First Day of School

The kids went back to school today. We had a great summer, but were ready to start school.

They all packed their backpacks and got up early to get ready.

Eliza is in 5th grade, Porter is in 1st grade. Both at Franklin.

Parker is in 8th grade. Emma is in 6th grade. Both at The Academy of Alameda. I love the uniforms! Emma found plaid shoes that match her backpack.

I've got no kids at home from 8:15-2:50 each day. What will I do with all my time? I was released as Young Women's president last week. I'm now the primary pianist and have about 70 songs to learn so I guess I'll be doing lots of piano practicing!

Emma's Birthday Weekend

We celebrated Emma's 11th birthday by spending Saturday at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom.


We love this theme park. It has tons of wild crazy rides like "Kong".

They have all kinds of animal exhibits.

We have gone to the dolphin show in the past. This time we went to the tiger show. These white tigers dive in the water for meat. It was really cool.

The baby tigers were cute.

They have a whole kids section that Porter loved.

The girls did this log ride 4 times at the end and were soaked.

We got Emma a funnel cake, stuck a candle in it and sang the birthday song.

Sunday was her actual birthday. She got lots of great gifts. Her favorite is the purple cell phone.

She covered Porter's mouth so she could blow out the candles by herself!

Happy Birthday Emma. We sure love you!

20 Year Anniversary!

Jim and I celebrated our 20 year anniversary last Friday. Jim came home with these beautiful roses.


Our girls were so excited that we were going out to San Francisco for the evening. They helped me get ready and took lots of pictures.

We went to Teatro ZinZanni on Embarcadero in San Francisco for a delicious five course dinner and theater. It was amazing with singing, dancing, magic show, aerialists and acrobats. Our favorite performance was a "vertical tango." The female star of the show is a talented aerialist that choreographed and performed with Pink at the 2010 Grammies. Here's a photo taken at the show:
Sunday was our actual anniversary (and Emma's birthday--I'll post more about that!). Emma made us this romantic, candle-lit dinner!

I'm grateful to celebrate 20 years of marriage. I've now been married longer than I've been single! I love Jim and am excited for all the years we've got ahead of us.

Marin Century

Here's the official photo from the Marin Century that we rode last Saturday!

What a great weekend!

Friday we celebrated Jim's 42nd birthday! He requested a German chocolate cake.

We had a BBQ dinner. Jim and I "carb loaded" because we rode the Marin Century on Saturday.

The century was really hard (106 miles, 7000+ feet of climb), but really fun. We finished in just under 10 hours.

It was a great weekend!