Trek's 39th Birthday

Happy 39th Birthday to the love of my life.  

For Trek's birthday, we invited his whole family to come celebrate with us.  Not everyone could come, but a lot of his family did & it was wonderful.  We love living close enough for family to travel to us & us to them.

On his actual birthday (January 25th) Trek opened presents from Nancy, my family, & us.  He got some really fun things:

Mimi & Baba got him some new guitar strings & a bluetooth speaker.

Justin & Cari got him a nice laptop case.

The kids & I got him a pair of new shoes for work & a quip toothbrush.  He's been
wanting a quip toothbrush for a while now.  If you haven't heard of them
check out the website: quip  The toothbrush is only $25 & it's like a sonicare.
Every 3 months they send you a new battery for it & a new brush head for $5 or
a new battery, new brush head, & 2 packages of toothpaste for $10.  It's a total
practical gift, but he was really excited about it.

Nancy got him some really nice new clothes & some funny pillows.

On Friday & Saturday his family came into town & stayed with us.  Saturday morning we did a big birthday breakfast for him with biscuits & gravy (his favorite), bacon, grapes, & a Potter family cupcake.

His parents brougth him some fun little gifts to enjoy.

We then all went to see the movie "The Greatest Showman" AGAIN.  I swear I could see that movie a thousand times in the theater & still not see it enough.  We LOVE that movie.  The soundtrack plays in a continuous loop at our house & so we were thrilled to go again.  Thank you Tylee & Jeff for treating us all to that.  It was amazing & we are SO grateful.

After the movie, we all went to a laser tag place & played a giant game of laser tag.  This place was awesome.  Even Canyon & Ella (who are 4) could play & they LOVED it.  There was an arcade that the kids could play at too.  I wish I had taken more pictures, but we were having way too much fun to think about pictures.  

And for the record. . . . I'm still the grand champion of laser tag.

After laser tag, we came back to the house & I made a huge Mexcian food dinner with tacos, burritos, nachos, & all the fixings.  There was fruit & veggies & all sorts of yummy things.

And after dinner we had ice cream cake from Cold Stone which is Trek's favorite.

It was SO much fun spending time with family for the weekend.  Trek had a great time & we just loved being with everyone.

Happy Birthday Trek.

January Fun

January 2018 has been fun for us.  We've mostly been busy with school/work/etc., but we had some fun in there too (including our trip to Pigeon Point & the Jelly Belly Factory).

The boys got to go to their best friends' house this month to participate in a real life Mario Kart race.  It was adorable.  They had 3 power wheel vehicles & all the kids got to race each other around the yard like Mario would.  Canyon especially loved being with his very best friend.  It was a fun family outing with friends.  We are so blessed to have such wonderful friends here.

Craiger worked all month on a book he wrote himself.  He wrote it, illustrated it, & just read it over & over & over to us.  He was very proud of his accomplishment.

I'm trying to enjoy my last year of having Canyon at home.  I can't believe he starts Kindergarten next year.  It's crazy.  We have little impromtu dates here & there & go out for lunch or ice cream or surprises at the dollar store.  This month we got ice cream . . . . in JANUARY.  I'm sure going to miss CA weather.

And Cadence has spent the entire month helping me prepare things for her 15th birthday party.  She is doing a HUGE murder mystery party & she's the main character of it.  .  .  Genesee Glasco.  (She's a bad guy world leader which makes it even more fun).  She finally got her costume put together for it. Don't be fooled by it's angelic whites & teals . . . she is a world tyrant out to destroy.  ha ha ha.  She's such a doll though.  It's going to be a fun party.  She invited her entire seminary class, a few kids on base, & her church class friends.  There are 25 teens coming.  Aaaaaah!  But it's going to be fun.

Jelly Belly Factory

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the kids were out of school & Trek didn't have to work, so we decided to go somewhere fun on our "Bay Area Bucket List" since we've only got about 5 more months here.  We ended up going to the Jelly Belly Factory & we were SO glad we did.  It was a blast.

They do free tours of the factory there which the kids had a blast with.  Everybody got to wear these cute hats & we got to see first hand how Jelly Belly jelly beans are made.

There were SO MANY JELLYBEANS.  Just stacks & stacks & stacks of beans.  The tour said there were over 40 million beans in the factory that day.  It was incredible.  The entire place smelled like a cavity if that's even possible.  It seriously smelled so sweet that it almost made you sick to your stomach.  The kids of course LOVED that.

It was really neat watching both machines & people work together to make, sort, & package all the jelly beans.  Some of those machines are AMAZING.

They also have some really fun mini-games for kids to play along the tour route (which is like 1/2 a mile long).  They enjoyed that too.

There was also a beautiful gallery of portraits made completely out of jelly beans.  The kids liked the Darth Vader one.

After the tour you get a free box of jelly beans to try & then we spent a good half hour in the jelly belly store trying free samples, & buying favorites.  Trek got a ton of fudge & I got some buttered popcorn jelly beans.

It was a really fun family day.  Local friends, if you haven't got up to see this yet, go.  It's free, it's fun, & it's fabulous for kids of all ages.

Pigeon Point Lighthouse & Tide Pools

For New Years Day, we decided to take a trip to the beach.  We really didn't know where we wanted to go, but we headed west anyway.  Half Moon Bay was crazy packed/busy so we just kept heading down the coast & found the most amazing things at Pigeon Point.  The first thing we saw was this amazing lighthouse.  I love lighthouses.  This one was gorgeous.

There was a little path down from the base of the lighthouse that took you down to the beach which ended up NOT being a beach at all, but a bunch of tide pools.  I guess when the ocean is at low tide here, you can walk on the ocean floor & see all the cool things that live at the bottom of the ocean.  The tide comes in at around 6pm & everything on that beach is under 6 feet of water at that point.  We were SO glad we came when we did because we had the time of our lives exploring all afternoon before the tide came in.

There were so many cool rocks, anemones, shells, oysters, crabs. . . SO many things to see.

The kids loved the anemones.  When you touch them (gently) they move & sometimes even spit water at you.

I was surprised at how many oysters & clams we found.  We were very careful to not step on or harm anything as we explored.  It was amazing.

There were SO MANY starfish too.  It was SO cool.  I'd never seen a starfish in the wild before.  And the pictures just don't do them justice.  They are all still under water.  There were little pools of water everywhere & that's where all the animals were.  The water was crystal clear & just beautiful.

There were tons of crabs too.  Cadence would scream every time one ran past her.

The coral was beautiful.  It was all over the sand.  There was white coral & purple coral & red coral.  Just gorgeous.

The starfish were so bright & vibrant.

And we found a live jellyfish in one of the pools.  How cool is that?

Lorien found a lobster claw on the sand.

The kids had so much fun.  Sometimes NOT having a plan & just exploring is the best way to spend time as a family.   What a wonderful New Years we had.

Back up at the light house, there was a little museum where you could see how the lens' of the lighthouse worked.  It was really cool.

What a wonderful, calming, peacful day.  If you haven't been to Pigeon Point, GO.  It was perfect.