On Sunday we had a wonderful time celebrating my Sister-In-Law's birthday a little bit early. She is not a huge fan of cake, so we celebrated with some toffee bars, which she likes. It had been a while since our last visit, so it was amazing just to hang out and spend time with the gang, including Aunt Paulette, Uncle Bo and Auntie Abs!
Merrick had definitely missed his sweet cousin Eva! This pose even sparked Ryan to grab the camera. It has to be a super special moment for him to come running for the camera! Thanks Ryan ;)
After filling up on some late lunch, we took a short walk to the ocean hoping to catch the sunset! Watching the sun set in the sky was beautiful, even with the clouds at the horizon.
...two gorgeous girls!
Thank you Brooke for giving us a perfect reason to spend this special day together! We are all very lucky to be connected with YOU ;) I hope your actual birthday is just as amazing as you!
Every Thursday the doors at the girl's school close early to give the kids an early start to their afternoon fun! The girls had a blast with a couple friends playing at the beach, throwing sand, and coming up with all different kinds of imaginary play.
Smile
...another smile
...an even bigger smile
...and one more big smile to share. Ryan was all smiles when he finally got to tell me the surprise he had been keeping from me for weeks. He was taking me to a snowy mountain to go snowboarding!
We rode on a charter bus with a friend/coworker of Ryan's named Normandy and her boyfriend Jeff to Big Bear's Snow Summit. We had an absolute blast, and we were glad we got to enjoy the day with them. Initially I was thinking that they would leave us in the dust, but they were awesome and hung with us until our pace picked up. I was actually quite surprised at how quickly my brain/muslces remembered the sport.
It was so nice to spend time with Ryan one on one, and also slash out this fun sport side by side. Actually, anyone who knows Ryan can guess he was more often ahead of me, then by my side. He seriously doesn't have a choice, he has to be ahead of me to be right in "his" head. LOL ...and good thing I don't care if I am ahead of him or behind :)
In the above video, I am sort of interviewing Ryan about our experience while riding on the ski lift. Fun times!
Unfortunately at the end of the last run of the day it went a bit down hill for my rib cage and my morale. I was boarding just behind a girl who was plowing straight down the run, assuming she would continue to plow straight, I decided to go to her right when suddenly she decided to go directly to her right clipping my board. I flipped over, with my rib cage landing (crunch) on my elbow which was sticking up from trying to break my fall, then my head slammed down as well. Whew this certainly knocked the wind right out of me, and gave me a great deal of pain of which I am still dealing with, but the timing couldn't have been better for something like this to happen. We were only about 100-200 yards from the end of our super fun day. I will cherish all of the fun memories we created throughout the day with our friends on these fine, mile long runs!
