Phoebe LOVES to play soccer! While the boys play, she will sit on my lap and laugh and cheer, but when she gets to play she is pure giggles!

I love this picture Maxy drew of our family.

Trip to the zoo

Sammy and his preschool buddies on a bug hunt. They were so cute!

When we went on our trip the kids had so much fun with my sweet mom and dad. The first thing Max said when I walked through the door was, "AWWW! I don;t want to go home!" And Phoebe cried when my mom passed her to me. She followed her voice around the room and got anxious when she couldn;t see her. I was like, "I WAS ONLY GONE 4 DAYS!" I think Mom felt about the same way about saying goodbye to them.

One day we were driving by my old school so I let the kids play.

Sweet angel love had a birthday! I still can't believe it came and went already. I didn't even have time to grieve for this birthday and my baby growing up. I guess that is a good thing :) She was a little princess! It was a busy day like always but I think she still had a good day.

Max and Sammy were just precious trying to give their little sis a great birthday. They wanted to be right by her side feeding her, talking to her, making her laugh. She got a little riding car for her birthday and they both pushed her around so sweetly. They were pretty excited to get their own turns to rude it too :) Phoebe laughed and laughed she thought it was so fun!

What a beauty!!! I can't get over this adorable little girl! She is funny and fun-loving, laughing all day. She is sociable and such a sweet little chatterbox when someone is listening, but also so patient and easygoing. If I am busy she will just quietly crawl around entertaining herself

Almost exactly a year ago, we bought an indoor playground called Just Kidn Around with my family. We were all so excited about it. We had lots of ideas and we worked hard. I worked full time on it actually all last summer. For reasons outside our control it didn't work out. We are actually in the middle of a lawsuit right now so I can't say what those reasons were but we had to close our little business down last month. The kids had a fun time playing there all year and it was pretty emotional to call it quits for so many reasons. I'm glad to have some pictures of our last visit before packing everything up.

Sammy and his cousin Miles were so hilarious playing air hockey. Every time they got a hold of the puck they would push it into their own goal and cheer :) And most of the game was banging their paddle on the table so someone would come and toss the puck toward the edges of the table where they could reach it.

Baby Phoebe LOOOOOVES Smoothies.

We had some fun with "civil engineers tape"

We made some kites one day and tried to fly them. It didn't work too well, but they were still fun.

My handsome boys are so funny! I had to include all these pictures because they were just so cute!

Phoebe LOVES being outside! Every time she crawls by the door she stands up and starts saying, "AH.AH.AH!" Meaning, "Let me out!" We've been doing a lot  of work in the yard lately and we have been spending hours outside at a time and Phoebe is so happy the whole time. She loves the sand box, she loves the grass, she loves the dirt. But she is also a thrill seeker. She'll stand by the slide for an hour just waiting for the chance to go down it, or crawl over to the hammock and push it with her hands until someone gets her into it and pushes her. She is so easy-going and funny! I love to see her massive grins when she is having a good time! 

Max and Sammy love to be outside too. They play with the neighbor boys, they play in the sand and they LOVE to dig for worms. Sammy think digging for worms is the only true form of gardening. He's always telling me he wants to garden to which I reply, "Great I am planting these roots...or perfect I am building these raised beds..." But Sammy doesn't want to have anything to do with that., "NOOOOO! I want to GARDEN!"

Cutie cowboy and indian.

Phoebe loves to draw. We have always had some crayons on that easel so they were within reach. At first she always ate them, but afetr a while she learned how to hold one and make marks. She is only 13 months old now and quite the sophisticated drawer.  Any time she sees a writing utensil she'll find a paper (seriously I just realized that is amazing she has that rule about drawing only on paper figured out. Max and Sammy both drew on walls and carpet till they were like 3) and start going to town making marks on it. She spends a lot of time at this easel. 

Start spreading the news...

My sweet wonderful parents have been called on a mission. I don't know if I have mentioned that here yet. We are so so very excited for them and we are also going to miss them so much! They are going to be mission presidents in Baton Rouge Louisiana for three years. I know they are going to be so so amazing! 

Because they are so sweet and wonderful they offered to watch our kids before they left so we could get a weekend away. We didn't need to think twice about where to go. Ever since we left New York we have been itching to get back. I was a little nervous when it came time to go because it was record cold, but it didn't even matter. We froze our tails off but we had so so so much fun! Our New York City! Oh how I love you!!! We had so much fun doing a million fun things in the city plus reminiscing plus being on our own without any kids and getting to feel like people again. It was so amazing! 

I thought it was so funny that as soon as we were on the street it was like a flood of memories washed over us as soon as we smelled the subway. So pungent, so distinct, it smells like the summer we lived here.

When we lived in New York the 911 memorial wasn't done yet. It is beautiful and moving. I am so glad to finally get to see it.

We stumbled in on a beautiful concert in Trinity Church. Sooo Lucky!

We wandered around central park while it was snowing which was pretty magical.

Oh Magnolias. We joked that we came mostly for the food. Maybe it wasn't a joke. Halal carts, Shake shack, Serendipitys, and magnolias to be precise :)

We also tried some new things. We read about this little hole in the wall Korean restaurant up on the third floor of this little building in little Korea. It was very authentic and fun!

We did some things like Grand Central Station that I had done on my own last time and Javier wanted to see.

Upper West side is so homey. I love it!

Reminiscing on wall street. It was 10 degrees and with the breeze off the river it was so cold we could only stand to walk a block or two before going inside to  warm up. Frreeezing!

Javier's favorite part and a big highlight for me too was seeing Columbia University. Beautiful, huge and so historic, we walked where Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffet have walked which was exciting.

Then we walked down Riverside Park at Sunset which was just unbelievable. Beautiful and so quiet!

Then we made it just in time running to see the Opera Werther at the MET. It was so incredible! The Opera house is breathtaking! We sat in the back of the 5th balcony and the view of the whole room was incredible! The singing was unbelievably beautiful! It was such a fun night for me! And our tickets were only $30 a seat.

To finish up the night and our trip we went to the top of the Empire State Building at 1:30am. This is something I always wanted to do but we couldn't really afford it when we lived there. It was amazing!!! It was only us and two other couples and the city was so incredibly beautiful! It was truly crazy to be up so high. We took an elevator up 88 floors!! It was still that 10 degree day and we got so cold our cheeks froze up and couldn;t move but it was so worth it!

I feel like the luckiest woman on earth to have such a wonderful, handsome, funny, sweet, adorable, intelligent husband! I am so grateful for our summer in New York and so grateful for another wonderful memory of my favorite city with my favorite man!

And this picture might be a little out of place. A couple weeks ago we got to chaperone for the youth sweethearts dance and we had a blast dancing and breaking up kids who were dancing too close :)