Butterfly Pavilion...

Gage has never gotten over the fun of holding Rosie, the tarantula, at the Butterfly Pavilion.  In fact, he generally likes to get right back in line after he's held her the first time.  This particular day we went as guests of Darby's (and Vince's), and little did we know that we'd be inheriting an annual pass by the time we were leaving!  Will and Darby had been our neighbors since we moved to Abbey St. 11+ years ago, and they just recently moved down south (Highlands Ranch, not Louisiana), which was a big adjustment for all of us this fall.  Darby didn't think that they'd be coming up north enough to use the Butterfly Pavilion pass, so she transferred it to me!  That's the kind of friend she is. 

I rarely hold Rosie, but I felt like I could be brave that day, especially when Gage was holding my other hand.  Forget the spider...how cute is my son?! 

The New Swing in the Neighborhood

Our little guys have been loving swings lately and recently experienced one at another kid's house during a birthday party.  I figured we could probably get one going in our front yard so I rigged up once with a short piece of climbing rope and a 2 x 4 that I dripped a hole in.  It worked like a charm and as you can see the neighborhood lined up to get in on the action.

As you can see, Gavin and Gage were especially excited by the new yard attraction.

Here is Gavin one last time finally getting his turn on the swing.  It's a good thing he has his bike helmet on just in case he gets a bit crazy on the swing!

Venus de Miles...

 Yes, that's me on the bike!!!  I know we're all so used to seeing Brent there that you might have done a double-take.  It was my biking husband's suggestion that I participate in the Venus de Miles this year, a supported, all-women's riding event with three different courses of varying distances: 25, 50 or 100 miles.  My friend, Jessica, and I chose to do the 50-miler, and when they re-routed it the week before, it actually turned out to be 52 miles.  I had never before ridden that many miles or for that long all at once!  It took us about 3.5 hours in total, and the whole family was there to cheer me on when we arrived back in Prospect.  (Thanks, Mom & Jim and Pam & Bob for coming out to support me!)  My ankle held up, which I was so thankful for, and I was able to ride the whole time without stopping.    It was really fun, which I'm happy to report, and Jessica and I agreed that we weren't really ready to be done at the end, a fun revelation that made us wonder if we could someday see ourselves training for the 100-miler!  I felt strong and rather proud of myself afterward. 

You can see from these pictures that Jessica and I had a heyday at the "after party," leaving no food/drink coupon unused.  And why not put on a feather boa and other random regalia after a 52-mile ride?!  I'm so glad that we got to do this event together!  It will be a great memory for us both, I'm sure. 

Goofy boys and their cousins...

During Zach and Lorna's last visit home, Lorna and I made a point to get together with the kids apart from our normal family time together.  We'd been telling them about how much fun we always have at the "Frog Park" (aka Louisville Community Park), so we finally made it happen to meet up there one afternoon.  Camille was sporting Gage's Lego Land cap in the picture above, holding the Italian soda bottle that became the family beverage of the afternoon.  How adorable is my niece?!

I should expect a goofy shot (or seven) anytime I'm looking for a cute one of the boys together, so here are both!

 

Can you see the band-aid on Gage's cheek in the photo above?  He had just gotten three stitches--funny enough, at the same park only the week before--riding around on the little dirt hills next to the park.  Oddly enough, it was the very helmet that hurt him!  The visor piece snapped off when he fell and dug into his cheek.  To even things out, Big Bro joined him with five stitches only about three or four weeks later, when he ran into a pole on the playground at recess.  We feel like we should have a punch card at Children's Hospital by now.  I'd like to get the next one free.

Auntie Lorna is holding Rylan (20 months now!), I don't know what Gage is doing and Gavin is busy trying to spot a frog to show his cousin, Camille.  We had talked so much about the "Frog Park" that we couldn't send them home without seeing some real frogs!!!  It was so fun to see Camille's face when she finally saw one.  Oh, how I wish my niece and nephew lived closer! 

First Grader in the House!

Bless his little heart, Gavin was SO ready for summer to be over and school to begin.  It's official, Folks:  We now have a first-grader in the house! And we're so glad that we decided to send Gavin to our neighborhood school, Mountain View Elementary, which is a whopping two minute walk from our door step.  

