Our Gualala Camping trip

This is Gualala. It is about 3 1/2 hours north of San Fran on hwy 1 and it is BEAUTIFUL! Our great friends Amber and J.T. Greenwood invited us up for Memorial weekend. Their family has been going here for 30 years, and it is a big family reunion/ward party. I am sad I don't have a picture to post of the Greenwoods, but they are amazing people. They really made us feel welcome since the first day moved to Fremont.


This is our campsite. I have to admit, the ONLY reason I go camping is for the food, and boy did we have great food while we were there. Thanks to Alex and Mike who took care of all of the meals, we ate non stop the whole weekend! Most of the meals were carefully prepared in the dutch oven. Some of the meals included pancakes, sausage, french toast, biscuits and gravy, Mike's famous chicken dutch oven, tin foil dinners, Alex's apple dutch oven yumness, peach cobbler, barbecue pulled-pork sandwiches, smores and we even got to try some abalone which some of the men in the ward go skin-diving for.


These are our friends the Droubays. Sorry guys that your big family photo on my blog is the camping shot! Aren't they cute anyways? We had so much fun with them. The kids played all day long and I got to hold baby Austin as much as I wanted. He is such a sweet baby.


We threw the kids' big wheels in the car and they loved it. They rode all around the campsite like they owned the place.


This was another fun thing for the kids to do, but I don't remember what it is called... There was a big playground too...I'm telling you, it was every camping mother's dream spot.


The campsite was so fun and beautiful. Not only was is surrounded by big beautiful redwoods, it was right next to a small river that led to the ocean that the kids ( and dads ) loved to skip rocks at all day long!


We of course had to play with glow sticks at night time. We brought probably one hundred of them to share with all of the other campers. We told Max and Tyler to take them around to all of their friends to share, but when they came back, they hadn't given any away. We said, "didn't you give any away?" and Tyler said, "we tried, no body would take them. We kept saying Glow sticks for sale!" Oh dear!


Poor Allie was EXHAUSTED! She played hard all day and would crash at night. I love camping for this reason...tired children. Although, with it comes the dirty children. Did I mention there was hot showers at this campsite? And electricity. This is my kind of camping!

Christmas morning with the Butlers

I have so much fun spending time with my sister. It was such a great Christmas to be with my family. We stayed at Becky's house and she was a wonderful host. As you can imagine, we ate delicious cookies and fudge all week long and simply enjoyed being together. It is much more fun to wrap presents together, cook together, and shop for last minute big wheels all over the valley together. Thanks Becks for the fun times!



These cute boys got Geo Trax and were so excited! Boys are sooooo fun!



The lighting is bad, but here is our jammie photo on Christmas eve. With all those kids in one house, the air was so thick with excitement you could cut it with a knife!



And the pink big wheel was a hit!



The best part was that all of those presents got a years worth of play by all the kids in 1 week.



Note to self for next year...If you have an idea for a present, just buy it, you can return it later if you change your mind. Also, less is more!

Christmas

I know, its out of order and past the season, but I can't leave out Christmas 08 with the Palmer family.



We had so much fun spending time with family. So much, in fact, that I didn't get to see all of the friends that I planned on visiting.
Here is one of my favorite memories...Max and Jake dressing the part of the shepherds for the nativity at Dan and Kristin's house. It was a special night to be together on Christmas eve. The best part was my dad sharing his testimony and conversion story with us.

These two boys were hillarious and wouldn't sit still for the life of them. They are the best of buds.



This picture of Rachel cracks me up. She is such a sweetheart. I loved spending time with her and Anna while we were spending the night at their house. All of our nieces and nephews are the best!

Lovely

Max can write his own name! He knew of course he was in trouble so he quickly said, "mom, the paper is too slippery, I HAVE to do it on carpet."

Enjoying a quiet Saturday evening...

I am sitting here on a Saturday night, the kids are asleep and it is raining outside so I am wrapped in a blanket thinking about what yummy treat I can look forward to tomorrow.
This is a picture of our yummy orange juliuses Alex made for our last Sunday evening treat. They were delicious. I don't think I have made those since junior high.

Happy Valentines Day!

My favorite part of Valentines Day is the making heart shaped sugar cookies. I loved having Valentine's Day on Saturday this year because we celebrated all week long. We started by making our first batch of dough on Mon, frosted them Tues, and gave them away. Then on Wed we made another batch and frosted again on Thurs. This sounds crazy and insane but I love baking! Max does too and he is fun to bake with. He told me, "mom, I LOVE baking with you!" It was so sweet. He is so sweet. I love my little boy!
BTW, I gave that dough to them to play with and Max insisted on cutting out hearts and cooking it...boy were they interesting!

A little note

Wow! yeah, its been a few weeks since I have posted, and sorry for the lack of photos tonight, but this is going to be just a short post to see how many of my cousins have not given up on me!
I bought my tickets to go to newport with the cousins in a few weeks and I am sooooo excited! I hope you all can make it because I can't wait to see you and spend a relaxing weekend with the girls. Really I am going to try not to spend too much money and be more frugal on this trip, but I think I say that every time. That being said, I am looking forward to a churro at the swap meet and OK a chocolate covered banana too. And staying up all night laughing and talking and Grandma's fart machine.
See you in Cali!