Family beach day

We were all in need of a little break, so since Wes was going to take a morning off to help me take all three girls to the doctor for check ups, he went ahead and took the day off so we could make a beach day out of it.

First everyone got all checked out....

Then we were off to Half Moon Bay for some much needed family and beach time.  

Adele was excited! And eagerly followed her sisters who bolted towards the ocean.

Mommy was happy to breathe fresh ocean air.

And Emeline and Kate were their usual bundles of energy.

Kate insisted on shorts, even though it was quite chilly.

Adele liked getting to see the water close up with Papa.

Lots of fun was had!

Emeline even got to fly her birthday kite!

We ended the day with dinner in Santa Cruz, and since it was such a special day, we got the girls Shirley Temples.   Emeline loved it, but Kate doesn't like bubbles, so the cherry was the best part.

Yay for playing hookey and having a family day.

Picnic with PJ

We had the opportunity to have a little reunion with my dear friend PJ.  PJ is from Belize, and is a native speaker of Garifuna.  We worked together for over a year on my masters thesis, many moons ago.  She is a wonderful woman, with a wonderful family and has been such a blessing in my life.  It had been far too long since we got together, but the other day we made a date for a picnic half way between our houses.  It took a few min, but all the girls took to her and wanted to cuddle and play with her.  We had a great time catching up.

You can see Kate got comfortable enough to do some purse rummaging.

And lots of cuddly lap time.

We went on a walk around Lake Elizabeth and the girls even got a fishing lesson from a pro.

I didn't take enough pictures, but it was such a gift to see PJ and catch up!

First pigtails

I don't know why first pigtails always stand out to me, but I love them.  Here are Emeline's first pigtails....

And Kate's...

And finally Adele's curls were hanging too far into her face so we did some for her too.

And a bonus shot of her with her first kids meal all to herself at Chick-fil-A

Kate's first person

This morning, Kate was drawing after breakfast, and she says to me, "Look, it's Papa."  And for the first time, when I expected to see scribbles, there was a person!  A triangular oddly shaped person, but a person none the less!  Go Kate!

The littlests

I'm always posting pictures of Emeline with Kate, since they are such a duo.  Kate and Adele are so close in age, I often wonder if they will turn out to be closer to each other.  Here are a few pics of the littlests together.

Gymnastics

Emeline did a gymnastics class with her friend Gracie earlier this year.  Gracie's mom and I traded off taking the big girls to class and watching the little ones at my house.  Emeline and Gracie had fun having some big kid time together, and Annie and Kate are good buddies so had lots of fun playing at our place.  Here are some of the pictures of gymnastics!

Easter

For Easter this year, I decided to decorate a little more than usual.  It's not much, I'm usually quite burnt out after Emeline's birthday, which is really too bad given the importance of the celebration.  So this year I put up a banner and some crosses on Easter morning, along with our candles we light to finish off our Bible story series of Holy Week.

We also had some fun colored eggs we dyed the day before.

So after a quick breakfast, we got the girls all dressed up and hurried off to church.

For Easter dinner we celebrated with our small group, and I made a speckled egg cake, which was made up of a vanilla malted milk cake, with chocolate malt frosting, and swiss meringue buttercream.  I was trying to make the cake taste like a malted milk egg, which were featured in a chocolate peanut butter birds nest on top.  It was over the top sweet, but delicious!

We had a wonderful time with our friends from church, and the kids even had a little egg hunt in the back yard.

And one awesome group photo.  Happy Easter!