Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

How has your Christmas season been? We have had a lot of fun, with a few recitals, lots of Christmas songs, shopping, wrapping, Christmas movies and decorating. We got to go camping, which was a lot of fun! Click here to watch a you tube video of our camping trip. And Gary and I celebrated 17 years of marriage. The kids are SO excited! That makes this time of year so great for us. Every morning they jump up and check off another day on the many many Christmas count downs that we have around the house. They have been sneaking gifts to each other and planning gifts for friends all the while singing every Christmas song we can think of.

I LOVE getting the mail this time of year. It's SO fun to see all the cards and all the CUTE pictures! I tried a few times to get a really good picture of the kids for our card--but it just isn't happening! So, I finally decided that we're just not doing cards this year. I apologize to those who have sent us cards! My plan is to take a really GREAT family picture this summer--so I'm ready to send out cards next year.

Here is one of my attempts of the kids below.

Hope you are all enjoying the excitement of this time of year as much as we are!

Love, The Calls

Thanksgiving

Well, all our plans changed this year! We were going to head to the desert, and we were all packed and ready to go. But we heard about how crazy it was, and reports of all the injuries, so at the 11th hour, we bagged our trip. Instead we stayed home, emptied the toy hauler, cleaned the house, started on Christmas gifts, decorated the house and had a nice relaxing weekend!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Halloween and Soccer

Sydney the Vampire

Matthew the Zombie

Kaycee the Flapper

Lauren the cave girl

*All of the costumes were picked out from our costume/dress up box this year! Nice!*

Matthew, Trailblazer of the month for Enthusiasm!

The Blue Eagles!

Our soccer players this year

The Silver Bullets

Jog-a-thon 2010

October 8th was our annual Jog-a-thon at school. It is always a fun day! And for the last 3 years, Kaycee has just happened to get Trailblazer of the month on the same day as the Jog-a-thon!


This year I had the kids take my phone with me on a lap. I have a GPS tracker on there. I found out that each lap is .10 of a mile. These kids run for 45 minutes, and each completed about 30 laps! That's 3 miles these little guys ran today!




By the time the 5th graders ran, it was getting HOT!
Nice job guys!

Doheny

We got to spend a GORGEOUS day at Doheny Beach! The kids' Uncle Josh was competing in the Doheny Beach Battle of the Paddle.

Go Uncle Josh!

A few others decided to compete as well

Ready, set, GO! Josh was in the last category--the surf board paddle boards.

The 1st place winner of the surf board category, Josh Call!

Matthew's Party

For Matthew's 6th birthday we had a Sports party! We all met at the park, picked teams and played a good game of kick ball--

Eric sliding into 1st!

A rousing game of soccer--

Shot some baskets, and then took a break for snacks, presents and cake!
Happy Birthday Buddy!


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What's the Latest?

Guess what? I finally uploaded all the pictures from our camera! I found lots of things! So, we'll remember that Sydney made Honor Roll at the end of 4th grade. . . .


Matthew graduated or was promoted from kindergarten. . . .

Sydney had her end of the year piano recital. . . .
And Kaycee was in the 2nd grade "Just For Grins" performance. . .

Ready or Not

Well, it happened. School started again. We try and hold the calender back, but somehow, this day comes whether we're ready or not! But, after getting schedules, and meeting our teachers we are excited and know we're going to have a GREAT year!

Lauren--8th grade

Sydney--5th grade, Kaycee--3rd grade, Matthew--1st grade

Our teachers' gifts this year was a cup of pens and pencils with a note that says "We're excited to start off this year on the "write" foot!"

Ahh Summer!

Ahhhh, summer! Here's what we've been doing:

Hitting the beach--but except for the 1st week of summer it hasn't looked like this:

It's looked more like this:

And the day we went to Coronado, the water felt like this:

But it hasn't stopped the kids from doing this:

And having fun no matter what! Cold water, cloudy days, sunny days, warm water, the beach is always fun!

For the 4th of July, we went to see the Pechanga Fireworks on Saturday night:

Then headed out to be with Gary's brother's family on Sunday, and watched the fireworks again.

And we caught up later in the week with the Barretts' on Coronado Island.

We've been trying to get here once a week:

And here:

And whenever we can, we do this:

We swim whenever we can find a friend who will let us us their pool. Luckily, between the Community pool above and our super great friends, we get to swim several times a week.

Lauren started these lessons:

And Matthew and Gary went on a trail ride here:
Bee Canyon Trail Idyllwild CA

Summer is always my favorite time of year! We're trying very hard not to think about what will happen in 3 more weeks:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Not yet!!