What a big day tomorrow will be!

I can't believe that our sweet little Jaeger Ray will be 4 tomorrow.  It seems like just yesterday we were bonding at midnight, two, four and 6 am.  And now he's sleeping so soundly that I was able to hang these up.  :)

Can't wait for him to wake up so we can start celebrating. :) 

We're alive and well!!

My goodness, it's been A LONG TIME!!!  We've having an amazing summer.  It's been incredibly warm and sunny here and we've been spending every free moment outside!  We have lots to share and we'll be catching up with the blog in the next few days.  Until then, we wanted to show you what our sweet little Jaeger Ray has been up to.




The funny part is that we weren't planning on taking off Jaeger's training wheels at all.  Jaeger walked into the garage yesterday and asked, "Daddy, could you please take my training wheels off?"  Daddy took them off thinking that it would be a waste of time and he'd have to just put them right back on.  But little Jaeger Ray knew exactly what he was ready for.  Not too shabby for a little guy that's not even 4 yet. :)

Happy Birthday Rescue Turtle

Last week, Dane informed me that it was Rescue Turtle's birthday, so what was a Mom to do?  Plan a birthday bash, of course. :)  Here's Dane and his favorite rescue turtle (doesn't everyone have one?) 

All the guests...

 The birthday cookie and candles (he turned 2 - we somehow missed the one year celebration!)

I'm up for any excuse to make some good cookies! :)  And since I recently found out that Daddy is a HUGE fan of Red Velvet Cake I found a Red Velvet Cookie recipe just for him {and for Rescue Turtle too}.  It was a huge success.  Are you a Red Velvet fan?  If so, try these out! 

Here's what else we've been up to - 

Dane's been asking to help with the dishes recently -  Ummmm....let me think....yep, pretty sure I'm going to say yes to that!  Go get 'em tiger. 

We had an amazingly warm and sunny weekend!  The boys and I had a special Mommy and me day and we soaked up some sun and water at Sandy Beach.  

And since we were in Douglas, we stopped by the fire station.  It is a volunteer station and we got super lucky that Firefighter Keegan was there.  He was amazing and let the boys sit in every vehicle.  The boys loved it (you'd think they'd grow tired of this firefighter stuff!  Don't worry, Unk Tim, they're not!) 

Afterwards we went by our favorite pizza place and had a couple of slices. Heavenly....

We spent the rest of the weekend gardening and fighting fires.  :)  

A pretty awesome weekend for all! 

Look who's reading!

Yep, this is one of THOSE posts.....my kid is super amazing!!!

Happy Easter!

We had such a wonderful Easter today and it felt so nice to have such a happy day after the last two Easters (You may recall, but if not, check it out here and here.)

Daddy and I were grumbling quite a bit when the alarm rang at  5:00 am,  but it was so worth it!  It was amazingly beautiful at the glacier this morning with the fog rolling in and the hint of a sunrise behind the clouds.  These pictures don't really do it justice at all, but here's where we had our Easter service this morning.  When it's a beautiful day in Juneau, there really is no more beautiful place on earth and we were blessed with that today! Quite fitting, don't you think? :)

Here's Dane at the service.  I managed not to take too many shots as it was rather cold without my mittens on. :) 

After the service, we went home to find out what the Easter Bunny left us.  The boys were pretty excited with the the chocolate bunny, Legos, and Bubble gun machine they got.  

After the excitement of the indoor Easter egg hunt and Easter egg basket opening had died down, we took advantage of the beautiful day and went for a bike ride to our neighborhood park.  

A snapshot of our Easter lunch.  

We also enjoyed lots of great Facetime conversations!  What an amazing thing technology is -  it felt like we had our morning chai tea with Nannie and Guy and our lunch with Auntie Amy and Uncle Tim!  Our afternoon was topped with a wonderful conversation with Grandma Heidi and Auntie Mary.  Doesn't get much better than that!  

We are so blessed and thankful for all of you! 

xoxo

Our little karate kids!

We enrolled Dane in karate a few months ago and he immediately fell in love.  Jaeger was just watching from the sidelines until one afternoon Sensei Young invited him to join the class because several students were absent.  Despite being so small and young, Jaeger did great and Sensei Young officially added him to his roster!  He is beyond thrilled to be participating with his very own Gi just like Dane. :)  

Here's Jaeger before he was an official member.  Sensei Young is the man squatting down behind Dane.  And, by the way, he's a FIREFIGHTER!!!  Needless to say, the boys think he's pretty cool. :)  

Mokuso - Each class begins and ends with a short quiet or meditation time.

Here they are running around the gym.  They love this part of the class and there is always lots of giggling.

And below here they are about to practice some of their karate moves with a partner.  

Eurovan fun!!!

It was absolutely gorgeous (COLD though!) last week, so we thought we'd pull the Eurovan out of the hangar and take it for a spin last night.   We had such a great time driving the open road once again.  The boys were SO EXCITED to get back in the Eurovan.  I guess they have pretty fond memories of our summer trip. 

We headed to Eagle Beach to watch an amazing sunset and ate our dinner in front of a million dollar view.   We're all ready for more fun and adventures this spring and summer. :)