Valentine's Day 2012

This year Valentine's day was a little different for us because it fell on a sad occasion.  This year Great Grandma passed away and her funeral was on February 14th.  We celebrated with our traditional red and pink dinner the night before and it actually turned out to be very fun since we were having the Sister Missionaries over for dinner.  We got to share our tradition with them.  I wish we would have taken pictures but sadly we didn't.  Also Aunt Sarah joined us for dinner which was fun too since we had Valentines the boys had put together for the Sisters and for My sister too :D.  The boys helped me make these Valentines this year.

When the boys woke up on Valentine's Day they were greeted with a super healthy breakfast

and their mailboxes had valentines from Mommy and a treat for each of them.  They were very excited!!

Kevin went to school so he could attend at least part of his big V-day party with his school pals and give out his Valentines there.  Then we picked him up early and headed up to Burbank to celebrate the life of someone we all loved very much, Great Grandma,  Ethel Low.  She had been fighting Leukemia at the end of her life, she lived to be 84 years old and I know she is happy to be with Papa now as she missed him so much.  Ethel worked at the studios in wardrobe and had wonderful stories of working with all of the stars.  Bryan remembers her telling them all to him when he was younger and he being excited to tell his friends who all his Grandma knew.  I got to know her too which was such a blessing in my life.  Before Bryan and I got married I lived with Grandma for a few months while we saved up for the wedding.  I moved up  to Toluca Lake and Bryan would come visit on all his days off and we would hang out with Grandma and I got to hear all her stories first hand.  She was honestly so kind hearted and I knew she loved me and our family and all of our boys loved her too.  Here are a few pics of her at work.  (She didn't like her picture being taken much the last couple of years)

Isaac turns 2

This year because I am in the condition I am in we had two small birthday parties for Isaac instead of one big one.  We had one with family at my parent's house and then we had one with some friends at our home.  Isaac was very excited to have days devoted to him.  He is really into sweets so having doughnuts and cake several times in one week were extra special.  Isaac got lots of fun stuff for his birthday this year including a Winnie the Pooh movie which is way cute and some clothes and, of course, cars...but his big gift this year was his very own big boy race car bed.  He has tried it out a couple of nights but has opted so far for his crib.  He actually will lay down in the bed and when we leave he just moves his pillow blanket, blankie, and himself into his crib without ever bothering us.  It is pretty funny to us that he has actually never crawled out of his crib but makes a habit of crawling into it!!

These pictures are not great quality, I'm not sure what went wrong but I hopefully can find some more pics of his parties :D!!

the birthday boy!!



 all the boys!!

yes, we had Krispy Kreme Doughnuts for his birthday!!!

I love this picture because Kevin is so excited for him!! (such an awesome big brother)

the big boy car bed!!



The second party was a day later when we had our good friends, the Cookes, come down and hang out with us for the day.  This was a crazy boy play date!! They spent a couple of hours at the park then came in for dinner and an awesome cake (decorated by Kien) with candles and all.  Isaac had so much fun running with the big boys and sleep came easy to all that night!! 


boys being boys on the slide!!

our big boy, I can't believe he is two years old already!!

Our Lake Tahoe BabyMoon!!!

Last year when we went to Kauai we ended up being able to give up our seats in exchange for some airline vouchers to the tune of $800 each.  They were only good for one year and that year was approaching fast (April 9th to be exact)  So we decided we needed to go somewhere, anywhere before #4 came along and before our vouchers expired, we decided on Lake Tahoe because we could get cheap accommodations especially since there had not been any snow up there this year at all.  For us that was fine since I wasn't really in any condition really for any real snow play.  We flew in on a Friday and it was raining...like in this picture

 of course we had cracked our window during the night because in my current state, I am always hot and needed some air.  By morning we could not close the window because it was jammed with snow :D

we went outside to find a winter wonderland, yay...so pretty...

 with some wind gusts reaching into the 100 mph range it was pretty chilly up there on top of the ridge!!

we ventured across the street and took a timeshare tour which paid for 3 of our meals while there and some souvenirs for the boys so it was worth it, plus we were not going to be driving in this anyway...:D

later in the afternoon it cleared a little bit and we went down to South Lake Tahoe and did some shopping...(bought Bryan a hat) and got some hot chocolate!!

 
we had to dig our car out of course...

poor Bryan had to stay out and scrape in the gusting wind, it was attacking him...

We ate out at a restaurant called the Fresh Catch in the Keys.  Bryan had meatloaf (yes it is wrapped in bacon, he said it was the best meatloaf he had EVER had) 

pictured below

I had Chilean Sea Bass, yuummmmm

The next morning we ventured out again and found the South Lake Tahoe Ward.  It was nice to go meet new people and spend a few hours with the locals : D and by the time we got out of church it was snowing again... here are some pics of the area around our Time Share...I have pics of Kevin playing on this playground when he was about 11 months old so I had to add this picture in...

The rest of the afternoon we just relaxed, took a really long nap and stayed warm.

we ventured out in the evening, by out, I mean across the street and we took our Rivals for Catan Game and played in the clubhouse, until it was time to go watch Downton Abby!!!!

Then sadly it was the last day of our wonderful vacation in which we pretty much did nothing for 3 days, it was awesome.  We had to dig our car out again from the snowfall the night before....

the we went down to the Lake because we hadn't even seen it, so we figured we better stop by on our way out of town...it looked cold and grey, but still huge and pretty...

someone will have to wait a little while to go wake boarding again.

the happy couple!!

We have taken this ferry out every time I've gone with my parents up to Tahoe, but today it just wasn't running...I wonder why???

on our way to Reno it was pretty dense fog and snow so we had to drive pretty slow...

we drove over to Virginia City and walked around and bought some fudge at the only open shop because the whole town had lost power the morning we decided to drop in...but it was so quaint and cute and really it worked well not have electricity...we would love to go back on a warm day sometime!!

Our trip was so much fun.  We were sad to have to go back to the hustle and bustle of real life but glad to get back to our sweet boys...next time we are taking them with us!!!