Random

I am going to just put a bunch of random pictures together in this post. I have wanted to do an individual post for each of them, but it just didn't happened.. so here are some pictures from the last couple of months....

I turned 31! It was a great day! My friends through me a fabulous lunch! I had a party with the family and Boyd took me to Tao for dinner..

Monica got us tickets to the Westminster Dog show from her brother Mike. This was our 2nd year. It is an interesting place. The kids were able to sit through 30 minutes. But, there favorite part is the area where they prep the dogs. Eli especially loved petting the dogs. Monica, then took us all out to lunch!Boyd went to San Diego for work and had an extra couple of hours at the end of his week and what did he do? He went boogie boarding with my cousin Brad! I was so jealous! He also got to see Katie and the kids!

Gavin at Dinosaur park! Sometimes we just have to go to the park, even if it is below freezing!

Eli continues to bring many messes to our life!

Gavin has pretty much won the battle on naps. He doesn't take them any more. He still needs them and sometimes he can't fight it...

Good-bye Mr. Monster

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I can't remember exactly when Mr. Monster entered our life. I am pretty sure it came after Gavin's 3rd birthday. He was fighting his nap, but I knew he still needed it, so I was fighting back. In one of my attempts to keep him in his bed, I told him I was going to tell him a monster story. He immediately stopped crying and was ready for his monster story. I began by saying, "Once upon a time there was a big SCARY monster." I realized as I was telling him this that I he might get scared, so I added "WAIT a minute, he's not a scary monster; He's a nice monster and he is friend's with a little boy named Gavin." "AND they liked to go adventures." I followed with some made up adventure that involved him and Mr. Monster.

I didn't realize that he would ask for a monster story before every nap and bedtime. I could make it longer or shorter depending on how much time we had. His adventures took us to the moon where they encountered a new friend named Billabong, to Africa, to central park, to the store, to the zoo, and many more places.

After a while Gavin started adding to the stories, so that he was practically telling the story himself.

I am not sure when he stopped asking for monster stories, but I realized this week that it has been a while. It made me a little sad, so today I asked Gavin if he wanted a Monster story. I was happy to see his eyes light up. I am pretty sure that Mr. Monster will occasionally reappear, but for now it is good-bye.

(I am not sure the monster pictured above is what we both pictured in our minds, but he looks pretty friendly)

Snow Fun

We've had a couple of snow days this winter and I failed to post pics of all the fun we had in the snow. The first pics are from January when we had snow day on MLK Day, so Boyd was home and we were able to have a great day of sledding and hot chocolate with the whole family and friends!



It snowed again this week and I attempted to take the boys out in the snow to build a snowman, but Frosty didn't quite make it. The snow was to dry to make into balls, so we improvised and made one like this. It made Gavin happy and that's what counts!