Al & Martha

 Today would have been my Nana and Grampie's 70th wedding anniversary.  Above is a scan of their wedding announcement.

 Above is a picture of them on their wedding day.  Below is one of my favorite family photos.  My dad is on my Nana's lap.  The boy on the right is my Uncle Dick.  The boy on the left is my Uncle Marty. 

I'm so grateful for my family.

Maddie's First Singing Recital

This is Maddie and her super cute voice teacher, Joanna.  Maddie had her first recital today.  She was incredible!!  Following is the video.  Unfortunately, I didn't get the camera started in time.  I did, however, manage to wrestle Ryan away from the lens during the performance without too much jiggle on the video.  We missed you Spencer!

Mud

Lots of rain here equals lots of mud and lots of fun.

Rainy Day Fun

My husband is the best fort maker ever.  Just ask our kids...

Rock and Roll

 Shannon said her hair was coming off on her own terms!  Doug and Jaycee shaved Shannon's hair into a mow hawk.

 I got to color the hair purple.  It was so much fun!!

 Here is the finished product.

 Shannon is one brave lady who has so much inner strength, it's scary.  Watch out cancer, she's coming for you!

Happy Birthday Aiden!

 Aiden turned 8!  We are all anxiously awaiting his baptism.  Until then, we celebrated with a bug/monkey party.  The cupcakes were delicious Julie!!

The kids (and adults) all played the Dance game on the Wii.  Those kids are good!!

Gateway

 On a very rainy day over spring break, we took the kids to Gateway Museum.  I love that place.  Grandpa, Grandma, and Uncle Jeff came along.

 Here is Ryan learning about a vacuum.

 Here Maddie is playing a little game to teach kids about dominant and recessive genes.  Did you know that four leaf-clovers are recessive, three leaf dominant?  I hadn't ever thought about that before...

The displays right now are very cool - not the best every, but fun.  I think they are depending on screens and recordings too much this time.

Weightless

 These are some fun photos that we took at the space museum.  We look like we're in outer space without gravity!!

Trip to SF

 Last weekend we got to go and visit my brother Steve!  Grampie came along and we met up with Uncle Dick.  We started at the Blue Mermaid - one of Mac's favorite restaurants.  Then we hit up Ghiradelli for some ice cream.  On Saturday we got up and went to Fort Point.

 The kids had a blast checking out the fort - Ryan loved the cannon balls!  They also loved watching the surfers.  Because of the tsunami warning, there were tons of surfers!  The waves were small, but they guys were still out there trying.

 The walls were super thick!  The kids had fun exploring and climbing.  This is a free, historical site, by the way.  It was a great way to spend the morning.

 This is the view of the city from the fort, which is just underneath the Golden Gate Bridge.

 On Sunday we went to the Chabot Space Museum.  I went and got family passes for the Gateway Museum and was able to use those to get into Chabot.  I saved a serious chunk of change doing that!

 We watched two movies in their huge megadomes.  One was on dinosaurs and the other was on outer space.  I wish we had only watched one.

 This is in the Bill Nye science exhibit.  This was super fun for the kids - very interactive.

 Maddie loves those green screens.  She is all ready to be a weather forecaster!

 I hope that my kids are super excited about science after this!!

I wanted to take the kids to UC Berkeley too, but we ran out of steam.  It started raining again, too.  Oh well.  Overall, we sure had a great time.  We crammed alot of fun in to a couple of days!!

Square Foot Gardening

 

We are getting serious this year about our garden.  We want to grow stuff - stuff we can eat!  I've tried and tried and haven't been too terribly successful.  Not this year!  We are trying out square foot gardening.  My brother and his buddy came over to help us get ready!

 Here is the weed guard.  No weeds shall pass!

Spencer wanted me to make sure to put in a picture of him working on the blog...

 

This is our strawberry patch part way through.  Remember this for when we post photos of our garden mid season!