beach week

This is our last week of summer before Calvin is off school. We went to the beach Mon, Wed and Th.  It is beautiful beach weather and it has been fun to go with friends.

Monday we met the Hussemans, Hulterstroms and Clifford's at Moonlight beach. As luck would have it, all the kids Clare's age were boys!  She loves her  boogie boarding buddies and thinks it's funny so many of them are boys!

Wed Lex and Jo went to a movie with the Hussemans so just Clare was at home with me (calvin was at school). I offered to take her school shopping for clothes and she said all she wanted to do was go to the beach. We called and texted lots of friends but we couldn't find anyone who was available to go! The carpenters hadn't returned the text so I called. Courtney is not a huge beach lover but when I said we were just going for two hours Ginger decided to come along with all three of her girls. The girls had a great time together and it was so fun to catch up with Ginger. She is a sweet friend and great woman! After the beach, Clare ended up spending the entire day at the carpenters, which was a treat for her!

Today (Thursday) we met Tracy Larsen up at clare's favorite beach Califia in San Clemente. It has GREAT boogie boarding waves. Clare and David spent 3 hours in the water together. I went out with them for a while too. It is one of the few beaches that I can't resist. The waves are so fun! Lex also had a ton of fun boogie boarding with Clare and David, playing in the sand and teaching Ruth to boogie board. It was a great day!  Lex and Clare would be happy to stay at the beach all day every day!

Jo jo loves the water too but gets cold faster than the other girls. She plays in the waves, stands on the boogie board and then spends more of her time in the sand.

This evening (th night) dave took Clare and Lexey along with Calvin to LaJolla shores for the scout activity tonight. Clare and Lex aren't scouts but they love to tag along! The beach is perfect right now. The water is warm, the sky is clear and it is perfectly beautiful! Such great summer days!



In other news, Dave has a beard.

cute jojo

Cute Jo is so excited to do gymnastics this year for her sport. Yesterday we went to gyminey kids for her evaluation so they could see which class would be best for her. She had a great time and did a really good job. She is very coordinated and has great balance. She is so excited to start class in 8 more days! She is also super excited to start kindergarten in about 24 days! She is counting down!

on Friday Jo went to a birthday party for her friend Jenna. I was impressed with her handwriting. She is getting better at her writing. She's ready for school to start. I especially love her backwards JoJo.

cute girls

This week we had several dentist appointments. All three girls had cleanings. Jo had two cavities which she had to go get filled. She did a great job. They didn't have to numb her mouth at all so the recovery was very quick. this was the first time we met with Dr. Good. She is my new favorite. I'll request her in the future. 

Lexey and Clare both had to go back to the orthodontist.  Alexey is missing two permanent teeth, a molar on the bottom and one of her front four teeth. She still has a lot of baby teeth so for now we are just waiting. In a year we will go back and see how things look. Once she loses her baby teeth (around age 10-11) we will start treatment.   Clare is also missing one permanent tooth, a molar on the upper right. Eventaully we will probably pull the baby molar out and then just close the gap.  She also has a permanent tooth that is not coming in as it should. Next week I take Clare back to pull the baby tooth in the hopes that the permanent tooth behind it will find the space and come in as it should. It's possible she'll need more help getting that tooth to come in right but hopefully not. Clare will go back to ortho in 6 months to check on the progress of that tooth. She will likely need braces within a year or two.  We are going to have lots of time and $$ invested in our orthodontist and dentist!

I took a few pics of the girls while we were at the orthodontist. They are adorable.

 

cliffords are home

Our best family friends were in Canada for last year, we were in Houston for the year before that, only overlapping for about one week last summer! We have missed them! It is so fun having them home. We love their new house in Green Valley only 5 minutes from us.  We took them with us to Mormon night at the padres. It was a great evening. Clare got on the big screen dacing like crazy, the kids ate cotton candy, which Jo bought with her birthday money, Lexey tried to shower  James with way too much attention while he tried to scoot out of the way.  Jo and Jessie sang and held hands all evening. A great night.  I left with most of the kids around 9:30pm as the little girls were past done! Dave stayed with Clare and all the boys for the end of the game which went into extra innings! They got home at 11pm. It was a long night. The game started at 5:40.  It is amazing how long baseball games are!

reno trip

We had a great week off.

