Tree Fresno!

Last weekend on Saturday morning we skipped gymnastics and headed out to a ponding basin across the street from the Clovis Costco. There we joined in on a tree planting community outreach set up by Tree Fresno. Papa Vaughn had seen a flyer at work and thought it would be a great family outing and something we could do to start building a desire to help the community in the kids. Even though our initial reasoning was to just help out, I think we got more out of it as we had a fun time as a family and created a great sense of pride in ourselves.

The weather was beautiful. The kids had fun checking out all the tiny little frogs hopping around while we were listening to the introductory comments and tree planting procedure.

Don't you just love the supervisors!

My "poser" had to pose at least once for me, of course! Boopy insisted on wearing this particular hat, even though she had pigtails and wouldn't leave the car without her necklace. Guess you just can't plant trees without looking your best!

Both kids got to take turns stomping down the dirt before placing the trees in the hole.

Boopy got to help Papa put the plastic tree guard around the base of the tree. After the first time helping she pretty much did it herself on the other trees we planted!

At least one family shot of us.

After the hard work of tree planting, we rewarded the kids with the fun time on the playground next to the ponding basin. It's nice to see more of these neighborhood parks popping up around town.

Such a big boy. He pretty much handled the rock wall all on his own.

Of course our daredevil, Boopy, had to climb the rock wall too, although she needed help only because her little legs weren't quite long enough.

The kids LOVE monkey bars! Getting a little help from Papa.

A view of the ponding basin after the tree planting. Some day we can come back here and see great big tall trees and know that we helped it to look so good!

I hope that overall the kids remember a fun family outing but also reflect on (one of hopefully many more times to come) the time spent helping the community.

Run Frog, RUN!!!

Last Friday night we ran some errands after work. Driving home into our culdesac, Papa Vaughn saw a frog in the middle of the road. As soon as he pulled into our driveway, he and the kids took off chasing the poor thing into a neighbors yard and then brought it up to our porch for the kids to "play" with briefly. I just wish I had my camera handy fast enough to catch them all running down the street chasing the poor frog!

My frogs checking out the neighborhood frog.





Close up especially taken for Grandma Washington who "loves" (okay, can't stand) frogs!



Don't worry after a few minutes of "play", the frog was returned to our front yard bushes and left unharmed and happy to go find it's frog family!

Another Vegas Weekend

The kids and I took another quick trip to Vegas this past weekend. This time we went over to spend time with "Guya" since her birthday was June 4th. I hadn't spent a birthday with her since our grandpa's funeral 4 years ago, which incidentally was on her actual birthday. Yes, that was a rough year for us, but that's another story. So...since Papa Vaughn had drill weekend, just the kids and I drove over. "Guya" decided to keep the weekend low-key. We spent most of the day just hanging out at the really cool park in the pictures below, shopping at Kohl's and hanging out at Guya and D's house.

We packed a picnic lunch to enjoy at the park before shopping. Big Boy was not thrilled that I made him stop to eat before he was allowed to play. Food is definitely not his priority.

I have seriously "ruined" this child. Boopy LOVES to pose for pictures. She would eat a bite of her sandwich, then go out to the grass area and lay around posing wanting me to take her picture. Of course I have to oblige!

I actually managed to get a picture of both kids together, looking at me (mostly) and being super cute. It's getting harder to get them to both sit long enough for a decent picture together.

I loved the entrance to the park. It had these wooden painted flowers up high above the arched entrance. I had Boopy sit up on Uncle "D"s shoulders so I could get them in the background with the beautiful blue sky.

The rock wall proved to be a big hit for my daredevil children.

Of course I had to try out the twisty slide with Big Boy.

The kids favorite thing at the park was this really cool caterpillar "monkey bar" type structure. After an initially cautious climb, Boopy discovered it wasn't so difficult and she could scale it just as easily as Big Boy. They would have played on this structure all day if we let them.

The park even had tube slides, caterpillars to balance on, tunnels to hide in and other structures to jump and climb on. With all the bright fun colors I couldn't help myself with the camera. Just wish we had parks like this in Fresno since it would be a fabulous park for young kid family picture sessions!

I LOVED the brightly colored stairs.

Overall another lovely summer weekend. Happy birthday Guya! AND happy birthday to Grandma Vaughn, who celebrated the day before on the 3rd!

Outdoor Adventures - Up, up and away!

Sorry for the delay (again) in blogging. While we haven't technically had major plans lately, I have been staying rather busy with my photography sessions. This has been great, but it does take away from my pics of the kids and time to blog about them. So this past weekend I did make sure to take Saturday "off" and we played as a family. We spent time at gymnastics in the morning and then went straight to the movies to see "UP". Highly recommend it by the way, very sweet movie.

Anyway, nice day of just hanging out, had lunch out and spent the afternoon snooping around the deals at Gottschalks. Since the weather was still so nice when we got home in the late afternoon/early evening, we let the kids loose in their favorite place - the backyard. They are so my kids in some ways - they both run around everywhere barefoot. If my feet could be naked year round and not freeze, they would be! So with the kids playing I had to play too, so I grabbed my camera and tortured them a bit. At least this time, Big Boy was a very willing subject!

Yes, they are quite acrobatic! My flying "Peter Pan" kids!

Boopy was funny - being barefooted and all she stepped down and shrieked when she stepped on something wiggly. Once she saw it was just a little worm she kept talking about how cute it was and how she just loved it!

Papa helped them put the worm in a much safer place rather than directly under the swings.

Had a little fun playing with some settings on my camera and managed to get a few fun evening shots.

Hope life has been treating you all well. While I've still got more pictures to edit, don't worry, I'll still keep trying to get over here and update you all on our adventures!