Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday to this guy!

First Day of School

James started his first day of school ad a 3rd grader! (How handsome is this guy?!)  He was excited to see all of his friends again, and this year he chose a purple backpack :)

Last Day of Summer

We ended the summer with a trip to the new aquarium!  We took cousin Ashley with us to have even more fun!  We saw everything from penguins & turtles to pythons & badgers. We got to pet stingrays and we got to see our first 4D movie about great white sharks! It was a fun day :)

Happy Birthday to Me!

Love my boys! They spoil me :)

Yeah Baby!

Steve made a custom seat for Blash's motorcycle so we got to keep it for a week :)  (Blash is James's birth mom's husband for those of you that don't know that)  James was nervous to even sit on it at first, but it didn't take long for him to warm up to it and he was begging for rides all week long!

Steel Days Parade

We got to be in the Steel Days Parade again! LDS Family Services has a float in the parade every year, and since Steve and I are on the board there, we get to help with all of the planning and preparations and everything. The theme we use is "Adoption Rocks" so the kids get to have blow up guitars and microphones, and we blast Kidz Bop music from the float and hand out Otter Pops to the crowd. It's a pretty fun float. This year we had twice as many people show up to participate so we ran out of Otter Pops pretty fast! James's birth mom had to work so she couldn't make it :( but hopefully next year!

4th of July

Happy 4th of July! Today we went out on the boat and did some tubing and knee boarding! The weather was beautiful and the lake was surprisingly not very crowded! Then after a fun filled day on the water, we went to Grandma & Grandpa's house for a BBQ, fireworks & swimming in the pool with all of the family. 

Cousins

Cousins from Sacramento came for a visit and to attend EFY so we decided to do some fun things while they were here.

We went bowling...

and we played mini-golf (in the dark)...

and we hiked the Y!

Already looking forward to them coming back to EFY next year!

Swim Lessons

James started swim lessons again just like he does every summer. This year he is finally good enough to move over to the big pool for his lessons so he was pretty excited about that. He is learning how to dive (while wearing his snorkel mask :)

 This is the first year that James decided to take flowrider lessons as well. He's actually pretty darn good at it! He can't wait to test his new boarding skills out on real ocean waves!

Baseball Season

It's time for baseball again. It's amazing how the kids skills improve in just one year. They don'y all dive on the ball at the same time, but there is still definitely a lot of confusion on the field :) James's favorite position is catcher :)

Cruising!

We got to go on a cruise! We decided to cruise down to Mexico with our best friends/family members/business partners :)  We spent a day in Catalina and a day in Ensenada, and then on the drive back home we stopped in Vegas for a show!  We even took the kiddo-s along too. Here are a few pics of our fun trip.

(Comedy Club Show)

 (Fun on the Boat)

(Island bowling in Catalina)

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 (More Catalina)

(Ensenada Mexico)

 (Zip line in Ensenada)

 (Vegas knight show)

Best vacation ever :)