Day of the American Cowboy

We celebrated the American Cowboy this past weekend and had a good time. One of the perks having the kids do bull riding this year, is we have had the opportunity to go to many more "horse/country" events outside of local rodeo's, than we would normally do. The kids didn't have to sign in for their rodeo competition until 2:30, but we wanted to experience the entire event, so we arrived at noon for opening ceremonies.

Opening ceremonies consisted of having this stagecoach come in with many dignitaries (mayors, school board president, etc) and then cowboys/girls carrying flags from all 50 states. 

I only took a picture of this one event, but there were several events that the local community could enter with their horses.  It was fun watching everyday horse people compete instead of professionals this time.  The goal of this event was for two people to run across the arena, around a barrel and back without breaking the paper ribbon.

Wanted for Biscuit Burning!

Wanted for being the Leader of a Gang.

Watching the events leading up to their competition and representing the Pacific Coast Junior Bull Riders

Thankful for supportive family and friends!

Elsie came in 2nd place with a score of 73

Seth is still trying his best.  I love how the two guys behind him have their heads cocked to the side like they can mentally get him back up on the calves back! lol

She Can See!!!

When Kya was a baby, she had a slightly droopy right eye.  When I asked her pediatrician about it, she said it was a lazy eye and that more than likely, Kya would outgrow it as she got older; which she did.  Then about 6 months ago, Kya started complaining about not being able to see very well out of her right eye and failed her eye test at her annual check up.  We took her to the Optometrist and what do you know....she has astigmatism.  So she now has to wear glasses while doing anything that requires concentration (during class, homework, watching movies, etc) and she couldn't be happier about it, since her best friend also wears glasses.  As her mom, my heart broke a bit when I learned of her having to wear glasses, because I fear that she may get made fun of at school, as kids can be mean.  I am grateful that we have the technology though to help care for her eyes and allow her to be able to see perfectly.  Either way, I think she looks absolutely beautiful!!!

Good Friends, Lots of Laughs and Swimming!

We are truly blessed by having some great friends. Every Tuesday this Summer, we have been able to join them to swim in their pool, bonding together over conversations and enjoying some delicious BBQ, fresh fruit, veggies. We also get together every Thursday for concerts in the park & a picnic dinner.  I am very thankful that God has brought Rishi, Irene and their family into our lives.

Rajer and my kids cooling off on a hot day. 

Rishi and Wayne discussing something deep I am sure.

Irene and her beautiful babies.  One thing I love about this couple, is they are both so open with their faith and don't put on a mask.  They truly are "what you see is what you get" kind of people and inspire me to be the same.

Grandma & Grandpa's House

One of my kids favorite things, is to spend the night at their Grandma & Grandpa's house without their siblings.  Now, although my kids love and adore their grandparents, they are not the reason they enjoy staying over....it is because their cousins live only 2 doors down!  While in Long Beach, they do all sorts of fun things with their cousins.  The activities include going to the beach, hiking through the nature center, riding bikes up and down the street until the sun goes down, watching videos, playing in the pool, having water balloon fights, etc.

Seth went home with my parents after his birthday dinner and played from sun up to sun set.  He and his cousins went over to my Aunt Pam's house to swim with not only my nieces and nephew, but also with my cousins kids, followed by an evening roasting smores with all the neighborhood kids, sleeping in my brother's tent and going to the beach. 

Roasting smores with cousins and neighbors

Our original plan after having our girls day out, was to drop Elsie off for her two days at Grandma's and bring Seth home, but we ended up staying the night so that all the cousins (minus 2 year old Lauren) could have a sleep over in the tent together with Grandma.  They were so tired from being at the beach, that each kid was sound asleep within 15-20 minutes!

Four of the tired cousins having breakfast together

I feel blessed that these kids are not only family, but amazing friends as well.  My kids always come home exhausted, but it is well worth it.  I pray that the bond they are forming today as kids will last them through adult hood.  May they grow old together and even have the chance of enjoying their own grand kids together.  LOVE MY FAMILY!!!

