Inside joke

See if you can figure this picture out (Jen, Allison & Lindsay already know it)

T-Ball fun

Tuesday was opening day for Pee-wee T-ball. This is the first sport or class Nate's done so we'll see how it goes.

The kids learned about hitting, running and catching. You should see Nate run, he was built for speed (ok, not really, he had to be the slowest kid out there)

The city went all out with an Africa theme at the whole park, after the clinic there were balloon animals, live animals, face paintings, games, crafts and this "Safari" adventure train that passed by among other things a man in a gorilla suit sitting in a lawn chair waving.

Some things

In Zach's opinion, you can't have too many ni-nees (yes, that's what we call them.) Even if he has 1 in the mouth he likes to hang on to any other's he can find. Ni-nees are feast-or-famine in our house, we are either scrambling to keep track of 1 or we have 5 or 6 all over the place. If you cant tell, he's got 4 in the photo above.

My car alarm went crazy 1 day (in the heat) when we went to the Mills to go shopping. It just kept going on and going on forever. Luckily I have awesome parents close who came to my rescue and fixed it for me. Nate has been into karate kid lately, that's why he's wearing the bandanna; he's Daniel Laruso.

Later that day we had our 2nd in-home evaluation for preschool (no they dont do this for all the kids) He had psychological evaluations and a health screening. The district nurse said Nate was 1 of the more well behaved kids she'd seen. He was pretty proud of the sticker she gave him. We wont find out till next month if he makes it into pre-school or not.

Nate at America's #1 Theme Park

Today Nate's Grandma & Papa Roy took him and cousins Blake, Lindsey & Mei-Mei to Knott's Berry Farm. It was totally weird for me not having him around for the whole day but he had alot of fun. Here are some pictures they gave me:

Let's go camping... again!

After getting to spend 5 awesome days in Carpinteria there were so many good pictures and things to talk about I'm not even sure where to start. So 12 of us (2 Murdocks + 6 Reynolds + 4 Lanes) all ventured together to stay at 1 campsite (1 trailer + 1 tent) along with other families from Flipside (Pikes, Clairs, Burnetts, and Curriers) The accommodations were tight but we like each other so it was cool. And check out the view from our campsite:

Yep, RIGHT ON THE BEACH! Can't beat that. The weather was awesome, a cloudy cover the first day then partly coudy/sunny the rest of the week. We saw dolphins and seals in the water everyday.

Nate and Seth had so much fun playing together in the water, riding bikes and climbing trees.

Sandy faces seemed to be the thing to do for the little guys.

And big guys too. The feet picture is just for you Erin cuz you love Ryan's feet!

Bike riding was a must for all the kids there. Ryan and I thought we should count how many times we went around the lap, we never did but I think between us all it had to be a hundred or so.

One of the highlights was going out on the kayak.

See those fuzzy black specs next to the shadowy figures on the kayak? That's Ryan, Kevin and Ethan out on the kayak with dolphins swimming around them. Pretty cool eh?

Nate's First Bike

The morning of our Carpinteria camping trip we got Nate a big boy bike. We waited a long time cuz everytime we had him on the trike he never wanted to pedal or steer, but we knew bike riding would be a big part of this camping trip so we picked up the "Gravel Blaster" bike. Nate calls it the "Bob the Builder" bike cuz it has guys wearing construction hats on it. Little did we know that by the first lap around the campground, Nate would master pedaling! Maybe he was waiting for the perfect bike or more likely it was just seeing Seth ride his bike around and wanting to keep up. Now we just have to using the brakes!

Trailer Sweet Trailer

Our super extended weekend with my parents camping in Pismo was really fun. The weather was chilly for a nice change.
The RV park was nice (sorry Becky I dont know what it's name was) it had a lot of cool things like a little miniature golf course and a little creek along the side that went into the ocean. We saw lots of pelicans, cranes, hawks and of course ducks which we visited several times a day. There were also squirrels which Nate always named "Deet" after the squirrel that used to sit on our back wall, my mom got shelled peanuts that we threw to him and he took them from our fingers too.

Trailer fun:

Yes, I'm under that pile of boys.

There is just something so cute about nudie kids in a tiny little bathtub. I take a picture of my kids in the tub every time we go camping but I think this might be the last year they fit in there together.

Zach seems to have a broom fetish, if there's a broom around he wants it. He sweeps a little but mostly just wants to hold them and gets really mad if you try and pry his fingers off.

One morning we went to Old Fashioned Texas Cinnamon Rolls. They were tasty so we took a picture and loved how terrible Ryan looked in the background of this one.

This cute pool was heated (awesome) and was only 1 foot deep from end to end!

I wish this video didnt have a view of the toilet in the background but it's cute so I want to share it. It's Nate singing him and daddy's special song Surf Wax America by Weezer that they listen to in his truck every single time they are together in it.

Translation: "You take your car to work, I will take my board, and when you're out of fuel, I'm still afloat."

Life's a Beach

Apparently Zachy really missed the beach because the first chance he got, not even 2 steps on to the sand and he laid right down on it and gave it a hug. Unfortunately we were on our way to dinner, not to play in the sand.

We walked the pier our first night and since Nate's been on a fishing kick lately he was super excited to see all the fish that had been caught in everyone's buckets, especially the bloody ones.

My mom picked up this awesome sand dollar for Nate but sad to say, it did not make it home. I found it crushed as we were packing up to leave.

This is the lobster that became a shark that Ryan and Nate made, it soon after became a whale.

Ryan and my dad took our kayak out with the intention of scouting out some sea caves to bring us back to but the water was so choppy they said they only went to a small island covered in bird crap.