Sarah's 11th birthday

For Sarah's birthday this year we went to "Bounce", which is basically a big warehouse with lots of inflatables for the kids to play on.  All four kids loved this activity, and they spent a couple of hours running and bouncing.

 Andrew especially loved climbing up the inflatables and jumping down.  He made a few friends while we were there, and all of them were quite a bit bigger than he is!

Then it was time for cake and presents.  This year Sarah chose a horse cake.  We were all quite surprised that she didn't choose a butterfly cake, since she is currently obsessed with butterflies of every kind, but I guess she just wanted to keep us on our toes!

I still can't really believe that my beautiful baby girl is 11!  She is such a wonderful, talented, responsible girl.  She has lots of friends at school, and her sisters and her brother adore her.  We are very proud and grateful to have her in our family.  The years are flying by too fast, but it sure is fun and rewarding to see our children growing up and learning so much.

We were lucky to have Grandma Karen and Grandpa Rocky and Grandma Jane and Grandpa Freddy here for Sarah's birthday celebrations.  That night the grandmas put the 3 girls' hair up in curlers, complete with bandana "babushkas".  This looks a little bit like a prison line-up, but the curls were sure pretty on Sunday!

Easter 2011

Here's everybody dressed up in their finest for Easter.  We had to take these fast before the sugar rush set in and the fancy clothes came off!

San Francisco

In April Chad and I had the chance to visit San Francisco with 3 other couples from his office.  Grandma Karen and Aunt Holly were sweet enough to watch the kiddos so that we could have a fun get-away!  I had never been to San Fran before, and it is a beautiful place with lots to see.  Here is Chad with Chad McDonald and Justin Walker.  The man behind them moves like a robot when you put money in his cup.

This is the bay overlooking Alcatraz.  We didn't actually go over to the prison, but we learned more about it and got a good view from the shore.

Here's the whole gang at dinner. 

And again at breakfast.  We spent quite a bit of time finding good food, and our favorite place turned out to be a diner just down the street from our hotel.  Nothing fancy, but it was sure yummy!

One of the funnest things that we did was to rent electric bikes.  We explored San Francisco and some of the beautiful parks, then rode the bikes across the Golden Gate bridge to the beautiful town of Sausalito. 

  After our bike ride we rode the ferry back to San Francisco.  It was a beautiful ride, with a great view of the Golden Gate bridge.

That night we had dinner at the Rainforest cafe.  We had so much fun being with our friends, and we feel very blessed that Chad gets to work with such great people.