Cheyanne's 6th Birthday - Camping & Snowplay

Here are pictures from our b-day camping weekend. Lots of fun sledding (despite occasional mud spots) and a fun morning of opening presents in the camper. See the post below for more details on Cheyanne's b-day and our camping adventure.

Tamara

Cheyanne's 6th Birthday - Princess Party

Well, we had a great time celebrating Cheyanne's birthday last week. She turned 6 yrs old (unbelievable) on Jan. 9th. She got to celebrate twice -- we had a Princess party on Wed. and had 7 other little girls over dressed in their favorite princess outfit. Cheyanne loves Cinderella and thus everything needed to be "Cinderella" for this party. I think part of the reason she likes that princess is that she wears blue and has yellow hair -- both of which are Cheyanne's favorite colors.

During the party we made bracelets, ate pizza, played "pin the slipper on Cinderella" and "Princess says", enjoyed opening presents and having cake before everyone headed home. Then, on her actual birthday we had decided to go camping up near Yosemite and enjoy a snowplay day. We drove up on Friday and on her birthday she opened presents in the morning and got a Cinderella watch, new Magnetic play toys (all the kids played for hours with), sparkly shoes, matching dress for her and her doll, Wii "Cheer" game, a fun yo-yo from her siblings (to which she has mastered now thanks to hours of practicing) and finally the BIG ONE -- a BLUE Girl's bike. She has been wanting a girl's bike for a very long time and always complained about having to ride her brother's hand-me-down bike which was not in a girl color. Luckily for her, the bike she was using had fallen off the back of our trailer coming home from our Thanksgiving trip and got picked up by another car before we could get back to it, thus, TJ could no longer hold her off on getting a girl's bike. Too funny!!!

We had a great time and enjoyed warmer than usual temperatures and sunshine (which is hard to find here in the central valley during January because we get a lot of fog every day). As we were driving up to the snowplay area which ended up being about 20 min. from our campsite, we had to warn the kids that there might not be any snow because we certainly weren't seeing any signs of it. Luckily, about 1/4 mile before the turnoff, we started to see the white stuff and the sledding hill had just enough snow to keep the kids entertained for 3+ hours. Amazing!! We had lunch on our tailgate and made a snowman out of VERY hard-packed snow. The girls desperately wanted to make snow angels and we tried and tried, but it was just old snow and crunchy. Try explaining to your 6 & 4yr olds that Mommy is NOT going to kick every bit of that crunchy hard-packed snow around to make it soft again so that they could lay down and make snow angels :)

Although our campsite wasn't the best we've been in, it did have a nice river running by it with a small waterfall and we managed to find a trail to hike around in the woods behind it. I even saw a big deer just sitting in a little meadow on my way home that was pretty cool.

Tamara

San Francisco - 2009

We decided to trek up to San Francisco for two reasons 1) I wanted to see "Wicked" for a year now and it was playing up there!!; 2) My parents have never been there. So, I searched and searched and finally found great priced rooms at the Marine Memorial Hotel for $69/night for military members. It's such a great deal -downtown SF and you get cooked breakfast in the morning (included in that $69 price) for 4 people. We ended up with two great rooms right next to each other. We headed out Monday morning by 8:30 - not bad for 8 people to get around and out the door. We spent the first day exploring the Pier and Fisherman's Wharf. Great sourdough bread and pizza and shopping. We found a nice Italian restaurant two blocks from our hotel so that was great. Headed for bed!

Our highlights for that day were Carson spotting 3 different and AMAZING starfish on the pier pilings. See pictures above. We saw 4 sea lions. I guess in November they had about 1700 in this one place, but then they started leaving, so we only got to see 4 of them. The kids saw a neat magician that ate fire at Fisherman's Wharf -- they were quite impressed!

Tuesday morning we set out to find an old army site that had guns/cannons etc. We didn't find it until later, but managed to find the Presidio and got some fantastic pictures at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge during the fog. Then, we headed to the California Science Museum and thus started our day of "not so fun". We drove and drove for over an hour looking for parking and finally gave up. We couldn't believe the crowds (we did find out later that this is the busiest week to see S.F.- UGH!!).

