The whole family totally rocked, though the main purpose of the photo shoot was to get senior pictures for this beautiful girl.

She choose to have pictures taken at the beach – sentimental value. You *KNOW* I was totally psyched about that. And we had a fabulous time walking all over the place. Beautiful little coves and flowers, etc. Will post more pictures later.

I look forward to meeting you soon!

First born child. Sweet, thoughtful, and goes with the flow.

Second child….disruptive to first child’s mellow. But he loves her all the same. I was struck by how well these three children get along with each other and look after each other (WITHOUT EVEN BEING TOLD!) This little girl is definitely the wild one in the bunch — but who doesn’t love a girl who will jump right in and grab the frog?

Third child…definitely his own person. Loves his brother’s mellow, but also wants to jump right into the fire with his sister.

True to form, she’s in the water. So he’s following her in, but then decides it’s too cold and starts to climb his sister. Which results in…..the entire body going in instead of just cold feet. Sigh. Poor kid.

Mom totally rocked my socks off. So attentive to the kids and yet still able to let them be by themselves. Not enough pictures of her with the kids since she was so busy interacting with them it’s a lot of hair pictures. But all these pictures are for Dad’s birthday (shhhhhh!) so we’ll have ANOTHER chance to get her smiling face. And dad’s too.

And what’s better than a pile ‘o babies?! I’ve never done birth announcements for twins before — I have to say being able to pile babies up for pictures is a lot of fun!

This one cracks me up. He’s just hangin’

Now, I’m off to go run around in the gorgeous sunshine and hopefully convince my family they want ice cream!

My boys!

I am happy to post two pictures taken by other members of the family.

Oliver has become very very good with the camera. I really want to get him his own SLR.

Oliver told Peter to take a picture of he and I — WAHOOO! I don’t even have to be the one to order other people around with the camera.

Beautiful day!

I don’t know what this is, but it’s one of my favorite pictures of the day.

There was so much to see in the tidepools. I’m going to limit myself to these couple (plus that odd thing above!) Sadly, we did not find any seastars, but I lost Oliver to the pull of sand art. He couldn’t be bothered to look in the tidepools too long when there was a long flat perfect beach to do some drawings on.

The rock and sand formations there were really amazing. This was Oliver’s favorite spot. He liked how the rock formed a little bowl.

We watched the surfers on and off during the day. They were pretty far away. Sadly, this surfer guy about to bite it is my favorite picture of them…

The sunset was amazing, and the moon was even more beautiful. I love how you can see the texture at the bottom of the moon.

Oliver is not big on change. In fact, there are still rides we have never tried at Legoland. Two because there’s the possibility of having water squirted on you. He finally gave in and tried them this year. He loved them! He didn’t get wet at all….because his mother is ENORMOUS and apparently shadowed out all the water spray. I was soaked. The good part of this was that the camera stayed with Sweet Peter on dry land, and miracles of miracles, he used it!

Legoland continues to expand and we found the new slide in adventure land. I’m not sure who designed this “ride”, but apparently they have a sick sense of humor. Giant plastic slide. Nylon-ish bags. Have any of you seen the GIGANTIC Van De Graaff generator at the Museum of Science? That’s got NOTHING on this thing. My rear-end was sparkled the entire way down. It was painful. The poor guy on the end got down to the bottom and had a spark jump from the wall a foot and a half over to his elbow. I think it smoked afterwards. YIKES! Oliver did go down the slide again so that he could experience it with Peter. Peter swears that jeans were more protective against the sparkles than my cords were. All the same, 2 for Oliver and one for each of us was enough. It was one of the few rides at Legoland that didn’t have much of a line. Go figure. It did produce really cute pictures of my family. I’m not biased or anything.

The previous picture is one of my favorites, as is the next. I cannot get enough pictures of the amount of fun my child has at Legoland…

Christmas was totally wonderful. My Aunt’s friend Charlotte (who’s just like family!) was able to join us this year for Christmas. The day was absolutely perfect. We opened presents, played with Legos all day, had a wonderful dinner together and dreamed of sugarplums the entire week. Okay, not sugarplums. Satsuma Tangerines. A million times better.

Sweet Dreams….of tangerines!

I could not get over how sweet the kids were to each other. They seemed too little to take the time to take care of each other.

At he first letterbox site – all five of us.

The ride in.

Great old trees in the city. Who knew I would have to leave the woods to find such great trees?

wildlife.

I’m not psyched with the placement of the swan in the photo, but I couldn’t bring myself to crop out his (her?) reflection.

Great lines.

This picture cracks me up. It reminds me so much of the dancing down the steps that occurred in last year’s city trip. I’m also really digging the TRA dirty pictures. Such great textures to add to my photos at the touch of a button. I’ve become so lazy.

And my new favorite picture.

Thanks for indulging me!