The Martins Visit

We were lucky to have Beth and family join us for her last sojourn before Baby Boy is born. They came out the first weekend of February.

Paige is very smart and knew the names of all the family members before she got here.

She is no shy and loves anyone who will play with her.

Of course whenever anyone visits this little guy shows up too! Love having them close by.

We have a picture of Dan and Beth like this from nay years ago.

Paige wants to do whatever the big kids do.

It was nice enough to go to the park.

Such a little climber!

Until next time Martin family!

Girl Trip

The last weekend of January I got to spend a weekend with my high school girlfriends! We went to our house in La Quinta.

We arrived on Saturday and visited Sunnylands for a tour. It was amazing!  I had no idea about this place, surrounded by a pink wall that goes on for miles. We had to order the tickets a month in advance. The last eight presidents, plus many celebrities and world leaders, stay here for retreats.

It was owned by the Annenbergs until Leanore Annenberg passed away in 2009. 

This is a mayan fountain outside the main house.

The house is a quite large, mid century modern structure. We were not allowed to take pictures inside. The walls are covered with the artwork of major Impressionist artists. They are now just duplicates as the Annenberg's art collection was given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The history of the house was incredible. We loved our tour.

On Sunday, we went to brunch and then walked around downtown Palm Springs. We came across this strange yard.

We stopped at a bar on the main drag and now we know why it is called the main "drag".

Sunday night we went out to dinner at the beautiful La Quinta resort. We had such a nice relaxing time.

Some January Stuff

We are happy to announce that Anna is May on the Face to Face calendar for 2017!

Just a normal morning before school for a girl and her dog.

One of the perks of living near your grandkids is that you get to go on their field trips. Maks had a trip to go ice skating and Becky asked me to come along to help with Oli.  

All the four year olds were excited to go out , but not many of them lasted very long. Ice skating is a bit tricky for that age.

Anna doesn't have school in the morning so she was able to go too!

All of Maks's class that attended the trip.

We rounded out the trip with a visit to the arcade.

Despite the picture, Oli really does love busses!

Bad Parents

We let our kids, and grandkids even, stand on the kitchen island.

How else can you reach to put the marbles in?

We let them ice skate (at our new cool ice rink in the shape of a river) without knee pads or helmets. 

And we even buy them high fructose syrup Gatorade to drink while they are doing it.

We let them pretend to shoot each other with high powered rifles in games of laser tag.

 
And we did it without even making them change out of their school uniforms.

Sorry we are such bad parents.

Winter Break 2016

We had a wonderful time at our house in La Quinta over winter break. Our original plan was to go the day after Christmas. But Becky and Arek were going to be there the week before Christmas and the week after, coming home in between. It didn't make sense for them to do that so we went out to California instead.

We opened our gifts on the 19th in Colorado. We found out that Santa will come early if you leave cookies out. :) 

When we got to La Quinta the girls didn't like that there was no Christmas tree, so they made two of their own.

We had a few days with just the four of us in the beginning. 

On Christmas Eve we went to the 4:30 Mass. At 3:50 the choir lead the people in the pews in singing  Christmas carols. It was nice to have something to do when you are just waiting for Mass to start. It was just the four of us on Christmas Eve. We had fun going out to a fancy restaurant! The girls got Shirley Temple's.

They saw some other people taking pictures in front of this mural and wanted to do the same. Yes, they were underdressed. We decided at the last minute to not pack fancy dresses. Bad choice, everyone was dressed up! 

The meals were pre-fix which included dessert. All the deserts at the table had a different Christmas symbol on the plate.

Becky and Arek came on Christmas Day. We opened presents and had a barbecue.

Arek had to work most of the visit. But Becky and the rest of went on a hike at the Oasis Park the day after Christmas. Behind us is the San Andreas Fault.

The kids found "gold". 

The girls favorite present by far was their Fin Fun Mermaid tales. They played with them in the pool every day that it wasn't raining and even one day when it was!

Joey, Brittany, Ben, Avery, Dar, Sean and Danielle joined us for Dan's birthday. The guys all went golfing while the kids swam and the ladies talked.

Dar's gift to the girls would have been great if they had somehow held together!

We hit Minerva Street again for a leisurely stroll among the houses decorated to the hilt.

It rained several days while we there so we found some indoor things to entertain us. The local casino has a great bowling alley.

We went to several parks on the warmer days. This was a park we hadn't been to before. It had a nice walking track and good climbing trees.

We found a hibachi restaurant which the girls always love. You always seem to meet interesting people too when you sit around a grill with them.

Our last night there was New Years Eve.  We didn't do anything as we had to get up early and leave the next morning. Once again, we found a countdown that was many hours earlier than the actual time.

We had a very good time on this trip and were ready to come home and start 2017!