Oh Canada!

We survived another cross country trip, this time minus Jack, but plus D! My little sister was such a great help in making the 15 hr drive with me and the kids and it was so nice to see my parents and my other little sister C and her cute little twins. I finally got to meet them!! It was nice to have Ez come back for a little part of it too. So, again, almost all the family were together...almost all....we really need to work on getting the whole gang together!! :o)

But here's some pics of our trip back in August.

Cousins.
Playing at the park.

Jaxon loved playing with the twins and holding the babies. He's such a sweet boy!!
Ahhhh, love my sisters!
Family
Me and my bro!
He's so good with all the kids. :o)
Me and the twins.
My nieces sporting some homemade crafty goodness I made them. :o)
Cami and Jaxon.
Oh I love my cute fam...Miss them all so much already!

Beach, Beach, Beach!-Cali part 2

The end of July we were able to meet up with the Madsen side of the family for their yearly beach trip to San Elijo and had so much fun with lazy days at Moonlight beach.

I promise, my kids did enjoy the beach...though it's hard to tell from some of these pictures. :o)
Here's Jack reliving his younger days with Mailee. Jack has these same types of pictures of his dad throwing him up in the air too when he was younger.
This is how Jaxon spent most of his beach days....staring into a bucket of sand that had sand crabs hidden in it. He loved catching, watching the catching, and holding sand crabs. :o)
Mailee LOOOOVED the ocean. She is totally her daddy. Apparently Jack's mom would try and take Jack to the edge of the water and have a wave kind of knock him down to get him scared of the water when he was little so he wouldn't wander into it without parents knowing...well, we tried the same thing with Mailee and we got the same result as when Jack's parents did it to him....they just wanted more of the water!
Jack actually took Mailee out boogey boarding and she really enjoyed it.
Mailee also enjoyed wrestling with Grandpa and the other cousins.
While Jaxon enjoyed just sitting with Grandma. :o)
I looooved that the kids got to spend time with their cousins. Jaxon was finally at an age that he could actually play with the other cousins. :o)

Mailee showing off her new swimsuit.
Jaxon crawling through a sand tunnel that the older cousins had made.
Kids enjoying the beach. :o)
Oh how we miss the beach so much already!
It was so nice being with family and we had almost everyone there and we missed Nick and Crys' family sooooo much!! Can't wait until next year!

Cali, Cali Fun!--Part 1

We are sad to be done with our month in California, and we are sad to be away from all the fun family and friends we got to hang with, and we are sad that we had to say good bye to Jack for another month...but while Jack is in Ohio, we are enjoying our stay with Utah family...and coming up soon, our Canadian family! :o) But in the meantime, here's some more memories captured of our fun time in Cali. We got to have some fun with Jack's cousins and extended family at Grandma Davis'.

Pool was too cold for me, but Jack and the kids couldn't resist the water and of course the diving board.

I can't believe I don't have pictures of the fun cousins we were hanging with!! But I promise, they were there. :o)
Tom let us play with one of his fun birthday party entertainment before the party started.
Thank you Tom! :o) Our kids...ok, and me too...had sooo much fun in the bounce house!
Sooooo much fun with Tew cousins!!
We got to stay in San Diego with Jack's wonderful sister and her family while Jack worked at Camp Pendleton and had sooooo much fun getting to know their family and having our kids play together. We miss them so much already!
While we were closer to the San Diego area, we visited Balboa Park.
So many beautiful buildings and architecture to see!
Kids loved the fish ponds with the lily pads.
Gardens were fun to see too.

And my favorite pic of the day at Balboa Park---Jack playing with the kids at the fountain.

July 1st and 4th

So, with both a Canadian and Americans in our household, we usually celebrate both Canada Day and Independence day. I hadn't really planned anything for July 1st since we were away from home, but thanks to some awesome friends out here in Cali, we were still able to celebrate with a huge breakfast and bbq later that night. And of course, we had to get in some fireworks to celebrate too. :o)
Jack and Tyler showing us all how it's done.
The kids weren't actually that pleased with the fireworks and got pretty scared of the sparklers.
...that's why the sad faces...
We also went to the beach for the July holiday weekend. Unfortunately, it was a little bit colder right off the beach then we anticipated, so we didn't stay too long. But I'm glad we still got a beach trip in. :o)
Jack introduced Mailee to the ocean for the first time.
Jaxon loved playing in the sand.
And last but not least, we celebrated the fourth with family in Glendora. We went to a parade in the morning...but it was not as entertaining as we might have hoped, so we left pretty quick and went swimming for the rest of the day.
I can't believe we didn't get a family picture of all of us in our red, white, and blue.
We are so grateful to live in a free country and we had fun celebrating our independence!