April & May

I had a great birthday this year. Joe and the kids made me breakfast in bed and decorated the white board:

That night we went out to Hana Japan for dinner. They used to have one of those in Stockton that we'd go to all the time and I loved it. When I found out there was one in Dublin, I was so excited. The kids all loved it! The food was great and it was entertaining. All of us caught the shrimp he flicked into our mouths except Joe. :)
That night Joe showed them all some funny videos from the Math program he is selling and I loved watching them all laugh and laugh:

Natalie has LOVED her wood elective this year and built a lot of cool things. Here's a picture her teacher sent me one day:

A cool tower the kids built:

Joe went on a work trip to San Diego and had a lot of fun riding around on these, going to the beach and eating good food. He likes the people he's working with (Joe is 2nd from the left).

We had a fun spring break this year. It was much more relaxing--no trip to Europe this time! Our spring break overlapped with the Ashby's for one day so we decided to meet in the middle in Fairfield to see them. We went to Scandia and had a lot of fun catching up with Mari and the kids. Our kids hadn't done laser tag before and they loved that:

The younger ones played some mini golf while the girls did the go-carts.

Nate sure missed Max. 

The Sunday after spring break started was Easter. We did our sunrise devotional again out on our trampoline. Then we ate cinnamon rolls and got ready for church. After church, we dyed eggs, did an egg hunt, and had dinner. It was a great day:

We went with the Allreds and the Winmills to the beach one day. It was a new one we hadn't been to (San Gregorio, south of Half Moon Bay) and we loved it! It was big but kind of hard to access since you had to climb down some rocks and cross a little stream so that meant there weren't very many people. The kids had so much fun playing in the stream and a little bit in the ocean (it was freezing!).

(Those are all courtesy of Kristen)

We also had fun meeting friends at an inflatable place and just hanging out at home.  Then it was back to school again in May.
I loved this picture that one of the kids took of a family game on Sunday.

 One Saturday morning in May, we had tickets to go through the Oakland temple open house. It was the first Saturday it was open and it was quite crowded. We didn't get as much time as we were hoping to stop and look at the different rooms but it was still nice taking the kids through and seeing where Joe and I were married.

 Next came Mother's Day, which was wonderful. The kids spoiled me with breakfast again and I loved the songs they sang in sacrament meeting. Here are the questionnaires the boys filled out about me in Primary:

 

 Nate's picture: :)

 I love that Eli always knows my birthday the best.
I requested another hike on Mother's Day and we had fun exploring at Dry Creek:

 

 I had to snap a picture of Eli sleeping in his tent one night:

 Natalie got to go to the Maker Faire across the bay for her wood shop. Joe got to go with her one day. She displayed her desk she made:

Isn't it awesome?

She got to do some other fun things too:

 One Sunday, Eli lost both of his front bottom teeth on the same day!

 It's crazy how he immediately looks older with missing teeth.
The day finally came for the Hamilton tickets we'd bought months and months earlier. Unfortunately, Joe needed to work since it was a matinee show. So, I ended up taking Nate in his place. He's grown to love Hamilton and was excited to go.

We were way up at the top but it was still awesome to show the kids one of their favorite musicals. Natalie was especially excited since she was most of the music memorized.

 We went back to the temple for another open house, this time with the Allreds and the Yeh family. The boys were good sports and came along. We also went to Fenton's after, so that helped. The girls went up another night to volunteer as ushers and I went up to help clean so we were at the temple a lot that month.

Another weekend we went to Rock City at the base of Mt Diablo to climb around and explore. 

Natalie and Nate were super worried about Elizabeth climbing things they thought were risky but she was fine and we all lived. :)

 At the end of May, Ann let me use a pass she'd been gifted for indoor skydiving since I chickened out of actual skydiving. Lareina and I did it and it was super fun.

We're going to take the kids back another time as a reward for completing a month without TV during May and June.