"Pp" week

Scott's kindergarten class celebrated Pp week in a big way these past two weeks.  We started with pajama day where we made pancakes during centers.  Shout out to his teacher who let me be in charge of the mix and syrup we used....no corn syrup here!!! 

Then we went on a field trip to the post office followed by making our own pizzas at a local pizza parlor.

Scott mailing a letter at the post office to our house!

Owen joined us on the field trip because we were going directly from there to the beach for a Rincon weekend!

I love watching my guys watch out for each other.  So cute!

Kindergarten class plus a few siblings.

Then it was pizza time.  All the kids got little chefs hats...

then they got a lesson in pizza making, including how to toss the dough...

Scott got to make a gluten free for himself and a regular that we brought home for dad!

Owen got to join in the fun too, there aren't too many things that make this kid as happy as food!

Finally this week we studied planets and had princess and pirate day in class.

We have a pretty special school and a pretty special teacher!

Vail 2016

So last year we went out to Colorado with some friends for a weekend of adult time and skiing....well as luck would have it our friend was back working in Vail this winter so we all jumped at the chance to go back!

We headed out Thursday and hit the slopes Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Glorious

Last year we got a lot of snow while we were there and this year the conditions were more clear giving us some stunning views!

I couldn't have been more excited about our trip and skiing, but I think the thing I was looking forward to the most was blood mary's at the Ritz at Beaver Creek to end the day.  Sound ridiculous a little bit right?! Try them - honestly best bloody mary I have ever had!!!

Great end to the day!

We also happened to be there for Super Bowl weekend and as luck would have it The Broncos were in the super bowl so Sunday the slopes were basically deserted.  We made it down the hill in time for the 4:30 start time.  And fortunately we travel with a couple we are super compatible with: the boys were stoked to watch the game and the girls were just fine with spending our afternoon enjoying the amenities at the spa.  I think I'll take a jacuzzi and a steam room over football almost every time!

Another amazing adventure with our good friends!  Thanks Daniels!

And thanks to Grandma for keeping the boys the whole weekend!

School and sports

Can't believe we are half way through Scott's kindergarten year.  We continue to love his class and his teacher and recently we have found ourselves working on lots of projects at home.  Back in January they did an arctic unit and during that unit each student had to do a report on an arctic animal of their choice.  Scott chose the arctic fox and we had a great time getting books from the library, learning and writing down facts about the arctic fox and printing and drawing pictures to make a poster to present to his class.  

I appreciate that our school really emphasizes the students doing these projects on their own with minimal help from parents, nothing is more annoying than letting your kid do something on their own that they are proud of and then the kid next to them in class comes in with some professional poster clearly done by their parents.  I loved every project I saw and I really enjoyed watching Scott learn from this process.

T- ball has started up and Scott has loved going out side to practice nearly every day since we got his gear.

Owen just missed the cut off for this year but that doesn't stop him from getting out there for his turn when we play backyard ball.

Just a fun little picture I got of Scott and two of his buds on our recent field trip to the Moorpark College learning zoo.  We had a super great time having the zoo to ourselves and learning so much about all the animals from the zookeeper students.

Kinders hanging out at college....no big deal.

Owen's usually hang out while waiting to pick up Scott.  Lunch under the board.

We celebrated the 100th day of school a few weeks ago with a little party in class as well as a 100th day of school project at home.  Scott chose to do his in perler beads and his day was made when his teacher told him that as long as she'd been doing this project no one had ever used perler beads.

Some days I pick up Scott first while Owen gets to stay at picnic pals.  Its especially fun to bring Scott back to his old preschool to hang with all his friends who are still there.  He really loves being "the big kid".  This particular day Scott had a new library book that he was ready to his friend Nelly.  The cutest thing in the world.  

Family days

Recently we got to spend a 'monday at mimi's' (and papa's).  The Richard girls even got to join us for coffee and lunch and a little kitchen science with papa.  

The kids got to experiment with elephant toothpaste and ivory soap clouds.  It was tons of fun!

And Eden finally decided she loves her Auntie.  She picked out some books for us to read together.  Swoon. 

Pretty special to get to share your papa with your friends for story time.

A few weeks later the boys and I went to play at Auntie's new house.  Owen read this book to Eden.  It went: "Once upon a time there were three wittle pigs and a big bad wolf."  

