Kaitlyn's Dance Recital - Jan 26 & 27th

Ballet

Jazz

Lyrical

Kaitlyn had her annual dance recital this weekend.  She was in a lyrical dance, a jazz dance and of course a ballet dance.  She did really well and has shown so much growth over the last year.  She loves to dance and it shows! 

Ella's Field trip to San Juan Capistrano - Jan 23rd

Ella had a fun field trip.  She was able to ride a bus to the train station and then take a train to one of the California Missions, San Juan Capistrano.  She had a blast.  I think she was really intrigued by the train ride itself, more than anything else :) 

Hot Saturday! - Jan 19th

The kids had been looking forward to a hot sunny day and they celebrated by riding their bikes down the street to get a Slurpee.  Hope we have more warm days like today!

James B-day Celebration - Jan 12

We have busy Tuesday evenings, so we had a family celebration on Sunday for James' 39th birthday.  We had tacos for dinner of course, and cupcakes for dessert.

California Science Center GATE Field Trip - Jan 5th

Outside the California Science Center

Rebecca, Kaitlyn and Emma.

Getting ready to watch an IMAX movie - Abby and Ella.

Crazy glasses!

Space Shuttle - Endeavour

We went to the California Science Center along with many other families from Oak Mesa Elementary's GATE students and families (about 200 of us total).  We were able to see an IMAX movie on the Hubble Telescope and see the Endeavour Space Shuttle which recently came to the California Science Center from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida back in mid October 2012.  It is now on display permanently after flying 25 missions into space.  It was really amazing to see the size and magnitude of the shuttle. 

Chuck E Cheese - Jan 2nd

We promised we would take the kids during our Christmas break to Chuck E Cheese.  They all earned straight A's on their report cards for the trimester, and Chuck E Cheese gave them 15 free tokens each.  They had fun playing games and as we were leaving- feeling a bit hungry, but not wanting to spend money on pizza-we noticed there was a Taco Bell in the same shopping center...we used our Taco Bell gift card we received from Jeremy, Sarah and Jane and ate a free dinner!  It was a super fun, free family night out!

New Year's Eve 2012

Kiddos visiting Aunt Bonnie

Out riding bikes

Corbin hanging out

Ella riding her new bike

Andrew and his new skateboard

New Year's Eve sleep over with the Kellogg's!

Kelly came down to visit after attending a wedding in L.A. the weekend after Christmas.  The boys had a sleep over in the living room and Hannah had fun sleeping in the girl's room.  New Year's Eve day was spent going to IKEA for free breakfast and then going out to visit Aunt Bonnie, then back to IKEA for kid's-eat- free lunch and then off to the church parking lot to ride bikes and get all the pent up energy out (or so we thought).  After dinner we let the kids stay up until midnight - but none of them actually stayed up that late.  Ella and Kaitlyn crashed just 15 minutes or so before midnight.  All the others had dropped off earlier in the evening.  We watched Dick Clark's Rockin Eve on t.v. and had popcorn and other treats.  It was sure fun to have family come visit us!

Christmas 2012

Santa Came!

Christmas Morning!

Santa comes down every street in La Verne and passes out bags of fruits and nuts.  His transportation is the La Verne Fire truck!

Beautiful books from Grandma and Grandpa.

Aunt Bonnie and Gigi opening their gifts - Gigi being silly with a big bow on her head.

My parents came down and brought Grandma with them from Fresno.  They stayed the night at Aunt Bonnie's house.  They came over for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to join in the festivities.  Christmas Eve we invited Cari and Brett's family to come over too and we all ate our traditional Pizza Hut dinner.  Christmas morning as we were eating breakfast, we heard a a siren and lots of noise outside.  A fire truck was driving down our street with Santa riding on top yelling Merry Christmas thru a mega phone!  The fire fighters were walking around passing out bags of fruits and nuts.  I had heard that this was a long standing tradition in La Verne, but this was our first experience staying home for the holiday and actually witnessing it ourselves.  It was really neat.  I sure love the small town feel of our little city.