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.

February & March

Joe and I went on some fun double dates with the Allreds. We're sure going to miss them when they move this summer. They took us to this spicy Chinese place. Check out all those red peppers:

A quick picture I took of our YW for one who moved to Utah:

I love those girls.

Date night at Fenton's:

I was volunteering in Eli's kindergarten class one day and noticed this scene during their snack:

He has always gotten along so well with girls. 

Speaking of Eli, one night he was working so hard to read a Magic Treehouse book. He has improved so much in his reading!

We had YW at our friends' the Weston's and got to meet their adorable new lab puppy Jogger that they are training to be a guide dog.  Natalie loves him so much.

Eli got to bring home his class stuffed bear and I loved this picture we took of him playing Wii with him:

Nate did his science project on Misty (testing whether she would eat more food if there was more food available) and took this pictures of her:

Sadly, she died only about a week after that. We're hoping we didn't put any stress on her. She was almost 2 which is pretty old for a hamster.

We got the kids a new hamster that they named Hazelnut, or Hazel for short.

She is a lot more active but does make a really weird hissing sound sometimes when she doesn't like something.

I think Eli took these pictures of the neighborhood kids playing:

I did a lesson on origami for my math class and thought this tower of truncated cubes was cool and fun to make:

We had a pi day activity and tested Buffon's needles experiment and sure enough--it worked!

Ann and I taught yoga at the multi-stake youth conference and then treated ourselves to hot pot after. The conference was fun and we got tons of kids to come to our classes. Mark Rober was even there giving a talk! 

After the shootings at mosques in New Zealand, we found out about a candlelight vigil at Lake Elizabeth and decided to go. It was a beautiful meeting and I loved seeing them pray at sunset. It was powerful to watch.

The girls and I went on a youth temple trip to Sacramento.

Natalie and Joe had a fun one-on-one date to go watch the BYU women's basketball team play Stanford in the tournament. They even got on TV! They also sat right by Steve Young and Tom Holmoe.

(That was where Steve Young was sitting :)

At the end of March, we drove up to Greenwood for one last chance to see the snow. We'd planned on taking the kids skiing but when Chris and Regina had some free time open up we invited them and they came! We surprised the kids and I think they were OK skipping skiing to spend time with cousins. We had a blast playing with them all weekend.

The older kids were outside building snow tunnels and playing.

We went up above Donner Lake:

We loved playing games, doing puzzles and just hanging out. We also took them out for their first time to an Indian restaurant and they all seemed to like it! It was a great weekend.

Elizabeth is 14!

Joe happened to out of town on Elizabeth's birthday this year so we celebrated a couple of days later when he got back. It was a pretty low-key celebration but a good day. She picked bread bowl soup (as we call it) for dinner and that was delicious. She made her cake herself which turned out amazing. The homemade chocolate frosting was way better than anything I've made. 

It's always tricky to shop for Lizzie but she seemed happy with what she got. Natalie made her this awesome wood plaque with a design from one of her favorite book series:

She also got her bow and arrow set! That was really the only thing she asked for.

We finally got to try it out at a park recently and had a blast. 

Elizabeth's had a great year. She officially passed me up in height! She grew so fast that people always comment on how tall she is. It's still pretty crazy for both of us. People sometimes think she is older than she is. She loved it when she didn't have to take a swim test over the summer but James did, even though he is older. :)

She is still doing great in school. She's been in a super tough advanced math class in 8th grade and has risen to the challenge. She does well in all her classes, even with missing school when she gets a migraine every month or two. We're still working on figuring out how to best handle those. She still loves English and is working on writing a bunch of novels. She loves to listen to music and write. She is talking about being an English teacher or a writer in the future now. She still enjoys Science too. She's taking French as an elective and is picking it up really quickly.

We're still working on finding her a physical activity that she enjoys. She is an expert at deflecting our efforts in this area. :) She did take intramural golf for half the year. She also loves riding her bike and going on walks while listening to music. She still loves climbing. We went to Rock City here and she was climbing all over everything. She loves to swim, too, but doesn't like swimming laps.

She loves music of all kinds and is writing amazing songs on the piano. She reads and reads, of course, and has gotten into Dickens. She loves making herself some cheesy potatoes to eat or a huge bowl of fruit. She still doesn't spend her money much, except on books. She's making a lot of money lately babysitting so she actually has a lot saved up. She's a really great babysitter and a wonderful big sister.

We sure love our Lizzie.