3 Little Monkeys Jumping in the Bed!

It's official - they're having FUN!

Happy Birthday Ella

This sweet angel turned 4 today. Is she not the sweetest thing ever?

Here's a glimpse of what we were up to today.

Lots of loving and kissing

The birthday girl LOVES Jaeger Ray and will make an excellent babysitter one day.

HOLY TORNADO!

Plenty of time spent playing in the California sun.

Pooped after a long day of playing.

Helping the kids finish their dinner so they can indulge in the birthday cupcakes.

Birthday celebration

And this is how the ladies indulged!

We made it!

It was a long day, but we were all so excited to be here. The kids made themselves at home immediately.


while we shared our first glass of wine. Delicious!

Blogging from 30,000 feet!

Besides missing our first flight and having to be rescheduled for a later flight*, our trip has been unbelievably smooth. I hate to jinx it as we still have an hour and half left of this flight, but the boys have been wonderful. Jaeger slept for about 35 minutes on the first flight and is currently entertaining himself with the abundance of toys I brought for him. Dane is out cold right next to me. I haven't even had to pull out Word World yet!!! We've been reading stories, playing with our new magnetic construction site, gazing out the window, and even having a few successes on the airplane potty. What more could a mommy ask for?

Here are a few pics of our morning.

Waiting patiently in Juneau

Dane has been such a good boy!

Unwrapping his first gift of the trip.

Success - Dane loves his new magnetic construction site!

A tender moment at the Seattle airport.

*I thought I was so organized and prepared for this trip!!! The one thing I didn't do is recheck my flight time yesterday and I went off memory. Huge mistake. What made me think I could actually remember my flight time is beyond me. I have the worst memory on the planet. I thought our flight was at 6:30 and we got there at 5:30 only to be informed it was leaving at 6:00. ARGH!! Thankfully, the woman at the Alaska Airlines was great and was able to get me on the 8:00 flight. Plus I was able to get an infant block for Jaeger which meant we've had an entire row for the 3 of us on both flights. Perhaps it all worked out for the best. Who knows if I would have been able to do that on the earlier flights. :) Just trying to make myself feel better and not like the complete imbecile I actually am.

So excited....

to see all these wonderful people!

Traveling alone with 2 kids under 3 will totally be worth it. :)

Famous!

Dane was in the paper on Sunday! We are participating in a summer reading program put on by our local library where you read 10 books at home, fill out the record sheet and then you get to pick out your very own book to take home. Not a shabby deal at all, especially since we're reading that many a day anyhow. ;) This is the photo that was featured in the paper. It's of Dane and his friend Maddy after story/craft time at the library.

Click here to see Dane in the paper.

And here are a few of the books Dane has chosen.

Okay, I'll be honest, I chose Duck Goes Potty. I had high hopes that Duck may help Dane go potty, but no such luck. :(

We love Daddy!

What a wonderful day Father's Day we all had today!
It began with these sweet videos we made for DADDY-ah!




The above video was the inspiration for our song below...
Jaeger is absolutely hilarious in this video and hopefully you can hear our song despite his cries. :)



And soon after DADDY-ah watched these videos, we then had a bit of trouble with one of these guys...


We were driving to catch a flight on this...


and apparently they don't like it if you drive 74 mph in a 55 mph posted zone. After a short lecture and $124 later we were back on the road for Dane and Daddy's Father's Day Surprise - a helicopter ride to the Taku Glacier. :)

Here they are gearing up.

I love this picture. Dane looks like he's running to the helicopter! He was so excited!

Ready for take-off.

Up on the Taku Glacier.

Pilot Mike giving Dane a high 5.

Apparently, Dane charmed the socks of the pilot. And I think the feeling was mutual as I've never seen Dane let someone he doesn't know pick him up for a picture! As you can imagine, Pilot Mike has made it into Dane's imaginary play for the last few days.

We then went to the wharf to see the float planes take off and have lunch at our favorite place in town, Pizzeria Roma. YUMMY!

Despite the ticket at the beginning, it wound up being a pretty awesome day.

Happy Father's Day DADDY-ah.
We definitely think you're an awesome fella
We love what you are, We love what you do....
OOOOO we love you!

Happy Birthday Ya-ya!

