At the Beach

Ahhhh... look at these pictures and think warm, happy thoughts!  I'm actually off to the pool right now with Gracia (I WISH it was the beach...)  so it's just pictures for now, enjoy!

Cousins

This picture made me so nervous, it's better if I'm not around when they do stuff like this.

The Cousins plus two, Maile and Chrysa.

And the cousin, plus wife and child that we SO missed!  We were all so bummed not to have you there, Aric, Danielle and Christian.  Next time.

Hair and Makeup

Is this not precious!!  This is Jeremy's oldest brother Eden, he's helping Gracia out with her makeup application!

Gretchen is amazing at so many things, one of her talents being hair cutting, she really should be a beautician.  She cut Gracia's hair, Brady's, mine, colored Jessie's and Zack's and gave Jess some great new bangs.  If she would have been paid for these services, she would have raked it in!  Too bad we're family...  By the way, I love my haircut Gretchen, I'll need another one in a month or two, just to let you know... should I come to your shop, or will you come to mine?  ;)

Like mother, like daughter!

LA Zoo

The Zoo Crew!

Zack is the sweetest "older than Hans" boy I know!  Hans LOVED having him around and loved that Zack paid such great attention to him.  Thanks Zack!

Flamingos, do you know why they are pink?

Flamingos??

These giraffe were so close, they literally could have reached over and pecked Jessie and Maile on the head!

Not sure if I have ever seen a rhino before, they look so rough and ugly, and are huge!

Venice Beach

This first picture is the "strip" at Venice Beach.  You walk down this road and see all kinds of "interesting" people selling possibly illegal and definitely weird stuff.  I don't think I'll be missing a lot if I don't go down the strip again...  

However, the beach was lovely!!!  I'd go back just for the beach!  

Apparently Venice was first know as "muscle beach," it has a huge outdoor gym and all kinds of neat gym equipment to play on, here's Brady and Hans climbing the ropes and Hans on the balance beam.  

The weather was beautiful!

What a treat to get to enjoy being outside without layers and layers of clothes on!  These pictures were from the In and Out Burger joint close to LAX, we HAD to stop for lunch, they have the best burgers and it is so inexpensive, double plus!!

 

Glad to be off the plane and run around!

Our monkey nephew, Brady, also extremely photogenic!

I wish the officer would have been around, I totally would have asked him if Hans could have taken a picture ON the bike.

CALIFORNIA

So I'm finally going to post some pictures of our Christmas trip to California.... I know, it's only Feb... better late then never right?

We had a FABULOUS time, we are SO THANKFUL to all of the family, especially Gerald and Linda for making this trip possible, THANK YOU!!! It is such a gift to love our family so much and be so grateful to get to spend time with them. Brian and Gretchen, you amaze us in so many ways! We LOVE staying with you and cannot say enough how much fun we had. You have a gift of hosting/giving of yourselves in so many ways. THANK YOU!!

Another big THANK YOU goes to Kevin and Karina for letting us "fly" in and out of their home on the way to and coming back from CA, even though it was short we were thankful to get to see you, it helped me both ways to be able to relax a little and re-group being at your home instead of rushing through. Kevin, thanks for the early morning trip to the airport, you guys made it so easy for us to make this happen. Thank you.

It was a very early morning for all these folks! It was really nice that we could all take the same flight out, that also eased my nerves a little bit.


Blaire was asleep within 5 minutes of boarding the plane! So what do we do? Throw all the kids over to his side!! Hee, hee. He can sleep through anything!


LAX!!! We're here!!! You can see their joy, we had a great flight, things went so well.


What a great Welcome sign, thanks Morgan and Aubre!!