Grandma's Visit

In November, Sue was able to come and stay with me while James went to work in Hawaii again for 10 days. She had to watch the boys for me while I worked on the weekend nights. It was a lot of fun to have her around. She read Soren all the Magic School Bus books he wanted. Some of the other things we did were, we visited some Asian grocery stores, carved our Halloween pumpkin that we didn't get around to doing at Halloween since we had just moved, watched "Singing in the Rain" together. I included a video clip of Soren as Gene Kelly. One of the days we were able to go to the Oakland Temple too. We miss you Grandma!

Mobile Home Living at its Best

Some of you may know, that a couple months after moving to California, we decided that we could not continue paying $2100/mo for our 2 bedroom place in Ben Lomond. Our house in Hawaii has been up for sale, but no luck with that so we were forced to look for another place. This was a difficult thought since we were just settling into our house and starting to get used to having less space than our place in Washington. As we began looking we decided it would be best to stay in our ward so the kids had some sort of consistency in at least one area. Our price range was so low, it was almost impossible that we would find any 2 bedrooms places. We started looking at trying to live in a 1 bedroom apartment. James loves his job, so we knew we had to find a way to make it work here even though it is expensive. Some of the 1 bedroom places we looked at were so scary! After much searching, the Lord answered our prayers. James was looking at a nice 1 bedroom apartment and he was excited about it, but he was hoping that landlord wouldn't panic when he heard we had 3 kids we wanted to squeeze into it. Fortunately, the landlord had 3 kids too, so they knew our plight and said they would rent it to us if we wanted. Then they presented another option, they had just bought an old campground that had a mobile home on it they were going to update and charge $1300 including utilties for and it had 2 bedrooms. We decided that this wasn't our dream come true, but it was what we had asked for and it would be better than living in a 1 bedroom place. Life in a mobile home has been interesting, but it feels like home now and we are grateful to have it. The campground itself has been a lot of fun for the boys to explore, so they are literally in little boy heaven! The mobile home was bought in 1962, so we have some serious retro brown wallboard, a tiny brown kitchen sink, a mustard yellow tub and very linear fixtures. We have started a list in honour of our new home called
You know you live in a mobile home in the Santa Cruz Mountains when...
1)You have tail lights on the outside of your house and a license plate
2) You get to boogie in the kitchen when you are running the washer because the electrical pull turns the kitchen light into a strobe light
3) You can't just flip a switch to turn on the lights you have to walk around to four lamps in one room since there is no overhead lighting
4) You get to hear and see your neighbor yelling at his wife just next door
5) You hear a gun go off outside repeatedly and find that another neighbor is killing racoons with his 22

Some of you have asked to see photos, for those of you who do not care ...sorry there are so many! Some of the shots are dark and its not the camera...the kitchen is just dark :) The picture that says Skyline, is showing our funky doorbell.

Halloween in Boulder Creek , CA

I made Soren and Isaiah Jedi costumes this year and they wore them quite a bit before Halloween, so that was fun. They would continually fight over who got to be ObiWan. Ian got to wear an old costume that was Isaiah's when we were in Hawaii. He still looked so cute as our little pilot man. We had a ward party the week before Halloween and Ian was very popular because he spent most of the time during the trunk or treat jammin' out. One of the cars was playing some pop music and he was in the zone. It was especially funny because he would change up his moves, not just the usual bouncingup and down. Too bad we didn't get video, but try to imagine it, if you can! We trick or treated on Halloween in Boulder Creek, CA. We had just moved the weekend before and the town has a tradition where all the Main Street businesses give out candy. So there were crowds of people going up and down main street in this little mountain town. It was nice because most of the houses here are spread out, so going from house to house would be a drag. We look forward to doing it again next year and getting more pictures of Main Street.

Labor Day 2008 Camping at Lehi Park

We were able to go camping for Labor Day at a Church owned campground on the mountain just above our house. There was hardly anyone there and the campsite was $5/night! It had real toilets, running water, and a playground. The kids had so much fun building fires, catching lizards and looking for spiders and insects to kill/torture. One of the photos shows Isaiah holding tightly onto the bottle they used to capture the Western Blue Belly Fence Lizard. We took it home and let it go in our yard, but it was never seen again. We made Boca burgers and had some corn cooked in the fire like my Dad cooks it. Of course, we didn't get much sleep but it is a good memory nonetheless!