They play outside and in, read tons of book and watched Night at the Museum.

Cousins are pretty special.

And I snuck in some snuggles with O.

Catching up with friends

Its been ages since I've blogged.   In an attempt to catch up I start with a friends post.

We had a bunch of rain when we got back from Christmas break and we had fun bundling up and splashing in the puddles.

Love this site when I pick up from preschool.  Our amazing Ms. Jennifer dancing in and singing in the rain with our babies.

You know my baby boy likes to get down with some food.  Well here he is with a baked potato, burger style.  Ha.  He never stops cracking me up.

More preschool fun.  I personally love the hat and glove combo.

My little yoga babe:

And not to be left out, these friends.  We headed out for a much needed girls night a few weeks ago.  Dinner, margaritas and bowling.  Love them!

And we always have a blast with our neighborhood crew.  The oldest three took turns cruising in Katelyn's new truck, complete with an iPhone plug in so they could listen to their tunes.  I couldn't help but thinking that they can do this for real in about 10 years.  Sobbing.

Owen always makes time to hang with the babies...love my little sweetheart!

These crazy friends monkeying around at school!  They have become quite the threesome lately.  Practically inseparable.  Pretty lucky my kids have found such wonderful friendships already!

Last week both of the boys had friends over after school.  It was tons of fun and surprisingly much easier for me once they were able to entertain each other!

Love those puppy snuggles.

So that about sums up our January and a little extra...

Holiday recap

And now for a December recap post.  We had a super busy, but really fun holiday season and I can't believe its already over.  But it's always nice to get back to our regularly scheduled programming and that begins today (well sort of, Scott doesn't go back til tomorrow so I decided Owen could play hooky today so we could all ease back into it)

So back at the beginning of December my friend Sandy informed me that her daughter would be singing with her theater group at the bookstore across the street.  Well Owen just loves him some Jade and it worked out that he and I could go watch.  It was crowded but really sweet, and once he spotted Jade he was mesmerized.  Fortunately we got to meet up with her for a few minutes after the performance and Owen even agreed to a picture.

I give you "first love":

I can't even.   Its so cute!  He just thinks she's the best thing since sliced bread.  I actually made the joke of the above picture that the only other thing he looks at like that is food.  HA!

I was way late on attempting Christmas card pictures, but it was fun to take them nonetheless, especially since its the one time of year I get to comb the boys hair.  

So now i'm just going to over post, but I just think they're the cutest.

Love when the laugh with each other:

Holiday baking in our chonies of course.

We were working on peppermint and oreo ice cream so I put the boys to work crushing candy and cookies with real tools.

School was a blur, christmas crafts and parties galore.  Glad these two have each other through it all.  This day they were "playing" dreidel - which basically became the two of them hoarding all the plastic treasure.

A week or so before school let out for the break Scott's class took a field trip to see our local production of the nutcracker.  He thought it was ok and the whole thing pretty much peaked at the one sword fight seen and went down hill from there.  At the end of the first act it "snowed" on stage, I thought Scott would be excited and pointed it out to him.  He said, "Its fake mom."  I spent half the second act with my friend's daughter on my lap who couldn't decide which ballerina outfit she liked the best and was completely into the whole production - so different.

He and I decided to try out ice skating afterwards...now that was a hit. 

It took a little while to get our ice legs on, but it definitely turned out to be our highlight of the day.

By the end he wasn't even holding the walls!!!

We headed over to see Santa a few days later.  Scott asked for the lego death star and Owen asked for a diamond.  Owen also pointed out we did not get our candy cane this year - Santa fail.

A few weeks ago we went to a free "birds of prey" day in the santa monica mountains.  The boys loved it and each received a bag of bird seed.  Owen had really hoped to hand feed it to the birds (owls, hawks, eagles....um no) so our compromise was to come home and make bird feeders from pinecones.  Ordinarily our neighborhood is loaded with pinecones, but on this day we walked all over the park and found nothing.  So the next day I picked up some delicious cinnamon scented whole foods the next and brought them home where we proceeded to cover them in organic sunbutter (owen is allergic to peanuts), making the most expensive homemade bird feeders to ever exist.

More fun in the leaves as I attempted a nice Christmas picture:

Picture overload, I know.

The week school let our was full of all kinds of fun.  One day (my work day in the classroom) Santa visited (and remembered candy canes, Scott took an extra for his brother!) and we made gingerbread houses.

