Summer Fun!!

The month of July has come and gone so quickly. Ryan is doing good in junior kindergarten as usual and just finished VBS this week at his school. His reading fluency is excellent and he is learning to spell some really hard words. He also loves bible stories, playing games, and writing notes to people. At 4 years old, he's able to do a lot of things on his own which makes mommy's and daddy's life easier. As for his hobbies, he has passed the "Thomas the Train" and "Sesame Street" phases, and is in the "Imagination Mover's" and "Transformer's" phase, although his "Barney" stage has been lingering longer than we'd like with the annoying "I Love You" song. The rest of the family, including Lauren, is also a fan of "Imagination Mover's". Lauren likes to copy her older brother all the time. Actually, it's very endearing to watch them play together for the few minutes before the inevitable fight breaks out. Here they are dancing to a song from "Imagination Mover's" together in the car ...



Lauren also likes to take Ryan's stuff and scream bloody murder when Ryan takes it back, but how can you not love this girl ... she is too adorable. Here she is walking around with Ryan's lunch bag pretending it's her purse ...




On that note, I'm glad I get to experience having a daughter as it's been a very different experience so far. She is already into bags, shoes, and stuffed animals. She loves to put on shoes to go out and whenever we happen to go to a store with purses...she will go over and get a purse for each arm and walk around with a huge smile on her face. Too bad her smile gets replaced with screams when I have to put the purses back.

Here are some cools things we did in the month of July...

For 4th of July, we got tickets to see an Angels game and then watched the fireworks show afterward. The Angel's won the game against the other team which I forget the name of. Obviously, I am no baseball fan. Overpriced food kept the kids happy until the fireworks. This is probably the first year that Ryan saw fireworks without getting scared. Lauren was a bit scared in the beginning, but got used to it.

Waiting for 4th of July fireworks at Angel's Stadium

Summer is also the time when I am always on the lookout for cool water play areas for kids and my favorite so far is at Irvine Spectrum - shopping + fun ... all in one place.

 
We also drove up to Nor Cal to attend Phil and Angela's highly anticipated wedding. Ryan has always been excellent with long car rides ever since he was born.

Happy Ryan

 And this is how Lauren handles long car rides.

Crazy Lauren

We stayed at the Hilton in Pleasanton so I could make a visit to fellow co-workers in the Pleasanton office. Our weekend was too packed to do anything other than wedding stuff. I hope Ryan did a good job walking down the aisle as a ring boy. I wouldn't know because I was too busy occupying Lauren so she wouldn't scream during the ceremony. After the wedding was over, how could we leave the Bay Area without having some Bi-Rite ice-cream?

Lauren eating ice-cream

I really miss the Bay Area!! There were so many things we wanted to do and people we wanted to see, but our trip was too short.

My parents happened to be in Fresno on our way down from Nor Cal so we visited them there. The best part about Fresno is their park, which has an awesome play structure and water splash pad, not to mention there is always an ice-cream truck around.

And as usual, Lauren made a mess in Fresno too. This girl is hilarious. When she is extra quiet you know something is amiss and when you go and take a look you will usually find her hand in toilet water or ripping stuff up into little teeny tiny pieces, like this ...

Lauren's obsession with ripping things

It wasn't too long ago when our favorite thing to do during summers was to go to bookstores to hang out and read, but sadly it looks like all the bookstores are closing down. I guess it is no surprise. Despite the gazillion bookstore trips I made, I rarely ever bought a book at a bookstore. Now this favorite pastime has been replaced by trips to the library instead.

 

We also visited Adventure City (which is a mini amusement park) for the first time.It was a crazy hot day, but we still had a good time there since it wasn't crowded.

Yay for summers! So much to do, but so little time.