Palm Springs!

After a busy month of running around so many places, it was so great having a few days to relax in the sunshine!! 

Tennis lesson with Jim! 

Making Orange Juice:). 

We went over to the resort to get ice cream, and there is a great spot to sit with games you can play! 

We went to the library a couple times this trip, which was fun! And even more fun is that Annie got a free In n Out for reading 5 books! 

I took advantage of little plans for the week and had a special time with all the bigger kids! I took Annie to In and Out, Kate to the resort for smoothie, Grace to the resort for a treat and Will wanted to go to the yogurt shop, so we biked over there, which was fun! 

 

Universal Studios!

We had a great time at Universal Studios!! My mom picked us up at the airport the night before and we went to Tony and Alissa's for dinner, which was really fun! Then we stayed at the Hilton Hotel right next to the park.   I read that you should get there early, so we walked over from our Hotel at 8:30am, and they let us in the park a little before 9.  We headed straight to the Harry Potter world, and went on those rides first.  We were so lucky that our first ride, Flight of the Hippogriff, didn't have a line! We even got to stay on it and go twice! That was a great kick off to the day, and helped me feel more relaxed about the potential for super long lines!! It was a fun day and fun to have my mom join us! 

I bought a wand for the kids to share so they could do spell around Hogwarts! It was pretty cool! Below are Annie and Will doing the spells! 

As you can see from the pictures, Harry Potter was the main focus of the day:), but all the other parts of the park were really cool as well!! I want to add some more pictures later, but this is what I have so far:)! 

I ran into my friend, Shelly, when we were about to leave! It was so fun to see her! And it turned out that she was also heading to Palm Springs for the rest of the week, so we were able to connect there as well! 

Leaving our hotel to head to Palm Springs! It was so beautiful out! 

 

More Basketball Tournaments

We had a very busy stretch of three back-to-back-to-back:) tournaments the end of February and beginning of March.  We kicked it off with Seaside where we got to stay with Bobby and Carrie at their beach house.  It was a total of 12 games for the weekend and it was really fun to watch the games, especially the first couple of games in Astoria and Will's last game in Seaside!  But also challenging because it was hard to get to all of them!! Grace and Will's teams won their divisions of the tournament, which was fun! And Kate's team did really well, too! I don't have a lot of pics from the weekend, probably because it was kind of a blur:). But below are a couple pics from friends.

Then off to Redmond for Grace's state tournament, where we stayed at Eagle Crest.  I was so grateful because we were able to use Bill and Maureen's timeshare points! It was a great weekend! It was fun to drive over with the whole crew and listen to To Kill a Mockingbird, though I realized why kids read it in High School.  It's meant for a little older audience:).  It's such a great book, though!  

One of the highlights was getting to play volleyball with the parents and kids at the resort in between games!

The girls won 2nd in State, which was amazing! 

Then off to Bend for Will's tournament! Bend was truly a mini vacation! We got to stay at Aunt Jackie and Uncle Clain's house, right on the water.  Such a beautiful spot and great location as it was only 5 minutes to each of the gyms he played in! It was so fun to have nothing to do but hang out and watch basketball games! Kate and I had fun walking around downtown Bend, and Grace and I walked to one of Will's games at Bend High School.  It was a great weekend!! 

One of the moms ordered shirts for us to wear! 

And that's a wrap of our 2022 basketball season! I feel so grateful that the kids were able to participate and have a lot of fun on their teams! I think it was especially great coming off the pause in play last year! 

 

The Dalles Basketball Tournament

I had so much fun going to The Dalles with Grace, Kate and Will for their basketball tournaments! It was a tournament I was kind of dreading at first because The Dalles is two hours away, and I thought we would be bringing all the kids and staying in a hotel room! But last minute, Maureen, Bill and Kelly offered to watch Leo and Annie for the night.  It was so great knowing they were having a great time and not having to drag them to all the games, and it freed me up to really enjoy watching them play!! 

Grace's team won the tournament, which was fun! 

 

Christmas and Christmas Break 2021

Christmas Morning- we all got up around 7.  Leo wanted to stay in bed:).  Not what you might picture for a Christmas morning! The kids had fun opening their presents! They opened their stockings and gifts from Santa first, then we had breakfast and went back and opened the other gifts.  It was a really fun relaxing morning/day! We just sat around with the house a total mess and played games and relaxed until about 2:30, then stated to clean up and get ready for our guests who came at 4.  

I didn't take individual pics, but some of the highlights were Annie's barbie dreamhouse, Kate getting to build a chicken coop, Will's phone, Leo's Avenger puzzle, and Grace's watch and clothes! Also, Pat and I gave them Universal Studios in March! 

Bill, Maureen, Kelly and Jimmy and Roxanne came for Christmas dinner, which was really fun! 

We did a lot of puzzles during break! Leo got the Avengers puzzle for Christmas and has probably put it together about 20 times since then! And Kate got a Harry Potter puzzle that was SO hard to do that I had to give her two pictures:). 

Mad for buffalo plaid! Thanks to Aunt Kelly, the kids had cute matching outfits for Christmas Eve at Bill and Maureen's! 

The day after Christmas it snowed! It was so pretty, but also tiring at first as we were just coming off Christmas and had to switch gears to make sure we had all of their snow gear! But once we figured that out, they had a lot of fun playing all week in the snow! We took a break on Tuesday to go to the movies to see Sing 2, which was so fun!! 

 

New Year's Eve! We had family over for dinner! 

The last day of break the snow started to melt, but it was still too icy to run around outside so I made the kids go to the trail! They never want to go, but it always feels so great to get out and walk/run around!