Don't Mess With a Missionary Man

Some of you may know that Soren wants to be a missionary right now! He is known to sleep in his suit many a night and he loves to go to the visitor center by the temple in Oakland and watch all the clips. We started inviting the missionaries over for dinner once a week since we are in a smaller ward here. The boys absolutely adore them.

Its only a flesh wound!

Isaiah did a nose dive off one of our benches in the back yard and smacked his head on the pebbled cement. It was a pretty good gash. We had to clip the hair around it to get the herbal ointment on, so the end product is this lovely photo! Yum-yum! Soren was such a great big brother, without being asked he decided it might help Isaiah feel better if he read to him while Mom and Dad operated. It was really cute!

Ian's 1st Haircut

I had to post these shots to show Ian with his long hair and without! Overnight, he aged 6 months when we cut it. We knew this would happen, so we put it off as long as we could. Now no one stops me in the store to say how cute my little girl is, so it is probably for the best! Some of you might agree that Ian with long hair looks a lot like Roxane when she was little. Poor child! We love you Ian!

Living in Ben Lomond, CA

When we first arrived in Ben Lomond (yes, its an odd name, I know) I couldn't quite get used to the rural surroundings, no sidewalks, no landscaping, etc. Our neighborhood in Washington was beautiful and I was just a little spoiled. There was no grass in our back or front yard, so James planted some seed and as you can see in the pictures, it came in nicely just in time for us to move! Here are some shots of Soren, Isaiah and Ian our pride and joy. The top photo shows Soren and Isaiah with their stuffed animals and the bears Grandma Bybee made them. They started dressing their animals one day and they had so much fun with it. That must be what it is like to have girls, but it only lasted for a day or two. The other two are of them posing together wearing Thomas the Tank Engine Shirts. Soren orchestrated these shots.

James 40th Birthday Surprise

James turned the big 40 on August 1st and in the past we haven't done anything too special for birthdays, so I decided to plan a surprise weekend away. My niece Lauren had been out to help me with the kids in Washington when James had to go to Hawaii to work for a few weeks for Telsource, so she agreed to come out to watch the kids for us for 2 days! I planned a weekend in San Fran since we were only an hour and a half now. I told James Lauren was coming out because she missed the kids and then he thought we were going to get to go out on a date for his birthday, which he was very excited about. When I told him it was for a weekend in the city he was completely stunned! We haven't had a weekend away since we went to Boston before Ian was born, so it was about time :) We got a hotel in Union Square and because there were no non-smoking rooms still available at our reserved rate, they upgraded our room to a corner suite and our view was amazing! Its funny when you haven't been without the kids much, we got to our room and we looked at each other and said "the kids would have loved this, we should have just brought them!" We changed our minds after we got used to the freedom again, walking to our restaurant without having to use a stroller or drag someone was really nice! We found this hole in the wall Indian restaurant that was fantastic! Our dinner was under $25 and it was only a few blocks from our hotel! Thanks to yelp.com!

The next day we enjoyed Chinatown a bit, then we called one of James' long time friends Kirt and his wife Michelle. They came and met us. We got talking so much we practically walked the entire city until we finally settled on a place for dinner. We were so tired! It was a really fun day and we actually got our friends to take some pictures of us so not all of our shots are too close ups!
We got to hear, smell and see the Sea Lions at the pier at Moss Landing too.

Leaving Gig Harbor, WA

In July 2008, we loaded the moving truck with the help of several kind neighbors and ward members and headed off to a new adventure in California. For any of you who didn't know, James had been working for Target in Washington and he decided to get back into the tech industry. He got a job with a company called Telsource. When he was offered the position in Washington it was temporary. After his first few days of work, they liked him so much they offered him a permanent position in the San Francisco Bay Area.

This was not our biggest move as far as miles, but it was our first with 3 kids, a massive moving truck and a 2nd vehicle in tow. We were not sure how it would go...

Come to find out Soren and Isaiah felt like kings riding in the enormous moving truck with their Dad. They rode with him almost the entire 16 hrs! The only trauma that we experienced was when Soren left his favorite blanket in the hotel in Washington and we didn't realize it until we were already in California. He must have really enjoyed the ride, because he said "Let's get in the truck and go get it right now!" After a few nights of crying himself to sleep, he decided it was time to move on.