Cousins

Max, Ella, and Anna getting acquainted.

Bumbo time

Ella has reached the age of the bumbo!

Happy 5th Birthday Lauren!

Nicole made a princess cake that was mmm good! Auntie Gem and Uncle Andrew and the cousins came to celebrate too!
The girls also spent a good 30 minutes playing with the stickers in the cards from Grandma and Grandpa!

Decorating cupcakes!

Nicole made these cupcakes and the girls decorated them for Friday's classical conversations weekly class.
Saturday was our friend Anika's 5th birthday where more cupcakes were enjoyed. As you can see, they were delicious! Winnie the Pooh bear came and ate some honey right from our table!
Tomorrow is Lauren's actual birthday, so it won't belong until more cupcakes! Mmm!

Sisters

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Some pics

The girls re-live old times in the cow toy! Ella will have to wait her turn.

Ella's first trip to Napa. We went for a day trip while Ben had his time off after Ella was born. We are at our time share Vino Bello. Very nice! We'll have to come back when we are less sleepy!

1st Hospital Visit Pics

Sleeping beauty....



This is the cart for transporting her to the nursery and back.

She is finally here!




I'm a big sister now!



Meeting auntie Gem and the cousins: Josh, Michaela, and Nathaniel.

Lauren and Sophie Meet the Baby

Lauren and Sophie take turns holding the baby in the hospital. Afterward, Lauren asked, "Mommy, Can we keep her?" and "Can we take her home?"

Our baby girl

Our baby girl is here! 8 lbs 14 oz, 21 inches long! She was born at 6:01am. Nicole and baby are doing well.

Just days away

We are just hours or days away from baby #3! Nicole is ready to be done!
We all went to Nicole's check up today where the doctor did an ultrasound and the did a stress test on the baby. Everything is looking good.
You can see the baby's profile in the picture. The doctor thinks she's already 7 pounds!

I'm not tired

Lauren rarely goes to sleep willingly. She conked out so fast here that she still has her hand on her face from rubbing her eyes. She slept like this for a good 10 minutes!

Experimenting with color

Trying something other than white!
-Ben

Monkey bars

Monkey on the monkey bars!
-Ben

Summertime at the swimmin' hole

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Baby shower at work

They had some cake and gave us a blanket with the company logo here at work today for the four employees having babies this year (3 have girls, 1 boy). We have less than 2 months to go!

Newsboys Concert!

We rocked the house tonight at the Newsboys concert at the Alameda County Fair! It was so awesome to see them play live - they have some great new music with Michael Tait as the lead singer now. Lauren was covering her ears, but Sophie was jumping around dancing!
After the concert we checked out the pony rides (you can see Sohpie on her pony in the background) and the animals. The kids got to pet a fawn that was only 2 weeks old.

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Flashback

This was Lauren or Sophie?

Cleaning Fish

Thanks to the support of my lovely wife, I caught my limit of 10 rock fish plus three more for my fishing pals Perry, Zac, Noel and Ian on Saturday! I also caught a rare salmon, but I couldn't keep it because I was using barbed hooks and you can only keep salmon caught with barbless hooks. :( Everyone on the boat ended up with their limits. It was my first deep sea fishing trip in two years. Unfortunately, it was the first time I've ever been sick on the boat. Half the guys got sick! Ugh.
After the girls watched me clean the fish, Sophie went over to her kitchen set, somehow found her plastic fish amongst the hundreds of food toys, and started cleaning it with her toy knife. That's my girl!
-Ben

Playdough pearls

Lauren is trying on her home made play dough pearl necklace.

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Shanghai Aquarium

We had a nice morning at the aquarium while it rained outside.

Shanghai

Here's some good food we found at a restaurant in the Super Brand Mall in Shanghai. We could have paid another 100RMB to sit at a table overlooking the city lights and the Hangpu River, but since we had already been on a river cruise we decided to just focus on the food. The spare ribs in the pumpkin was particularly tasty, and the kids loved playing with the umbrellas. :) They also loved jumping around the kids play land while mommy got a rare pedicure!