Tahoe Fun...part one!

We enjoyed an awesome trip to Tahoe earlier this month.  The girls and I joined Grandma Lala, Papa Rod, Aunt Ashley, Uncle Paul and baby Liam for the first week and then Corey joined us for week two!  Two weeks in Tahoe...it really doesn't get better than that!

I'm going to divide blog entries accordingly because week one was captured on my old, cranky iPhone camera (except for the pics I stole from Paul and Ashley's less finicky phones) and the second week, thanks to Corey, was captured on our much nicer camera.

While we were super excited to spend time at the lake, of course, what really got us excited about our trip this year was this little man. Liam Charles, our new little cousin!

 What a delight he was all week. He's so darn adorable.  And I loved watching the girls be such "hands on" (maybe too hands on at times) big cousins.  Thank you, Ash and Paul, for letting them snuggle him silly all week.

We hung out at the cabin a lot, spent many days at the beach, ate way too much apple pie, frequented all of our favorite local restaurants, and just enjoyed spending time together...

These girls love their Papa and Lala,

and their cousins

and the beach

 and especially their GGMa!  

(and their GGPa, too, of course, but for some reason I didn't get a picture of him this trip!)

Tahoe sure delivers a gorgeous sunset!

I'll post pics of week two once I go through those pictures!

Go Fish!

Corey and Natalie have recently started fishing together.  And Natalie is sooooo into it.  She absolutely loves it...all of it: organizing the tackle box, buying pretty new lures, playing with the worms before they're wiggly bait and casting her line (which she does with amazing skill and grace for a 7 year old).  She caught her first fish one morning last weekend but had to throw him back as he wasn't quite the minimum size.  But she was thrilled, nonetheless!

One evening last week, Audrey decided she wanted to go, too, so that meant I had got to go. :) No way for Corey to fish with Natalie AND keep Audrey from falling in the reservoir.  Audrey really needs an adult all to herself when near any body of water bigger than a mud puddle.  So, we joined them.  And, as I suspected would happen, Audrey lost interest in fishing completely after 6 and a half minutes of sitting on the dock.  I did my best to entertain her while fisherman and fishergirl kept at it but eventually bedtime came and went and we packed up.  I'm not sure Audrey will be invited back again anytime soon.  But it was fun to picnic on the dock and watch Corey and Natalie in action.  Well, as much action as fishing entails.

Pool Time

We didn't join our neighborhood pool this year but luckily all our friends joined their neighborhood pools so we've not lacked for swimming opportunities.  After a full year of swimming lessons (and they're still at it over the summer), it's been awesome to see the growth in confidence and skill in both of them.  Natalie is swimming a beautiful breaststroke and freestyle and working on butterfly.  Audrey is putting her face in the water (huge progress) and loves to kick, show us her streamline arms and let us help her float on her back like a starfish.  We're really pleased with what they've learned this last year at lessons and I think we're going to keep at it weekly for another year.

 Hanging out poolside with friends, Brooklynne and Chloe

 They earn a certificate and ribbon when they pass each level at their swim school.  Natalie has moved up 4 levels since we started back in September.  Audrey has moved up a level even since this picture was taken, and 2 levels in all since she started in April.    

 Learning to swim well is a must anywhere, but especially here.  There is such a huge swim team culture here that a majority of Natalie's friends (and some of Audrey's as well) swim competitively.  That results in a lot of pool playdates and pool parties and I realized soon after we moved here that even if the girls didn't want to join swim team, we had to learn to swim as if we were team members...just to keep up with friends in the pool.  They're both doing great!

Grandma Lala!

Grandma Lala came to visit last month and, as usual, we had a great time with her here.  I think it was her first visit here where we didn't hop in the car and head over the mountain to Reno for a few days during her trip.  While we missed the road trip (it's always equal parts painful and fun), it was nice to just relax while she was here.  It really doesn't get better for the girls than a Grandma audience.

  Love you, Lala!  So much!

Corey's Birthday

Mercy.  I'm more than a month late with this post but it just had to be written about so we never forget how special it was.

A little backstory...Natalie has been earning "Vikings" at all year at school for everything from remembering to bring back library books and signed forms to helping clean up litter on the playground and in the lunchroom. The Vikings that all the kids earn can be saved and eventually spent a few times a year at the "Viking Store" that the school sets up.  The Viking Store sells all sorts of stuff like pens and erasers and pencil pouches, etc.  Last fall Natalie spent 40 hard earned Vikings on a scented marker that stopped working a few weeks later and she learned a valuable spending lesson: no pen, regardless of how yummy it smells, is worth 40 whole Vikings!  So this semester she put a lot more thought into how she would spend her Vikings.  In fact, she skipped a winter store event entirely in an effort so build up a stockpile to buy something big at the last Viking Store of the school year.  In addition to the usual stuff for sale, there were a few big ticket items like a popcorn party at recess, a pizza party after school one day,  having a Quiznos sandwich delivered to the classroom at lunchtime...some fun stuff.  One of the big ticket items was a free burger at The Habit Grill that would cost her 100 Vikings.  She had 110 to spend and knew that there would be nothing left of her loot if she traded them all in for a burger.  But she also knew that Corey really likes The Habit and made the decision to get the gift certificate for him for his birthday.  So sweet.  So the day came to part with her Vikings and she handed almost every one of them over (she'd been saving them since last November) in exchange for a birthday burger for Dad.  

 She was so proud and thrilled to give him that gift and insisted we go the very night of his birthday for a burger dinner.  She was convinced that the certificate treated the whole family to dinner when in actuality it bought her kid-size burger but we played it up and she wore a smile all night thinking she'd spent her Vikings on a night out for all of us.  So cute.  The Habit made it so special, too.  I was expecting a photo-copied coupon to come home with her but instead it was a nicely printed certificate and only a small edge had to be removed to redeem the burger and the rest of it was left entirely intact to hang on to.  Really awesome.

It meant a lot to Corey that she passed up gobs of goodies at the Viking Store to buy him a birthday dinner.

Happy 4th!

...a week late!
We had a great 4th of July! We took the kids to the Danville parade which is always fun, came home in time to walk in the parade that goes through our very own neighborhood, came home and recovered from a morning of full sun and hot heat at these various parades, cooked hot dogs and ate strawberry rhubarb pie and then headed to the fireworks in Concord.  Totally great day.  And some of the most amazing fireworks I have ever seen.  We met our good friends for the show and the kids had a blast running around together with their light up Independence Day bling!

In other news, this is our 600th blog post on Scrapbrooks.  Holy smokes!  600 posts documenting the last 7 and  a half years.  Such a fun way to keep track of our family's life.