This Minivan Life

My Sweet Michael, Is it that time already? Are you already 4? Where has this year gone? It seems to have passed in a whirl of tantrums, activities, Thomas, Octonauts, Dusty, and Wild Kratts. You my friend have a passion for life. I am often amazed at the amount to enthusiasm you put into each and every activity. It is as if you wake up each morning ready to fight the day, you don't approach anything lightly, you throw yourself into everything. You are thrilled one minute and devastated the next- for the life of me I cannot keep up with your never ending energy. Your thirst for knowledge is astounding. When you were little the interest was a bit more superficial but now, well now that has changed. And with your recent discovery of the non fiction section, well friend, I expect big things from you. This year we have learned about the sea, animals, and now space. You constantly surprise me, you say things like "Mom did you know that Neptune and Uranus are brothers? They are

Remember how our family photos turned out last summer ? If not let me tell you, t hey did not turn out well... no really, Zach looked truly horrified. So we took some again in November and those were ok . Since the kids had grown and we were hopeful that they could cooperate more (in fairness Michael is awesome when it comes to getting his photo taken but someone I'm paying, totally worth the money). They did. Still not perfect, but SO MUCH BETTER!    Yep it's as close to a win as we are going to get. Yeah there are issues, but it's red, everyone is looking, and did I mention no one looks horrified to be there?

Sadly for Michael we were driving to the Lake on his birthday. Lucky for him he got his creature power suit (more on that later), the minivan we rented had a DVD player, and we got to stay in a hotel.   We started by stopping at Cardenas for some treats.  They loved the DVD player in the car.  We had lunch at In'N'Out  Played a bit  Wore the creature power suit the whole time  and LOVED the hotel.  Poppy thought ahead and brought bacon (Michael's favorite food) and made it for him for dinner. Yep bacon in a hotel room, don't you wish you were our neighbors?  A dinner of bacon sandwiches and grapes.  And more trashing the room.

For our last day in CA we were flying solo. We went to Walmart, Target, Toys'R'Us, Wendy's, and some Pulte model homes.  The boys loved the sun roof in Poppy's car.   We found some model homes and they did what they always do, play on the beds and in the shower. I feel sorta bad if they made a mess (which they didn't) but not really now that I've bought a Pulte house and Brian works (a lot) for them.  We went to Toys'R'Us and Michael got to pick himself out a present.  We visited the most fun thing- a little free library set up by one of my high school friends. It's adorable. If you are in CA (well Temecula) you need to check it out!  Zach didn't want a picture.