creative friends

After Bodhi's birthday I realized we have so many creative friends. We had several people make gifts for Bodhi this year. First, My sister made a birthday banner for the party. I love it! It is so cute and I love that I get to use it over and over again for Bodhi's parties. Bodhi really likes the fabric with the choo choos.

Another gift for Bodhi was this amazing growth chart made by our friend Stephanie. It is so beautiful and personalized just for Bodhi. She even gives a tutorial on how to make it on her blog here.

Our friend Tuan knitted this adorable monkey that you twist from one long piece. We decided getting this on video would be the best thing to do, so we could actually try to put it back together if it comes apart. So fun and Bodhi loves monkeys!

6 years and counting

Ray and I celebrated our 6th year wedding anniversary last weekend with a mini family trip to San Diego. We stayed in the Gaslamp district. We have stayed in this area on a previous trip and thought it was a great location so decided to stay again. Our view from the hotel overlooked San Diego bay and train tracks from the Trolley. Bodhi loved seeing the trains go by.

The weekend actually started off at a birthday party for my friends Rebecca's son Riley at Boomer's in Irvine. Bodhi loved running all around the gameroom, and pretending to "drive" at the car racing games. It was a nice event, since we actually got to chat with everyone. The afternoon even included a round of mini golf. Although Bodhi didn't do much golfing as he would just run up to each hole on the green and throw the ball in.

After the party we continued our drive to San Diego and checked into our hotel. Unfortunately we hit some traffic along the way, so we ended up eating dinner really late. That was a bit of an adventure since we weren't really sure where to eat, so we just kept walking down the street until we found a place. We finally ended up at Seaport Village at a restarant overlooking the water. It was a warm evening so we sat outside. When the waiter came to take our order, Bodhi said "Nooess, peez" (Noodles, please) to the waiter. It was so cute to see him order his own food! Then, since he was so hungry after the waiter left he kept saying Noodles where are you? and looking around for the noodles. Our waiter was really nice and brought out Bodhi's food right away. Once our meals came Bodhi had seconds of salmon and french fries!

After dinner we were able to take the trolley train back to our hotel (yes, we walked that far to dinner!). There was a stop right in front of our hotel. Poor Bodhi was so tired when we got back at 10pm. I don't think he has ever been up that late before. The next morning we slept in a bit and then had brunch at Cafe 222. The last time we stayed in San Diego was when I was pregnant with Bodhi and we went to this same cafe. It has really yummy pancakes! Again, Bodhi ordered for himself "pancakes, syrup." Then on to the Zoo. We spent the rest of the day there seeing all the animals. My favorite animals to see were the polar bears. I think Bodhi liked the polar bears too!

Some of the other animals that we saw at the zoo...




We even took a ride on the aerial tramway.

Then we got on the freeway to drive home, thinking we would just stop somewhere off the freeway to eat dinner. But when we decided to get off, we kind of got lost and ended up driving around for a while until we came across the Corvette Diner, which incidentally, I had read about online before we left for the weekend. It was our last stop of the day which included yummy burgers and onion rings. Luckily we had no trouble finding our way back to the freeway and headed home.

Easter

Easter was pretty busy this year, lots of stuff to do. We colored eggs and decorated cookies the night before, though Bodhi fell asleep before most of the action. The next morning the kids all discovered their baskets, which were promptly rooted through.

Egg coloring, old-school style!

Wow! Look at all this loot!

After getting the kids dressed and ready to go we headed to church in Orange County for an egg hunt. They were supposed to draw a number then find the 3 eggs with their number on it. Bodhi got a little carried away.

Somebody left all these eggs just laying around!

Happy Easter!

About halfway into the service, Bodhi and Dahlia got a little restless so we went back outside to run around a bit. Had to work off some of that candy!

Hey, where'd all those eggs go?

Cheeeeeese!
After church we went out to lunch at barbecue place and then back to Aunt Susan's place for dessert and another egg hunt with just the 4 kids (Baby Connor didn't participate this year).

Oooo! There's one!

See? Eggs!
Like I said, a busy Easter this year. But it was lots of fun and the kids really seemed to enjoy it. Happy Easter, everyone!

A day in the gardens...

Another recent family outing, this time to the Huntington Gardens. We met Sherry and the kids at the front entrance and then took a walk around. We thought that we'd only be there a little while and be ready to go, but this place is huge! After a couple hours, though, the gardens were closing and we were nowhere near being done. There are a lot of different types of gardens: desert succulents, Japanese gardens, lily ponds, open lawns, statue gardens, a children's garden, etc. I don't think we saw even half of it. We'll have to make a couple more trips to take it all in. The kids had lots of fun, sometimes too much fun and it was hard to get them to move on to the next area. But, it's always good to get the kids out and there were lots of places for them to just run and explore.

birthday party

We celebrated Bodhi's 2nd birthday this last Saturday. Sherry and Miles were kind enough to let us have the party at their house, which was so great since they have a big playground set up in the backyard that all the kids love. We did super easy food, pizza, pasta salad, green salad and fruit. We made the cardboard train the week before the party. Thank goodness I had a lot of helpers, (thanks Vignols!) otherwise it never would have been finished. I loved how all the details turned out in the end and I think Bodhi loved the party and spending the day with family and friends.

a visit to travel town

We went to Travel Town this weekend. We had never been there before so we enjoyed walking around looking at and climbing into the large trains on the property. We also got to take a ride on the small locomotive that goes around the property. I thought it would be good for Bodhi to see some big trains to get him excited for his train party. Sherry and Miles met us there with Dahlia, Mason and Connor. Bodhi loves his cousins by the way he is always talking about Mamis and Dada. (Mason and Dahlia respectively). When he pretends to be talking on the phone at home, he is always talking to Mamis or Dada. (Oh, Hi Dada, yeah alright, bye) Too cute!

toddler bed

Bodhi recently moved from his crib to a toddler bed. We had planned on taking off the crib rail and replacing it with toddler bed rail and wouldn't you know it the day before we did it, Bodhi fell out of his crib in the middle of the night. Thankfully he did not get hurt. The next morning we replaced the railing. Bodhi liked his new bed right away, getting in and pretending he was sleeping saying "Ah shoo, Ah shoo," pulling the covers up under his chin. Of course this new bed makes it much easier to get up in the middle of the night and get into our bed. The other morning, Ray and I woke up to find Bodhi had crawled into our bed without either of us knowing. He has recently taken to bringing a lovey with him to bed at night. He has a few favorites including a little monkey he calls Buddy and a monster doll called Big toe. But he occasionally likes to take another toy to bed with him. Other choices at night have been a stuffed bunny, a bath boat, a toy hammer and pliers. We have a pretty good routine at night and Bodhi usually accepts that it is bed time and will say he needs to give Mommy a kiss and a hug before selecting his lovey for the night, and then going into his room with Daddy to turn off the light and turn on his moon and stars.