Bay Hills Christmas show-

So every children's program needs one kid to make everyone laugh. We took one for the team and let it be our daughter who showed off her underwear. Clearly when your pantyhose are riding up you need to fix it! This will be a good one when she's 16!

Best Friends!

Last weekend my best friend Ali (Aunt Ali to the girls) brought her daughter down for a visit. We were so excited since Avery has never met Taylor and Isabel was only 6 months when she came with me to meet her the first time. Ali, Sara and I get together at least once a year but it's hard to decide should it be "girls weekend" or "family weekend". So far girls weekend has won!
Unfortunately Sara couldn't come but she was forgiven as she was days away from delivering twins!
It was a short trip but we crammed a lot in 48 hours. Taylor's Uncle Brian (Tommy's brother) lives in Berkeley so we met up with him for dinner on Friday. On Saturday we went down to "little Farm" in Berkeley, came home so the girls could nap and I could go to a baby shower, and then hit Six Flags that evening. It was Taylor's first time on roller coasters so all-in-all it was a pretty good weekend. The girls had so much fun together, they held hands everywhere we went and we can already tell they are going to be "best friends" too!

Halloween 2010

This year there was a lot of excitement for Halloween in this house. All coming from Avery and all because of candy. If you asked Avery what her perfect day would be I think it would involve unlimited candy and unlimited TV.  The one thing she wasn't sure about was what to dress up as. It changed daily and I don't think she really understood the concept completely. That was too my favor as at least she wasn't asking for one of those $50 costumes at the store. We can wait a few more years on that. Right now the motto is "homemade all the way", at least until she can fight me more on it. Then I'll probably just tell Grandma and still not have to buy anything!
Once again we got a group shot with all our friends. This time we decided not to go to Picture People and all that chaos because really, why were we paying someone when we have a photographer in the group! We ended up putting a background up at my house and having everyone come over here. Imagine 17 kids, 5 mothers, rainy day, popcorn, cookies, pizza,  lots of laughs and you would know what the day was like. I did have to mop later that night but it was absolutely worth it and hopefully we can do something like that again next year.
Avery turned out to be a variation of Abby Cadabby from Sesame Street and Isabel was a dog.

On Halloween our church had our annual "Trunk or Treat" we spent most of the night there. Since I help organize that it's pretty hard to get away to go around the neighborhood. Hopefully next year when they are a bit older we can do that. I don't think they really cared as they still got a lot of candy. My rule was that they could pretty much eat all they wanted that night, (much easier that following them around pulling candy from their hands and dealing with fits) but the candy would go away on Monday. I am fully confident they took advantage of this with everything they had. Isabel usually had at least 2 pieces of candy in hand all night and every time I looked at Avery she was chewing something. They played a few games and played with a few friends so I think Halloween was a success!

 This is Simeon one of the children of the woman who watches the girls. She loves him.

 This is Isabel with Lani (in the back) and Linda, our children's director at church.

 Avery with her friend from Sunday School who was also Abby Cadabby.

 Doing the limbo.

 Isabel with Amaia, another little girl who goes to the same daycare.

Blue Angels

One of the perks of not living in a "land-locked" state is that they have a Fleet Week. Not sure what that means but it starts with an airshow by the Blue Angels. We've been here 7 years but we've never made it to one. There have been times we've been traveling through the city and we've seen the Blue Angels flying overhead but, last year was the first year we tried to go in the city to see the show. Our first year and guess what, we got fogged out. At the last minute they canceled the show and the Angels did not fly. Well, this year I decided that things would be different. We had beautiful weather and I just knew they wouldn't cancel it. In fact we decided to have a full family weekend. On Saturday we all went to the Lawrence Berkeley Children's Museum and had a great time. On Sunday I decided my kids would see the air show, too bad Ryan didn't feel well. So, it wasn't perfect but it was neat. Hopefully Ryan will make it next year, but I did get some neat video.

I can't believe I forgot my telephoto lens, too bad or these pictures would have been better.

The girls were a little more interested in playing in the sand. It was REALLY loud so Isabel was a bit frightened at times but actually she was a bit more interested than Avery.

Afterward we hung out and played in the sand while we waited for the traffic to get better.