Strawberry Picking!

I've been meaning to take the kids strawberry picking for years, and today we finally took the adventure down to Watsonville to give it a try. I've heard about Gizdich Ranch for awhile, and it did not disappoint, although many other families had the same idea today.  You basically bring your own baskets and they direct you to a specific row to start your picking and take however long you wish to take looking through all of the berry bushes.  Little Addison ate about half of the crop that she picked, and Colbie ate about a quarter, but boy were these fresh strawberries absolutely DELICIOUS!  We missed the great bakery with the fresh berry pies, berry ice cream, and homemade apple juice (too crowded for our hungry crew), but next time we're definitely going to taste it all.  We ended up with an enormous box of berries which I'm confident we'll work our way through in just a couple of days.  After berry picking we spent a cold and windy afternoon at the Capitola beach.  It was a great start to our Memorial Day weekend!

 

 

 

Great Hometown Days Weekend!

Phew, it's been a very busy weekend with our local Hometown Days festival going on.  Yesterday morning we headed down to the little funky parade downtown.  Jake really wanted to be in it with his school friends (and for the first time ever asked if he could just walk with his friends without us...boy have times changed!).   The girls and I sat and watched the parade and the girls LOVED it.  The local middle school and high school bands and cheerleaders all performed, as well as every little school/dance studio/etc.  Just like last year it felt like more people were in the parade than watching it.  When Jake came by, the girls really wanted to join him, so we all joined in the parade.  

 

 

We ran to a quick birthday party after walking the entire parade...how the girls lasted there for two hours of jumpy house time I have no idea!  And yes, after nap time we went back to the festival.

 Today we started with the 5k/10k fun run just like last year.  The girls were not so excited about getting into the stroller since Jake was running with me, so it was quite an eventful run.  It went something like this:  Countdown begins and we all run through the start line, 1 minute in the girls are crying that they want me to push them, 0.5 miles in Jake takes a header into the pavement (neighbors actually came out and brought band aids and offered ice packs!), then I get to push all three of them on the stroller to calm everyone down for the next mile.  At about mile 2 Jake decides that he is ok and with a little push he joins me for the remainder of the 5k while Josh takes the stroller off for the 10k.  Not only did Jake run, but he actually sprinted nearly the entire last mile. Josh met us at the pancake breakfast at the end with hilarious stories of screaming girls for the entire last 4 miles (such loud screaming in fact that fellow racers were telling him that he had his own sirens and another lady ran into her house and brought out toys for the girls...nothing worked for poor Josh).  So...it was most definitely an eventful race!

  

 The rest of the day was carnival time...pony rides, ferris wheels, jumpy houses and games.  Phew we are TIRED!

 

 

 glitter tattoos!

Hometown Days Begins

I took the kids down to the park last night for the start of our little hometown days weekend celebration.  All of the bands and orchestras from our local schools performed and it was good fun.  Although it was quite chilly, the kids ran around and danced for nearly two hours, and boy did they all go down fast for bedtime!!  Today we're headed to the parade- all of the kids have been invited to be in the parade between the three schools we are a part of, but we'll see if anyone actually does it!

Messy!

Unlike Jake, Colbie and Addison LIKE to get messy!!  They had such fun turning their painting project into finger/hand painting at school this week!

Happy Mother's Day!!!

Happy, Happy Mother's Day to all of you Moms dear family and friends!!   I hope that you had a relaxing day today.   My big present was a day "off" yesterday, and it was just lovely.   I haven't really had a ME day probably since last Mother's Day, and boy did I need it!   Josh sent me out of the house by 8:00 in the morning yesterday, so I headed to the gym and had a nice long workout (very rare to not be rushed at the gym).  Then I finally got to use my gift certificates from last Mother's Day and had a TWO hour massage...pure paradise.   And then I headed down to Stanford mall for a quick 1.5 hours of shopping.  There is not really much more of a perfect me day than gym, spa and shopping...I'm mean seriously!!!  The relaxed feeling went away pretty quickly once I returned to our home of chaos, and the kids decided to not sleep last night as payback, but oh well...it was absolutely lovely while it lasted so thank you so much Josh!!  
Today has been very sweet, even though I had very little sleep last night.  Jake made me the cutest book for Mother's Day which I will treasure forever.   We had a lovely lunch at my parents house with all of the grandparents, and I didn't have to cook a thing (thanks Mom and Lee!!). 
Jake's picture of me made in computer class:

 Here are a few pages from the book that he made (LOVE that he can write now!!)

  

Josh actually bought all of the kids these "I love Mom" shirts and put them on them first thing this morning!

 Here are all of the Mom's at lunch:

 We missed you Tia Lindsay but we are sending you a BIG Happy FIRST Mother's Day today!!    Thank you Josh for making such a wonderful weekend for me this weekend...now have a nice trip to New York this week...ha ha ha!!!!!

Calendar Day

Every day in Jake's classroom the kids rotate job duties, and the most anticipated job is when it's your "calendar day".   I've never really understood what it was except that you get to be line leader all day long, but yesterday Mrs. Mecchi invited me in to watch Jake lead the classroom in the calendar process.   Wow...it was so interesting!  First of course he puts the day of the month in the calendar and the day of the week in the week chart.  But then he writes what number day of the school year it is (155 yesterday) and glues it up on the chart, and then in front of the class counts by 5 from 5 to 155.  Then he spells out to Mrs. Mecchi what the weather looks like (I had no idea Jake knew the word brisk) and fills in a color chart on weather.  Furthermore he counts out $1.55 in money and then 155 straws (in 10s) and THEN starts a class math problem (he picked 5+1=6).  The kids then come up with tons of other variations of how to get to the number 6 with addition and subtraction.   The whole process is about 15 minutes, and I was so impressed with how far Jake has come this year and how many tasks each child gets to help with.  Wow Mrs. Mecchi!