This is Gavin's first-grade teacher, Mrs. Powell, and he has loved her and her camping-themed classroom every day since he started school.  It feels like we should have already been used to Gavin being gone for so long since he was in full-day Kindergarten last year, but for some reason (several, really) Gage and I have really been noticing his absence in the afternoons.  Gage is only in school 'til 11:30, and last year we kept him in Enrichment 'til 2 three days a week, so he didn't have much time to miss Big Bro.  But this year, Gage asks several times a day, "Is it 2:30 yet?  When is it time to go pick up Gavin?"  My, how he loves his brother!  And misses him, too!  It's felt strange to have the boys at two different schools for the first time ever.  We'll probably start Gage in Mountain View next year (Kindergarten already!) and then they'll be back to being under the same roof. 

Laguna Beach - Day 6 (Little Corona Del Mar Beach & Dolphin and Whale Tours) - Part 3 of 3

We later moved on to a second pod of dolphins hoping to find a whale, as well, but we did not find any on this trip.  These guys were still excited to be out on the water watching everything that was happening, though.

Here are a few more pictures from the trip.  These guys certainly are hard to photograph as you never quite know where they are going to pop up.

This is the last set before headed back home before the sun went down.

We were almost all the way back to the harbor when we had this added treat on this big metal ocean bouy.  We went right by these big guys that were huddled all together. 

Here is the picture I took while entering back into the harbor and though it is hard to tell, the rocks are covered with big pelicans and other birds.  I have to say that it was quite smelly area.  In the end, it was a bit nerve racking to be on the boat with these guys all alone for so long but it was totally worth it to have such an amazing adventure with them.

Laguna Beach - Day 6 (Little Corona Del Mar Beach & Dolphin and Whale Tours) - Part 2 of 3

As we previously mentioned, we decided not to make the trek down to Sea World, but we wanted to try to fill the day with some new and exciting adventures that were close to Laguna Beach.  I was able to find a dolphin and whale tour that left from Dana Point Harbor, which was about 15 minutes south of us.  The tour was projected to last around two to three hours in total.  Unfortunately, as we learned during our honeymoon, Tara gets extremely sick on a boat and so we gave her the afternoon off while I took the boys out for the tour.  You can see our boat in the picture above.  It is the white one in the middle of the picture and held about 35 people at capacity.

The main part of the boat was solid, but the entire front end was made up of mesh ropes woven between the front edges of the boat.  This meant you could look through down to the water quite easily, but also that the water constantly splashed up on your legs while the boat was cruising.  It was actually a bit windy out on the open ocean, and with some cloud cover it made for a cooler trip.  This didn't really stop these guys from wanting to be right out over the water getting soaked with every rolling wave.

It took us about 30 minutes or so to find the first pod of dolphins of the trip.  This was a pod of about 300-400 dolphins cruising along, and the neat thing about the boat was you were able to pull right in to the center of this huge pod.  The dolphins seemed to like interacting with the boat and the people on the boat and were quite comfortable playing around right in front of the boat as you can see by the picture above.

Another neat feature of this boat was that it had a viewing cabin that went down into the hull of the boat.  It was partially submerged, and you could peer out under the water and see the dolphins at eye level.  This picture shows the boys in the viewing cabin.  We took a few turns down here because it was so cool.

This picture shows one of the many baby dolphins that were swimming around.  It was hard to get good shots of them as they are moving so fast and popping up and down all over the place.  It was pretty amazing to see the sheer number of these dolphins in the wild.  We probably spent a total of 30-45 minutes just cruising slowly along with this pod.

Laguna Beach - Day 6 (Little Corona Del Mar Beach & Dolphin and Whale Tours) - Part 1 of 3

Wanting to shake up the beach plan a little bit and knowing that Gavin's favorite thing in life is exploring the environment around him, I spent an evening researching the best tide pools around.  Fortunately, there are some gems within close driving distance from Laguna Beach.  We ended up at a place called Little Corona Del Mar Beach.  I had been to the main Corona Del Mar beach when I (Brent) was much younger, but never this smaller little beach area.  We were blessed with a very close parking spot which was up the cliffs a bit and a few blocks away and then you have to hike down.  As you can see in the distance, a lot of the rocks that come into the ocean make for great tide pools when the tide goes out.  The same rocks exist in the other direction, as well.  We also were able to research when low tide would be and timed our trip accordingly for maximum exposure.

The family got right to work looking for all the creatures and stuff we could find.  It was actually a bit treacherous to navigate all the rocks and waves coming through, but we tried to stay on the mostly dryer parts.

