Dripping Springs

Normally when we head to Dripping Springs it looks like the above: a dry creek bed.

But when we went yesterday, it looked like this! A real creek! The kids had so much fun playing in the crystal cold water, that we never made it any further on our "hike".

It's off!

It's been a month! We've had a big b-day party for Syd, but I haven't uploaded the pictures for that yet!

Today Sydney got her cast off! She's been SO great about it this whole month! We got her "after" X-ray. See the little black line in her bone of her third finger? That is the break. The Dr. said it's healing, but not all the way healed yet. So she still has to be careful. She CAN go back to playing the piano though-which she is SO happy about! Her arm is all peeling and scaly now that the cast is off!!

1st broken bone

Friday Sydney was running around with a friend and her sister. She rammed her hand into the couch. She cried and said that her hand hurt so bad! I told her it was ok and it would be fine. All weekend she complained. Finally Monday she begged me to take her to the Dr. That is unusual for her! So off we went. We went in for X-rays and sure enough, she had broken the bone in her hand that is above her ring finger. We had to then drive down to Escondido to see the specialist and get it casted. Luckily, nothing hurt her very much and now she has a cool new cast!

100th day field trip

Friday was the 100th day of school! All the 1st graders dressed up as a 100 year old. Matthew got to make a necklace out of 100 fruit loops, and do some other fun 100th day activities. Matthew and I also got to share with his class a little bit about his real life 100 year old Great Great Grandma Watkins! We shared with his class how when she was born there was no electricity or water in her house. We told how she drove her horse and wagon to the stream when she was 8 to fill the 50 gallon water bucket with water, how the car they had when she was a teenager wasn't strong enough to make it up the hills to Snowflake, so they all had to get out and push it up, how she felt when she felt the first electric fan, (she grew up in Arizona) and some other fun facts about living for 100 years! If you would like to read all of Grandma Watkins book about her life, there is a free download of it available here.

Here is Matthew as a 100 year old!

Here is Grandma Watkins on her 100th birthday!

Also, the very same day was Kaycee's 3rd grade field trip to the Santa Rosa Plateau. We got to take a guided hike around the area, and learn about the trees, the rocks, the plateau and the wildlife.

This was the end of the path for us, the bridge had been completely washed out with the recent rain. In fact, Kaycee would have been underwater if she was there a month ago!

Speaking of wildlife, as we went through a path that had recently been burned, one of the boys in our group said, "Look, a snake!" Our guide said, "Oh yes, it's a rattlesnake! You guys stay behind me and if we're very quiet and still we can watch it for a moment." He was very good at keeping the kids calm, so the snake never felt threatened. I think it was us parents who were more freaked out!

All in all it was a very busy, but very fun day!

Ahhh, the sun!

Yes, it's the middle of January, but we got some GREAT weather! FINALLY! Beautiful sunshine.

Last weekend we headed to the desert and had a nice weekend riding. Here's the you tube video of it: Gordons Well Trip

Then this weekend, we had a four day weekend! We were at the park most of the day Friday, and Saturday we went to the beach. It was so gorgeous!

No matter how cold the water, the kids always get in! The three younger actually dunked under!

Last July when we were at the beach, the surfer statue looked like this:

We found out from talking with some locals that the surfers HATE this statue. They say it looks too feminine. So it is constantly being "dressed up". When we went down yesterday, it had a pink boa on it, as well as a skirt and a nice head dress!

Hope you have enjoyed the sunshine as much as we have (if you live here in CA) and if not, hope you also had a great few weeks!

Farewell 2010

How was your Christmas break? We had a very interesting 2 weeks! It started with a visit from Grandma! Yeah! It's been a long time! She came for our Niece's baptism. It was a lot of fun to visit with family. . .

Even though it did RAIN for FIVE days STRAIGHT! I've never seen so much water! Here is our normally dry creek bed. . .
Once it stopped, we tried to get out and head to the park for the day--well they all looked like this. . .

The biggest bummer of our Christmas break was that the same day that Grandma left, all 4 kids came down with the flu! A bad one too. In fact, we've never had all 4 kids so sick all at the same time. It was 2 straight weeks of headaches, fevers, throwing up, coughing, and in general feeling horrible! We felt so bad for them! Christmas day they got up, looked at their gifts, and all went back to bed! They'd get up a few hours later, look some more, and lie down on the couch. Matthew didn't get it until the day after Christmas, so he had our new Wii game all to himself for the day!
The good news is that now everyone is healthy, and we are DONE being sick for the whole year--right?? :)

Hope you all had a great Christmas and New Years!

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