Birthday!

My first baby is not a baby, in fact, she is one year short of being a teenager! Yikes! Yep, she is 12, and as of 2:30 this morning, she shares her birthday with her brand new cousin Zoe. Zoe is the first child to Tony's sister Maria [Chonchi] and we are absolutely thrilled for her and her husband Junior. Thrilled!

We made our way over to the hospital this afternoon and of course I wasn't surprised when the nurse told us that my four children were not allowed. This news put two of them on the verge of tears even though they knew in advance that would most likely be the case. She did however tell us that we could take our kids outside for a peek in the window. What!

Tony was inside when I took this photo. I think it's hilarious that they were getting their first look at their baby cousin this way!



They were so happy to get a glimpse of her. They talked among themselves about how cute and little she was. It was sweet watching them watching her. Maria mouthed the words happy birthday to Emily through the glass and Emily mouthed the words thank you back to her. Happy birthday indeed.

When Maria gave Zoe to Tony for a first hold, he held her up to the window so we could all get a good look at her. See how pretty she is.



Wyatt said to Eva, "I can't wait to play with her" and Eva said "me too!"

Tony came outside to tag me and I got to go inside and hold her for myself. How quickly we forget what it's like to hold a newborn. It's the best thing in the world. And the sweetest. Happy Birthday sweet little Zoe, I hope you live a long happy wonderful awesome life.

In the Pines.

One Down. Camping trip that is. We spent a long weekend in Pinecrest Campground, sort of an annual tradition now except that we didn't go last year under threat of rain and snow. We finally were able to pick a campsite that we had chosen rather than just accepting any available one that we found online. And it was a marvelous site. Level, roomy [not smooshed up against the neighbors], close to the bathroom [but not too close], and with plenty of those giant trailer size boulders for the kids to climb. Under 40º overnight in a tent is too cold for me, but I toughed it out. I have to remember that one extra heavy blanket would have made the difference.



The first night the wind howled through the giant trees so loudly, I thought that maybe they had built a massive expressway over our campground as we slept, or that we had a rainless hurricane close by. Funny thing though, as we stayed late in our sleeping bags that first morning so as to avoid going out in the cold and for fear that all of our supplies and maybe our car too had blown away, our tent wasn't blowing so much. It was the trees! They block or absorb much of the wind, and they make lots of noise when the gusts blow through their lanky limbs. Honestly, it sounded like a freight train passing through the forest, in close proximity to our tent. All. Night. Long.



Notwithstanding the wind and cold, I think this was our most successful camping trip to date. Probably because the kids are a little older and more self sufficient. Or maybe it's that we have sort of found a grove with all the organizing, meal planning, and packing in and packing out. I know it was our best trip because it was the first one that I didn't make my usual "I am never doing that again!" proclamation to my family as we pulled out to head for home.

I love that this place has the outdoor amphitheater where they have mass on Sunday and where we could see a movie every night, if we wanted to. The lake was beautiful and there is still snow at the tops of the mountains. We hiked around the lake, just to the dam and back. Eva kept up like a champ, scrambling the rocks without a fuss. The only fussing that occurred was between Emily and Sarah about who was the leader of our expedition, pretty much the entire way, adding a slight amount of grief to an otherwise pleasant morning.





I have to say, the thing that the kids were most excited about was the fishing. They had a blast. No fish were caught, but a blast was had nevertheless.







We sat and snuggled by the fire, hunted rocks and pinecones, played games, played cards in our tent, danced with glowsticks, made smores, got plenty dirty, then came home tired and smelling smokey.

At Ease.

It's the second week in to our summer vacation and we [or at least me] are feeling so much at ease. Waking up in the morning is nice and peaceful when you don't have four kids to hurry. I don't take this for granted I am aware of exactly how wonderful it is and I am savoring every easy morning. Our days are slower, more outdoors than in, with more freedom, more appreciating each other, well mostly. I'm still the referee more times than I would like to be, but it's all part of the show. We have been to the library several times already and all four of them are pretty happy self motivated little readers. They're getting in a whole lot of swimming too. I wish we had more time to fix up the side yard because I was dreaming of the perfect garden summer with vegetables and flowers and other good things but so far it's not to be. May was so busy and now we have a few other distractions that have been keeping our weekends all tied up.

We are looking forward to a couple of camping trips to our regular places and I just finished planning a Disneyland vacation for July. The last time we visited Disney was in 2005 when we had three kids and one on the way. It will be fun to see the biggest little princess ever meet the real fake princesses. The kids are especially excited about that trip because we added a few days to the end of it for a visit with my sister Alicia and her family. She lives about four hours south of us, close to the coast, in a beautiful part of our state with reputation for producing great California wine. Can't wait!

I never said May was bad, just extra extra busy in a way that made me [regrettably] dream of it being over. We kicked it all off May 1st with Tony's family reunion. This is just a tiny sampling, it was much much bigger than this little collage.



We celebrated Sarah's first communion. I love that she wore the same dress and crown that Emily wore, and that her Godmother Carmen gave her the hairdo. She's my first girl to get her ears pierced, she really wanted it done so we took her down to Claire's a few months ago. This is her with cousin Vicki on their special day.



That same day we watched our niece Caty get married to Wilson. Here we were as coordinated as we have ever been.



Sadly, I didn't get a photo of Caty and Wilson, it was just that kind of day.

Emily and Sarah both bridged up to the next level in scouting. After being a Daisy for one year a Brownie for three, Sarah is now a Junior Girl Scout. Emily is now a Cadette with seven years of Girl Scouts behind her!

Emily led her sister over the bridge!





I didn't think we would start anything new but Wyatt did start Boy Scouts last month. He brought home a flier way back in the fall and expressed a strong interest but I thought maybe he was too young and I also didn't want to add anything to our crowded plate at the time. I asked him to wait until he was seven and then maybe we could work it in. When he turned seven, my little elephant remembered this and kept asking about it. I soon found out that our little league coach was a leader and he gave us all the info we needed to get started. As luck would have it, Wyatt's den leader turns out to be someone that I have known for about six years through Girl Scouts [when I was leading Emily's troop] and also from my mom's club and also nursery school! So the whole Boy Scout thing, although foreign to me, seemed to fall into place in a way that seemed like it was meant to be. He really seems to like being part of the pack and so far it's not even taking that much of our time.

In my new role as Boy Scout mom I was pinned by my newly created Wolf Cub Scout [wow, the Girl Scouts don't do this!] I do kinda wish I wasn't looking so much like Cousin It.



Notice the little Wolf is now missing his top front teeth!



Bad news for me: my camera of only two years seems to have died for no good reason. I have been using Emily's camera, but this is devastating for me, I feel like I lost part of myself! I have desperately been wanting to order a laptop so this is really bad timing, what to do?

I hope your summer is off to a roaring start, or at least a warm sweet happy one. I'm going to post more to this neglected little space, especially if I ever get my laptop!