Beach Trip!

Ryan has made an executive decision that we are going to take a family beach trip once a year...we'll see how long that lasts, but here are some highlights from the second Earp family beach trip!

Highlights:
1. This was like a mini family reunion on Ryan's side because 3 of the 4 siblings were here and all of the grandkids were present. The kids had a blast with all of their cousins!
2. Ryan and Uncle Matt were the experts on sand castle building and even let the kids help them build their legendary sand castle/fort!
3. Some kid at the beach saw all the little kids playing on it after it was built and we overheard him say to his family, "Hey did you see what those little kids made!"
4. Apparently, we have taken our kids to stay in quite a few hotels recently because they are sure getting to be good at all sleeping in the same room and we all get a good night sleep!
5. We pretty much never left the beach the four days we were there - we got some pretty sweet tans!
6. Grandma and Grandpa Earp brought back Hawaii outfits for all the grandkids from their recent trip and we got some cute pictures!
7. During one of our photo shoots with Grandma and Grandpa we lost Sawyer's only plug as it got swept away by a wave. Devon was unusually and tearfully sad about it, but after most of us thought it was long gone Uncle Matt saved the day!
8. Marissa and Taylor were able to rekindle their "best buddy" friendship" and once again had a blast together. One day at the beach we saw just the two of them laying by each other on the sand having their own conversation for quite a while. We found out later that Taylor was telling stories and Marissa was his avid listener and questioner!
9. Sawyer was just starting to get around so he had a great time helping himself to everything. That kid was like a food magnet and all of a sudden we looked down and he was gnawing away on his first peanut butter sandwich! Oops!




Here's the totally wicked sand castle/fort!







Here's Marissa and Taylor just after they were telling each other stories!



Grandma and Grandpa Earp and all their grandkids decked out in Hawaii apparel!



The kids in their Hawaii outfits.



Here you can see Devon looking down at Sawyer's plug at his feet just moments before it was swept away by a wave. I saw it there and almost ran to get it, but stopped myself thinking, "It's not going anywhere...I don't want to ruin the pictures," when seconds later it was gone from my sight.



Devon woke up with some awesome bedhead one morning!

Kindergarten Celebration!

I can't believe Marissa just finished her kindergarten year! She is growing up too fast and she agrees with me. In fact, she has stated a number of times that she doesn't want to go to first grade. She doesn't want to grow up and she will miss her teacher! She had a great year and I'm sure once she goes back in the fall she will love first grade, too!

She is a fantastic student and loves learning. She is an especially good reader and loves to read her chapter books as she lays in bed (just like mom)!



Marissa and Mrs. Brunenkant



Her class sang a cute little song about moving on to first grade. Good thing Marissa sang it for me several times beforehand because I was a few minutes late and arrived towards the end of the song!

Devon is such a "BIG BOY"!

Devon is at a great age and is really into being a 'big boy'. About a month ago he finally decided that using the potty was okay and he hasn't looked back. Not long after he also decided that riding his 'rocket bike' like a big boy without training wheels was cool, too! Ryan had to fix his bike which resulted in him removing his training wheels and then we just didn't put them back on. We thought we'd let Devon try it out and he was really quite good at it from the beginning so we decided to leave them off. In a matter of a couple of weeks Devon was riding circles around me and zapping 'abominable snowmen' as he raced around on his 'rocket bike'! It is fun to see such a little kid riding around so well!


Here is Devon showing me his "buff muscles"!



He loves to ride his 'rocket bike'!

Happy Easter!

I was so excited to dress Sawyer and Devon in these outfits because this is the first real matching outfit we could get them - Sawyer had to reach 6 mos before his clothes would really start to match Devon's 'big boy' clothes.



Easter morning after the hunt - you can tell what Devon's favorite part of Easter was!



Sawyer was content to watch his older siblings run their tails off trying to find all the eggs!



Yesterday, our community held an Easter egg hunt - Marissa made out pretty well this year. You can see her here already planning her next move!



Devon pretty much rocked his egg hunt - he was in the 0-3 years old age group so while all the 'babies' were too busy drooling over one egg, Devon, a.k.a. the 'rocket', was rakin' them in!

Flagstaff Trip!

Ryan had four days off in a row so we said, "What the heck...let's go to Flagstaff!" Here are some highlights:

1. Only a 4 hour drive passing by several outlet malls!
2. We spent a day at the Grand Canyon. We hiked the South Rim canyon trail which let us have a view of the Grand Canyon the whole time and it was paved!!
3. We went to the Lowell Observatory and the kids got to see Saturn through a huge telescope as well as the star 'Sirius'. Marissa especially loves this kind of thing and has been asking us questions such as "Is Jupiter a dead planet like Mars?" ever since.
4. We saw the remains of Sunset Crater Volcano after which Marissa was full of questions.
5. We visited the Wupatki Indian ruins during which time we decided that the rooms in their buildings were way too small. Ryan's favorite part was seeing (and feeling) the 'blowhole' (see picture below).
6. Devon fell into the toilet at the hotel, which gave us all (except maybe Devon) a good laugh!
7. You might read this and think all we do is go on trips and while that may be true for the time being it's all thanks to Uncle Dan and $39/night rooms at the Marriot!
8. The hotel had an indoor pool that the kids would have liked to frequent daily if we'd have let them and a cozy fireplace outside in the courtyard!



The Grand Canyon - as you can see Sawyer is really enjoying the view!



The canyon trail was lined with big rocks that the kids liked to walk along. They also like to run ahead of us on the trail and then hang out on the rocks. We could push Sawyer in the stroller, the kids never got tired, and we had an awesome view of the canyon - this was the perfect hike for our family!



Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument



This is the 'blowhole'. Air gets trapped underground and gets pushed up with some impressive force. It was surprisingly cool as well which led us all to wonder why in the world the Native Americans didn't build their buildings around this for some natural air conditioning!



The boys in front of the Wupatki Ruins.



From this view it really looks like the rooms are tiny...admittedly, when we walked right next to them they were bigger than they originally looked.

Trip to L.A.!

During Marissa's spring break we were able to meet Grandma and Grandpa in L.A. for a week. Three of those days we went to Disneyland (pictures of this fun event are still to come:). Here are a few of the highlights from our trip:

1. Although the weather at this time wasn't particularly warm, we were still able to catch some beach time which is always a self-entertaining activity for the kids!
2. It's always fun to hang out with Grandma and Grandpa!
3. These pictures represent the 'down-time' we had that week which was some much needed time to counter-balance the crazy 'running around' time we had at Disneyland!
4. It is only a 7-hour drive to get there!
5. I didn't have to make Marissa's lunch for school all week!!
6.Sawyer had his first introduction to sand and the judges were out on this for awhile but in the end enjoyment won out!



"I will crush you just like I did this rock!"



Devon is sneaky mode - "What? There's nothing in my jacket."



"Studious Devon"




The more kids we have the harder it is to get a decent shot of all of them - you take what you can get!



Our sweet Sawyer!







"What?! Where'd Sawyer go!" If only Sawyer hadn't snuck off we could have had a family picture!





Marissa was in 'model mode' today! Check out that smile!

Itty Bitty Open

Nice follow through!



Nice hairdo!



Like father like son!






Our parks and rec program put on an itty bitty open where they had kids come to a golf course and gave them each their own set of plastic clubs and visor. They also had "holes" set up for the kids and the pro golfer at the golf course gave them some instructions before they set out on their course. The kids had a great time and it got Ryan and me thinking that we needed to shorten some of our own old golf clubs for them. The kids love going out and teeing up their balls and smacking away!