She's off the charts!

Lily had her four month check up this week and the girl is huge! She is off the charts for weight and is in the 95% for height. I had some one ask me at Costco today if she was 1. She continues to be off the charts adorable! At four months Lily loves her excersaucer! The thing she seems to love most about the saucer is the challenge of trying to pull every toy to her mouth for a nice taste. She is definitely the most mouth oriented baby that I have ever had she seems to always want something in her mouth: fingers, toes, pacifiers, toys, blankets, or clothes pretty much everything and anything goes in her mouth. She continues to be a happy baby who smiles and laughs easily. I love to tickle her on her collar bone. And for some reason she loves the primary song "in the leafy tree tops" that song usually gets her to give a big smile. We sure love our Lily girl!

The many faces of Lily

You gotta love the girly features (the lips and eye lashes are to die for)

Family

As part of our California trip we got to spend a lot of time hanging out with my family. My grandparents still live in California and it was great to be able to see them and visit their home. I love to go to my Grandparents home. I have such great memories at their house and they are such tremendous examples. It was great to have my kids finally meet them! After visiting with my Grandparents the rest of my family met up in Oceanside so that we could hang out and enjoy the condos my parents reserved for our family. Thanks mom and dad for such a great time! While we were there my mom wanted me to try and get a picture of the whole family (a little tricky when using a remote to take the picture) so below are some of the best and silliest pictures we got.

Cali part 3 - sea world

We went to sea world as part of our vacation. If you know my kids very well you might have a small inkling of what a big deal this is. Carson has been obsessed with aquatic creatures since he was 3 and he particularly loves killer whales. I have been looking forward to going to sea world with them for the last year. The boys had a great time at sea world. we got there early so we had great seats in the splash zone for all the shows. Luckily we were able to sit in the splash zone and not get very wet (I was mostly worried about Lily getting soaked). When the boys first saw Shamu they were pretty much in awe of the creature. I don't think they fully comprehended how enormous a killer whale actually is. The Shamu show was really cool, but I must say I was a little disappointed, because they didn't have any people jumping off Shamus nose or anything. The kids got to choose a toy from sea world there choices so fit their personalities Lincoln wanted a cuddly stuffed animal Shamoo and Carson wanted a little container stuffed with as many aquatic creatures as would fit. Lincoln said his favorite part of sea world was the whale show. Carson surprised me by saying the thing he liked best was the bat rays. They have a place where you can feed and pet the rays. Carson got to pet one particular ray 3 times and he kept saying that he made a friend with the sting ray (it was really cute).

Cali part 2 - beach

While in California we spent about 3 days at the beach. We had a great time hanging out with family and playing in the water and sand. The boys loved going out into the waves with Nate. They both said that "kicking the waves" with dad was their favorite thing to do at the beach. But they also loved digging for sand crabs, collecting sea shells and just playing in the sand. My dad who likes to fish at the beach caught a baby leopard shark, Carson thought that was just about the coolest thing ever. Nate was brave and actually let the kids bury him in sand. Lincoln took the idea of burying Dad literally and tried to cover Nates face in sand, consequently Nate ended up with a mouthful of the beach! My sister Heather was our unofficial nanny at the beach. She helped to keep an eye on the boys and entertain them while I was busy with Lily or having fun in the water. Nate and I also got a chance to dust off our mad boogie boarding skills and had a great time catching waves. I love the beach! I grew up going to the beach often and it was so much fun to see my kids enjoy something that I loved as a kid.

Our trip to Cali- part 1

We went down to California for our big summer vacation. We drove to California which I was worried would be a nightmare, but the kids were great and it was overall an uneventful drive, with the exception of a small speeding ticket that Nate got in Nevada. We started out our Cali vacation with an action packed day at Disneyland. We decided since we were only spending one day at Disneyland that it would be worth our while to buy ridemax (a online program that helps you plan your day at Disneyland efficiently). We showed up at Disneyland a 1/2 hour before the gates opened ready to put our plan into action. Of course things didn't go quite as planned about 2 minutes before we were about to be admitted to Disneyland Lily had a huge diaper blowout. Not wanting to ruin our ridemax plan right at the beginning we split up Nate went and changed Lily's diaper and I took the boys on the first couple rides alone. The rest of the day went relatively smoothly. Lily did great she hardly made a peep the whole time! And Lincoln did well too he maybe had one meltdown, which I thought was pretty good for an unnapped two year old. We ended up spending 15 hours at Disneyland in total. For the most part the kids loved all the things we did. Their favorite ride was the rocket ride and the tea cups and Dumbo came in a close second. I was a bit surprised that both the boys were a little bit scared of Pirates of the Caribbean. Lincoln covered his face through the whole ride, but at the end when we asked him if he liked it he assured us that he did (too funny). Carson was a bit more honest. Although he didn't cover his face during the ride he admitted he thought it was a little bit scary. We also went to the Jedi training academy show. I was a little disappointed that Carson didn't want to participate but he and Lincoln were both in awe of the Darth Vader and Darth Mal characters that all the little Jedi's got to fight. We had a great time and ended the day with the fireworks show over Sleeping Beauty's castle. Lincoln who loves fireworks fell asleep on Nates shoulders in the middle of the show. The kid was so tired it wasn't like he just fell asleep it was as if he went into a mini coma, we could not get him to wake up for anything. I know I am going to sound like a total cheese ball but the day was so fun and the fireworks were so spectacular that I got a little bit misty eyed during the fireworks show. Disneyland with kids is so much fun!