Next on the Agenda

Geesh, I feel like I have been going non-stop this whole month. An 8 day driving trip and family reunion, then came home to have my friend Mimi who stayed with me for 2 weeks, during which I had the middle school book fair and I had to fill in at work for my co-worker who was on vacation. And now I am shopping and packing the camper for a trip to the mountains this weekend. This trip is a fundraiser called "Ride for life" and it benefits the Ronald McDonald house in Palo Alto. Most of our friends have done this ride before, it's our first time. It should be fun, did I mention that this is Dirt bike ride? Yes, It should be fun! I'm sure I will have a story or two to tell when we return.

Half Moon Bay and Beyond

My Friend Mimi is visiting me for a couple of weeks and we have been all over. She lived here on the coast for 12 years before moving to her home town of Moscow, Idaho and now lives in Colorado for the past 10 years. Coming back to the coast is a real treat for her, living at 7000ft the air is dry and she just loves the damp beach air here. Like I said, we have been all over from Santa Cruz to Healdsburg, where the above picture was taken. Tomorrow we are heading to San Francisco for some Dim Sum and city culture. Not only do I love the company, I love having someone to drag around to places you only seem to get to when someone is visiting!

Spring Break Adventure

When I found out that my cousin was planning a "Yamane family" reunion in Los Angles for the the second weekend in April, I realized that it was at the end of our spring break and that it might be a perfect opportunity to take a road trip. I never considered a "road trip" with the boys for obvious reasons and crossed my fingers that they would not only enjoy, but appreciate the trip. I had BIG plans at first. Death Valley, Los Vegas, Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon all before heading to LA where we would go to Universal Studios and Hollywood and finally the reunion weekend with our family. After some consideration I decided that The Grand Canyon was too grand an idea and cut it from the itinerary. We did add the Shelby Factory and The Los Vegas Speedway in Los Vegas and we also stopped at the Gamble House in Pasadena. The boys did great with the driving and we have some great memories from everywhere we went. But I think the best part of our trip was reconnecting with our relatives at the reunion. We had family come from as far as New York and Hawaii. We now have plans for another family reunion in 2012. This time on Kauai. And we have plans to bring my dad back down to LA so he can attend a gathering of his Kauai friends that have been getting together the last weekend in September for years.

Hello, My name is Jill and............

I am an addict. That's right, I'm addicted to a word game on my Iphone. It's called "Words with Friends" and It's, Well, It's addicting. The Ironery about this is that I am the absolute worst speller in the world and I usually hate word games like Scrabble, It's so humiliating to get beat by an 8 year old! But, I guess I can blame my new obsession over word games on my sister. She gave us a word game for Christmas called "Bananagrams". It's quite fun and I like "Bananagrams" because you work independently on your own crossword using the tiles provided. I've recently been playing this game on my Iphone as well and you can play "Live" games against other people out in cyber space (when you get creamed, no one has to know but you), Oh my! Then the other day my hairdresser told me about "Words with Friends" and how she and her husband are addicted to it. Well, I just had to try it out! So now, I'm addicted and I don't care. No 12 steps for me thank you. I'm becoming a better person ,I mean speller because of it! Join me if you want, My user name is Jane67.

In other news, we are going on a driving trip over spring break. Look out for news that could read something like this:
Mother jumps into the Hoover Dam after (stupidly) agreeing to a driving trip with her family.
Or I like this one:
Mother runs for her life out into the barren desert in Death Valley, It was her only hope for sanity after (stupidly) agreeing to a driving trip..........blah,blah,blah! Wish me luck!

Birthday Boys

Evan and his Uncle Mike have birthday's just days apart, so we usually end up with a "family" celebration, it's become a tradition. We haven't had Evan's party yet, he wants to invite a group of friends to his favorite trampoline place some time soon. But for now I have a couple of pictures to show off.
Below are from 2009.......Above are from 2010

4x12 for February

I finally did it and it only took a tsunami to make it happen! I'd been wanting to take another family picture at the beach for my 4x12 photo project and between the rain and everyone running in different directions it just wasn't happening. With only 2 days left of our short month o' February I had almost given up hope. I really wanted to take it in the same spot each month but I figured I'll just take what I can get and I think it turned out OK. We actually had gone down to the beach to watch for the Tsunami that was suppose to reach our coastline after hitting Hawaii a bit earlier, an after effect from the horrible earthquake in Chile today. It was expected to hit us around 2:00pm and have a 2ft. swell . I was really hoping for a dramatic effect but alas nothing really came of it, except for my desired 4x12 picture!

Old Pictures

Continuing on with my theme for this month, I love looking at old pictures. Not that these are particularly old, they just do what all pictures do. Bring you back to a certain time. And I loved this time in my life, we were living in a 950 sq ft duplex. I could stand practically anywhere in the place and see the boys. It was perfect for us, I loved being so close to them. The boys were so much fun at this age. And I can't help but think back to how lucky we were that on any given day we could just go off to the beach or the zoo or the park or the rope swing across the street, we could bake cookies and pretzels or play in the rain and jump in mud puddles. Whatever we wanted to we did all because I was lucky enough to stay home with them. I don't think I squandered a minute of time with them, I loved it so much. In these pictures we had just hand made these pretzels, They were so excited and I think these pictures are priceless!