Anyway, off to "Plan B". We decided to head over the Golden Gate Bridge to see the Muir Redwoods (we had planned to do this on Wed), so off we went and then had a crazy drive into the town of Mill Valley in search of something to eat. Another side trip we could've lived without because it is not easy to find a restaurant in a little town that caters to picky eaters and can seat 8 people. We found that happened a lot in S.F. -- not geared for large family seating for dinner. Anyway, after much searching and asking around, we opted for the deli at the local supermarket and got sandwiches (expensive ones I might add -I think our bill was close to $50 and ate in the car :) Then, we asked for directions (quicker ones I might add) and headed to the John Muir Woods National Monument. It was a great hike and we really enjoyed the lush forests. We then headed back into S.F. and wen to the Ghiradelli Square where we once again stood in line for their ice cream and hot chocolate (that turned out to be lukewarm) and the rain started while we were standing outside. So, off to our car and head back to the hotel. This was the night was saw "Wicked". My parents & I went and TJ was gracious enough to stay behind and watch kids. The play was amazing and I'm very glad we got to see it. I'd go again if I could talk someone into it. We took a taxi cab to the theater which was only a mile away. Our cab ride there was great, but coming back, we all thought she was an Indy 500 driver and all hoped to arrive safe and sound because she went so fast through those streets that we were hanging on for dear life!!

Wednesday morning we decided we needed to get an earlier start to get to the museum and thus had eaten breakfast, packed and checked out by 8:30 a.m. Headed over to the museum and had no trouble finding parking and then waited in line for it to open. It is a really great museum with a planetarium (we didn't get to see due to the lines), a 3D bug show, rain forest that was amazing, African animal exhibit with live penguins and the Aquarium which was the biggest hit especially to Carson. I would definitely recommend seeing this place, but don't go the week after Christmas. The people just kept coming in and coming in. I can't even begin to imagine how many were there. We were done and ready to head by 3 pm just due to the crowds.

So, we decided to head for home instead of staying in a different hotel. Of course, TJ managed to talk us into a stop at Cabela's (only 15 minutes out of the way) and he and the guys had fun looking at hunting stuff. We got a little lost getting out trying to find gas that added almost 30 min . to our drive time (we'll be updating our GPS before our next trip) and then got home about 9:30 pm -- WHEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We enjoyed doing nothing on Thursday but unpacking, watching football and then had the Westendorff's over for games and celebrated the New Year on east coast time. The kids had fun watching the ball drop and then everyone headed for bed!!!

Looking forward to 2010 and so happy we're not having to say goodbye to TJ for a deployment this January. It's nice to know he'll be around for the next couple of months!

Happy New Year Everyone!!

Tamara

Christmas 2009

Cassidy searching for presents

Well, Christmas week was a fun week at the Lennard household. My parents were in town to help celebrate with us and my brother, Jan, & his wife, Jacqui, came over on Christmas Day for the weekend as well. During the week, we decorated cookies together, went to a movie "Princess & the Frog", ate BBQ and saw a live nativity. The kids & I also went around the neighborhood with other families and sang Christmas carols to the neighbors. That was a lot of fun. Our Christmas Eve service at church was beautiful and full of great music including a violionist. We went through a couple of neighborhoods to look at lights before we heard protesting from the back to get home and get stuff ready for Santa. Soooo, we headed home and got out the cookies, carrots and wrote a note for Santa. The kids opened their gifts from each other and their new Christmas pj's. Everyone went to bed pretty well except Cassidy who managed to fall asleep during the service at 5pm and thus was up until 11 pm with us.

The boys were up plenty early, but we had told them nothing got opened before 7 am. Of course, I was up early too excited to see their faces, so we finally got TJ going about 6:45 am and the boys had fun waking up the girls. I have a fun picture of them waiting to run down the hallway. Speaking of which, I'm just going to put in the Christmas pictures at random and not try and coordinate them in a timeline. Hope you don't mind. We opened stockings, stopped and had breakfast and then opened more presents.

The highlights were Legos sets (many) for Carson, Science stuff & Models for Colton, Razor scooters, Dress-up clothes and Barbies for the girls. TJ got hunting stuff and I received more silverware and a cool picture purse.

We played many games indoord and outdoors (it was a beautiful Christmas day with no fog). We had an enjoyable weekend with Jan & Jacqui and just hung out as a family and even went bowling one day. I didn't hear "I'm bored" until after we got back from San Francisco (another post).

Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Tamara