Birthday boy, Griffin

Today Griffin is 9 years old!  He had a fun party last night with friends at the park, so today we're just relaxing, and he's building all the lego set he got as gifts.

Since Patrick had to work last night, and missed the party we had a small celebration this morning.  Daddy brought home Krispie cream, and we put our cake decorations on the dougnuts.

He got to open cards & gifts from Grandparents, and his gift from us.

At his party, they ate, built lego cars, played lego bingo, and guessed how many legos were in a jar.  I think everyone had a good time.

Summer rainstrom

Yesterday late afternoon, just as we were on our way home from doing lots of errands it started raining hard.  We decided to set chairs up in the garage and watch the storm.  The kids decided to play in the rain.  Simple pleasures.

Must be doing something right

This is a total brag post!!

The other day we took the kids out to lunch at a favorite resturant.  Toward the end of the meal our waitress said "Your kids are so well behaved, their manners are out of this world."

That same night as I went to pick Trevor up at Boy Scouts, a friend of mine said "I'll have you know that your boy saw me coming to the door, and quickly came out and opened it for me."

While Savanah was at a playdate today, my friend sent me a text "Wow, Savannah is so polite & mature."

It's nice to know that we must be doing something right.  When rasing kids it's often hard to know if anything you're telling them is sinking in. With all the up's and down's (yes, we have lot's of down's) of parenthood, words like these make it all worthwhile.

Mateo

The other night we went to the pet store, I decided to take a look at the birds.  I saw one that was adorable, so I decided to buy him.  We named him Mateo.  He is such a cute sweet bird.

Mario is happy to have a new friend too.  It's so cute to see them cuddle up together every night.

One LONG hike, major picture overload

We got up really early yesterday morning for a big hike to the top of the Sandia Mountains.
We met up with our Irish friends Liam & Maria.  Liam had heard about the Pino Trail, so that's what we decided to do.  We set out on the hike at 7:30am
It's listed as a difficult trail, yikes!!

This was by far the most beautiful hike we've done in New Mexico.  We hiked through an area that we're pretty sure was a  turkey vulture nesing ground.  They were eveywhere, it was slightly freaky.

At about 4 1/2 hours we started getting really tired.  The kids found the energy to power through, and kept up with Liam & Maria, which is saying a lot because those two are super fast.  Patrick & I took a pretty good break while they all went ahead.  Patrick was having really bad leg pain and I was exhausted.  We eventually caught back up with them, and finished the hike.  It took us just shy of six hours to get to the top.  I'm so proud of all of us!  Our longest & hardest hike we've done before.

Yay, we did it!!  We were so happy to take the tram ride down.  Boy, am I sore now.  It was a workout like never before.  Hopefully I'll be pain free soon.  :)

Something about summer

Maybe it's just the fact that we have no real obligations, or that we can spend more time together.  I just love summer.  I love being able to go do whatever we feel like whenever we feel like it.  This is some stuff we've been up to the last few days.