Kaden turns 5!

Last Wednesday Kaden turned 5 (I know I'm a week behind, but its for good reason).  I can't believe he's now 5 years old.  This birthday was truly special for him because in the morning he got to webcam with Jay while opening some of his birthday presents. (hense the reason why)  Both of them loved that hour together and just had a great time.  The theme for Kaden's birthday: Transformers.

Kaden loves them so that is what the focus was on.

 Kaden showing Jay what he got for his birthday.

 The Transformers: BumbleBee(yellow car), Dead End (Bad guy, black car), Croma (blue bike), Sideswipe (the actual robot) and then Skids (green car that you can't see).  He loves these toys and is constantly playing with them and "transforming" them from cars to robots.

 His birthday cake: Transfomers Optimus Prime mask

Kaden said the best part of his birthday was getting to talk and visit with Jay over the webcam.  That made Jay's day when I told him about it later on.

Lunch at Olive Garden

I have got some truly wonderful and amazing women that I have had the privilage of not only getting to know but become friends with over the last year.  These awsome gals from ASA are the best support system you could ask for.  We're all navy wives (and some army) and so we get the struggles of deployments and the frustrations that come with being a military family.  Every so often all of us San Diego girls get together for lunch of other fun activities which are always a lot of fun.  Today was one of those days.

Wendy is leaving to return home and we got the chance to meet Kathrine for the very first time.  So we met up at Olive Garden for lunch.  It was a lot of fun.  I made sure to bring my camera and so we got some great photos.

 The ASA San Diego Girls: (left to right in back) Janny, Kristen, Sarah and her daughter Katty, Kathrine and her son Daniel, Krsitina.  (Left to right in front): Nicole, Wendy, Marriah, Kaden, and me holding Annabelle

 Since today was also Jay's birthday I got some White Chocolate Cheesecake togo in honor of it. 

 Us at Lunch

 Marriah, her husband and their baby boy Felix

 Wendy's little boy LJ

 Wendy

 Kristina

Kathrine and her son Daniel

 Marriah and Nicole

 Sarah and Katty

Me

Kristen

Lunch was great.  The company was wonderful and we're already talking about doing a few more of these get togethers soon.

Water everywhere

I've basically given up on getting caught up from my trip last month.  For those who haven't heard the news, SO CAL area has been slammed for the last week with rain.  And it was a lot of rain.  We started getting rain on Monday and up until this morning we were still getting rain.  What had once been only 4 storms turned into 5 and that last one was bad.  I love the rain, but this got to be even too much for me.  We had tornados, thunder, lightning, massive amounts of wind, hail and loads of rain.  Thursday night was one of the worst nights of the storm.  The wind was horrible and the thunder actually woke up Kaden. 

 I took these on Monday morning of the storm.  This is our front yard, right outside Kaden's window.  We had our own mini lake.

 The rain was just coming down like this all week long.

 On Friday morning as I opened Annabelle's blinds this is what I see across the street.  The wind was just that powerful as well as the rain that just kept coming.

 Ten minutes later Kaden asked me to see if it was still raining, it had tapered off some, and the same tree was now broken.  The wind just snapped off the limbs of the tree.  Throughout our part of the neighborhood there were 4 trees all affected like this or worse just from Friday's storm.

In between storms the maintence crew was scrambling to get all of the damaged trees cut down and out of harms way before it once again started raining.

Today we're actually seeing the sun and I can't wait to get out of this house for a lunch get together with my fellow navy wives.  It will be so nice to get out of this house for once this week.

Oh, and before I forget today is Jay's birthday and I'm eating some dessert at lunch today in honor of it.  He's still deployed and we miss him like crazy, but he'll be coming home soon and we'll celebrate all that he's missed at that time.

Trip to Utah

Back in December (I know I'm that far behing) we went to Ut to visit family for the holidays.  It was a nice trip, but we sure are glad to be back in our beautiful weather.  The first official day was busy.  After church we were on the go.

We had the cousin dinner on the Teerlink side of the family and Kaden spent some quality time with Grandpa T.

Before the cousin dinner we stopped by Grandpa's house to see the decorations.  It has gotten worse since the last time I saw them.  Kaden just loved the decorations and that he had permission to push all of the buttons on everything.  It got incredibly noisy very fast.

Grandpa!  He is my favorite person in the whole world.  I've missed seeing him so it was great to see him again and to get to visit.

The massive villiage.  Its unreal at how much time goes into decorating this house.

Posts to come

Now that we're back home I'll be doing some serious updates of what we've been up to the last few weeks. Just have a few more crazy things going on with life and once it settles down later this week look out for those photos of what we did while we were in Ut. By the way I don't miss that cold at all.

Loving my 70 degree weather in Janurary!! This weather is fabulous!

Merry Christmas

This will be a short post as we are currently visiting family in Utah for Christmas.  Once we are back in San Diego I'll take a few days and post some of our adventures from this trip.  But for today I just wanted to wish you all a


Merry Christmas!!!!!

Ward Christmas Party

Doesn't this picture say it all?

The Chirstmas party was last Saturday night and it was a lot of fun.  The highlght of the night, besides the great company of the members of the ward, was the chocolate fountain that was part of dessert.  Now, I've never had chocolate dipped anything beyond pretzles so naturally I personally had to try out chcolate dipped strawberries.  Well they also had marshmellows to use at the fountain too so I got one of those and three dipped strawberries (one for the kids and myself).  Well Annabelle wanted nothing to do with those strawberries (only because they were dipped in chocolate) but boy did that girl love that marshmellow dipped in chocolate.  I learned quite quickly that I do indeed love Chocolate Dipped strawberries, more than I thought I would.

Later that night, Jay called.  After 3 days of him trying to get through to me and him not getting my e-mails (his e-mail just wasn't getting my e-mails for some odd reason for 3 days) which in turn caused him to worry he finally got through to me.  It was so great to hear his voice and I could tell that the worry he had in his e-mails went away the moment he heard my voice.  Our call wasn't too long, but it was still was so great to hear his voice.  About 20 min later, my e-mails from the last 3 days started hitting his inbox.  It will be so nice once he's home with us again.