Who says you have to play IN the playhouse....

not Daddy apparently.....he thinks they belong on the roof of the playhouse....
surprisingly, they didn't get blown off the roof...it was howling wind here today...

GOOOOO RIPTIDE!!!!!!!!

Saturday was a BIG DAY for Catie! It was her first official swim meet for her team Novato's Riptide! She was VERY excited and so ready for her big day! We were out of the house at 7:00am, at the pool and she was warming up by 7:30am.... She did GREAT! Did her best! We are so proud of her!!!

Here she is before we left the house...
and a good luck hug from Meigan...

I took this just before I lined them up for their heat....the sun was right in her eyes, as you an tell...

and here is our champ, making her way down lane 2 in her freestyle heat. She came in just over 30 seconds....pretty awesome for this first time swimteam participant!!!!

A Tuesday Surprise

Today, Meigan and I picked up Catie from school and went right down to Larkspur and got on the Ferry to San Francisco. There we got to see my brother Ryan, up from LA for business. The girls get VERY excited to see their Uncle, as we don't see him very often. He lives in Eagle Rock (next to Pasadena) with Nicole and our little niece/cousin Ella, who will turn 1yrs. old very soon! The girls ran like crazy to Uncle Ryan when they saw him, it was really cute!

We had a quick visit and dinner at The Marketplace Cafe at the Ferry Building, and it was FUN!

The girls have a Ferry tradition...no matter what time of the day it is, chips are a MUST on the Ferry! As you can see by this picture...2 very happy girls!!

Sweet Catie...growing up so fast....

It's hard for us to believe, that in less than 2 months, Catie will turn 7yrs. old. She's been with us for almost 6yrs. now, yet it seems like forever! She's changed so much lately, maturing rapidly...She's a fantastic student, quite a swimmer on our local swim team, loves her art class and will be playing soccer in the fall...she's always reading, writing and drawing...and she's amazingly patient with her little sister 80% of the time...

She knows her story...knows how she came to be our daughter....and she in recent times, gets a bit sad thinking of her birthmother, and is full of questions about all of it.

She's such an amazing little girl...we are so incredibly lucky......and to say that we are her parents is both an honor and a priviledge....

We love you so Catie!!!

These were taken Mother's Day out at Limantour Beach in Point Reyes...

Pee Wee Soccer Star

Here is Meigan in action!! We signed her up for a pee-wee soccer clinic for 5 weeks! She LOVES it! ...she's out there for 45mins. every Saturday and just goes and kicks the ball, and she can control it pretty well.....

Strawberries taste best when you grow them yourselves!

We've had our first official "harvest" here in Novato....the weather has been perfect for Catie's strawberries to grow....tonight we got a few of our first ripe berries......Catie chose strawberries for her planter boxes, and Meigan chose cucumbers and tomatoes...







however, since Meigan's cucumbers and tomatoes are nowhere near ready, she had to get in on the strawberry action and plead with her big sister for "just one pleeeeeeeaaaassseeee".....


nuthin' left on that one...this kid can clean a strawberry faster than anyone I know...

What are little sisters for??????

welllll......to cart their big sisters around the backyard, of course......

Sooooooo Busy.....so little ltime to blog.....

Where DOES the time go with 2 kids??? well, it goes to school, preschool, volunteering in class, doing the class art project for the school auction, driving back and forth to swim team practice (oh, did I neglect to post that in March??)...soccer sign-ups, gymnastics.....blah, blah, blah.....it never ends it seems......oh, and I do fit in the gym for me most mornings a week.....phew, makes me tired just typing all this.....

As an updated to our owl visitor a month ago.....we actually got the owl back, and got to let it go ourselves...it was VERY cool...the kids thought it was fun, and the little owl even came with 2 of it's own DEAD MICE for a snack.....yep....Brian picked it up from Wild Care, and they threw in 2 of the dead little suckers....but our owl wasn't going for them...so it flew away, across the street into the neighbor's yard..... what a fiasco that was...but quite exciting!

We had a visitor this past weekend, one of Brian's closest childhood friends from Long Island...he lives in Riverside now, but he came to see us...we haven't seen him in years...we had such a fun visit with Ed..and the girls loved him and he loved them... Brian's been traveling a lot (nothing new there).

Here are some pics from the past month!

Meigan and Daddy out at the Point Reyes Lighthouse

Catie was a bit apprehensive waiting for the owl to fly away.....

I found Meig one day, up in the cabinet getting herself a glass for water.....monkey!

Catie models her new uniform for Novato Youth Soccer......she'll be wearing #1 for the season!! she is very excited!!!

a shot of the girls on Friday on the way to school...

The girls on the Larkspur Ferry on Saturday with our friend Ed...the girls didn't leave him alone for a second the entire weekend! We had a great day in San Francisco, ate our way through the city, and walked the girls from the Ferry Terminal, to Pier 39, to China Town, back to the Ferry and home...they ate all day, and were STILL hungry at 8:30pm that night...

A trip to the city is not complete without a ride on the Pier 39 carousel.....or a trip to the Sea Lions.