Bostonians come west!

Jon's old mission/BYU roommate and his family flew out a couple weeks ago. We had a marathon sight-seeing weekend with them! Check this out...

Friday we saw:

Jon's EA office
Elephant seals in Ano Nuevo: A bit more of a hike than we expected... I was glad Lee was willing to help carry Dawna part of the way, but she was quite a trooper! Lawrence rode well on my shoulders, unless the path was paved with gravel--then he tried to jump off my shoulders in search of rocks to throw.
Authentic Mexican restaurant: My favorite quote was from Lee "I just think it's awesome that I spoke to three different people in Spanish in the last five minutes!" Why did that make me laugh? I'm not sure, but it did :)

Golden Gate Bridge
"Secret beach" in the Marin Headlands: Lee and Kristin and Jon and Dawna waded in the waves... but Larry... you guessed it... kept working on his pitching muscles by throwing all the rocks he could get his hands on
Lombard--the windiest street in America!
Artichokes! Farm fresh and purchased at a road-side stand!

There was a lot of time in the car, but still all in all it was a blast!

Saturday we meant to continue the lightning tour, but were brought back to a human pace when baby Kaela got a fever. This baby is seriously stunningly beautiful. For those of you familiar with Twilight, she is, in my minds eye, Reneesme. Anyway, instead of trekking back across the bay, we just biked to central park and enjoyed the playground there.

Sunday we enjoyed church and the afternoon at a leisurely pace... unfortunately and all too soon, our dear friends had to go back across the country to Boston... we hope their trip out here--with all the sleep depriving, fever inducing fun-- didn't diminish their desire to make the Bay Area a permanent residence for them :) It could happen... especially if we could get away with arranging a certain marriage... hehehehe < insert evil chuckle here >
For more information about our exciting weekend, see Lee and Kristin's Blog--link in the right margin of our blog :)

Teddy Bear Picnic

So, I'm a little behind in my blogging...

Dawna's birthday party this year was a "Teddy Bear Picnic." She had six friends from nursery and primary. Each brought along a stuffed furry friend to enjoy the party. I even got creative and designed invitations on GIMP.

We all enjoyed a variety of activities including:

• Taking our teddies for a ride on a parachute
• Playing "musical bears" to the "Teddy Bear Picnic" Song
• Sack race... aka: put your teddy in a pillowcase and run around the cones...
• Decorating bear cookies
• And the treasure hunt... which requires some explanation...

Before decorating cookies, I had the kids put their teddies down for a "nap" and covered them all with a blanket. Then we all went to the kitchen. While Emily, Jessie, Sarah, and mom helped the kids decorate, I took the teddies out from under the blanket and put them in the "forest" in our backyard. I put them on a checkered picnic blanket and next to each teddy was a little bag of gummy bears... So, after the cookie decorating was done, I took the kids to wake up the bears... but --POOF!!-- there were NO BEARS under the blanket where they left them for a nap... but there were bear footprints with clues such as, "tiptoe down the path," and "skip across the lawn to the swing." The footprints led the kids to their teddies who were having a picnic of their own in the woods! It was really cute! It was the best executed party activity--some of the others required a little more prodding on my part...

Jon helped me make the cake, which was actually a rice crispy treat bear... Which we actually ended up eating after the party for Family Home Evening that night
I really had a lot of fun with this and I hope Dawna will have good memories of her first "friends" birthday party!