The Blondetourage

Since the last post, Annabelle has conquered the potty! She was EASY PEASY! She woke up at 6:30 one morning and said she needed to go potty. She hasn't worn a diaper during the daytime since! After 8 1/2 years of having at least one child in diapers, its a bit surreal!



Her big reward was a tiara to go with her Cinderella dress!

Charles has been perfecting some of his Lego masterpieces and insisting that I photograph them for the contest he's going to win. I really know nothing about any contest, but I am more than happy to take pictures of his creations. He'd seriously spend his entire day doing this if I let him!





Dillon's baseball season ended. It was an awesome season- SO MUCH FUN for the kids and the families. They boys were inspiring in the way that they came from losing every single game to winning every single game! They had a blast and I'm so sad he won't be on the AA Giants team again next year. :( He's gotten to be so close with these other kids and especially the coaches. They're all so great to him. The last game of the season, Dillon pitched the last inning and struck 2 kids out! Coach told him that he had saved him as their "secret weapon!" So cute.



Last year (May of '09) we went and stayed in the Paradise Pier hotel at Disneyland and had the best time ever, so we knew we were going to try and do it again this year. We weren't able to stay for as long, but we did stay at the actual Disney hotel which was super fun and its really the best time of year to go. It wasn't busy at all and we had WAY TOO MUCH FUN! Especially with Annabelle potty trained and tall enough to go on Matterhorn! Its sooooooooo crazy how fast my kids are growing up. Here are the highlights:













In early May, uncle Dustin came to visit. We did our first big day at the beach and it was GREAT! Since then we've spent many days there. We decided to spend as much time there as possible since this is our last Summer in paradise! Anyway James, uncle Dustin and the boys made a sea turtle out of sand!









While the boys were away at the Father/ Son campout, grandma Melody came down to have a girl's night out with Annie and me! We had so much fun going to the beach, eating Tai food, reading bedtime stories and watching chick flicks.








Here are some fun photos of when Haley came to visit with her boyfriend Adrian and his daughters - Nicole, Emily, and Julieta. The boys thought Adrian looked like a character from the last Chipmonks movie - Toby..... and much to his joy, the name stuck. If you ask them who Adrian is, they'll have no idea!








Charlie graduated from Preschool today! He was so proud of himself and what a great year he had. LOTS and lots of progress. He's really looking forward to kindergarten. His preschool teacher asked me if I teach him math at home. I don't, of course! She said he like to get into the school-age children's bins and do the first grade math problems! He must get that from James!





Dillon was in the school play "Rumpus in the Rainforest." He was an army ant. We got to go see the last performance. He was too cute!






WARNING: I am about to post about a thousand cute pictures from the dress-rehearsal of Annie's first dance recital! It took me forever to decide which photos out of the millions NOT to post! SOoooooo cute.










Here she is drying the tears of another little girl who was having a hard time enjoying all the glitz and glamour!




The actual recital is tomorrow night but they won't allow any cameras there. We had to PAY, of course, to have someone else take photos. I guess its good, though, because James is on call and I won't have any free hands anyway!

Speaking of James - he only has TWO MORE call shifts before he's done with residency FOREVER!! Its been quite a ride. As challenging as its been I think I'm really going to miss these years. I guess part of that is the fear of the unknown.... We found out his ship will be out to sea most of August and September, so that will also be a new adventure- one I'm not so much looking forward to. :(

I have this thing with taking pictures of the kids sleeping. I always get a little excited to check on them before I go to bed because they so often are sleeping in the wierdest positions. Especially Charlie. So I'll sign-off this post with the latest: