Ava's Birthday Party!

Ava was thrilled to spend her birthday at Chuck E. Cheese. Adam and Jessalyn as well as Marianne were able to come. We let Ava go up into the tubes to play around. I don't know what it is called when you get claustraphobia for someone else but Amy and I had it! These tubes have entrances that are too small to let adults in (there are access areas that the employees can open if needed) and it made us worry that she would not be able to find her way out. We felt like Marlin on Finding Nemo, we just had to let her go and see how she fared on her own. She did fine, of course, with the help of an older boy who showed her the way down.

Koben is so funny. He does the army

crawl around the house and then when he passes the TV he will park just like this or he will lay on his arm and watch the tube for a while.

The Lion, the Witch, and the.........

I know it is little late for halloween pictures but we thought we would post these pictures of the kid's costumes. We took them to the mall to trick-or-treat because, well, we don't really have a neighborhood and the 99 cent store and the gas station weren't giving any candy out. It only took Ava a minute to figure out that the people hanging out in front of the stores were the ones giving out the candy. After that she was running from store to store!

Koben's getting Trunky

Koben is getting ready to move, as are we. We have been trying to finalize the dates. Contrary to what we have been telling people, it looks like we are going to be here until the week after Christmas. It is going to work out better with Frank's school schedule, and we won't have to rent a U-Haul. We are definitely getting antsy about moving. We are looking forward to having a house with more that one bedroom and a backyard. Maybe we will even be lucky enough to have a dishwasher, (other than Frank).

The other day we went to Marianne's house for dinner with Kathy, Roy and the boys. This was after Frank went to help out earlier to lay sod in the yard. Their house looks great, and the kids love the grass. They even carved a pumpkin with Marianne.

Evening at the Beach

We cruised down to the beach for a little walk because we were bored. It just turned out that it was freezing and windy there. We only stayed for about 15 minutes because Ava was complaining about it being too cold. She is going to have a big shock when we move home to Utah in the middle of the winter. She will find out what cold really means. In fact the other day we went to Costco and walked into the vegtable cooler section and she started to panic because she thought it was too cold. This is so sad. My kids are just way to used to the California weather. I can't say that it is too bad either.

Sorry we haven't updated for so long. Here are some more pictures of the kids, which is about the only things we have pictures of. Ava picked up the spoon on the nose trick all by herself, we have no idea where it came from. She just started walking around with a spoon on her nose, and she is really good at it. Unkie Adam swears he didn't teach her. We have also resorted to putting Koben in baskets now that he is starting to crawl everywhere. He even thinks he is big enough to walk, but he isn't. He is just so cute though!

Another day at Disneyland

Ava is really starting to enjoy and to remember going to Disneyland. Her favorite rides are Dumbo, the Carousel, the teacups, and the Casey Jr. train, among many other things. Lately we have been taking her after the sun goes down. It is cooler and the lines are non-existent for most of the rides she likes. Adam and Jessalyn take all of our pictures for us so we can have the whole family in them. We threw in a few pictures we have taken around the house too. We will really miss being able to go do Disneyland whenever we want when we move home.

Our trip to the San Diego Aircraft Museum

Our trip to the Aircraft Museum was fun. It was interesting to see all the airplanes and the inside of the ship. It was huge. We were there for three hours and we only saw about half of the ship. The picture where we are behind bars is the ship's brigg (prison) way down in the bottom of the ship. The landing area on top of the carrier was lined with all different types of planes and helicopters you could explore. It was really hot outside that day, so we decided that we had to go to the Ghiradelli Ice cream shop after we were done, yummy!

Random pictures for random viewers

Grandma Walker said we needed to post more pictures-and we agreed (We love posting pictures of our kids). We haven't done anything spectacular lately but here are a few new pictures we have taken.

We are planning to go to the San Diego Aircraft Carrier Museum tomorrow, maybe we will have some more pictures to post soon.

Museum Website: www.midway.org/site/pp.asp?c=coIMKTMCF&b=81432

Orange County Fair (Yeehahhh)

We took the kids to the fair. Ava loved to see all the different types of animals she has been seeing in her books. It's ironic that we have to go to the fair to see things like cows, pigs, chickens and horses considering where both of us grew up! The highlight of the day was a ride on the Goliath slide. We think Ava liked it.?

Keith and Danielle's Wedding

Our second trip out to Utah was great. Jim and Becky let us stay at their house in Ogden which worked out really nice for us. They have done a great job remodeling that house. We enjoyed being with Keith and Danielle on thier wedding day. We also enjoyed spending some time with Fred and listening to him report his mission. Staying in Laketown was very relaxing for us, we went to the lake, cooked dinner at temple flat in Mom and Dad's new trailer, and had fun with all the other grandkids around.

San Diego Maritime Museum

Another thing that we did while Andelyn was out here was visit the San Diego Maritime Museum. It is a collection of four old ships and a WWII era Russian submarine. The submarine was my (Frank's) favorite but that is not why we only have pictures of the sub, we actually ran out of memory on our camera before we got to the next ship. I was just amazed by how small the living spaces were. Who could live in one of these!

http://www.sdmaritime.com/

We have been so busy lately driving back and forth to Utah, but it has been fun. Andy came home with us and stayed between our two trips. It was nice of her to entertain the kids for 20 hours in the back of the van! While she was out here we did quite a few things, including going to Disneyland, of course!

We braved the long wait for the new Nemo ride, rode the carousel, got pictures with Buzz, got soaked at splash mountain(because Andy insisted that we sit in the front of the boat:), and otherwise wore ourselves out.

A Quick Trip to Utah

We recently made a trip to Utah to attend a wedding for Frank's friend, Clint Robinson. Originally we hesitated to go because we are coming to Utah in July for Keith's wedding, however we decided we really wanted to go so we made the trip anyway.

Ava just loved to play in Grandma and Grandpa Walkers back yard. She is getting more comfortable with the dog and the cat. In the pictures with the cat, Ava thought it was fun to roll around on the floor the way the cat does, it was pretty funny to watch. We also went to see Granny Huff in her new home.

On Monday the 11 we spent the day in San Deigo with Jim and Becky. They had a day to spend while waiting for a flight home. We met at the Mormon Battalion visitors center and watched a brief movie about the Battallion's experiences. We then walked around Old Town San Diego, which is similar to Pioneer Village in Salt Lake City, except of course it is displaying the some of the history of San Diego. After Old Town we went to a part of downtown San Diego which is known as "Little Italy" and ate at a great authentic pizza pasta joint. We finished the day off at the Ghiradelli Chocolate store. The picture of Ava in the car tells us how she feels about traveling in the car. (She stole Koben's binky and put it in her mouth upside down and let her bottom lip hang out. She was bored!) It was a fun excursion for the day and it was good to see Jim and Becky.

Camping at Sequoia

On Memorial weekend, Marianne and Steven invited us to go camping with them for a night up in the Sequoia National Forest. Roy, Lincoln and Noah were also there. It was hot during the day and freezing at night. Bears had recently been sighted in the campground (or so the ranger said), I think we only slept for 3 hours, and the kids didn't like sleeping in the tent. (However, you can see in the picture that they liked being awake in the middle of the night in the tent.) The next day we drove around the Park and did some short hikes. As much as we miss camping it was nice to take a hot shower and get some great food at Kathy's house after our trip. It was a great trip!