Saturday at the Beach

Chris did another ocean swim on Saturday in Corona Del Mar. So we packed up the kids and made a day out of it. He placed 69th out of 269. Not bad!

The sea of swimmers. Chris is in the green cap.

A run for the finish...Chris couldn't break away from a pack, so they all raced up together.

He's in line to give his standing. Chris shaved almost 5 minutes off last years time and had a much better placing than his 2-mile Newport Pier to Pier swim last month. Race Results

Mom and Sam decided to be daring and played in the ocean, Maggie preferred the beach.

Sophie Has a New Smile!

Just in time for 2nd grade Sophie lost her tooth! This is tooth #3 and the top center. The one right next to it is loose too. Should look cute for school pictures:). We know what she wants this Christmas!

Sequoia National Park

Now that summer is almost over, we finally took a summer vacation! We headed up to Sequoia National Park to see the BIGGEST trees in the world (not the tallest, those are the Redwoods). But these were truly spectacular. We stayed the first night in the city of Visalia, then headed up the next day...

Chris is holding up the boulder so our car could get through:)

This tree is called the Sentinel. It is on the grounds of the Sequoia tree museum. They also had a children's activity center. While we were walking out behind it looking at the view, the kids had a close encounter with a baby bear!

On our first hike....walking through a tree that had fallen over. The kids found some cool walking sticks. It was fun to hike through a forest!

Ranger Sam

A hike up to Moro Rock...though we are blocking it, it was incredible.

The second night we were able to find this cool, rustic lodge to stay in. It is part of a family summer camp. Sun-Fri families come and stay and on Saturday night they open it up to the public for one night. So we were able to get a room and the kids just loved it! We had a king size bed and two sets of bunk beds. The food was included so we had an awesome all you can eat breakfast and lunch. It has all kinds of activities and you can do anything you want, free! The best thing was....

the lake! Their were canoes for Sam to row....

and fish for Sophie to catch (it was really hard to get her away to do anything else).

Maggie took to playing tennis...

and we enjoyed canoe-ing too. They also had a swimming pool, trampoline, golf, archery, horseback riding and more. But...it was time to move on.

What a cute family! (if I do say so myself)

The girls at the lodge

This is the biggest tree in the world-the General Sherman. It is 275 ft. tall, 103 ft. around the base, and a volume of 52,508 cubic ft. Pretty impressive and the main attraction of the park.

We had a great trip, some of our best trips have been last minute ones. We realized how many beautiful and diverse places we have in California and they are all in our backyard-awesome! Goodbye Sequoia!!

Maggism

The other night during FHE we were singing the song "Choose the Right". Maggie usually loves to sing but wasn't joining in. I told her to come over and sing with us and she said "No, I don't want to Choose the Right. I want to Choose the Left!" Should we be worried? Do we have a future Hilary Clinton supporter?

Premiere of High School Musical 2!!

In case you didn't know, the girls are crazy about High School Musical. The 2nd installment airs this Friday on the Disney Channel. We read in the paper that they were having the movie premiere at Downtown Disney in Disneyland. So did we go? Of course we did. We live in Cali and hey, "when in Rome".

My friend Rachel and I got the girls in their shirts and left the boys at home. We were on a mission to see Zac Efron, the star of the show.
The place was packed! We were surrounded by screaming girls of all ages. We squeezed into the crowd and found a spot about 6 people deep to watch the stars walk down the carpet.

This is Vanessa Hudgens, the female lead-gorgeous!


Monique Coleman, and Zac is standing behind her.


Lucas Grabeel signing autographs...


The girls at the beginning of the carpet. The stars took their photos in front of the blue wall and then moved down the line, giving interviews. Their were hundreds of reporters there.


Billy Ray Cyrus former "achey brakey heart"-throb. He now stars on Disney's Hannah Montana with his daughter...


Miley Cyrus, Hannah herself. The crowd went crazy for her.

Sophie- shining bright. The girls couldn't really see anyone unless we lifted them up, so Rachel ended up taking the girls to the second floor of the restaurant above the scene. They were able to see everyone from a window up above in the air conditioning. I was left down in the mob on camera duty.


Ashley Tisdale....

And drumroll please....Zac! He came down last and all the girls went crazy.
In this picture the entertainment reporter George Pinacchio (in purple) told Zac that a girl across the way was crying. The girl was a few people in front and to the side of me. So he turned around to come say hi to her and I got this picture. Turns out the girl was hurt! She had been pushed too hard against the railing. She was okay but fans are scary. Scarier is that I was one of them!

I am sure you are all rolling your eyes on this little outing, but we had fun and hey, just try to look back when you were a teenybopper. Wouldn't you have just died to see your favorite heartthrob? Mine was John Schneider, Bo from the Dukes of Hazzard. I still wouldn't mind seeing him:).

Sam's Friend Party

It was Sam's year for a friend party (we only do them every other year). All he wanted was to hang out and play video games. So we made our own Game Zone and that's what they did!
We could barley get them away to eat, have cake, and open presents. It was the most stress-free party ever! Sam loved it.

Welcome to the Game Zone!


Taking a rare break...

His cake was in the shape of a Wii Remote.

Make a wish!

Sophie in the Local Paper!

At the end of last year Sophie's teacher told me that the local paper had come and taken a picture of her door for Teacher Appreciation Week. It finally went to print this month. The theme was "Happy Feet", penguins, etc. I didn't know that Sophie was in the picture with a couple of other classmates.
Here is the link:

http://www.alisolagunanews.com/aln/08042007/08042007%20ALN%2010.pdf