There were quite a lot of these little crab guys hiding in the pools.  This one is about the size of one of the kids' fists.  They would quickly try to find a place to go in the shadows fearing we were some predator.

As we got further out on the rocks we saw lots of these purple sea urchins which were pretty neat looking.  The crabs or other creatures must feed on them because we also saw lots of urchin bones which end up looking like a solid white ball with no purple left on them.

We did get some time in the ocean as well, but most of our time was spent in the tide pools.  Here is Gavin testing how far we will let him go out before we call him back closer to shore.  The hard part is you want to let him go out and experience the waves, but he was still not a great swimmer at this time and when that wave comes through it almost completely swamps him.  Usually he was just fine to pop back up, but at waist deep already, there isn't a great margin for error so we kept very close eye on him and shortly after this picture I went out to be within arms reach of him.  As you can also see, Tara and Gage are standing a bit closer in a much safer location. 

Laguna Beach - Day 5 (Sea Lion Rescue Tour & Huntington Beach)

Something fun and free that we decided to do--sort of in lieu of going to Sea World, like they were in the same league, but I told myself there was enough overlap--was taking the boys to visit a sea lion rescue outfit up the canyon from us.  We got to see a bunch of rescued sea lions but couldn't see the alleged elephant seal/s because they were being temporarily kept indoors.  It was interesting and pretty small potatoes, honestly, so it's a good thing the boys didn't totally understand what they weren't seeing at Sea World.

On our second trip to beautiful Huntington Beach just up the road, we took the boogie board from the house where we were staying and even a beach umbrella, though no one really sat under it much.  Brent was so much more well-versed in the ways of the ocean, and it was fun to see him playing in the waves and experiencing the beach with the boys.

It definitely wasn't balmy while we were there, which was fine most of the time, except when we'd been in and out of the water.  What cracked me up was watching Gage attempt to rid himself of every grain of sand in the water and then proceed to lay himself down in the sand (sometimes sans towel)...like a little piece meat getting perfectly breaded.

I have always liked me a good sand castle.  We brought one sand pail from home, and then I picked up another abandoned one on the beach one day.  And, yes, I am wearing a long-sleeved sun shirt, winning the approval of my dermatologist every step of the way. ;)  I've started taking sun damage more seriously ever since Mom had melanoma on her leg a year or two ago.  I'm sure that one reason I like doing things like building sand castles with my boys is that it's an activity during which they might stay in one place long enough (with me)...to talk and just do something together. 

Laguna Beach - Day 4 (Hiking & Sawdust Festival)

The hills above Laguna Beach are pretty well known for hiking and single track mountain biking, so I thought it would be great to take the kids up here while Tara had some time to herself.  I found a place just west of town called Alta Laguna park which was also known as the Top of the World park.  The drive up here (and also the bike ride that I experienced first hand) is quite steep with grades that seemed to approach 15-20% at times. We arrived after a short 10 minute drive and these guys were psyched to get out on the trails.  The different trails seem to go off in all directions and though there weren't really any trees, there were plenty of this desert shrubbery and cactus to be found.  We looked for rattlesnakes which were advertised to be in the area but really only saw some bugs and a few other lizards and other insignificant things.  It did get quite hot and dusty and with some fairly large elevations gains on the trail we had our work cut out for us.

So that hike must've tuckered them out altogether ;) because this is how I found Gavin afterward.  Gavin was just taking a break in his new favorite tire swing, and I caught a good pic of it in the moment.

So when Daddy got out on a bike ride (he rented a road bike in town for 24 hours) I took the boys on a free trolley ride.  We'd been talking about doing it ever since we'd seen them around town, and we agreed it was a must-do.  How cute is this picture of the two of them in the open-air trolley (?!), taking in the sights and sounds of Laguna Beach.  Seeing pictures like these almost makes me forget how much they fought during other moments of the trip. ;)

 Our destination was the Sawdust Festival, an annual arts and crafts event up the canyon from where we were staying and a perfect trolley stop away.  We got to watch a glass-blowing demonstration, see lots of artists and their beautiful wares and even make some art of our own.  The boys made star fish out of multi-colored tissue paper, and they hang at home now as a great reminder of our trip to California.

When I wasn't terrified that Gavin and Gage might break something fragile and expensive at the Sawdust Festival, we were having fun exploring everything there and taking pictures in front of beautiful landscapes like this one.  I have good memories from that afternoon with the boys. 