Girls Day Out

Seth spent a couple of days at my parents house and since I was to come pick him up Wednesday evening, I decided to make a day out of it with my girls. I had lots of fun playing tourist in a city I lived most my life in and showing the girls not only all the famous landmarks, but also many places I worked and/or hung out as a girl/young adult.  We started off the day by boarding the blue line metro near the house I grew up in and took it to downtown's Pike.  The girls got to experience a lot of firsts, including riding a train and going on a boat.

The girls enjoying their first train ride.  Elsie kept putting her face up against the window to not miss anything and when I told her to not touch the glass with her face because lots of others had done the same thing and it was kinda gross, she commented "yeah, I can smell the dirt!"

Once we got off the blue line, we walked through the Promenade and hopped on the Passport.  The Passport is a bus that takes you to different places downtown for free.  I was hoping to walk around the Pike and see a few things, but Elsie was quite anxious to see everything as quickly as possible and didn't like having to wait the 10 minutes for the Passport to arrive, nor did she want to walk around.   Since the new Pike was built after I moved away, I will have to make a trip back down by myself or with Wayne one day.

The girls were quite impressed with just how big the Queen Mary is.  We will have to come someday as a family to actually go on it and take a few tours.

We also saw the outside of the Russian Scorpion (submarine) and ventured through the little gift shop.  Here they are posing with the suit the soldiers would have to put on if they had to evacuate the submarine during an emergency.  It is much heavier and cumbersome than our scuba diving gear we wear today.

Trying on hats is always fun.  Ay, my lil' Russian Captain.

Next we walked over to the dock where we literally just missed the Aquabus (its the small boat just above Elsie's head and pulling away) and had to wait another hour for the next one to arrive.  We decided it was the perfect time to sit down and eat our lunch and then throw pebbles into the water.

Group Selfie!!!

Riding the Aquabus and you can see my old office building in the background.

The sky looks so blue in this picture!  You can see the Queen Mary and the dome that used to house the Spruce Goose before it got moved up to Oregon.  The dome is now used for special events and to film movies, including two of the Batman's.

The Aquabus dropped us off at Shoreline Village where the girls enjoyed a mint chip ice cream, walked around the arcade, checked out a few stores and boats.  When I asked them if they would like to live close to the beach, Elsie said "No, I would miss my horses too much!"

This store has tons of crazy hats.  I am not sure anyone actually buys them , but they are always fun to try on.  My brother and I even did so as kids!

Arrr, Kya the Mermaid Pirate

Elsie as Jake from Jake and the Neverland.  She wanted to pose in this for her brother Seth.

After hanging out at Shoreline Village, we took the blue line back to get our van and finally headed down to the beach.  Normally Long Beach doesn't get waves due to the breakwater that was put in during the 1940's, but we have been having extremely high riptides and so there was actually some small waves for the girls to play in.  There were also about 100 Kite Surfers taking advantage of the small waves and slightly windy day. 

Jumping the waves together and then trying their hand had body surfing.  You can see one of the Oil Islands in the background that is used to produce oil from five major sand intervals ranging in depths from 2,000 feet to 11,000 feet.  At night the island is quite pretty when it is all lit up.

Before I married Wayne, I lived just a few blocks down the beach and although I love my life inland, I do  miss being able to walk down to the beach and rollerblade daily.  Being back for the day brought back so many memories and I was glad to share it with my girls.

Birthday Boys!

Wayne and Seth were blessed to celebrate another birthday this year. Wayne's was on Sunday, while Seth's was the day after.  We woke up a bit early to have blueberry pancakes, per Wayne's request, before church and then came home to eat lunch before heading out to Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor for desert. 

We went for Kya's birthday a couple of years ago and Seth witnessed how they staff makes over the birthday person BIG time and he was looking forward to the attention.  The staff came out with 2 free sundae's, banging a drum, shouting and lots of singing.

Seth & Wayne each had huge smiles on their faces and had lots of fun waving their hands about and being made over.

The birthday boys getting ready to enjoy their desert.

The girls and I shared a sundae and I am sure they got more chocolate sauce on their faces than in their tummies. lol

Mommy and Daddy with their big 8 year old.  God sure did bless us with an amazing son!

Daddy with all 3 of his blessings.

