GCC (Group Chaos Camping!)

Oh, Yeah! We headed out to a lake between Arrowhead and Big Gear with a whole group of families to go camping for a weekend this summer. Fun? Yes. Chaos? Yes.

We borrowed our friends' pop-up trailer, and oh, was it nice. Yes, we were the only ones in our group with one, and all were jealous!

Food: main event while camping. Here the dads are doing the fire building/cooking. (All the kids supervised, and the wives tried to stay out of it.)

After a lot of work and tons of running around, the food tasted Great.

The moms' attempt to make a meal kinda healthy. :)

Kid fun. It was so cute to watch all the ages of kids from different families play together, enjoying the outdoors.

The boys, especially Isaiah, loved to blast down this hill as fast as possible. We were so glad No major accidents occurred, the whole weekend!

Smores, of course.

Joel is savoring his first smore ever.

One day us moms got to take this fun Jeep out for a ride. Our friend even let me drive it!

Jordan Kate poses as she takes a dip in the lake.

Noah and Isaiah: best buddies.

I had a great time with the other moms, including this dear friend, Jamie. It was so nice to let the kids play, while we were able to chat and finish a few sentences in a row!

Joel loved this experience, and all the big kids loved him, too.

Beginning of Summer

Yet another summer is here!

What better way to kick it off than start out with a morning at the beach? Our 4 kids and I enjoyed La Jolla Cove for a few hours, getting a little wet and collecting a ton of shells!

How is it that we now have a 3rd grader, a first grader, an almost 4 year old and a 2 year old? This was my 'test run' day to see if I can do many outings alone with them this summer. They did great and we had fun, so hopefully I can post more of our adventures.

Yeah, that is Isaiah WAY up there. And yes, that was the only time he climbed up there!

(So I'm not going to even try to apologize for not updating our blog more. )

Our family: A summary

What a wonderful 2010 we have had! It's been a joy to see God work in so many ways and give the amount of grace needed for each day. These pics are a good summary of each of our kids:

Joel: into everything at 21 months; learning to use the fake smile to try to manipulate us;

a total joy!

Jordan: vivacious 3 year old; always trying to keep up with the 2 big kids, even on her bike; has an infectious laugh to brighten any day.

Isaiah: our resident 5 year old Spider man; learning to read when he can sit for a few minutes; normally climbing up a tree or whizzing past on his bike; king of the one-liners and crazy vocabulary; keeps us on our toes.

Naomi: 7 year old creative girl who loves to make any kind of craft; helps in our house with all the kids; enjoys learning at school and explaining concepts to help other students; great sarcastic sense of humor.

Danny & Laurie: humor, love, and mostly a lot of God's grace keep our marriage strong.

December

Church Christmas pageant. Such a cliche, but still really cute.

Naomi as a shepherd.

Naomi, it turns out, is an academic over-achiever. Who knew.

Mud Bricks

A little home project with Danny and the three big kids: mixing mud (in the right proportions of ingredients, of course), mixing with straw and water, and casting real mud bricks.

When they were dry, they built a little semi-circular wall to look like a castle.

Still drying out here.

Update: freakish rains for four consecutive days topped our wall. Oh, well. It was still a lot of fun to have a dirty project and understand ancient technology.