Robbie Eating Mariah's Arm

Tina taped Mariah and Robbie the other morning (hence Mariah's hair-do) reading a book. When Robbie didn't like Mariah trying to help him, he just decided to eat her arm.

A Million Pictures

Josh and Brandilyn
Robbie and Nina
Mariah and Daddy
Mariah
Throwing Rocks

The kids playing
The boys
MeMe and a starfish
The beach
Robbie

Eating Rocks
Mariah sans pants
Tina and MariahThrowing Rocks
Running

Baby Starfish
Butterfly
Searching for Crabs
Swimmer Robbie
Robbie and Josh



Because there's just not enough room for them all...

Fort Bragg

Robbie and Josh
do you see it?
Mariah and a pretty rock
Brandilyn and Mariah in the tide pools
Papa and Robbie wave watching...

clown face

concentration
Security
Glass Beach

Josh and his friend
Robbie and "MeMe" (aka Big Mariah)
Mariah and 2 Baby Starfish
us shortly after waking up
I caught Mariah smiling!! (she never smiles for pictures anymore...)

After Yosemite we all (our family and Josh's) went up to Fort Bragg. We had an awesome time. The weather was so refreshing, it was actually cold - which we happily welcomed. We all ended up getting sunburns after the first day at the beach because it wasn't even sunny, no one thought to put sunscreen on. Mariah and Robbie were in heaven. I decided I need to move to the beach because it's the all-time best babysitter. Robbie sat mostly (because it was hard for him to walk in the sand) and played with the sand and the toys, watching the waves and everyone play. Mariah ran around looking for crabs and seashells, sang songs for everyone, and who knows what else. They were both perfectly content. The adults played a good game of wiffle ball where unfortunately the boys beat the girls (barely) and we were all about to pass out. Running in the sand is hard!





We also went to Glass Beach. This is where a long time ago they just dumped all the trash into the ocean, including all the glass bottles. Over time, the ocean broke up and softened the edges of all the bottles and it all washed up in one spot. From a distance it looks like rocks, but up close, it's all different colored pieces of glass. It was beautiful. The kids loved playing with it and looking for interesting pieces. (see pictures)





We went playing in the tide pools and found lots of fun stuff. Mariah touched a sea anemone for the first time and then we had to find every sea anenome in a 1 mile radius so she could touch them all. Josh found a crab friend, I found some baby starfish, and everyone else found lots of other fun stuff. We had a great time.





The kids loved spending time with their Papa, Nina, MeMe and Tina... (translation: Josh's parents and two sisters). We don't get to see them as often as we'd like because they're so far away... but we got some quality time in this trip. I'm going to put in another post of just pictures because there's not enough room. All in all, it was a wonderful trip!

Yosemite

Too sexy for my shirt...
We love each other
Brandilyn with sexy Robbie
Robbie catching some rays
Mariah, the model

Josh and Mariah (too big for the carrier but whatever...)
Best Dad Award moment
Robbie and Josh
El Capitan
Beautiful Wildflowers

We went up to Yosemite with Josh's family (who came out for a week from Tennessee) earlier this month. It was surprisingly hot up there, so we all ended up jumping into the river with our clothes on, well except the kids who took all their clothes off (see pictures). Yosemite is truly one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. It's overwhelming.

Most of the waterfalls were pretty dried up, but the hikes were still fun, and it was all still amazing. We camped in canvas tents and let me just say that was an interesting experience. We were all still recovering from being sick and Robbie is the lightest sleeper in the world... so canvas tents weren't his favorite thing. At one point, I got up to walk to the bathrooms and could hear him screaming clear across the campground. I think all of our neighbors hated us. Luckily it was only for one night.

Other than that, everything was great. Mariah and Robbie loved feeding all the chipmunks and squirrels. We also saw some lizards and a bear (from a reasonable distance!). Hopefully we'll be able to go back soon...

Mariah feeding Robbie

Mariah feeding her brother yogurt... and Robbie waving bye-bye...

So cute!

Robbie's New Haircut

Before...
After.

I decided to give Robbie a haircut, and somehow ended up buzzing the whole thing. (The razor was on a bit of a shorter cut than I thought...) Anyways, it turned okay - luckily he's such a cute kid! Of course the before picture was a few months ago, I got the shaggiest picture I could find... hahha!

The Fair

Checkin out the ride A little scared...

No Backing down now!
Brandy and the kids

Tavey Baby (as Mariah calls him)

We hit up the Stanislaus County Fair last night. The plan was to go in the morning, but we found out that it didn't open until noon. Luckily we found this out before we left... So we planned to go around 1:00. Finally a little before six p.m. - we got there... It was still extremely hot (as you can see from the tomato faces) but we had a good time. Mariah went on her first rollercoaster and loved it! She wanted to keep going again and again! Robbie didn't like watching her go, I think he wanted to go with her. Robbie loved running around all over in the dirt and both of them had a blast looking and petting all the fun animals. I got to get a funnel cake (my absolute favorite) so it was all worth it to me.