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We spent Thanksgiving in Utah this year.  It was fun but cold.  The California climate has made us weak.  But the chilly weather couldn't keep us from rockin' out.

Without context

First Day of School

The kids started back at school on August 19th. Emily in 3rd grade, Caleb in 1st, and Elinor in TK which is basically like Pre-K. Emily and Caleb are going to the school down the street so are able to walk/bike/scooter (by themselves!!) every day. It is glorious to not have to fight traffic and search for parking.

Caleb chose his sporks shirt, which is great, but maybe not what I would have chosen if I had gotten to his dresser drawer first. :)

 Elinor is attending transitional kindergarten at a school about a mile away. Our neighborhood school is very crowded, so is not offering TK anymore. I was planning to keep her at home for another year until I found out about another family in the ward who is in the same situation as us, with kids at two schools. We have worked out a carpool, and that, combined with the older kids walking on their own, has made the two-school thing relatively painless. I will heave a sigh of relief once all three are at a single school next year though!

Elinor's school is a uniform school. Her uniform didn't get here in time for the first day, but here she is a couple of days later. Cute, right??

Those little T-strap shoes? They just kill me!

And this one that I have to add, fuzzy as it is. She insists on the knee socks every day. I love it.

School is good, the weather is good, and Jacob is relishing his few hours per day of being an only child!

Beach Day!

On Wednesday we decided to go to the beach. We chose Twin Lakes in Santa Cruz and it turned out to be a really nice beach. The kids and I were musing about how it might become one of our favorites.

This is all of us crowding in for a selfie... didn't really work. Em was happy with the result though!

Just me and Jake. These are my "silly glasses" but I sorta love them. Nice how you can see my hands taking the picture here, right? But mostly I love Jacob's smile.

The kids were all really excited about the shells. Elinor was really, really excited.

Caleb racing to greet the waves. I love how at the beach the kids always have something important to do.

These two stuck together for a lot of the time.

Jumping the waves.

Beautiful day, right? Look at that sky! (okay, really, it was barely 70 degrees and WINDY. But everyone still had fun.)

Kid project.

It took a lot of manpower and a lot of time.

Exhausted at the end of the day. Emily was covered in sand from head to toe. We brought home a LOT of sand with us! Next time I will make them lay on towels.

Speaking of beach towels, this beach trip was our first time using our new sand-free "multimat" and I am a fan! I'm not totally sure how it works, but it only lets sand through one way, so any sand that landed on top sifted back through pretty quickly and we had this nice sand-free oasis on this beach of very fine sand that really got into everything. I would totally recommend it to anyone going to the beach with any kind of frequency.

You can sort of see it in the back of this picture.

Overall, it was a great beach trip. We will definitely be going back sometime... but maybe not for a little while. This week of fun was very exhausting!

Last Week of Summer

I have been trying to cram as much as I possibly can into this last week we have of summer before the kids go back to school. It's a bad habit I have where I panic and realize we're out of time so we'd better hurry and have as much fun as we possibly can... which sometimes tips over into not being super fun because it's so intense, but let's ignore that part. Full steam ahead!

Monday we went hiking on one of my favorite running trails. It was a gorgeous hike and we were having a good time (we saw a banana slug!!) until Elinor got stung by a bee and then we had to turn back early. You know, I think it is one of the most terrifying things in the world to hear your 4-year-old cutie-patootie little girl shrieking in terror and to see her all alone up there on the trail and not be able to reach her right away. I had so many awful things going through my head for those first few moments. Luckily we had Joseph with us and he got to her within a few seconds while I stayed with Jacob. She's fine.
After hiking we went swimming with some friends and then called it a day.

Tuesday we went to see a dollar movie in the morning (horrible movie, but the kids loved it and we got to sit in some great recliner seats!) and then headed straight to the Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose. I found out in researching it that Steve Wozniak was a key donor so they changed the name of the street it's on to Woz Way. It's a pretty great museum and the kids had a great time.

Dancing to the entrance.

Sitting at the entrance with a giant party-hatted polar bear (and a sleeping Jacob).

They had an ambulance and firetruck that the kids loved. Jacob basically wanted to move in.

See how at-home he is?

He got to the firetruck before I did and I caught him pulling another kid out of the driver's seat. He had to apologize and take a little time-out before he was able to drive again, but that's how passionate he feels about it!

My little firefighters. :)

This bubble room was cool. The kids spent a lot of time there playing around and possibly learning some new things about bubbles.

There were bubbles floating down from the pipe overhead that the kids liked to catch in their bubble hoop. It was pretty fun.

Even Jake got into it.

Emi spent a good hour at this corn husk doll making station. After she finished hers she helped Elinor make one (which she promptly lost) and then helped another girl make one, after which they spent some time together making braids for hair and clothes for the dolls out of denim scraps.

