M & M Dude's Best Father's Day

On Father's Day, M & M Dude and Mr. President went to Infineon Raceway in style! M & M Dude won tickets to the Nascar Race which included hospitality tent seats and driving a Toyota Tundra around the track with a couple of the Nascar drivers in the back of the bed of the truck. M & M Dude ended up not driving the truck because there was not enough trucks for the number of winners, so he ended up being a passenger (with Mr. President in the truck too). This worked out to their benefit! While driving around the track, M & M Dude saw Tom Cruise about 4 feet away and said, "Hey Tom Cruise", and pointed to him. Tom Cruise saw Mr. President in the back and said, "Happy Father's Day" to my husband and waved to my son! This was one of the highlights of M & M Dude's life. When he called me right after, he was so excited! It took a couple of days for him to come down from the clouds! And it did not help that his Nascar Driver, Kasey Kahne, won the race also!


This picture with M & M Dude's arm sticking out of the truck was taken by one of the kid's former teacher's husband, who happened to be at the race and did not know M & M Dude was at the race.

Braces

Last month, Firecracker hit a new milestone. She got braces! And had them put on 2 days before her 8TH Birthday! M & M Dude and I both had braces and did not expect to have our youngest child to start with braces first and even a little earlier than we started (I had braces put on in 3rd grade). Firecracker actually has the opposite issue (underbite) than us (overbite).
BEFORE PICTURE

AFTER PICTURE

Hawaiian Luau Birthday

Firecracker decided to have a Hawaiian Luau Birthday Party this year! Thanks to the Internet I was able to find lots of ideas. Her 8Th Birthday party turned out great and everyone seemed to have a lot of fun. To start off the party, we made message in a bottle invitations with sand, shells, and an umbrella. (We just used recycled water bottles).

We had many activities planned for the party! Including a water balloon toss, pinata, limbo and an erupting volcano (this was the boys' favorite).




My favorite part of Firecracker's Birthday was her cake. I had so much fun with the cake. I purchased a Costco cake, scraped off the flowers, made some white and sea-blue colored frosting,added brown sugar to create the sand and blue frosting to create the waves, and added a few things (umbrella, lounge chair, plastic sea animals, palm trees and a hula girl.

Maui Week 2

Here were the highlights of our 2nd week in Maui:
*Upgraded to Ocean Front 2 Bedroom
*Lei Making
*M & M Dude & Mr. President seeing an 80 year old turtle up close while snorkeling; he even looked them right in the eye and then swam back down to the bottom of the ocean! And they even saw a huge puffer fish and some type of fish with vampire teeth that we cannot find a picture in any ocean books (maybe it's a new species?).
*Maui Ocean Center- loved the turtles. Some interesting facts about turtles:
1. Wait until they are 25 to have babies
2. Their shells actually tan. If they don't have any exposure to sun, their shells turn white.
3. They are carnivores at first and then become vegetarians
*Dinner at sunset at Kimos (best ono ever with coconut panko crust and spicy peanut Thai sauce and pineapple salsa & can't leave without sharing Hula Pie)
*Searching for sea glass

Maui Vacation Week 1

Since I've got one kid home sick today, I thought I should start getting caught up on my blog.
We have a timeshare in Maui and we go every other year. It's a place where it feels like home and can't wait to come back to!

Here are some highlights of our 1st week:
*Found our new favorite restaurant, DA KITCHEN with the best Teriyaki Chicken and Potato Mac Salad!
*Mr. President's quote when we landed, "Boy, I really love the smell of Maui!"
*Scoring 4 FREE ticket to the Maui Ocean Center because the Marine Naturalist was a No Show at the resort.
*Playing Bingo and winning lots of stuff (bottles of pineapple wine, free kid activities and shaved ice)
*The kids collecting plumeria flowers
*Whale Watching~ incredible!!! Saw lots of activity despite being late in the season! One whale slapped his tail 7 times in a row.
*Swimming or snorkeling at the pool and beach every day
*Watching the beautiful and very different sunsets every night
*Exotic Flower Tour- absolutely amazing and educational tour
*Luau- great food and drinks; the fun, dark walk along the beach walk back to our resort
*Visit to the Grand Wailea
*Playing with the crabs on the beach (the crabs would run for any tree nuts we would throw at them). It was too funny;))
*BBQing at the resort

Concannon Winery Tour

Towards the end of April, M&M Dude and I went on a personal winery tour with M & M Dude's cousin and husband. I've written about Debbie and TC before as we spend a lot of time with them and even though we are relatives, they are more like friends to us! They had won a special tour of the winery for 4 and we were honored that they invited us to spend the day with them. The tour was on the historic Concannon Winery in the Livermore valley. Our tour guide was very informative. Besides tasting wine, my favorite part of the tour was learning about the wine barrels specific tree types used and why many wine growers used to use rose bushes at the end of each of grape vine row (because the rose bushes would tell the wine growers that there might be disease in the particular row and they now just plant the rose bushes as a tradition because there are other ways to determine how the grade vines are doing.) We had a great time without the kids to just relax and chat and have some wine and had an early Mexican dinner. A wonderful day!

Mini Reunion

In April, we had a mini girl's high school reunion. Many of us had not seen each other in over 20+ years, but it felt like old times! We had fun catching up, eating awesome food and wine, and reminiscing over old times.



Posts coming soon: wine tasting and vacation in Maui

A little behind... Fieldtrip to the POND!

Okay, I'm so so behind on posting. I'm very sorry! I'm going to try to catch up within the next week.
In April, I went with Firecracker's class to the "POND" in Livermore. We had a really good time with a little hike, lunch and an education on bugs by the park rangers. The kids each got a little bug net to find bugs in the pond. They found all kinds of things like frogs, mosquito larve, a dead bee, tadpoles, a couple of little fish.

Friends, Fun and a Movie!

With my kids being in Year Round School, they had a very, very short Spring Break (3 days off). We went to see the Monsters vs. Aliens movie with our friends. I was a little resistant in seeing this movie based on the previews and some one's comments about the movie. But, I loved it! We saw the 3-D version and I don't normally like 3-D movies as they normally give me a headache. Not this movie! I couldn't even tell I had on glasses. After the movie, we went over to Barnes and Nobles and us girls (adults) each got a coffee!

The kids looked around at books and a few purchased books. Then we headed over to our friend's house for more fun, lots of girl chatting, food and a surprise wild rain storm!

Awesome EASTER

I know I have not posted in awhile. Sorry!
We had a very fun EASTER with my husband's side of the family. My In-Laws has always had such great EASTERS at their house. This year they changed it up a bit, but we loved it!
BRUNCH
Easter Egg Hunt. This year each kid had a specific color of plastic eggs to find. Mr. President was orange and Firecracker was pink (she is no loving pink right now, but was okay with it since she is the only girl in the family). This worked out perfect in that everyone got the same number of eggs to find and $ in the eggs;))
Pinata The new Easter addition and the kids had a ball!
















After brunch, hunt and pinata, the grown-ups sat down outside and just talked and watched the resident squirrels and blue jays eating the peanuts my father in-law threw on the lawn.



My In-Laws took us out to yummy Chinese later in the day. It was such a PERFECT DAY!!