It was also the day of Scott's holiday concert.  The combined kindergarten classes sang what I thought was going to be one cute holiday song that they had been practicing all year.  Turns out they sang every song they had learned in music all year.  After they were made to sit behind the 8th grade choir who performed for the first 20 minutes and were expected to not fidget....poor planning by the music teacher. 

It turned out cute and I captured a great sneeze by Scott.

Post concert my girlfriends and I took all the kids to sharkey's for lunch.  It was crazy but fun.  Love my tribe.

Gingerbread house masterpiece.

Early morning shot of our tree.  So peaceful.  I still think our house is at its prettiest during the holidays.

Christmas break officially began when Grandpa and Gerri and Grandma and Gpa got to town to celebrate.  Grandma and I kicked off the weekend with some "happy hour" wine tasting on friday followed by a fun BBQ feast on Saturday afternoon.

Saturday night we headed to the Staves' Family Christmas party - this year: Cowboy themed!!

Aww my little cow poke.

Full family band to play all the Christmas classics.  They were amazing!

The following week we started enjoying long, relaxed mornings in our jams, lots of bike rides and soccer at the park and a few fun outings.

Tuesday we headed to the Santa Barbara Zoo for the first time in ages.

We had so much fun and it was almost like going to a brand new zoo since it had been so long since we had been.  Thanks for the pass Auntie, we can't wait to go back!

Baby boy hatching from the egg:

Hanging out in the egg together:

I'm amazed I could get it (and mostly back out) of that thing!

Lounging

Brothers on the zoo train

Our kids our so grown up that we don't even have to ride next to them anymore (cue tears)

And a big high five from the gorilla

On the way home I may have requested a stop at Lucky Llama for matcha lattes and acai bowls, thankful for such an accommodating husband!! ; )

Before we knew it, it was Christmas eve and time for a marathon cookie baking session.  I tried these paleo thumbprint cookies for the first time and they were a huge success (at least for me), I also made Owen friendly chocolate chip and Santa (Brian) friendly chocolate chip (or "normal" as some would call them).

Campbell family Christmas Eve.

This could have been our most magical Christmases so far.  The boys could NOT fall asleep because of excitement.  Every time we went in to check on them Scott would insist he heard sleigh bells.  Owen eventually crashed but Scott was up til at least 11.  We definitely wanted to freeze time, they were just too excited!

Santa was finally able to get to work and thankfully no one woke up til around 7:30 so we got some nice sleep in between.

My lighting was absolutely terrible in these pictures but you get the idea, Christmas morning magic, magnatiles, scooters and boogie boards galore. And I think Brian might have gotten some better shots with the good camera.

Scott couldn't get through stockings before insisting that Owen open the gift Scott had chosen for him.  Owen wanted a lego watch so badly and that was what Scott chose to get him.  It was such a sweet brotherly moment.  And Owen was delighted.

Santa did not disappoint on the diamond request....Owen got a bag full.

The rest of the day was spent building lego creations, eating and finally heading to Mimi and Papa's for some more Christmas fun.  And it was such a whirlwind I don't think I got any pictures the rest of the day.

A day or two later we headed to Malibu Seafood with Grandpa and Gerri.  It was freezing but fun and as always the yummiest eats!

Sillies

Can't go wrong with a Pacific coast sunset anytime of year.

The next day we decided it was time for the kids to try bowling. 

It was so cute and fun!

Scott got the hang of it pretty quick.

Owen usually needed a little extra help so that his ball would make it to the end of the lane.

A day or two before New Years Eve we met up with Mimi and Papa and Mimi's sister and the kids at an amazing park in Ojai and then went to dinner.  These little nuggets are all just growing up way too fast.

New Years Eve we headed over to the Daniels' for the second year in a row.  Its been such a great, simple way to ring in the new year.  No pressure, super easy and fun for everyone! Thanks for having us all again Daniels!

Just taking a break from eating to celebrate.  Always eating.

Happy NY New Years.  Now off to bed with you!  And for the record the adults made it til 1:00 - CA time.  Party people!!!!

We calculated that this was our 13th New Years spent together (although some weren't together due to Brian's old travel schedule and always working the Rose parade).  Wouldn't ever wish for any other date by my side!

Happy 2016 friends!