I turned around for a second and Elinor was missing. After searching for a while I found her here, calmly weighing every piece of produce she could fit and balance into the scale. The museum was perfect for Elinor and Caleb's character. They both love to explore and touch new things, even when it's not okay. They had no problem wandering off to a nearby display to try things out if something caught their eye. Emily is more of a rule follower, so she had fun too, but in a totally different and more cautious way. Jake was just stuck on the ambulance and firetruck and one other display, which I will get to in a minute.

This giant pinboard thingy is something Caleb remembered from his kindergarten field trip. All the kids loved it. It often ended up a battle between the two sides to push all the pins to the opposite side.

Emi was working on this wood carving machine thing (lathe?) that she powered with a pedal.

Very early on in our visit Caleb disappeared into the waterworks portion of the museum and did not come back. I checked in on him periodically and always found him very thoroughly occupied.

First time I checked in with him: roll the ball down the railing so it can land on the fountain and shoot up in the air to land in that tank on the ceiling. It was sweet to see him helping that little baby standing at his elbow. He would reach for balls that were out of reach and hand them to him and sometimes push it along on the railing if it didn't have enough momentum. Melts my heart!

This fountain would fill with fog and then the kids could manipulate it with a knob and send out little puffs of fog.

And this pipe had a little intake hole at the bottom that the kids could stick a ball through and have it sucked up and shot out the top. Caleb figured it out early and loved teaching the others kids about it.

Cool, huh?

The other kids were just tossing balls straight into the whirlpool tank. Amateurs.

And Jacob? Well Jacob was here:

At this little tank. Forever.

He loved the thing and literally fed it for at least 20 minutes before I pulled him away for lunch.

All in all, it was a great day.

Legoland!!

For Part 2 of our summer vacation this year we went to Legoland! I didn't feel ready to tackle Disneyland (mentally or financially) so we thought Legoland would be a good starter option.We checked into our fabulous hotel (milk and cookies before bed every night!), went swimming that first afternoon, and then took the shuttle to Legoland the next morning.

This was right outside the gate. They also had life-size Lego people built along the road leading to the park.

As we went into the park Joseph took the big kids to get in line for the Sky Cruiser and I took Jacob to do some littler rides.

This was his very first and very favorite ride. He used to cry as I buckled him into his carseat because he wanted to drive so badly. This was like a dream come true and he was a pro!

He went on to ride in a helicopter...

The cars again...

A train...

(Duplo city)

A boat...

This was a fairy tale boat ride with all kinds of different characters to see.

And he also rode in airplanes, but that was the next day. We were busy!

And I got to spend a lot of one-on-one time with my baby boy.

He loved playing in these cars as well and insisted I take his picture here, with that lovely lady posing beside him.

  Meanwhile, the big kids did bigger things. Lots of roller coasters and line-waiting for them.

Joseph wasn't as picture-happy as I was, so I don't have as many of them. Plus their lines were longer so they weren't able to do as many different rides as me and Jacob. But the rides they did get to were awesome!

They also wandered through Miniland where they have a ton of people and buildings built entirely out of Legos.

Poor El was feeling pretty under-the-weather by this time.

We met up in Heartlake City, where Jacob spent his time  watching the Lego Friends show.

The big kids took a second to ride the carousel.

And then we headed in to see the Lego Movie set.

It was pretty amazing, but sort of hard to take pictures of. I loved seeing all the tiny details.

El was about ready to pass out at this point, so I took her and Jacob to get some food while Joseph and the bigger kids went to do more roller coasters.

Within seconds of climbing into the stroller... (poor girl!)

 After this Jacob wanted to do the cars again (surprise!) so we waited in line for that while Elinor slept.

The next day at Legoland we came in our swim suits so we could go to the water parks. That was really fun. One of my favorite rides was one like Splash Mountain that the whole family was able to do together. Getting soaked felt really good on such a hot day! We also went swimming in a wave pool, floated around a lazy river, and did a couple of water slides. We did manage to also squeeze in a fourth and final ride on the cars for Jacob before we left the park for the day.

Emily and Caleb's first ride the second day.

Jake in the fountains at Heartlake City.

Emily and Caleb finally took a turn driving the Lego cars (this was on the big kid track).

Jacob and I went on a laser tag-type ride that was perfect for him. Skeletons, sound effects, stolen treasure, and little laser guns. Every little boy's dream come true!

Any time we passed a gift shop, the kids all donned foam armor and wielded foam weapons to stage a battle. The store employees were very tolerant of this. :)

It was such a fun vacation and Legoland was a great theme park to take the kids to. They were the perfect ages to enjoy everything the park had to offer. It was a great trip!