End of School Picnic

Hagen and Sam enjoying snow cones at the annual end of school picnic at the end of May. I think they went back and tried every flavor!

Picnic with my boys!

Stephanie, me, and Brodie enjoying the beautiful weather and the view by the creek.

Big Ben in Mommy's lap with his fancy, tie-dyed picnic hat.

Of course the best events always have a train!

Guess who loves trains!?!?!

I think Ben rode the train at least four times and was not happy that it wasn't more like ten times.

Presentation Day 2011

These pictures are from back in April when we attended Presentation Day at the boys' school

Here we are waiting for Sam to go on stage and Ben is eating a little snack.

Ben was completely fascinated as soon as he figured out that Buddy was behind the curtain.

Sam sort of knew the words to the songs!

Sam chose to show us how he is learning his nouns and verbs.

First he matched up the noun cards with the verb cards to make sentences.

Then he completed his noun/verb worksheet. We didn't realize that he was working on grammar skills already.

Sam's was the first class to go and Ben's was the last, so we had lots of time for snacking on cookies. Ben kept eating one bite of a cookie and then wanting another ... like all of the goodie came out with the first bite!

Ben's presentation was a sing-a-long with the parents.

Later that night we had a picnic dinner, with gelato, and a concert by the creek.

Fancy pants.

Legoland Discovery Center

After Sam's Celebration of Life we went to Legoland Discovery Center. Yes, it's one month after Sam's birthday and I still have stuff to post. We seem to have birthday seasons around our house!

When you enter Legoland, Professor Brick-a-brack takes you on a tour of the "factory." Sam had to jump up and down to make it turn.

Next we turned the wheels to stamp the legos.

And finally Sam pushed this big lego button to get our very own Legoland lego bricks we had made.

The next stop was the Kindom Quest ride. Neither Sam nor Ben wanted to try to shoot anything, but you can see the Chris and I took it very seriously.

Born to be wild!

Building our own lego racers. You can see the Merlin's Apprentice ride in the background. Ben was very disappointed that he could not ride that with everyone else, but poor baby didn't meet the height restrictions.

Concentration.

Testing Sam's racer on one of the tracks.

4D movie (the 4th dimension is apparently wind, water, and bubbles)

Dallas built of legos.

Cowboy stadium.

Plano balloon festival.

Lulu and Daddy built a castle with the boys.

Mimi had the day off of work so she got to come with us!

On our way to dinner ... who can resist?

Last stop, Rainforest Cafe.

Balloon animals!

Celebration of Life - Sam's 5th Birthday

I've been trying to post these pictures for a couple of weeks now, but we've been having computer issues. It's almost been a month since Sam's birthday, but I couldn't pass up on writing about all the fun we had at his Celebration of Life on his 5th birthday.

Sam had a lot of fun showing everyone pictures from when he was a baby.

It was fun telling stories about things he did at different ages.

Ben was very interested in the whole process and really wanted to get involved.

Is there any doubt our little guy likes to be the center of attention?

Make a wish!

Sam requested chocolate cupcakes with blue icing and North American sprinkles (red, white and blue of course).

More photos of Ben eating a cupcake. This just doesn't get old.

What a mess! Time to clean up.

A birthday isn't complete without a few more presents!

What every Ben 10 fan really wants ... an Omnitrix! Sam was kind of disappointed that he didn't really get to turn into an alien though.

These are the pictures that we showed Sam's friends. My oh my how fast five years have flown by!