Spring Break 2012

Once again I packed up the kids and headed to Reno for Spring Break!  Too bad it was more like winter than spring. We had to leave a day early to avoid driving in a snow storm both on the way up there and the way back home.  But it didn't matter much, we had a great visit.  The kids had fun with grandma and playing with their cousins.  I got to hang out with some awesome friends! And had fun building loft beds with my sister.  The difference this year is spring break wasn't the same week as Easter.  We always have a lot fun things planned for all the kids on Easter so I'm a little sad we didn't get to do all that with family.  But we do have fun things planned here at home with our friends!  Also Matt wasn't able to come up at all, usually he will fly up for a couple days and drive back with us. But not this time, I had to do all the driving on my own.  One of the things we did with the kids was visit the new children's museum, the kids had a blast and we can't wait to go back this summer.

The Loft Bed Build

I'm so excited about this loft bed I designed for my nephews.  My sister needed a custom bed to fit in her boys room because of the built-in "shelf" (you can see in the pics below what I'm talking about).  She decided loft beds would be best and just happen to fit perfectly in an L shape.  The beds are secured into the wall on two sides each and then have a total of three legs supporting the outer sides. I designed the whole thing using google sketch-up.  We spent 3 full days working on it, the longest part was sanding and painting, which Staci did a lot while I wasn't there.  The color was chosen to match the furniture already in the room.  Alivia calls it a playhouse bed and wants one of her own!  And Elijah was a little disappointed it wasn't a bunk bed with a bottom bed.
Here's some before, during and after pics.

The design pic:

The Before pictures:

During:

Finished!:

Happy 5th Birthday Aaron!

Aaron is 5 years old!

My Aaron is such a sweet heart.  He is a little on the shy side so we had a rough start to pre-school.  He really didn't want to go for the first few weeks, but it got better as he made friends.  Now he is doing great and even likes doing his homework.  He's back in t-ball this season thanks to his new best friend.  Aaron wants to try soccer, so maybe we will do that this year. He does great riding his bike, we will try with no training wheels this spring. His favorite thing to do is play video games, he would play all day if I let him, but is very good at turning off the games when I tell him time is up.  Aaron is very responsible and is always the first one to take his dishes to the sink, and asks politely for more juice.  This does get him in trouble from time to time because he tries to enforce the rules with his sisters and of course they don't want to be told what to do by their brother. Aaron's favorite place to visit is Grandma in Reno.  He's been asking everyday if it's spring break yet so we can go to grandma's house.   For his birthday this year we took him and his best friend to the movies, had ice cream and played at the park, everyone had a great time! I'm looking forward to seeing him grow this year and start kindergarten in the fall.

Happy 5th Birthday Alivia!

My Alivia is 5 years old!

This last year has been so much fun.  Alivia has started pre-school and she just loves it so much. It's only two days a week so the rest of the time she is talking about school and asking for more homework to do.  She loves to draw, color and cut and paste art projects.  She tells me she wants to be an artist. Just the other day she drew up plans for how to build a tunnel slide, wonder where she gets that from? Alivia is very high energy, she loves playing outside, riding her bike, and is starting her 3rd season playing t-ball.   Her favorite place to visit is the LA County Fair, she would ask me almost every day for months if it was time for the fair.  We also started swimming lessons, which she loved, and now can't wait for summer at grandmas pool.  She can be a little sneaky though, and picking fights with her sister is quite common. And little miss independent will pour her own cup of milk and get herself a bowl of cereal when no one is looking.  This year for her birthday, she invited her best friend to go see a movie with her, then had lunch, ice cream and played at the park.  It was so much fun!  I can't believe she will be starting kindergarten later this year, but I'm excited for her because I know she will love it.

Twins turn 5!

Another year has gone by way too fast.  My sweet little Alivia and Aaron will be 5 years old tomorrow.  I miss them being tiny little babies so much! I took a trip down memory lane and went through tons and tons of pictures of my babies.  Here are just some of my favorites...

 

Love the funny faces!