Beautiful day

Great day for a bike ride. We have been having some beautiful Spring weather basically all winter. I'm sure soon they will start complaining we are in a drought, but until then we are loving every minute of it.

Praying for snow

We had been praying for snow in hopes of spending our long President's Day weekend in Lake Tahoe. Although it hasn't snowed much up there so far this winter we heard the skiing was good so we packed up the car and headed to Tahoe.

We found a little patch here and there on the side of the road. Here we were playing in a park we always go to when we are there.

We found these awesome snowmen
best thing was we didn't have to build them...those suckers are hard to make
we had to stop for a beer
Here we are at that same park. If you remember any of our previous Tahoe posts we always take pictures here. Usually the snow is all the way to the end of the pier. The scary thing is we are usually out there on it. Little did we know we were walking on water.
Another park we played at. Roxy loved Tahoe. She ran so fast through the snow it was adorable.
Here is Cameron catching some air on the slopes
Cooper catching air. These kids are pretty darn good skiers!

This was so cool for me, the Starbucks lover. Squaw has the first ski through Starbucks on the top of the mountain. Here are the kids & I ordering some pumpkin bread. It's pretty crazy seeing people skiing with their coffee...

Heading to the lodge/ice arena at the top of Squaw Valley
We put the kids in ski school and had a few hours of "grown up" skiing. It was a nice having time to ski together and sneak to the lodge for a bloody mary. I love these huge outdoor fire pits you can chill around. I made Eddie pose for me. We had a great relaxing weekend. We love it up there.

Cooper keeping busy

Cooper is very good at finding things to keep him busy. He is always tinkering with things, digging up random treasures from our junk drawer, drawing...you name it he's probably thought of it.

The boys celebrated their 100th day at school. Cooper made this great sticker to wear that day. Then at school they made these great edible necklaces with 100 pieces of cereal on it.

nothing like a good vampire
or some skateboarding
or rollarblading
Here's Cameron along for the ride. Just wondering when he can get on his tractor again.

Hanging with Cousin Ethan

The boys cousin Ethan decided to come and hang out with Cameron & Cooper. They had a blast. They played, made popcorn & camped in a tent to watch a movie. Of course Becky & I drug them around shopping in Occidental & Bodega. It was a great, relaxing, fun time!

Our breakfast stop..

Hanging with old man Clyde
the art outside of the breakfast spot in Occidental-Howard Station
the sisters...(in matching sweatshirts & jeans lol )
We all had a great time & realized we just gotta suck up the 2 hour drive and do this more often!

Fun in the bark

We've been making some progress on the landscaping on the side of our house. With the path complete it was time for some weed control, bark and rocks. Here is a before shot...

The kids made the most out of having the dump trailer
or is it a slide?
yep, it's a slide
and the after shot.
We found out from some neighbors who are also doing some landscaping right now (only they are paying to have it done so they pay for the professional knowledge & we get it for free) that it is good to plant all the native plants this time of year -they also supplied us with a list of plants to choose from- so we may be doing some planting sooner than we thought. For now we are feeling good about our progress so far.

Happy 2012

Happy New Year 2012! Hope you all had a great New Year's. We have one more day off and we are back to work & school. It was a great vacation. I actually liked working until a few days before x-mas and having the 2 weeks after x-mas off...I was able to concentrate more on vacation and less on x-mas stress that way. I would rather rush/stress on Christmas while I am already rushing and stressing on work/school/homework etc.. and enjoy our time off. We had some left over fireworks so we enjoyed those on New Year's Eve..

our awesome New Year's Eve dinner. - the boys loved it
A little goofing around with Kinect - that is actually really fun and gets you moving
Some movie time...aka...quiet time for mom & dad
Some riding & camping...such a blast! We went to Hollister which is a bit of a drive from our usual camping but so worth it. The trails are so kid friendly, Cooper was able to ride several trails we got a lot of ride time in and were able to all ride together. So fun!
Our home away from home
Cooper lived in his new rollarblades for several days after x-mas. We even went to the local skating rink for some skating. Cameron even loves it..another great way to burn some energy!
Happy 2012 everyone. We'll be at the grocery store & a birthday party tomorrow. Then back to the grind. Lucky for us next weekend is a 3 day-a nice way to transition back in.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone (a little late). Well that's how we are running this year - or actually it would be last year now since I'm posting our Christmas on Jan 2nd. So we got the tree decorated 2 days before Christmas, whew just in time for Santa. So the festivities began.

We started by making cookies for Santa - this year they even left some carrots out for the rain deer.

Then we made some Christmas treats to share with everyone
turned out pretty cute, we also dipped peanut butter filled pretzels those were yummy
we opened presents
even Roxy wanted in on the playing. Clyde on the other hand prefers napping
we played some more
a little concert from the boys- when they aren't echoing "who farted" into the mic (any Diary of a Whimpy Kids fans will know where they got that)
we ate
and ate some more
It was a beautiful day. Hope you all had a great time and Santa was good to you.