Miraleste Basketball

Shane made the Miraleste Basketball team at his school.  He played well the first game and now starts, even before some 8th graders.  He got MVP of the second game that they announced at school but he never heard it.  A friend told him after school, typical Shane.

Shane on the far left.  Pretty cool that his Jr High has an indoor gym

Knott's Berry Farm

Hailey has been wanting to go to Knott's Berry Farm for her birthday.  Like I always tell the kids, I will only take you to a theme park on a weekday in January or February.  So we celebrated Hailey's birthday on January 25th, 3 months early but so worth it.  This was the most incredible day in terms of crowds, NONE!  The only time we waited was while we were on the ride waiting for other riders to come fill the ride.  Hailey invited her friend Katie

Shane brought Kyle

And i brought Jesse

 The kids were crazy for going on this ride and they did it 2 times in a row

 Drying off 

The girls loved posing with these statues, they were everywhere

 I had to threaten the boys to do this

 Calico Gold mine ride

 Silver Bullet was their favorite and they liked sitting on the edge

The girls rode Silver Bullet 10 times.  7 of them were in a row

Montezuma's 

It was a nice mellow day at Knott's and we only stayed for 6 hours.  We calculated that the kids rode a ride every 10 minutes that we were there.  Hailey says, "It was Awesome."

It's a community

The boys discovered in the pouring down rain that the barn had flooded where Hailey takes lessons

In the rain and soaking wet the boys helped build this dam

They had to take all the horses out because it had flooded 2 feet

24 hours later after a bunch of us helping out all day, huge progress

 Hailey wanted to come help out

  I spent 6 hours with Tiffany cleaning out the stalls for the 12 horses.

 Tiffany, the owner in the middle.  The sweetest lady you will ever meet.

 Drying out all of the horse accessories, Hailey loves this kind of stuff

Fun for a day but glad i don't own the barn!

Weather Advisory

Our TV and phones all had warnings of weather advisory.  So the boys put on their rain gear and explored the horse trails.  

 Flood Alert

They had so much fun

Rascal

Hailey found a new friend in our neighborhood named Rascal.  The owners wants to pay her to walk him.  We'll see how long this lasts!  So far 2 times

Vitamin Sea

I hate being bundled up indoors. The tides were extremely low so we headed out to get some    Vitamin Sea

 Winter at the beach is my favorite

 Hailey and Lanie got in the water, now that was cold

Baking

Hailey has gotten into watching baking shows on TV.  We finally made a Lemon poppyseed cream cheese cake and she was so into it.  Shane helped too but like Hailey says, "I made it!".  Her favorite part was the presentation.

 The Mendozas came over and enjoyed it with us.  Angelina is an amazing baker and Hailey wanted to impress her.  Unfortunately, something went wrong and the cake was too dense.  We all enjoyed the frosting and a little bit of the cake.  Can't have success without failure

Beach fun

Looks like they are doing the Mannequin challenge but really we are playing 3 vs 3 soccer

 Proof, the youngest are always the loudest

Finally a good picture of these kiddos

twas a nice evening on the beach

A little side trip to the Watts Towers 

 Our tour guide made it very interesting with his stories 

The only bummer was that Shane and Luke chickened out on asking 2 black kids who were playing basketball, to a 2 on 2 game in the streets of Watts.  I think Luke may have done it but Not Shane although  Luke was afraid he might blind them with his whiteness