Big Train Adventure

On Saturday, we had a fun excursion to San Diego with the Bird family. We rode the train from Fullerton to San Diego, and then hit the city by foot. It was a big adventure with no agenda, other than to have fun with friends and explore the city. The train to San Diego was pretty full, so all eight of us found a way to fit into 4 seats (the best use of space, according to the train attendant!). After a fun train ride down (filled with many "wow"'s from the kids, who were looking out the window), we headed to Horton Plaza for lunch.

The kids had a fun time coloring on the train.

Lana and Ian Bird

Jack and Luke in their sweet ride!

Jack pretending to sleep...

After lunch, we found a great park near the Children's Museum.

Next stop was Seaport Village, where we wandered around, grabbed some ice cream from Ben & Jerry's, and set up a picnic area overlooking the water where we had a great time people watching and playing a few card games (or in Luke's case, taking a power nap).

The Bird Family (Aaron, Ian, Shelly and Lana)

Everyone was pretty tired on the train ride home. Ian and Jack slept for part of the ride home, and Lana and Luke had a great time being silly and making each other laugh. Back in Fullerton, we headed to a burger joint for a late dinner...Great end to a wonderful day!

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July! We had a great day with the Del Vecchios at their block party. Our own block is pretty quiet lately since most of the kids are getting older. There are a few of us with young kids, so maybe things will kick back up in the future, but the Del Vecchios are within bike riding distance from us, so we have adopted their block to celebrate the 4th with! The boys were napping, so they missed the bike parade, but we headed over there around 1pm, and the boys enjoyed some time in the pool.

Zak and Jack took aim at the poor blow up pool animals, who didn't stand a chance!

This was our first year participating in the water balloon fun. We helped fill up some balloons the night before. In total, we probably filled around 1,000 balloons between us, Jody and Adam and Adam's parents, and we were feeling pretty good about our contribution. It turns out that the neighbors were much more dedicated....so the estimated total number of water balloons thrown this day was 18,000!!!!!
Here's the kid's water balloon fight- for ages 12 and under only since the "Grown-ups" can get carried away.



The Adults prepping for the main event. See the video below!

Me and Luke

Adam and Gary cooling off in the baby pool. Note Zak's surprise attack from behind the Safari Falls!

The Aftermath

Bouncer fun!

Swimming at the neighbor's pool

Luke giving Josh a push

Jack did such a great job on his bike!

The kids waiting in line for the pinata. Lucky for Jack and Zak, they were among the smallest so were at the front of the line.

Nice swing!

Grabbing the loot

Cuddled up to watch the fireworks

I surprised Nick with a kayaking tour of Newport Harbor for Father's Day. The weather was perfect and our guide, Mike from China Cove Kayak Adventures, was absolutely the perfect guy to tour around with. He's an ex-pro baseball player who lives in the area and knows all of the locals. Excellent history lesson, good exercise, and time together. It was a great way to spend the morning!

We stopped at Pirate's Cove, which is where portions of Gilligan's Island was filmed. It turns out that Nick has gone rock climbing in this cove before! We then headed over to Balboa Island for another stop, where we walked around, grabbed some coffee, and enjoyed the views of the harbor.
Mike gave us the best kayak, which came in handy when we all decided to have a race. Nick and I won, thanks in part to our speedy kayak but mainly to Nick's mad kayaking skills :)

The Boys

It's been a while since we had pictures taken of the boys. Jack is 4 and Luke is 19 months. They are getting so big!!