4th of July Weekend

Well I'm finally doing it...blogging.  Its been WAY too long since my last real post.  This will be the first of a LONG string of posts.  Nothing fancy, just basically all the happenings of what we've been up to since, well the last time I posted, which was like 7 months ago (how embarrassing!).

Way back in July we had an awesome 4th of July weekend.  We didn't do anything fancy, but had SO much fun!  The day before (Saturday), we headed south for our first adventure to Nojoqui Falls.  Living on the Central Coast my entire life, I'd never been.  In fact I'd never even HEARD of it until a couple of years ago when a friend of mine brought her family down.  It's an awesome hike for families with little kids who don't like to walk far.  It took probably less then 10 minutes to "hike" to the falls.

David warned (ok, scared) the kids into walking quietly so they wouldn't catch the attention of any mountain lions.  (Oh, and by the way, notice the Ergo pack David's carrying Jamen in?  It is stinkin' awesome!  For anyone with a kid baby to 40 lbs, get one, you'll LOVE it!!!  You can wear it on your back, too!)

Jonah loves adventures and is always prepared for whatever might come his way!

The pool at the bottom of the falls was just the right depth for the kids to play in.  The boys were really mad they didn't bring their swim suits!

They found plenty to play with though.

The falls were beautiful.  The green moss & ivy looked so cool under the dripping water!

Jaxon built a dam like the beaver on Wonder Pets with his sticks.  I'm pretty sure it didn't do much good though :-)

On our way back, we found a park table and had a delicious picnic.

The boys thought the hollow tree was so awesome.  How many trees do you find that you can actually climb inside?

Lets just say Jaxon was a little wiped out. (By the way, that's a chip in his mouth)

On our way home we decided to make a couple fun stops.  First up, Solvang.  Since it was summer and a holiday at that, we mainly just walked around (it was real crowded).  Of course the boys had to play in the telephone booth.

And what would a trip to Solvang be without playing in the giant clog?

For some reason I didn't take pictures, but next we went to the Old Mission Santa Inés and looked around.  We then packed back into the car and made our last stop at a park in Shell Beach before we headed home.

The next day was actually Independence Day.  We did nothing too fancy...we had a nice dinner at my parents.  My sister Elise came over & I finally got a picture of her with Jamen.

I think David had a few poppers or something.  The boys loved them, but Jaxon hated the noise he made when he popped them...silly kid!

 But we did head down to Pismo for some fireworks.  A family friend let us watch them from his driveway/front yard, which was only a few blocks form the beach & had a great view without the crowd, traffic, & smoke.

 It was awesome!  I think we'll have to do it every year from now on!