A pretty stellar day for Dane

If Dane could rate the best days of his nearly 3 years of life, today would be right at the top. Look at what an awesome day he had...

We started the day playing "fire truck" and Dane spent all of Jaeger's ninety minute nap playing with his collapsible fire truck. This photo shows Dane inside, but for most of the time, guess who was inside - - yep, MOMMY - oh and I got to be the passenger, so I got to climb to the back every time (No one is getting any younger in this household - so this was no small task either!!!!)

(This picture was actually taken in Puerto Penasco - fun memories!)

Then we went to Ward Air, Dane's Disneyland, to test out the planes, forklifts, fuel trucks, vans, and other hardware. The icing on this cake was that Dane got to steer the van on Daddy's lap, while we drove around the airport viewing the construction equipment working on the runway expansion.


After lunch and a nap, he resumed his hard work, now playing with this...


Next, we fed the ducks with Payton and his family.....

Not exactly sure who ate more bread, the ducks or Dane!


At the duck park, they also have a fun playground !

Back at home, he spent some quality time in the ditch - a new favorite pasttime. :)


But, I think Dane's favorite part of today was riding go-karts with Daddy! Unfortunately, I was home with Jaeger so we don't have pictures, but I know we'll be going again soon as he absolutely LOVED it. :)
An outstanding day indeed!

Look what was parked on our street today!

As you can imagine, this was very exciting for Dane!

Here he is supervising the job.
Notice his hardhat - as soon as he saw the utility workers, he ran inside to get his own construction hat!

The workers were slightly widening and smoothing out the ditches on our street, so Dane thought he'd help out a bit on our own ditch.

After a hard day working in the ditch, Dane couldn't wait to partake in one of his favorite pastimes - rock collecting!
(Yep, we're at that point in childhood already - I have to check every last pocket to make sure I'm not washing an unwanted friends in the machine.)

Movie Monday!

Happy Birthday Auntie Kissy!




We love you!

Sunday Snapshot

Like father, like son!
And for those of you that haven't seen Dane's "weed wacker" it's actually a giant upside down yellow flower.
Isn't a two year old's imagination fantastic?

Strawberries and "Putella" - a winning combination

Daddy's newest addiction is Nutella and he especially loves it with strawberries. Of course, Dane was completely willing to give this hazelnut spread a try and he fell in love the second it hit his lips. Now, he's requesting all of his fruit with "Putella!" Between his new found love for Sunday donuts (yep, Daddy bribed him - "If you're a good boy at church, we'll get donuts!" I think they're more for Daddy than anyone else. ;) ) and fruit with Putella we've now got a kid who has a significant sweet tooth. He's come a long way from his first birthday when he wouldn't even try his birthday cake. :)

Gotta love how clean it is. ;)

Good to the very last morsel.

Sadly, it's already over!

Nannie and Guy's trip that is.

How did 2 weeks already come and go? We had such a wonderful time playing out in the sunshine (I'm pretty sure the number of sunny days Nannie & Guy had must be a record for any of our guests!), reading stories, playing cars, visiting with many of our Juneau friends, gardening, swinging and sliding, playing firetrucks, learning to sew all over again (I'm sure Nannie is sick of teaching me how to do it - perhaps I should think about practicing in between their visits) eating lots of egg rolls (compliments of Na!) and yummy crab (compliments of Erik & Lindsi), going to the airport, and most importantly, just visiting and spending precious quality time together.

Jaeger Ray LOVED Guy and obviously, the feeling was mutual.

Guy, Daddy and Dane at the monthly Home Deep Kids Workshop. They made the cutest little soccer game - it looks like a mini foosball. And while the boys were at Home Deep, Nannie, Jaeger and I went to my book club. I loved that Nannie got to meet all of my Sworn Sistas as they are such an important part of my life. :)

Spending time with Dane & Jaeger

Dane munching on a donut compliments of Nannie!

Wheelbarrow fun!

Weeeeee

One of Dane's favorite past times - mowing the lawn with Daddy

Dane can't get enough reading and he especially loved listening to Guy and Nannie read!

Nannie snapped this picture of Dan. I thought it was adorable.

This is how we all felt about having Guy and Nannie here and we're all super sad they are gone. It went way too fast and we're already looking forward to their next visit (hint hint!!)