Great Weather for January

It has been very good weather up here, and we knew the rain was coming, so we had to take advantage of it. I took the boys, and dog, to Horseshoe Lake in the morning, then when Dad got home he took the up to Monkey Face rock. It was a great day of hiking and exploring.

Rainbow

In between rain showers we were treated to this! It was a full rainbow but I could only get half at a time. It was beautiful. These pictures don't even show how bright the colors were.

Second week of Christmas

Well like I said we had a "Memories" Christmas. So the fun continues. We were so happy to see lots of friends and family and sad that there were some that we missed, but we will catch them next time. Thank you friends and family for a great Christmas. Here are some more Pics.

Sunday: We went to church at Calvary Chapel East Anaheim then to the park to let the kids run around. Mel Nowak joined us. Then we changed places we were staying, we went to Mel's for the next few nights. That night we played games with Herb, Polly, Tony, Melanie and Shelli and Mel

Monday : Knotts Berry Farm. This is where me and Jay met 18 1/2 years ago. We were both working here in 1990. It is neat to see where God has taken us, good and bad, in those 18 1/2 years. I am excited for the rest of our adventures. We were really impressed with Knotts and the fact that they did not need to keep Christ out of Christmas. This awesome nativity set was right when you walk in the doors. And in the Snoopy ice show they share the "real meaning" of Christmas and they actually call it that. It was also neat to hear the cheers from the audience when the "Story" was over, definite approval. There were also lots of people taking pictures here with the Nativity.
One of Scout and Breandan's Favorite rides :-)

Tuesday: We met up with some family on Tuesday night for dinner. Aunt Laura, Aunt Becky, Leah, Becky's fiancee Doug and his kids (sorry I can't remember their names, we just met them). We went to Chuck E Cheese to play then to Red Robin to eat LOL. It was great to see everyone.

Wednesday: We started staying at Vance and Priscella's house for the rest of our trip. They have a New Years Eve party every year. We have spent New years with them for the past 13 years only missing one (last year). They even came up here one year. It was great to spend time with them.
Shelli and Mel: This years theme was to make up a game for everyone to play
Me, Mel and Priscella

Thursday: New Years Day : We went and spent part of the day with Will and Annalisa. It was so good to see them. Then we went to Medieval Times thanks to Mema and Papa Nash for our Christmas present. Mema and Papa Lord, Uncle Royal, Aunt Denise and Becky also joined us. The boys were so into it, it was hard to get them to eat.

Becky Drake with the boys

Our Knight, the red one, won. That was even more exciting for the boys.

Friday: Right before our drive home we went and picked up Nana and went to the beach. Nana loves the beach and calls it "Her Ocean" It was the perfect end to our vacation.

The drive home was long but uneventfull. It was really hard to come home and back to reality from so much fun. But, we are back in the swing of things now with school, work and soccer.

Christmas Week

We had a great vacation. We went down to So. Cal. for two weeks to have Christmas with family. Instead of presents this year we decided to have a "Memories" Christmas. We had so much fun and we were really busy. I will post our first week today and our second week later. It was so good to see lots of family and friends.

Really our adventures started the day before we left. Our new exchange student came from Korea his name is Scout and he is 13. And we had a visit from another one of our students, Mari, who is from Japan. It was so good to see her. She is graduating from San Francisco State and going back to Japan. We will definitely keep in touch with her as she is part of the family. Then for the drive, it took us 8 1/2 hours, not bad with 5 kids. Check out the pics below for the rest of the week of fun. We always said, because we used to live down in So Cal., that we would never do the "tourist" thing, especially since we used to work at Knotts and Disney, but we did. It was a lot of fun with the boys.

Mari Our exchange student from Japan

We stayed in a timeshare with my parents in Anaheim

Monday: Mema and Papa Lord took us Ice Skating for Christmas. We went to Anaheim Ice. The boys had no problem staying up, even Breandan. Roller Hockey really helped.

Tuesday: One of our presents to the boys was Disneyland. We had a great time. Breandan is now big enough to go on everything except Indiana Jones.

Breandan was one of the kids chosen to do the Jedi training. We got to learn the light saber fight then fought Darth Vader. He was so excited.

This is Snow Whites wishing well, this is where we got engaged 16 years ago. Now look at our family!

Wednesday, Christmas Eve: DownTown Disney.

Ready for bed Christmas Eve!

Thursday, Christmas Day: We always start our morning with our last advent. It is a great time of focusing on Christ on His Birthday

Santa and his Elf

Mema and Papa also took us to the movies. We went to the movies in the afternoon and saw "The Tale of Despereaux"

Christmas Night we went to Uncle Royal and Aunt Denise's house

Friday: We visited our friend Chrissy and got to meet her new baby Alexander. Her other son Troy was sick so we missed him and Patrick, her husband.

Saturday: To end the first week we went to see Becky (who came up to Chico for school and lived with us for about a year) and her Mom and Dad. Then we went to have our big family Christmas with my Grandma, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins

We had a very busy and fun week.