just because you're older does not mean you're wiser

Last weekend we went up to shaver lake with some friends to "visit the snow" as it's called in California.  We got all bundled up like we were children again, and had some fun in the snow.

There was a sledding hill behind our cabin, and we had a couple saucers that john had gotten as a white elephant gift one Christmas because "he would never use them in California."  Ha!  We used them alright.

In fact, we even broke one of them.  But that was after we got bored with regular 'ol sledding and decided to show how much we had matured since we were kids and build ourselves a jump.

Here's a teaser of what we accomplished.  videos to follow.

babies: can't live without 'em

remember the cupcakes that we made back in october to reveal the gender of jonathan and lisa's baby? well she has arrived! annie chiharu was born early on wednesday morning, about 3 weeks earlier than anticipated. she was 5 pounds 15 ounces and 19.5 inches.


before going to the hospital to see the maher family, i decided to embellish some cloth diapers to bring with us. here's the end result:

a surprise visit!

during my weekend away in carmel, ben and julie spent some time plotting over skype. since nick and sofia were going to michigan to surprise nick's mom, she thought it would be the perfect chance to come up and visit me.

she was going to make the entire trip a surprise, but decided to tell me instead so that i could clear my schedule. what she DIDN'T tell me was that they were coming up on thursday afternoon, not on friday.

ben and i got home from school around 4 thursday afternoon. when we walked in i noticed that the christmas tree lights were on (yes, we still had our christmas tree). this wasn't a huge anomaly since our lights are on a clapper; perhaps they had gone on due to noise outside during the day. but then i noticed a sucker on our fireplace! i looked at ben who had a sneaky glint in his eye. he said, "do you hear something?" sure enough, there were faint shrieks and giggles coming from the laundry room. we opened the door, and there were julie and eva! 

what a fun visit we had. friday morning we were surprised by a fog delay which meant a wonderfully relaxed start to the day. after school on friday, ben left for a track conference, so on saturday julie, eva, and i got to have a little girls' day out. we went to fresno to do some shopping, went out for lunch at panera, and stopped at bravo farms cheese factory on the way home for eva to visit the petting zoo.

with all our fun, we didn't take very many pictures. here are just a couple snapshots of our activities together:

right away on thursday, eva suggested that we make cookies! so we made the dough together on thursday and then while we were at school, julie and eva rolled, cut, and baked the cookies.

friday when i got home from school we frosted and sprinkled them.

sunday before they left, julie decided to pick some grapefruits to take home. 

thanks for a great visit! surprise me anytime!