The next day, on Seth's actual birthday, Grandpa, Grandma, Great Grandpa and Great Grandma came over for dinner, cake and presents.  He chose to  not have a party this year, so that he can compete in more rodeo's

Grandma/pa gave him his very on boogie board that he was able to try out at the beach on Wednesday with his cousins.

I feel so blessed that my Grandma is still alive and doing well at the age of 87.  Not only is it fun to have her around, but I love that my kids have the chance to know her and Bob.  My grandpa passed away over 15 years ago, so Bob is the only Great Grandpa my kids have known and we all LOVE him.

I wish I had asked my mom to get in this picture too.

 We had one of Seth's favorite meals, homemade Chinese food.  The menu was: Sweet & Sour Chicken, Sesame Noodles, Steamed Broccoli and Pot-stickers followed by Chocolate cake and smore ice cream.

Boo, Summer is half over

I can't believe how quickly Summer is flying by! We are already over half way done and in just 4 short weeks, the kids will be back in school. BOO! I am enjoying having my kids home and being able to sleep in, find free things to do together and overall just having fun.  I haven't taken many pictures of our adventures, because that requires me to take along my big camera and let's face it, I don't want too.  Here are a some highlights of what we have been doing.......

My Grandma asked me a while back if I would make and can her some peach jam if she could get me the peaches.  Of course I said yes and had a fun afternoon making the jam with my little helper.

Elsie enjoyed squeezing the soft fruit between her fingers to remove the seed.

I made 18 jars, but one of the pint size jars ended up breaking while in the canner.  So sad!  I am hoping to get our own peach tree soon and then we can have more peaches than we know what to do with.

Kya took a cooking class this Summer.  It was a four week class and she learned how to make muffins, meatballs, pizza and a berry trifle. She had lots of fun and so I am sure we will be signing her up again soon. 

I posted this picture on facebook and was informed by a friend of mine that the instructor is her cousin!  Small world.

Although our 4th of July weekend was fairly busy, it didn't go quite has I had hoped it would.  I really wanted to spend Friday at a local parade, come home to BBQ and then get together with friends for a firework show.  In the end, Wayne was able to work overtime (more money!) and the parade started way too early for our slow poke family.  So we nixed the parade and just stayed home.  I did venture out with the millions of other people to buy ribs at Stater Bros and made some fall off the bone, yummy spare ribs, corn on the cob, baked beans and watermelon.  Sounds pretty typical of 4th of July food eh?  We packed up all the food and ate dinner with Wayne in his office and then returned later on to sit in the district office parking lot to watch the fireworks.  Although the city firework show was pretty good, I have to say that the illegal fireworks being shot off all over town was even better.  Not saying I am a fan of those, in fact, they scare me a lot, but they are nice to watch from a distance.  Even with our laid back day, the kids were wiped out!  Kya was curled up behind Elsie, but I had already carried her to her own bed, before Wayne suggested I take a picture.

The next morning we had to get up and dressed pretty early to watch our friends kids compete in a horse show for their 4-H Club.  I am really hoping to get the kids involved in 4-H as well and thought this would be a good time to check out what it is really all about.  Turns out it wasn't and we are hoping to go to their local fair to actually learn more.  Anyways, it was fun to see our friends and to watch all that the kids have learned in the riding arena.  The show started at 9am and I thought it would be over no later than 10am (I mean really, only 4 kids were competing!), but turns out it didn't end until almost noon.  Ugh!  That meant that the other plans I had for that day fell through as well.  I was hoping to go up the hill to Mountaineer Days, but to fully enjoy the activities, we needed to leave out house no later than 11am and obviously that didn't happen, so we just spent another day at home.

Katie and Kassidy had already taken off their western shirts to cool down.

Ken and Eileen came over for a short while before leaving on a plane for Colorado so they could bring Seth his birthday present and some goodies from Germany.

Seth got this iron horseshoe hat hanger for his wall and a light up razor.

We all got some German candy to share, a typical German decoration and the girls got some cute hair bows.  I love that Eileen always thinks of us when she is traveling.

On Sunday, Wayne preached at our church while our pastor was on vacation and then we came back later on that night for our church picnic.  So like I said, it was a fun, full weekend and we all just learned  how to deal with unexpected changes.  I will up date the second half of our summer fun in about a month!