Friday July 1st- The girls (jo and lex) attended their last day of VBS in the morning, meanwhile I took my car in for an oil change and found out it needed breaks and a water pump! Glad I took it into a good shop instead of just a ten minute oil change.  Dave came home from work around 2pm, around the same time I got my car back. Dave had stopped on the way home to get me some biker shorts so we could ride bikes in Reno/Tahoe.

We hit the road around 3pm, a couple of hours later than planned and made it to visilia by 10. The kids were all pumped and hyper so they didn't settle down until midnight. That was not fun!

Sat morning we took the kids to swim at the hotel pool and stopped at the store for some snacks and then hit the road for Sequoia.  there was some traffic just past three rivers so we pulled over and let dave ride his bike for about 45 minutes. Then we got back on the road and there was still traffic so we decided to skip sequoia. It would have taken us all day to get there and see everything and on the 4th of july weekend it just seemed like a bad idea!  So we headed for Reno, arriving around 8pm. The kids were hyper, yet again, so I went out for a bike ride while they played with grandma and grandma for an hour before bed.

Sunday - church, park

Monday - 4th of July - we went to Scott Lake up near Tahoe. It was perfect. We drove our cars on a dirt trail about 4 miles off the main road. The lake was completely secluded and not crowded. Great way to spend the 4th. We had lunch - hot dogs on a small grill. We went on a fun hike up a waterfall.  Dave and his dad rode bikes about 30-45 min from the lake down to a parking lot where Linda and I met them with the cars. Dan took a couple of really hard falls off the bike!

Tues - We went back up to Tahoe. Dave and I went biking while Dan and Linda took the kids to the beach. The bike ride was amazing. It was 17 miles total. The first 4 miles I had to walk because it was  uphill.  Then we hit about 2 miles downhill past Marquette lake where we passed into the flume trail. The flume trail is gorgeous and sits right near the top of the mountains overlooking Tahoe. all along the trail you can see the lake. It's amazing. That trail goes about 7 miles. Then you get a straight downhill for the last 3 miles!  Once we hit Lake Tahoe at the bottom we rode about 3 more miles to find the kids.  It was the longest ride I have ever done. It was very fun.  Would love to do it again.    We didn't get home until around 6pm so we took everyone out to dinner at Red Robin.

Wed - Dave went out early and rode 22 miles up in Tahoe. It was a very hard and fun ride for him. Around 11am I took the kids to the water park in Sparks. Dave met us there about 1pm. Jojo had fun going on some of the rides and then got pretty cold. She rested for a couple of hours and then later in the afternoon did some more slides. Her favorite was the Tortuga on the double tube. we did it over and over and over again! All the kids had a good time.  Clare and Lexey also did the Tortuga a dozen times on a double tube.

Th -July 7th!! JOJO's 5th birthday! In the morning we said happy birthday to jojo. I asked her if she wanted to open a present in the morning and she said no, she wanted to wait until after we sang happy birthday to her! Dave asked her how  it feels to be a five year old and she said she isn't five until we sing to her!  She is so cute!

 We went river rafting along the trukee river with Dan Linda and Mark and two of his kids. It started around 11 and we finished around 2pm. We ate lunch near the river and then drove over to up above doner lake for some rock climbing. Calvin did a great job repelling down, I took a turn repelling down as well (after a good cry ... I was scared out of my mind)! Then Dave set up the ropes for climbing so the kids all took a few turns going up and down the rock. Lexey went first and scaled all the way to the top so quick! She got up there and we told her she needed to repel back down. She looked down and said, "no" so she hiked around the back of the rock.   Jojo, on her first time up went a little too far and got stuck so Uncle Mark had to climb up and help her get down. After that she just went up and down five feet so she could get some practice with the technique.  The kids had a good time. We ended up staying at the rock climbing for a few hours, much longer than planned os it delayed our dinner, once again!   On the drive home we picked up happy meals for the kids.  When we got home we sang happy birthday to Jo and let her open presents. The kids played for a bit and then went to bed around 8:30-9. At 9 Dave and I went to the casinos to look for food but nothing looked that great. We stopped by a well known little hole in the wall down a dark alley called "the nugget" but it was so disgusting inside we couldn't stay and eat. We ended up going to BJ's for dinner super late! 10:15pm. We were both exhausted but you've got to take advantage of the babysitters when you've got 'em!

Fri we left about 9:30 to drive home. The drive was uneventful. We got home about 8:30pm. Meyer was very happy to see us.