Master Tuutau

Daniel's "Master" graduation went really well. Again, like his last graduation, he sat up on stage in the shade (lucky dog!) and he sang the National Anthem as well as the Alma Mater.

I had my camera taking pictures, my stepmom Sharon was holding a sleeping Joshua, my dad had the video camera trying to record it (there was a guy that sat right behind us that was singing at the top of his lungs which was REALLY annoying while Daniel sang) and my mom was sitting with John. The moment Daniel started to sing my mom started getting really annoyed by the guy behind us that she didn't realize John slipped away into the crowd and ran for the stage (no doubt to be with is daddy). No one was paying attention until we heard a kid screaming and security people running to grad him and pull him back. I knew right away and Daniel did too (right in the middle of the song) that it was John. Oy! The security people brought him back to a very red-faced mommy!

Daniel was the very first person (again, like with his BA) to have his name called then we sat there for what felt like FOREVER waiting for the rest of the names to be called. It was pretty cool watching this ceremony because of all the doctoral people and their cool robes and hat things. I heard a few names that I recognized but pretty much the rest of the time I spend trying to make John sit in his seat (not an easy thing to do with a 2 year old). This is my dad, stepmom Sharon, and my mom who all came out for the graduation and to help us move.

This is definitely one of my favorite pictures of the two of us!

This is Daniel's dad Jo and stepmom Lavesi.

This is Daniel's aunt and uncle (I can't remember their names...I'm so terrible!). They were the ones that made those beautiful lays.

Every time I try and get their attention so they can look at the camera they all look in different directions.

My graduate and my future little graduate!

I'm so proud of you sweetie and I love you SSSSOOOOOOOOO much!

It's Nacho Party!!

For our Goodbye Party/Birthday Party Daniel decided he wanted to have a Nacho Bar and Rootbeer floats (sound familiar? yes, it was the same thing he had at his Recital after-party!). He pretty much wanted that theme just so he could make this cool invitation...
We had lots of food, Pixar Shorts playing on the TV, and lots and lots of amazing friends who came to say goodbye to us. It was a bitter-sweet party for us because we knew it would be our last one in SB. I love and miss all of you out there in the 805 and really hope that we will be able to visit from time to time. :)

Magic Mountain

The Tuesday before we moved we finally made the trip to Magic Mountain. I have wanted to go there since we were first married and every time we planned on going something would happen to make us postpone (pregnancy, sickness, etc.). This time the stars aligned just right and our wonderful friends Ryan and Nicole took the boys for the day and we headed off. We met a couple of friends there Sean and Ayla and arrived just after opening. Unfortunately Sean was banned from the park that day (he he he funny story!) so he wasn't able to go in with us. We had a lot of fun together and Daniel finally got to introduce me to what a "real" roller coaster is like. We went on Viper first which was great then we went and stood in line for Dejavu. I was so scared on that ride that I was shaking so bad when it was over. I don't think I was expecting it to be like that so I was scared out of my mind. We tamed things down a bit after that and went on a small water canoe ride thing that was fun then Ninja, The Riddler's Revenge, and Scream (by far my favorite ride of the day. I could have gone on that one 10 more times). Then Daniel's brother brought us some lunch and we ate a delicious funnel cake that was so expensive but well worth it :)

After we ate we were all really tired and decided to wait in line for X2. It's one of the biggest (and best) roller coasters in the park and it was definitely worth the hour plus wait. It was nice to take a breather and let our lunch digest before going on another ride. I don't think I've screamed so hard in my life on that ride. Daniel was laughing at me the entire time and I literally lost my voice by the end. There were huge fireballs at one point...aaaahhhhh! After that we decided to call it quits on the roller coasters because that one was so intense and great that we wanted to leave the park ending on the best ride. Plus it was almost time to close so we went and played one of those silly games where you hit the big hammer on the thing and the the thingy goes up to the top. Ayla did pretty good, I made it about 80% of the way but Daniel was the best he made it all the way to the top. We all got cool capes to take home (I got a Batman cape, Daniel got the Superman cape, and Ayla got the Wonderwoman cape). We hit up the Wendy's before heading back home and were completely exhausted. We tried everything to keep each other awake but we did get safely home....thank goodness!

On Viper right before we lowered the harness things.

This was on the little boat water ride thing. I realized after looking at this picture that Daniel and I don't really have that many pictures of just the two of us. Once the kids came we just don't take many pictures of us together anymore.

Ayla is a huge time surfer girl so when we saw this sign we had to be dorks for a second and take a surfing picture together!

I loved posing with Wonder Woman and Batman!

This is us going down the awesome boat-canoe ride!

Packing and Moving

Our packing experience can be summed up in one word...CRAZY! I thought I was so smart and clever by starting to pack 2 weeks prior to our move. Don't get me wrong it did help A LOT but even though I had promised myself I would label every box and make lists of everything in each box (that way we could find it easy enough in our storage unit) by the end I was throwing random things into random boxes and not labeling anything at all! I got to the point where I just wanted to throw everything away and start fresh (which would have been really annoying so I'm glad my sensible husband calmed me down and talked me out of it!). I'm glad to say that eventually everything did get packed up and onto the moving van. We had plenty of room to fix a junk load of stuff and after moving it all into our storage unit we even have a pathway down the middle so we can get to things easy enough....finding things is a different story!

Here are some pictures of the kids during their last week in SB. I have a million more but I wanted to show how much they put up with from me and the craziness of moving!

It rained one of the days and even though it was cold John LOVES splashing around in it.

Many a time I would find John and Josh getting into things they weren't suppose to. Every time I would start to clean one room and feel really accomplished getting things done and 2 seconds later I would walk into another room and find a similar situation like this....my two little tornadoes doing what they do best!I can't even keep a roll of TP intact! He would unroll the entire thing and spread it all over the house.

Poor John got really mad at me one day because I forgot to give him breakfast (I know I know, Mother of the Year right?!) so he tried to pour a glass of orange juice for himself and ended up spilling it all over his pants (which he discarded immediately).

John had to take up the post of "provider" while I was busy doing stuff and tried many times to feed Joshua. It usually ended up being a bigger mess to clean up than anything else but it was really thoughtful and cute. In this picture he actually had on his Mickey Mouse ears and was trying to feed Joshua but right when I snapped the picture the Mickey Mouse ears feel backward and you can't even tell. It was really cute though.

This whole process made all of us really REALLY tired!

Here's Daniel and my dad Allen getting everything into our moving van. Of course I was so busy that I didn't take many pictures of the moving process (which I regret now) but at least it's done and over with!

Happenings...

Ok I know it's been a long time but with all the craziness that has been happening and now we don't have internet anymore it's a little difficult to get online. However, this will all be fixed soon once I move into my moms house next week. Unlimited internet access= much time to catch up! Until then here's a summary of our happenings...

-Packing, packing, packing
-My first trip to Magic Mountain
- "Naucho Goodbye/Birthday Party"
-Daniel graduated with his Masters ...hurray!!
-The move
-The drive
-The amazing amounts of fun John and Josh are having with their cousins

and finally, today we entered Joshua into the Freedom Festival Baby Contest and guess what?...

He won 1st place!

More pictures and explanations to come about all of the other awesome stuff that's been going on in our lives...soon!