only 60 miles from snow...

today we decided to drive up to big bear since we just had a few cold days this week & we could see the snow on the mountains. we thought we'd go up there before the snow melts, also, kaia said, "i want to go to the snow like on Charlie Brown"...(like on The Charlie Brown Christmas show)...so, we went & i really can't believe that we don't go up there more often...it only took us about an hour & it was a lot of fun.
leia's first time to real snow... (she didn't make a peep the whole time we were there, she just smiled at everyone). she was in awe.
here we are getting our pass...
kaia was very proud of her snowball...
she had it in her hand for like 5 minutes (and i forgot to pack gloves, sorry kaia)...brrrrr!
about to get on the little "people-mover thingy"...
weeeeeee! (at first kaia said, "i wanna walk, mama"), but, after the first time, she loved it.
here's kaia trying a smaller hill on her own...
such a big girl :)
a quick family pic before we left...
they love holding hands in the car...ahhhh.

Happy birthday my love

today was derek's 32nd birthday, so we went to PF Changs for dinner (one of the only chinese food places i'll eat...for a few different reasons)...
kaia's always there to help out...
our girls...
mama and lei lei...
leia looks like such a big girl in her high chair...
just the 8 of us...

hi cousins...

i barely ever see my cousins since we live all over the United States...St.Louis & Texas, but my aunt sent me some recent pictures of them today. just thought i'd say "hi, cousins!". :)

can you say "fangs"?!?

yes...teeth #'s 3 & 4 have arrived!!!

daddy and his baby

silly us...

so, i've been trying to organize/spring clean/throw out/PACK for the move. only 9 days away. and under our bed i came across our body pillows that we made back in our "young and in love college days"...we are still in love, just not as young now. :) it didn't seem as wierd at the time as it does now, but we decided to make derek-shannon body pillows that we could cuddle with at night. it was "safer" that way. hmmm,hmmm. anyways, we parted with them this weekend, but not before we snapped a quick pic of them. of course.

molly

last weekend we heard Molly Jenson sing in san diego & bought one of her cd's & i'm hooked. it's a great cd. usually the only cd's we listen to are "the wiggles", "veggie tales" or the occasional grown-up cd. anyways, we've been listening to her cd so much lately that kaia knows some of the words. check it out, you'll love it!

California Pizza Kitchen fieldtrip

Today we went on a fieldtrip to CPK & i have to say that the people there have a lot of patience! there were about 10-15 kids tromping through their kitchen as they were preparing for the day. all the kids got to make their own personal pizza. not to mention, they all got a smoothie that the guy made for them as they went to the tour and a popsicle for dessert. it was great!



perefecto!!!




yummy!

My Valentine's

Happy Valentine's Day everybody! we had a nice mellow one, dropped kaia off with papa & nema and we went to dinner and a movie. we saw "Music and Lyrics" and it was really good, a good Valentines Day movie...it had it's fair share of chick flick-ness about it, but not overboard (derek liked it too). probably because of the fact that it had to do with writing music (he has a myspace music page if you're interested.) anyways, it was fun. afterwards, we slpit a piece of cheesecake, yummy! thank you kim and john for the Valentines candy for the girls, kaia was very excited to see their surprise by the front door. here's to a day of love...may every day be like Valentine's Day!

Family dedication day

our church...

Kaia's just taking care of her daddy

We went down to san diego last night to another one of ben's shows and derek played a song & as you can see, kaia got a hold of the tip bucket and "hooked her daddy up". it was pretty funny. the audience loved her. hey, what can i say, she's a daddy's girl!

Quack Quack

just being silly on the drive home...it was amusing.
by the way, these are pretzels...

Good ol' Benja...

One of our good friends and his band are in town from Amsterdam touring the west coast for a few more weeks, so we went to Santa Ana tonight to see him. We thought it was gonna be a coffee shop, but it was more like a bar/coffee shop...and, yes, the girls came too. A girl came up and asked, "how do you get them to be so good for this long at a bar?" i jokingly (i thought) said, "oh, we take them to bars all the time, they're used to it." she looked at me with a shocked look on her face until i told her that i was totally kidding. it was funny. anyways, here are a few moments from tonight...