Nathan has never outgrown his infant nickname. Greg has given each of our children on the spot nicknames at the hospital right when they were born. Nathan was Bean from the first moment. It's morphed into Beanie, Beanie-Bean, Beaner, etc. Anyway, he had a birthday on Monday and he has been counting down the days for months now. He and his big brother have lately been obsessed with all things Lego. Funny how these boys go through fads. So Lego Indiana Jones for Wii was high on his wish list. We also thought he'd appreciate an actual bin of Lego pieces to play with, rather than just play them on the Wii. We had a family dinner then went bowling at Fat Cats. Sorry for some blurry pictures. Not great photos from the cell phone in a dark bowling alley.
Andrew can't resist having his moment in the limelight as well, even on his little brother's birthday.
Yes, his presents are under that blanket. Yes, I'm a lazy gift wrapper. David in the arcade room of the bowling alley.
Check out the form of Andrew as he launches his ball down the lane.
What a trip we've had! We've put over 2,000 miles on the van this last week and have been many wonderful places. Last Sunday after church and work we drove to St. George and stayed the night there at our favorite family hotel. The next day we got up and made the rest of the drive to California. We first stopped at our friend's house, the Jones'. We used to live down in southern CA and made some wonderful friends there. It was hard to move away and we miss them so much! We had a nice visit with them and then decided to drive around our neighborhood and visit our old haunts. Much to our dismay we found that our favorite restaurant went out of business. (That was half the excitement of the whole trip, getting to eat at our place again). So we were bummed about that. But we found another one several miles out of our way and decided to go there instead. It wasn't quite as good, but oh well. We stayed in Anaheim that night. The next day we got up bright and early (thanks to David) and made our way down to Huntington Beach. It also happened to be Greg and my anniversary, so that was a fun way to spend it. Huntington Beach was our favorite beach while we lived there and spent many weekends down there enjoying the sand and surf. When we got there it was very over cast with a stiff ocean breeze blowing. We decided we weren't quite ready to dress down and get wet so we went for a long walk up and down the board walk and out onto the pier. We saw lots of dolphins and even more surfers. We happened to be there on the day they were holding a huge surfing competition. So we watch hundreds of people sitting on on their boards in wetsuits out in the water waiting for their perfect wave. We finally got in the water and spent the whole rest of the day playing on the beach. So much fun! That night after the beach we checked in to the Disneyland Hotel and met up with the rest of our family. Greg's mom was celebrating her birthday and she decided to have her party with all of us at Disneyland. So we spent the next two days enjoying Disneyland and it's many delights. Oh how we love Disneyland! Such a fun, happy place. It was pretty crowded, but we were able to do everything we wanted without too much waiting in line. And the best part of all (for Andrew) was that he was chosen from the crowd for Jedi Training. Nathan sat on his hands and did NOT want to participate, so Andrew got the moment all to himself. We had lots of adults around this time at Disneyland, so Greg and I were able to leave the kids with grandparents and aunts and uncles to go do some adult rides. I have to say my favorite is still the Tower of Terror in California Adventure. After Disneyland we said good bye to the rest of the family and drove up I-5 to Capitola, CA right on Monterrey Bay. My 82 year old grandma lives there in a beautiful ocean front condo. She has not met my 2 youngest boys. She doesn't get out much and we so rarely get to California anymore. So this was such a special treat to be with her. It also happened to be Andrew's 7th birthday that day. She had birthday cake and ice cream and presents waiting for us when we got there. We spent a couple hours with her and then said goodbye because we still had to go another 3 hours up the road to Sacramento to where our hotel was waiting for us. The next day was nothing but driving and driving and driving. We went to Idaho from Sacramento and stopped in with my parents, then drove home 2 days later. We had such a fun trip, despite all the time we spent in the car. Such fun memories and what a great way to spend anniversaries and birthdays!
Huntington Beach and Pier
Grandma's birthday dinner at Rainforest Cafe. Look at that brownie volcano! Yumm! We didn't want to buy the pictures on Tower of Terror, so we just snatched pictures of the pictures with our camera. Love Greg's face! Reading new birthday books with Great grandma Shelly!
