much fun though and can't wait for next year.

One year stats

I realize that most of you don't care how big my boy is. I do this for the sake of my own memory keeping.

Brandon had his one year check up this morning. It took WAY too long. Wasn't so happy about that. Here are his stats. 

Weight-20 pounds 9 ounces (20th percentile)

Height-30 inches (50th percentile)

Head-47 1/2 cm (60th percentile)

Basically, tall skinny and top heavy. HA....just kidding. He's my perfect little boy and I love him!

Here are some things he's doing.

~He walks all over now. Hooray for no more crawling. 

~He says "yay". That's about it. A couple of times we thought he said "hi", but I'm not convinced. He mostly jibber jabbers all day in a foreign tongue. 

~He waves hi and bye and always seems quite pleased with himself for doing so.

~He LOVES to wrestle and rough house. Just ask his sisters....and Beth too (sorry little Audrey).

~ He FINALLY started sleeping through the night at 10 1/2 months (hooray).

~He loves balls and cars (it really is inborn with these little guys. It's quite funny.)

~He's into just about everything, and especially likes to try and get in the fireplace.

~He is snuggly and lovey and gives the greatest hugs.

~He's a VERY happy baby, but does know how to throw his head back and cry in despair when I take something away from him that he wanted.

~He has eight teeth and still almost no hair.

~And he's most definitely a little charmer. Melts my heart everyday. 

What do you think Bud?

We are going to have a family party for Brandon in a couple of weeks, but we just had to have a little party and let him have his first chocolate cupcake. This about sums up what he thought of it. 

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday little guy. I love you so much and can't believe it's already been a whole year! We're so glad you're part of our family.

Building the swing set

We have a hard working Daddy. And of course, yesterday was probably the hottest day of the year so far. But he didn't let that stop him from accomplishing his mission of getting that swing set put together (Okay so he also had two little heads in his face at 7 in the morning asking if it was FINALLY the day he was going to put the swing set together. They were a little excited.)

 The girls are in heaven. So is Brandon. 

The rest of Spring Break

I don't know why, but my pictures keep loading wrong. So they're out of order again, but oh well.

Saturday night we dyed Easter Eggs. The girls had a blast. And we got to have multi colored deviled eggs for dinner the next night (how is it that the dye goes through the shell and should I be worried that we ate it?)

On Thursday, we headed out to Underwood Family Farm with some friends from Encino. It was a lot of fun. We walked around, fed the animals (thanks again Brooke for the carrots), and played played played in the sand. I think we took a least a bucket or two of sand home in our clothes.  The girls were SO excited about riding the horses though. It was definitely the highlight of the day.

On Wednesday afternoon, we headed out on the 126 to find something to do. We stopped at a museum and took the tour. I can't remember the name of it, but it was interesting. It was basically just a really old house/plantation type tour. But at the end was this 150 year old Black Walnut tree that was just amazing. It's dying. You can see they are trying to save the branches, but I guess there isn't much they can do. 

We also stopped at a fish hatchery and fed the rainbow trout. The girls thought this was AWESOME and SO much fun, even though it was basically a big concrete slab with thousands of fish in it. I guess these fish are grown here and then shipped out to rivers and lakes all over CA so that people have fish to catch when they go fishing. That's nature in CA for ya! 
Friday was kind of a down day. We were all tired from the busy week. Plus, on the way home from Underwood Family farm on Thursday afternoon, a rock the size of a golf ball hit my windshield and cracked it bad enough to make me nervous to drive my car around until I got it fixed. 

Crashed out

He fought it and fought it...until he couldn't fight it anymore. And then he fell asleep. Fifteen minutes before church was over. And this is in our new ward. People don't really know us too well. We don't know them. But we definitely got a lot of stops and stares and some laughs too at the funny position poor little Brandon ended up in.

My best attempt...

at an Easter photo of the kids before Church. They just didn't want to cooperate. Oh well. They still look cute to me.

See the white stuff?

It was hailing outside today. Totally cool! Unfortunately, the girls were more interested in their new Barbie movie. But hey, it's not everyday that you see hail in Southern California.

Strawberry dipping

Wednesday morning was slow, so I got some strawberries out of the fridge and decided they would be MUCH better with chocolate on them....and guess what, they were! Here are some pictures. 

Leah's new thing is "posing" for the camera.

Ooh. Yummy!

The finished product. Dipped with love.

Tasting the fruit of her labor. 

We even managed to save a few for Daddy.

Spring break so far

Blogger is being dumb and mixing up the order of my pictures, but I'm too tired to try and fix it.

Today we went to Santa Barbara to go to the zoo. We met up with some friends and had such a good time. The girls LOVED rolling down this hill. They must have done it a dozen times at least.

We rode the train at the end of the day right before leaving the zoo. I was trying to get a picture of all of us together, but that was hard to do. The funny thing is that as soon as I pulled out the camera, Brandon gave us this hilarious face. I think he's gonna be a ham. 

To my surprise the girls really liked the reptile house. Probably because all the bugs and snakes were in cages and couldn't get them. 
Disgusting. I HATE roaches. Absolutely HATE them. Do they do anything good for us? Anything? Probably not.

It was an exciting day at the Santa Barbara zoo. We got to see the penguins being fed and the lions getting "friendly". We walked away before our children saw too much. Not quite ready for that "talk" yet. 

This picture is from Monday. We met up with some different friends at Travel town in Glendale. Another fun day. The girls walked around from train to train, we ate cheap hot dogs, and rode the little train around the park. The weather was great and it was a fun outing for the first day of spring break.

Don't know yet what's in store for Wednesday. But whatever it is, it needs to be closer to home. I need a little down time. 

Such a boy

Seriously, not one minute after my little boy figures out how to climb in the chair and sit, he figures out he can also stand in it. Sheesh! I see stitches in the near future for this little guy.