Mountain Man

Thank you God for the mountains!! and my cute mountain man who loves them as much as I do.

Birthday Visit

Got together with the highschool girls today to celebrate Lynette's recent birthday and my upcoming birthday. I love it that we still get together to celebrate each other after all these years. Love these girls so much. The kids especially had fun swimming in Brandy's pool and eating ice cream. Thanks for hosting Bran!

Level 3

Although we intended to send Haylie to swim lessons last summer, we kept finding ourselves "behind the 8-ball" and the classes were full or the timing didn't work... So this year we finally got her in and she has done great!! It was amazing how quickly she caught on with a little focus and direction. After about a week, her teacher said she was pretty much ready for the next level. She accomplished everything she was supposed to including swimming under the water, jumping in, getting rings from the bottom of the pool. It was fun to watch her so proud of herself with each step. We signed her up for the Level 3 next, where she will learn more of the swimming techniques including freestyle and backstroke - we'll see how she does.

We decided to sign James up for swim lessons as well, and although it was probably still a good idea to get some practice for him I was doubting it throughout the session. He wanted nothing to do with putting his face in the water which was his main objective for Level 1. In fact half of the days he got out of the pool mid-way through the lesson and said he was done, came over to me and wanted to go home! Needless to say James did not graduate to Level 2 but it was worth a try!

Adult time

It sure is nice to get some time now and then to hang out with my love, no kids attached! Micah was offered some free tickets to check out the Sacramento Capitals so we figured it was a good excuse for a date night. I've never been to a real tennis match before; although when we went to New York we actually bought tickets for the US Open which happened to be going on while we were there. Unfortunately the matches were rained out that day and our schedule didn't allow us to make it back. So, it was fun to actually get to watch a live professional tennis match - a new experience for us:

We ran into an old co-worker of mine from the bank and Micah's boss as well. We all got access to the VIP section and appetizers before the game:

I liked their cute outfits and a couple of the girls had very toned arms which is my personal gym goal!

One last picture - driving Micah a little crazy with the photos but it was such a fun time I wanted to document it!

Hiking

As part of our weekend getaway we went hiking (walking) along a path to a waterfall. It was such a fun trip and I want to find more day trips like this one. We love being out in nature and exploring.

So beautiful:

At the top - viewing the falls:

This just makes me happy:

Haylie loved climbing on all the rocks along the path and conquering each rock:

Craziest thing - on the way back we saw some good friends of ours walking up the trail. We had no idea the other was going and this wasn't a popular trail - neither of us had been here before and it is about 3 hours from home - so weird. Haylie had fun playing with her friend Sierra for awhile and climbing the rocks together:

James a little tired on the way back:

Craft Fair

Micah did a great job finding fun activities for us to go to on our trip. There was a big craft fair going on in town with music and yummy treats... While Daddy and the kids had fun looking at all the sweets they offered, Mommy and Haylie had fun looking at all the cutesy crafts like tutus and hair bows. Ultimately the kids each got to pick one thing to take home... James got a pop gun and Haylie got a pink snake.

Children's Festival and Renaissance Fair

After wandering around Nevada City we headed to the main event - the children's festival and renaissance fair. It was such a great event - better than we even expected - fire breathing dragon and all. I thought all of the craft ideas were so creative and very well put together. There was a big castle at the beginning that the kids could paint. The hit of the day was the table full of wood parts and tools where Daddy made James a sword and Haylie a wand. James carried his sword around the rest of the weekend and even slept with it by his side every night. Mommy helped by sawing off the tip to make it pointy!! There were probably 20 different free craft tables with fun, creative crafts that the kids really loved making. One of the crafts was painting pillowcases to make their own tunics. For the rest of the weekend James walked around with an angry face, beating off imaginary bad guys with his new super cool sword and shield. On the way back to the car we had to stop at the park when Haylie found her favorite thing - Monkey Bars!

2 more parts to come...