California Here We Come.........

A day at Lego Land Aquarium with EVERYBODY!

Grandad and Westin checkin out the Starfishes



Kennady practicing her Crane Technique

Sadelle practicing her mouth excercises

Raymond "Warming" the kids up befor we could go into the Aquarium

A look out our front door, down the campsite, and onto the ocean. We love this place! You never know what you are going to get next door to you! This year we got the Hippies on parade!

Our camp on the beach we set up everyday

The hike down the stairs from our campsite to the beach. Once you come down you try not to have to go back up!

Westin loves digging with his PaPa!

We were so lucky to have both sets of grandparents there with us this year. What a treat!

Grandad Alvord made it to the beach and had a great time!

Isn't grandma Alvord so beautiful!

Madison had to spend the first three days out of the water because of her stitches on her finger, it was not easy! This was her first debut into the ocean!

I couldn't resist this picture, Bronson was so cute sleeping on the beach, and the colors were so amazing around him!

JaNae and I doing some catch up

The kids had so much fun burying their legs in the sand and then leaning. We thought they looked like trees blowing in the wind, it was so funny!

Westin munchin on a popsicle.......yum!

Sadelle spent the days digging in the sand and catching some rays. I loved her in this cute yellow bathingsuit!

Kennady spent her days surfing away!

Madison.......what can I say, I love this girl!

This picture is my favorite! It explains our entire trip in a nutshell.......fun, relaxation, and a beautiful beach!

Rapunzel, Rapunzel,......Rusty?

The girls decided to try one of Madisons old wigs on Rusty one night while we were gone.........ta-da...Rustunzel!

Our Princess

Sadelle is most definetally our "girly" girl! She loves everything pink and beautiful! It is so much fun having a variety of personalities in our family! This was Miss Robins Ballet Demonstration for the year, she does NOT do recitals and I LOVE that!

Kaylee and Sadelle did Miss Jenee"s Musical theater class this summer for 2 weeks. I could have died driving her to and from, but if she wasn't singing and dancing all over the house the way she was I would have given up on it after day 2! Who would have guessed that "Santan" location meant "Santan Road" ughh! Their songs all had the word ROCK in them, sooooo cute! Sadelles favorite was "Rockin Robin"! We all enjoyed the fabulous performance that Miss Jenee always puts on!

A family swim

The kids love swimming with dad at night!

It was stormy out and this beautiful rainbow popped up in front of us. I think rainbows are little gifts from heaven!


This was Rusty's first swim!

4th Of July

We had a great 4th of July this year! We stayed in town and suvived the heat, a first for us in many years! We enjoyed the night with our good friends and neighbors the Cranes and Stewarts.

Madison and Rusty.....She is such a great big sister!

The kids had plenty of fun with tons of cannonballs, rock jumping, sliding, and oh did I mention the "Dive in movie"!

Is life really so Urgent?

I can officially say I am tired of getting up in the morning and heading to Urgent Care in my pajamas! First came Rusty with an ear infection on the weekend, then came Sadelle with an ear infection the next weekend and a holiday non-the-less, and last but not least came Madison with a swift slice to her finger while cutting a bagel. My refrigerator is overflowing with 5 different antibiotics all to be taken at different times by different children. It is times like these that I ask myself "Why did we have 5 kids again?"

I can do hard things!

After many years of promptings and persuasions by family and friends I have finally decided to stop fighting and just go ahead and blog. I don't know why it has been such a struggle for me to do this, but it has. Maybe I have become a little more computer savy, maybe it's because I have tried to slow my life down so that I have more time for the little things in life, or maybe it's just because I just think my family is so amazing and that we need to document the absolutely ordinary things of our lives. At any rate here I am!