Mom opening two beautiful zip up sweats from Robert and
She also got that throw blanket from the Lion's Club!
This is like a silver winter around here. The ice is on everything that is outside.
My tree that I dug up a few years ago. Getting nice and big, with all the ice on it.
We went to Julie's favorite restaurant, Mazatlan, to celebrate her 60th birthday! Of course, mom loved the whole thing! She is such a social butterfly!
16 friends from church were there to help celebrate.
Chris had to hurry to get this one of Louise by mom because Louise is camera shy.
Let's see, it was 60, or 90, or 09, or...06! 06 seemed the very best! Good cake!
California Clan...we came home this morning, to find this icky, very, very creepy spider on the front door frame! So, so, so, so creeeepy! Joel killed it and hundreds of baby spiders came out...so ick! Dad said he would try to figure out which type it is. just ick, ick, ick!! I can hardly look at the picture without jumping! My teeth are clenched just typing this up...yuck, yuck, yuck!
On Monday we met Jennifer and the kids at Mazatlan restaurant. Tony was supposed to have leave but since it was cancelled we were still able to see the kids.
You can tell Julie enjoys seeing her grandkids. They brought along thier spelling lists and tested Julie and me. Alexander likes dinosaurs, and some of the spelling words were his favorite words, so they were dinosaur names and periods of time. They were really laughing at grandpa because I couldn't spell them. Although if I would have had a pencil and paper I would have done much better. 
This was early in the trip and Abigail was already getting tired of having her picture taken.
I threw this one in just to prove that Joel was along. I couldn't find one of Amy, but she has always said that we never took pictures of her when she was growing up, so why change now.
It seems that Abigail likes being with these little gys! This is a birthing cave for polar bears.
Elijah just liked looking at all of the bears on the wall, growling and jumping up and down with excitement!
A rare moment of child captivity! 
I think Julie was enjoying herself. What do you think?
Elijah has a great smile and all you have to do is point the camera at him to get him to show it.
Julie got a great picture of this cat.
This was probably my favorite exhibit. The true blue of the water, and the size of the Sea Lion doesn't quite come out in this picture. 
Last Saturday Shawn & Christena came for a visit and to see Amy & Joel. They stayed until about noon on Monday. It was great to see them again.
They have added Alicia to their family since we saw them last. Julie was having a lot of fun with grandkids and Shawn and Christena's kids.
The Werdebaughs went to Slovenia last summer to help with the English camps, and the kids didn't take long to get reaquainted. They had a ball playing together.
The temperatures are in the high 80s to low 90s during the day and the kids are really enjoying the octopus sprinkler they brought with them. Amy found it on line last spring but she couldn't order it because she lived out of the US, so Julie ordered it and we shipped it to them. However the hoses in Slovenia didn't connect properly and it didn't work like it was supposed to. Our hose connects good but the water pressure is so low here that it still isn't working right, but as you can see the kids don't care.
Abigail and Joel thought I should get wet too, so they poured water on my feet and legs. Boy was it cold.
Tuesday we took the kids to the fun center and we spent the time in the arcade section. As far as the kids were concerned this was bowling and they had a lot of fun with all the games.
While we were waiting for everyone to get ready to leave Elijah thought he would try handling a regular bowling ball.
On the way home we stopped at McDonalds and the kids played in the play structure while we had some coffee and cokes.
Joel, Amy, Abigail and Elijah arrived Sun. morning around 2:30 so all day Sunday and most of Monday was spent doing nothing and getting caught up on sleep and time adjustment.
On Monday afternoon we went to see Julie at the farmers market. It was the last day of the market and it was real slow, so most of the vendors just bought from each other. More adventures to follow.