St. Patty's Day

We did some fun crafts for St Patty's Day. We ate corned beef and Cabbage for dinner and shared a fruit rainbow dessert with our friends. The best pics are in Bens phone- so hopefully I can get those from him.

There are also a few fun pictures from one of our March hikes.

A Pretty Little Party

We had so much fun celebrating Sylvie's first birthday.  We just did our own little family party.  Rhone helped me make treats for her party.  He was so dissapointed that we were making the cake, but didn't get to eat any of it.  I even made a tutu for Sylvie.  We picked out some of her favorite things for meals. Our little lady LOVES jamba juice smoothies.  Its how she learned to drink out of a straw, so of course she got one for lunch.  We spaced the celebration out so it would work with her nap schedule- which made for a whole day of celebrating.  She was also blessed with gifts, cards, and calls for family and friends all over the country.

Our Sylvie girl is one smiling girl.  She will smile for anyone, and you don't even have to work for it.  She is very good hearted and determined.  She is not too much of a snuggler.  When she is tired she doesn't want to be rocked.  She will lean for her crib when you walk into her room.  Her first "word" was Ace.  She is very fascinated and excited about animals. 

Sylvie is near the 50th percentile for height, but she is light weight.  She is only in the 8th percentile for weight- so we are trying hard to get some weight on her.  She loves fruits, veggies, cheese and meats.  She is not much of a bread eater.  We love watching her walk around and explore the world.  It feels like she has always been apart of our family and we are all so blessed to have her in our family.

 Team work!

Weekend at the Cabin

This move we were so lucky (you won't hear me say that too often) because some of our dear friend from DE moved out here with us.  They have a family cabin and were kind (and brave) enough to invite us and our kids for the weekend.  It was absoloutely beautiful there.  We went sledding on a wild and long hill.  Then we got a snowmobile ride back to the top.  We strolled through the quaint little town and took the snowmobiles out a breathtaking (both in beauty and temperature) ride to the local lake.  It was a fantastic and relaxing weekend.  Rhone is still talking about it months later.  Thank you so much Todd and Haley for a great weekend.

Hiking

The kids and I are part of the best playgroup.  It's a hiking group.  Sometimes it's pretty wild between kiddos and doggies, but it is so much fun.  There is some beautiful country to explore here.  We also went on a few family hikes and we love taking our Ace monster out for a good run.

This was a LONG hike to hidden falls.  Turns out it's not hidden very well.  I swear half of Nor Cal was in the parking lot that morning.  Rhone did an awesome job on it.

Sylvie was determined to get to the water- so we just let her play.  What a mess, but boy did she have a blast.  She work her jacket as pants on the hike out :)

11 months

There is no getting around it.  She is pretty adorable.  We took these in Grass Valley.  She wasn't great at free standing so we kind of propped her up by the rock.  She actually stood up for the first time from sitting with out holding on to anything while Ben and I were on our date.  Nana and Papa were impressed.  She is an excellent crawler and loves, loves to crawl up stairs.  She loves to sing songs and dance.  Sylvie also loves when we carry her around with us when we play chase with Rhone.  She just laughs and giggles.  I can't believe that she is almost 1!

She loves swinging and will crawl up the playsets and slide down by herself.

Nana and Papa came!

We loved having my parents come to visit.  Rhone was quite excited that Papa was coming too.  We took a trip to Point Reyes National Seashore.  On the way we drove through Sonoma and the wine country.  We stopped at a little local place for lunch and visited train town.  It was a list minute thing, but Rhone really loved the train ride.  They take you around the little park and let you off in an old western miniature sized town.  We loaded back in the truck to finish the drive.  We hiked out the see the elephant seals, we hiking down to the light house (I didn't get any pictures there) and then we finally made it to the beach.  Rhone was so devastated that I didn't bring his swim clothes.  I kept explaining that it was going to be cold.  He had a blast in the chilly water anyway and got Papa to get wet with him.  We stopped and had dinner at a Czech restaurant.  We made Ben tell us all about the food.  It was a fun little find.  

We spent some time at the house to recover from our busy travel day.  My dad made a little gate for Ace so we can kennel him when we are using the backyard space and don't want a dog in our business.  Nana and I made it out for some shopping too.  Finally we made a day trip to Grass Valley.  It is such an interesting town and there is beautiful hiking around there.  My parents were kind enough to watch the kiddos too, so Ben and I could be out for a date night.  The car battery wouldn't start when we were done eating.  It was quite the date :)

 I love his excitement. 

I wanted to take some pictures of Rhone.  The only way I could get him to put on a collared shirt was to tell him he would be just like Papa.

 Look at that gorgeous soil profile!  

I love watching the kids wander off a little ways and just discover and explore.  Childhood is such a magical time of life.  There is just so much to learn and so much curiosity. 

Nana and Papa brought Sylvie's birthday gift with them and lots of Valentine gifts too.  Including some very cool pop up books.

My Czech dinner.  Too bad it was so long ago I can't even tell ya much about it.