Happy Birthday Trek

Trek's birthday is the start of the Potter birthday month.  We have 4 birthdays in a month so his is always the start of it all.

For his birthday the kids (ahem, I) got him the new Lego Dimensions game for the Wii U.  We got that Wii U for Christmas, but only had 2 games for it.  This one is a lot of fun because it has lego people you get to play with in the game.  It's a great one for kids & grown ups to play together.

For his birthday breakfast, Trek had biscuits & gravy, bacon, & a Potter birthday breakfast cupcake.

37 years young.

Taya made Trek a little girl out of a toilet paper roll to help remind him of her.  

(How adorable can you get?).  She also gave him the $1 she had.

Lorien bought him an Anger Funko Doll for his desk at work.  We always tease that I'm Joy & Trek's Anger from Inside Out. . . which is funny because Trek NEVER gets mad.  He just likes how Anger's head starts on fire.

Grandma Kinsfather sent a beautiful card with money this year.  He bought himself some delicious gelato with his money.

Nancy sent Trek all sorts of new clothes, goodies, bacon themed things, & Star Wars PEZ dispensers. We always enjoy all the fun things our fairy godmother sends us.

My parents send him Super Mario Brothers 3D, a game he's been wanting ever since we got the Wii U.

And Cari & Justin sent him Super Mario Brothers for the Wii U.  Both are totally different games & both Mario games are a blast.  Trek is in HEAVEN.

I was the boring gift giver this time around.  I got him a universal remote since all our remotes are broken & don't do anything anymore.  Yay for being able to change the volume without walking to the TV.  How lazy are we?  ha ha ha

I also got him the Doctor Who lego to the Lego Dimension game. . . because . . . Doctor WHO!

For his birthday dinner, Trek wanted homemade chicken nuggets & funeral potatoes.  It's also pretty much the entire family's favorite dinner so it was a huge win for everyone.

And he requested CHEESECAKE for his cake this year.  I don't make cheesecake so I got to buy it which was a lot less stressful for me.  It was delicious.

Happy birthday sweetheart.  I hope your day was amazing.

Santa Cruz Fun

For Trek's 37th birthday we drove down to Santa Cruz to Trek's Aunt's house.  We love living so close to family here in CA.  Auntie lives right by the Santa Cruz Boardwalk so we spent the day eating fair food, riding rides, & playing fair games.

Dippin Dots is always a family favorite.

The kids & their rides.  They rode all sorts of fun things.  And they even got me on a puke inducing HUGE roller coaster.  I don't think I've been on a REAL roller coaster in 10 years.  It was SO MUCH FUN.

Trek enjoyed the bumper cars with Cadence & Lorien.  They were the only ones out there so they REALLY had fun crashing into each other.

After playing all afternoon, we went back to Auntie's house & had cake & sang Happy Birthday to Trek.  I'm glad we did something to celebrate his special day.

Having Fun

We've had a lot of fun these last two months.

Opa works up in the Bay Area regularly so we have seen him a LOT lately.  Him & Oma lived with us for 2 weeks in January while Tylee was really really sick & in the hospital in San Francisco.  Then Opa has come up a few times since then for work.  He always stops by to say hello & treat us with something fun.  The kids LOVE having Opa around.

The boys & I have started exploring the library downtown.  I finally feel like I can get into a routine here in CA & the boys missed story time in VA so we're trying out the story time here in Mountain View.  We love it.  The boys think it's pretty cool that there are 2 pieces of the Berlin Wall just outside the library doors.  They always want to go touch them every time we go to the library.

Bladen FINALLY lost his first tooth.  YAYAYAYAY!  He's a whole lot older than my other kids were.  He was SO excited.  Now he has a 2nd loose tooth that we expect to come out over the next week or two.  The tooth fairy brought him a whole dollar & he was THRILLED.

We also celebrated Mardi Gras this month like we always do.  Canyon got the baby in his cake last year so he helped me make the cake this year.  Actually, Craiger was a big help this time around.  We always have fun baking this guy.  This year Taya found the baby inside her cake piece she she'll be making the cake next year.

We had the opportunity of seeing President Obama here on base last week.  Air Force One flew in one day & out the next for some fund raiser he had to be at out here.  It was really neat.  I managed to get  shot of Air Force One taxi-ing into the base as well as the car driving out the base gate with the president inside.

The next day I went up closer & took some pics of Air Force One.  It's kind of exciting that he flies right into the base twice a year.

We've also had several visits from Auntie Tylee these past two months as well.  Tylee got really really sick in Peru at Thanksgiving & brought back a super bug that almost killed her.  She has 2 collapsed lungs & really truly almost died.  We are SO grateful to still have her with us.  The kids love it when she comes over to spend the night & play with us.  She is such a wonderful, loving Auntie.  We love living SO close to her.

Tomorrowland

One thing we're really loving about Trek's new job & this area is the technology here.  Trek sees SO MANY COOL things every day at his work.  He's always bringing home new "TOYS" to have us try out here at home.  I think my kids are having more fun than Trek is.

He's brought home a hover board a few times already & it's by far the funnest of all the toys.

Trek got a BB8 robot for Christmas & all the kids enjoy programming him to move, dance, sleep, & do exactly what they want him to do.

We have drones everywhere.  Big drones, microscopic drones, I swear I'm going to have to get helicopter blades out of my girls' hair one of these days.

Google Cardboard virtual reality technology is pretty cool too.  We like "traveling" all over the world virtually & seeing the sights.

I have to laugh.  We live in a real life TOMORROWLAND right now.  And we wouldn't change that for anything in the world.

Lorien's Cello

My very favorite thing about living in CA is that the schools here teach strings.  In VA they only taught band instruments, which is great too, but I'm a string teacher so I was DYING to have at least ONE of my kids play a string.  

Lorien was SO THRILLED when she chose the cello as her instrument.  Her music teacher was nervous at first since the entire 5th grade orchestra was only violins.  Plus we moved here 3 months into the school year so she'd be 3 months behind everyone else.  I promised her that I would teach her at home & that I'd have her up to speed within a month.  She gave us a month trial to see if we could accomplish that.

We rented a really beautiful cello from a music store down the road & I got right to work.  It brought back SO MANY MEMORIES.  I miss playing my viola SO much.  Within 2 weeks, Lorien was already at the skill level the rest of her class was.  Already knowing her musical theory from piano lessons was a big help & she just naturally plays the cello beautifully.  I'm SO proud of her.

She is the only cellist at the entire school so she really stands out when she plays.  She's also really good at slap cello to help her class keep the beat.  Her orchestra teacher ADORES her & uses her a lot in their lessons.  Each day she practices she improves more & more & she is happy which makes me happy.

I love my little cellist.

New Year's Eve Fun

Okay, so I've been REALLY bad in 2016 so far.  Time to update my blog & catch up on the last two months.  We've been SO busy!

New Year's Eve was fantastic this year.  We had Opa & Oma staying with us.  All 6 kids stayed up until midnight, including Canyon!  We played twister & tons of other fun games, ate lots of yummy snacks foods, & rang in the New Year with Martinelli's.  It was great spending time as a family.