Laguna Beach - Day 3 (Legoland) - Part 3 of 3

We certainly spent a full day's worth of time at Legoland...which you should when it costs you almost $275 to get in as a family.  Toward the end of the day we rested our legs in this grassy area next to where they had Legoland singers leading some songs and had guest appearances by Emmit and some other anonymous Lego guy.  After the performance we were all able to take some pictures with them which seemed pretty fun for the kids.  Gage was kind of funny and shy at first, but he warmed up a bit for a second picture...after we waited in line again.

Here are both of the guys with Emmit.  They are pretty psyched if you can't tell.

We made our way toward the gate to head home, but not before we jumped on a few rides that we missed along the way.  This one lifts everyone up then drops you bit by bit on the way down.  I think we ended up doing this two or three times as it was pretty fun.

The very last ride was this airplane ride then went round and round and swung the kids out at each end.  We are thankful that by this time everyone was pretty much getting along and enjoying themselves.

Here we are before heading home after the Lego land store shopping trip and outside the entrance gates.  Legoland complete!  It was a long day with many challenges (and I won't even mention how bad the car ride was!), but it was worth it and I am glad we went.  I will note that after this excursion, it was an easier decision to probably not make the longer trip down to Sea World. 

Laguna Beach - Day 3 (Legoland) - Part 2 of 3

We had intended to go on this roller coaster type ride where people pedaled to move along and seemed to cover a vast area of the park, but by the time we got there people said the line was around an hour and a half.  With our two kids, or any for that matter, that was WAY too much of a commitment for a single ride.  Luckly, this ride was right there and had very little ride.  You get strapped into these seats and then hold onto a climbing rope between you.  When you pull down the seats move up and when you let it go they drop down.  The kids loved this ride and I think we went on it like three or four times.

Gavin especially got a kick out of doing all the work himself without one of us parents helping him out.

One of the favorite rides we had heard about from other people was the Driving School rides.  If you are tall enough, which Gage was not to his thorough disappointment, they have this fairly large paved area where kids go sit in Lego go-karts and then drive around in what is set up like a little city area.  I think there were 20-30 kids worth of cars going around at the same time.  They had traffic signals, stop signs, and even lanes to follow.  This was probably one of the highlights for Gavin on the day.

This also proved to be one of the lowlights of the day for Gage.  He was just barely too short so he was relegated to the younger kids driving school which consisted of a small paved doughnut track with some of the slowest small go-karts you have ever seen.  He did his best to show us his displeasure by pretending to sleep on the ride and then later giving us a big thumbs down when we tried to ask how he was doing.  We couldn't help but laugh at his antics, but it was quite a bummer he wasn't able to take part in the older kids' version of the driving school.

Laguna Beach - Day 3 (Legoland) - Part 1 of 3

On our third day of vacation, we decided to head about an hour south of Laguna Beach to Legoland.  The kids were super excited, as this was one of the planned highlights for the trip.  Unfortunately, our drive was filled with tears and almost constant fighting between our two kids.  I am not quite sure how many times we heard, "He's looking out my window!" and "He's touching me!", but it was far too many.  By the time we arrived, Gavin was flopping on the ground and both kids were resisting any sun screen.  It was truly a sad start to what was supposed to be a fun day.  Attitudes were so sour that we didn't even get any pre-entry pictures of the place.  These guys even moped around until finally we got on our first ride.  Thankfully, the undeniable fun associated with amusement rides was enough to finally draw out some smiles on these guys.  This first ride was this Lego cup ride that spins around in circles round and round.

The mood was further enhanced by this giant Lego spider.  Legoland did a pretty good job about creating so many different little Lego features alongside the rides all the way through the park.

We mapped out our plan to weave through the place from ride to ride and one of the places we were sure to hit was this water ride.  Mom volunteered to stand in line with the kids to take them on the ride, while I (Brent) kept our stuff dry and safe.  I think she only later realized how wet this ride actually makes you, as she started witnessing the people exiting the ride.  The one bummer was that the line proved to be fairly lengthy because the ride was shared with another line coming from Legoland waterpark side.  The above pictures shows these guys right before they hit the water.  Both kids look like they are holding on for dear life.  Although the aftermath pictures didn't quite make the cut, trust me when I say that these guys could not have been more wet if they had just jumped straight into the pool.

Around mid-day we circled back around near the front of the park again and these giant Lego creations even had a water hose spraying across the lake from a Lego guy that was riding a dinosaur.  Everyone was pretty happy and excited to keep going at this point.