pictures and more pictures - l o n g

in may, we bought praying mantis eggs. almost 5 weeks later the ones we kept in a glass bowl finally hatched! here is one of the many many babies from the egg (isn't that a cool egg? i had no idea that's what the eggs looked like). i was VERY very pleased that we were HOME when they hatched. as much as i love praying mantises and as good for the garden etc as they are, having 100 of them in my dining room would have ooged me to no end. so here is one of the little guys before we took them outside to eat aphids etc. we're hoping that some of them survived and didn't get eaten by birds or ants before they got big. they are good at hiding, so it's quite possible that we have some happy mantises in our garden.

and on saturday before we left for our camping trip, irene had her Super Circus with gymnastics. she hasn't ever gotten to do it because the past two decembers, it's been the same weekend as tamale day and last june it was when we were in so. cal. she had fun and was very cute. we couldn't take pictures with a flash, so they were a little blurry, but sort of cool b/c you can tell they are action shots.doing a hand stand
and here she is with her medal - it was cute - all kids got to stand on the medal stand and wave to the crowd etc. this picture was more clear than the medal stand picture.
and here we are in escondido. we camped at Woods Valley Kampground in sites 78 and 79. it was wonderful - lovely pool, GREAT site for LOTS of tents, flush toilets, free showers. and, amazingly, NO mosquitos!! oh! they also had a catch/release pond. erica took the kids down and rhys CAUGHT a fish!! i don't have a picture of it, but he really did catch one :D
this is a picture of jalen and me putting up one of the tents. put up 3 sleeping tents, one shade canopy, and a screen tent. we rocked! and site 78 had HUGE room and a cool little tunnel and trees where irene and katie (another cousin) made a fairy house.
the dirt was, of course, the best place to play!! here are Domenick, Irene, and Rhys playing under the shade tent. rhys was AWESOME about wearing his hat and i also got him several shirts w/the UVF stuff in them. poor guy is like me - he has two colors...white and red. katie and irene's tent is in the background.
jalen took this picture of me. not a bad one :D
here is a picture of mom and gramma. gramma's memory is getting worse and worse - her short term memory that is. it was hard when she didn't know who irene was. she often doesn't remember rhys, which i already knew - her memory was having a hard time around the same time rhys was born, but she's always known irene - always knew she was my girlie. but, mostly gramma is happy, so that is good.on rhys' b-day (june 27) we went to La Jolla and spent the day at the beach. i had forgotten just how much fun it is to ride the waves and to be in water that is warmer than 60 degrees like in northern california. i even was able to sort of relax and enjoy watching irene have a great time. she was really amazing out there. she got knocked around pretty good once, so she had a bit of respect for the ocean which is a really good thing to have! at one point, erica kept an eye on rhys so that irene and i could go out and have some fun together riding the waves. it was FANTASTIC!!!

this is irene and jalen waiting for the perfect wave *smile* oh! i should point out that jalen is deaf - it added another aspect to the trip - my rusty sign language got better - but when we were out in the ocean, we couldn't just call him to get him to move more to the left b/c the rip tide had swept him toward the pier a little too far - or the undertow had pulled him out farther than made me and mom comfortable. we had to get his attention or grab him :) really, all the kids had an amazing time. one of erica's friends was there and had brought a ton of boogie boards - so they got to play on those too. i don't have the pix of rhys surfing in 1" of water on it - but when i get a copy, i'll try to remember to post it.
while it looks like rhys has a big ol' booger, it's just sand that he wouldn't let me wipe off...and i inadvertantly left his hat in erica's car, so he happily wore irene's hat. when we first got to the beach, rhys informed me that he'd invited everyone to the beach for his b-day. after a few hours, he got quite sad and said "i guess that we aren't going to have my birthday party at the beach." which we'd been talking about for days on end...so when it was time for everyone to take a bit of a break from the water, we sang happy birthday and he opened presents and cards. he was a happy boy. oma, erica, the boys, and patty gave him sand toys - rhys was in HEAVEN!!!
here is rhys playing with cousin Patty and making fun sandcastles with some of the sandtoys. irene came to join the fun as well.
that evening, we had the cake that rhys had requested - an ice cream cake from cold stone. it was melty by the time we had it, but boy howdy was it good!!
on thursday, we went to dad and moni's (papa and gramma's) house in redlands - we didn't get there as early as i wanted to get there, but we still had great fun. their neighbors are on vacation and so we used their pool - it was so fun!! we all went down the slide, swam in the pool, dad worked with irene on her swimming, great gramma was there, we had yummy yummy food, matt and michelle came over for a little bit, rhys opened presents (i need to get a picture of him playing with his amazing pirate ship!), and eventually it was time for us to head back. here is irene in her goggles.
and jumping into the water (by the end of our swimming time, papa had convinced her to STOP plugging her nose and START blowing bubbles out of her nose -- i'd been trying to convince her to do that for about a year or more!)
and here she is going down the slide - papa and gramma's house is in the background. this slide is at LEAST 30 years old - i hadn't been on it in who even knows how many years - but b/c it's that old, the automatic slide water thingies (that's the technical term) don't work, so we took turns spraying it.
and here's rhys - he mostly started at the end of the pool and then bun jumped to me - but he had fun doing that, so what the heck :)
on friday we went to the San Diego Zoo - great amounts of fun was had by all!
irene, rhys, and katie at the zoo - the shirt rhys has is lightweight - so don't worry that it was long sleeved. it had the uvf stuff in it and was perfect for him.
irene as a turtle
rhys watching the Dr Zoolittle show
irene and rhys as a butterfly and caterpillar
isn't this cool? do you know what it is? it's bundles of cotton and maybe wool? it's for the birds to make nests from - at least, that's what we decided it was for. perhaps we're wrong. but it looks way cool, yes?
the kids all got to feed the giraffes - we happened to get there right when it was happening.

rhys fed them AND got a kiss!
these are what rhys called "daddylion leg spiders" and they would congregate on the OUTSIDE of the tent in a few spots - you should have seen the ooginess when i (gently) used the broom to remove them all the next day when we were taking down the tents. many many many spiders - hurry scurrying EVERYWHERE! i'm good with spiders - really - but when they were scurrying everywhere, i was not so very good.
much like last year, the boys discovered the rocks on our last day as we were packing up. here they are - they were hollering "WE ARE THE KINGS OF SHEEEEEBA!" it was funny.

and here is irene - she was wiped out by this time and needed some time away from most everyone - so she sat on a rock w/nala (the lion she got at the zoo). it was quite hot.
we arrived at Patty's house and filled up some pools and tubs with water. here is rhys enjoying the cool of the pool - er - tub.and here we have two sacked out children!

we left the next day for tracy (where erica lives). it was a long/hot drive. we stopped in castaic when there was a sign that said "traffic jammed next 18 miles." mom rented a room at the days inn so that we could go swimming for a few hours and miss that traffic. we got to erica's house close to midnight as there was bad traffic 1/2 hour from erica's house. i woke rob up and he told us about highway 33 - which parallels 5 - so we took that and were at least moving. we left the next afternoon around 2:00 pm and finally got home 6ish. i'm still pretty tired, but boy howdy did we have fun!