Spring

Once again time has escaped me, and we are months without an update. We saw a lot of snow this winter, and it left us longing for the west coast.

In March, we signed up for a class at the US Botanical Gardens in DC. It was so much fun. Jay loved visiting the gardens each week. He learned so much about seeds and plants. We have just recently attempted planting our own flowers and herbs. I have never had much luck at all with keeping plants alive, so we will soon see how this will turn out. We enjoy the gardens so much we have been trying to visit each month to see what new flowers are blooming.



We are lucky to have a Cherry Blossom tree in our front yard! The trees bloomed early this year. They were so beautiful. For a while it looked like it was snowing cherry blossoms. My Aunt visited us during the Cherry Blossom Festival in DC, and she bought us all tickets to see the parade! It was so much fun! I had not been to a big parade like that before, and we all really enjoyed it. We had awesome seats near the grand stands and we got to see all of the performances!






We spent a lot of our free time at our local rec center! He has taken basketball, swimming, and gymnastic classes so far this year. I like to rotate which classes he takes each session. His favorite is basketball and he has participated in that class the last 3 sessions. They are so much fun to watch. It is basically a skills class, with some parent involvement, but they do scrimmage and it is so cute! I would like him to try soccer again next but so far his heart is still set on basketball.




There are only two weeks left of Awana! Jay's Cubbie vest is all filled in now. Next year he'll be a Sparky! He loves the Awana program and we are so happy we found a chapter for him to participate in here. We are amazed by his ability to memorize bible verses.

A long over due update

2009 has been an interesting year for us. A few months ago Xian was offered a job that took us over 2,600 miles away from our home, family, church, and friends. We have moved many times, but for some reason this move seemed just a little bit harder than normal. But we are finally settling in and once again exploring a new place and starting a new adventure.

Autumn has always been my favorite season. This was a first for Jay, finally experiencing the beautiful fall foliage.



As soon as we moved we thankfully found another Awana Chapter to be involved with! Jay is in his second year of Cubbies and LOVES it!



The pig mask is normally not part of his uniform! It was dress as your favorite bible character night. Jay was certain he wanted to be a pig from Noah's ark.

We've been taking advantage of all the touristy things that we are near now!






He wasn't thrilled to take this photo, it was very busy at the Bureau of Engraving and Imprinting, and he did not want to stand alone near that sign!

More to come soon, I hope!

Long over due Christmas update!

I'm over a month late with this entry, but figured I may as well post a few of our Christmas pictures from this year. Christmas was so much fun this year with a three year old! He was so excited about everything! He keeps asking when it will be Christmas time again. He was so disappointed when we started packing up the Christmas decorations, he really wanted to keep the tree up until next Christmas.

This year we stayed in California for the holidays. Our NY family sent many boxes to us during the month of December! Jay was so excited to get so much mail! Most of the packages had to go into the garage to wait until Christmas. He keeps hoping the mailman will continue to bring surprises to our house.




I took my own photos this year for our Christmas cards. Jay was pretty cooperative. This was our favorite for the cards! I wasn't really happy with how they turned out, but had to order them asap to get them in the mail before Christmas. He is crazy about the red monkey and candy cane pj's he is wearing in this photo. He is still wearing them all the time. Sometimes he even insists on wearing them under his clothing!



We usually get Jay's photos professionally done around the holidays. But this year we really wanted to try to cut that expense, so I took some pictures myself in our living room. This was one of my favorites of him reading a book he got from my Aunt and Uncle. We also took several family pictures, and they turned out really great! Wish these could have made it into the Christmas cards!



And here is Jay with Santa. This year we went on the Santa Train, and got to visit with Santa during a train ride. The train was all decorated for Christmas and Mrs. Claus was even there greeting everyone. It was a wonderful day, but a little chilly. Jay asked Santa for a garbage truck, jumping rope, and a grocery shop.



I had a few pictures from Christmas day I wanted to share, but sadly I can't get the cropped versions to show up on my blog. I'd rather not post pictures of our extended family here! :) So I guess this is all for today!

ARGH, I hate how the photos are not showing up correctly, but I don't have any more time to mess with this right now! Maybe later tonight!

Day out with Thomas!

On Vetern's day, spur of the moment, we decided to call and see if there were any tickets available to see Thomas the Train. We missed seeing Thomas last year, and we knew little Jay would really enjoy it. Luckily, the event still had tickets so we were off to the train station.

It sure seemed to take forever for Thomas to arrive. But luckily, someone was in a patient mood that day.




Sadly, I didn't get any pictures of him next to Thomas! But I did get some during the train ride. After all that waiting, the 30 minute ride seemed to fly by!


The senery wasn't anything too exciting, so Jay amused us with his "Pirate Eye".



He also got his first tattoo! These things sure are better than I remembered. His has just started to wear off today.



And almost as exciting as Thomas, our good friend Bob the Builder was there too. He did a singing show for the kids and then let everyone get pictures. Bob is a favorite in our house, he might even win over Thomas on most days here.

After seeing Thomas, (and Bob) Jay was melting down, since he missed his nap, so we had to cut the rest of the day short. They had a lot of stuff going on, and we only saw about half of it. We are thinking of going back to the Train station in December. They will have a Christmas Train then!

FFF ~Daddy and Me~~

This first picture was taking Father's Day weekend, and Disney's California Adventure. Jay just adores his Daddy.



He was so upset when Xian went on a ride without him. He didn't cry until his Daddy came back, and then he just sobbed. :( Daddy went on no more rides solo after that.




Here is a picture from last Father's Day.


Sadly, I don't have a picture from Xian's first Father's day, because he was deployed then. But this is a picture from our pick up trip, always one of my favorite Daddy and me pictures!

Here are the two best pictures that I mentioned earlier! I hope to have more time to update with some action swimming shots soon. I have them uploaded, I just need to resize them.

We are all so tired tonight. We just got back from Disney's California Adventure! It was so much fun! :)



I think and am almost afraid that it wont be long before little J is jumping from these rocks around the pool...

FFF ~bloopers~

Here are my bloopers from this week. It seems like every time I have my camera out, I get more missed shots than keepers. But I still keep every picture anyway. It's really hard to get a good picture of J lately, he's always moving. We've been so busy with our move, I can't believe it has been so long since I've done a FFF!

We love having a pool now!

He's showing off his new bathing suit from his Auntie!

It took 13 shots to get two good ones, I'll post those later on this afternoon maybe!