Claire's photography

Claire loves to grab my camera and take pictures.  She also likes to look at them on the camera when she is done.  Here are some of her shots from our trip.

 

 

President's Day picnic

On President's Day we went to a park at the Rose Bowl called Pirate Park.  We had a pseudo picnic - Subway for the adults and McDonald's for the kids. We met Erik and Lisa there, so we had 8 kids between all of us.  We started with lunch and then headed to the playground.

Taylor and Claire playing.

McKenzie riding a toy.

Andrew and Landon climbing.

Andrew and Landon loved this part of the structure - it had a handle that slid back and forth.  They were trying to jump and catch the handle and then slide to the other side on it.  The kept missing the handle and falling, but they didn't care.

McKenzie and Grant.

Grant went down the slide by herself.

The whole structure was really cool.  There was even a mini pirate ship that rocked back and forth.

Isabel and Claire on the swings.

The parents were hanging out on the hill while the children were doing this....

digging in the dirt.  In the whole park they found this pile of dirt to play in.  First it was just Taylor, Mia and Claire and then Grant, McKenzie and Isabel came over.

Landon, Isabel and Andrew decided to climb a hill nearby.  Then Claire, Taylor and Mia decided to join in. 

Then Ryan had to go in for a rescue of Mia.  After they went up they decided it was too steep to come down.  Claire and Taylor slid down on the their bottoms getting more and more dirty.

A group shot of all of them - so cute!

Then we went to the ice cream parlor by Erik and Lisa's house in South Pasadena.  They kids were so excited to share a big sundae.

We had two other desserts at our table.

McKenzie enjoying her ice cream.

And Mia - look how fast they ate that!

Claire enjoying a treat.  Overall it was a great day at the park.  The kids fell asleep in the car on the way back to Ryan's house.  And then we may have gotten lost and taken a tour of downtown San Fernando. 



The whole weekend we were there Claire and Mia were constantly playing dress up.  I found them having a picnic this time.

Andrew and Claire are excited that Ryan and Mandy are moving up here.  Lots more cousin time!

President's weekend part 2

Wii is always fun to do with cousins.  They played all sorts of games, but they quite liked some of the sports like tennis.  Who knew that you could also play games lying down?

Saturday night we went out to eat at Chili's and then to miniature golf.  The kids were very excited to go, but we quickly learned that miniature golf with small children is probably better done during the day.  There weren't a lot of lights out on the course so we spent some time looking for balls using the lights from cell phones.  This particular course lets the kids pick their own ball color.  They have them in old gumball machines.

We didn't dare give Grant a ball or clubs as someone would be injured.  He rode for about half of the time in the stroller and then I had to let him out.  Then he kept picking up and moving all of the balls, so I took him into the arcade.  He liked sitting on the games and pretending to play them.

Sorry for the poor quality pictures, but this was as good as they were going to get. We took them all last summer and they loved it, so we took them again.

They all got churros at the end except for Claire who for some reason insisted on Skittles.  Needless to say, they all slept really well Saturday night.

Ice Skating Adventure

We went to Southern California over President's weekend.  People always ask me what we are going to do - go to Disneyland or somewhere similar?  I always say that the kids just love to hang out with their cousins.  They play and make up games and once in a while ask for food, but there doesn't need to be any planned activities.  Landon is now a cub scout and is trying to get the ice skating belt loop, so Ryan was taking Landon to the rink.  Andrew went a long, but Claire was dying to go.  Ever since her friend Ava went, Claire has been asking to go.  Well ask you can see below, it was a bit harder than she thought it would be.  



She wanted to wait until she could get a "walker".

When Ryan came back around he got her a walker and helped her skate.  She said that she liked it after that.  She says that she wants to go again, but only if there is a walker. I haven't seen one of these before, so I don't know if they have them up here.

Ryan took Landon and Andrew around the rink holding their hands the first time.  Danny didn't even make it all the way around with just Claire.  Ryan was definitely the skating champion of the day.

This looks like an accident about to happen.

 Then Landon and Andrew both got walkers and all was well again.  Landon got the hours for his belt loop and Andrew and Claire ended up having a good time.