Yuba!

We spent the day with the the Nortons and Grandma Jo at Yuba Lake. It was AWESOME! We got to try out our new "Jumbo Dog." Bailey loved it. She sat on the back and bounced everyone else. She rode with one hand and then no hands. She is our wild child in the water. Wade walked up and down the shoreline and found treasures. He found a perfect arrowhead. He was so enthralled with hunting arrowheads that we came home with a baggie full of chipings and broken arrowheads. Chase loved jumping off the dock and playing with his dolphin. We had a lot of fun. It was especially fun to watch Grandma on the jumbo dog and it wasn't quite so fun with James at the wheel while Bailey, Jasa and I were on it. When we wrecked, we hit the water pretty hard. It was a great day and none of us wanted to go home (except maybe little Bodee)!

Swim Meet

Bailey was in her first swim meet on Saturday. She did really well. She came home with a 2nd, 5th, 3rd and 4th place ribbons. Her favorite event is the back stroke! She also raced in freestyle, breaststroke, and a relay.

CHASE

Chase has found out how much fun riding bikes is. We took off his training wheels and away he went. I just wish the road we live on had a slower speed limit. My kids are really growing up!

Wrapping up Baseball Season

Chase played T Ball on the Gray Bees. He always has the most serious faces when he swings and runs. He was just happy as could be to be on the field, whether he got the ball or not.

Wade played on the Black Bee team. He loved to hit the ball FAR! He is a little hustler and he has a great arm. I think we will be playing alot more baseball with him as he gets older.

Bailey has been playing on two teams. She played on a city team which quite frankly was not very good! We moved her up with the 4-6th graders and she was one of the pitchers for her team. She consistently threw strikes. We were really proud of her. She also played on an EXTREME traveling softball team. She is the youngest and so she isn't playing her favorite positions, but she is having fun and learning tons. We are heading to Kanab for the state tournament in a couple weeks.

Ready, Aim, Fire!

A couple of our favorite things are Sunday afternoons, smores, and shooting contests. Our family eats our share of hotdogs and marshmallows. We have a great time having contests to see who is the best shot. Bailey and Wade are usually neck and neck and then they usually do that small act of kindness and hit one of Chase's targets so that he is tricked into believing he is the winner too! Whatever we do, we sure have fun together.

I love my DAD!

These cute little boys want to be just like their dad. They decided to try on some of his clothes. There are so many many ways that they really are like their dad. They are a couple of cuties. I am thankful for their dad and hope they grow up to be just like him!

This is what you get!?!

So this is what I get for not having any grass. My sweet little nephews visited us the other day. I set up the pool (on the sidewalk) and then went to get some things done. When I walked back around the house, this is what I saw. Oh boy, were they having fun!!! There was not one clean spot on them (except for the little white spot where their swimming suits went). Anyway, this is what they looked like when my sister came by to pick them up. And when we told them we were going to spray them off to get cleaned up, they took their suits off. I don't know how many cars drove by, but they definitely got quite a show!

Aloha

James and I just experienced one of the best weeks of our lives! We are celebrating 15 years together this year, so we left the kiddos home and flew to Hawaii for the week. It is one amazingly beautiful place!! And we found a new passion--snorkeling!

We spent the first few days in Oahu. We got to see Pearl Harbor, swim on the North Shore, watch the sunset on Waikiki Beach and our favorite was swim with the sea turtles. I wish I had some good pictures, because I just can't describe how incredibly awesome it was to snorkel next to these creatures. The water is so blue and so clear that while snorkeling out in the ocean you could see EVERYTHING below you. At one point we found 6 sea turtles. They weren't bothered by us at all. They would swim to the top of the water, and we were inches away from them. It was also fun to feed the fish and have hundreds of them swimming around us. We snorkeled at other beaches in Oahu, but this was our favorite. Oahu had incredible beaches, we escpecially loved the water hitting the rocks and watching water shoot out of the blow holes.

We then flew to The Big Island. There were a lot less people and even more beauty. We were able to witness an active volcano. We watched the flumes come out the top and then went down by the ocean and watched the lava flowing off the mountain. Lava had just come and covered the road a month ago. It was quite amazing.

Snorkeling on the Big Island was even better than Oahu. We found a guy off the side of the road one day renting a kayak, so we hopped in. We paddled out in the ocean and were surrounded by at least 35 wild spinner dolphins. They circled our boat, swam underneath us and did amazing acrobat tricks out of the water. We jumped in the ocean with them. Although we only got about 10 feet from them, they were still awesome to swim with. They would swim under us and we sat and watched them for quite a while. We also found a reef with such an abundance of fish. The fish were the neatest and brightest colors I have ever seen.

Another highlight of the trip was walking through the rain forests. There was so much GREEN. The plants were amazing and the waterfalls were amazing. Lets just say, it was totally amazing. We found some caves which were lava tubes in the midst of the rain forest. They were interesting caves because the roots of the trees and bushes above the ground were growing through the cave ceiling.

Yes, becuase of all the vines growing on the trees, we just couldn't help being Tarzan! And yes, it really works. We had the best time--even the food was great. We enjoyed stopping along the road side and buying local fruit (our favorites are lychee and apple bannanas). Malasadas are scrumptious and James thought the pig at the luau was pretty tasty. I spent a great week in a great place with a great guy!