Spring Break, MJ's birthday, Cece's baptism

For spring break this year, I took the kids up to Lake Tahoe to spend some time with my sister, Rebecca and her kids.  We are so lucky to stay at Bec's mother-in-laws home up there.  It is large (bigger than my house) and beautiful.  There is ample room outside to play.  And as you can see, the kids didn't mind the cold at all.  :)

This was really Ren's first experience with snow.  He was so giddy with anticipation...and then he spent every moment he could out there!  He didn't like to be outside alone, but he'd beg anyone to go out with him.

Ellie shows off her perfect snowball.

MJ has a good one here...where are her gloves? you might ask.  Well, we brought some gloves, not good ones, because as you can imagine, we don't have gloves living in SoCal as we do.  Or boots for that matter.  It was nice to use some of the gloves and boots that the Petersen family keeps up there for the likes of us.  (Though they didn't have all the sizes and quantity that we required, it was nice to have anything!)  On the last day we were there, MJ's hands got so cold that they were burning.  I remember that happening to my hands when I was a kid.  You know, you come inside after playing in the snow with no gloves and your hands just hurt!  I felt so bad for her!

Cecilee thinks it's summer.  She wore capris the whole week.  :)  Atleast she put on her jacket, this time!

Ren tests out the snowball makers.  It seems they worked pretty well.  

Lots of snowball fights!

Chloe joined the kids a few times out there too.

Here is the fort that Porter and Blake made.  They built up a wall for protection and started to make walls all around, but it was tedious work, you know?  :)  I think Ren was trying to help out, but didn't really.

MJ!  Don't do it!  Don't throw that snowball at me!  Hey, I'm your mom, be nice, who's the one who makes you dinner and tucks you in at night?!  

Oh!  You got me!  OK, you can forget about dessert tonight, little sister! :)

This is the house we stay in.  Isn't it cute?

Porter was out there quite a bit too.  As usual, he doesn't like the camera.  Too bad, the camera likes him.  :)

 We went swimming at the local pool one day.  Of course, it's all indoors.  That was fun to get out that one day.  But for the rest of the time, we stayed at the house.  It was wonderful and relaxing.

 Rebecca thought ahead and brought a few 'crafty' things that the girls (and the boys though they might not want to admit it) to do.  These hot pads were a huge hit!  In fact, I think we counted like 30 or so.  And that doesn't count the ones that we redid!  We actually took several out, just so we could do more.

 Chloe shows off her hot pads!

 MJ turned 8 while we were in Tahoe!  So, we had a mini party up there.  (We have one at home planned for when we get back home.)  We had strawberry shortcake, yum.

 BIRTHDAY GIRL

 Presents!  MJ got a couple of DS games (cooking mama and crafting mama) and some craft things...

 And she also got a tetherball court!  Yay!  She is a 'professional' at tetherball at school and has wanted to get a home court for a while now!  We couldn't bring this with us to Tahoe, so we drew a pic on a plate (I think Ellie drew it).

 Snow!  

Ren is just so silly and cute.  I can't resist him and he can resist making silly and cute faces and poses for the camera!

 Yes, I just want to kiss those chubby cheeks too!

 He fell asleep in the car and doesn't look very comfy.  He's trying to get a little cushion from his dolphin pillow pet.

We left Tahoe on Thursday to go back to Rebecca's house to get ready for Cece's baptism and it was snowing!  We couldn't get down the mountain!  Ugh!  We had to get chains on our tires!  I had rented a van to take on this trip, so didn't have my 4 wheel drive suburban and Rebecca had her car.  So, I bought chains and Bec already had some.  We paid to get them put on and I asked the guy who did it if he'd show me how to take them off.  So, when we got to the point when we were through the hard part of the mountain and could take off the chains... I tried to get those things off!  I tried hard!  And I just couldn't do it!  So, we paid to get the chains taken off too!  I think that could be a real racket, but it really was snowing and the roads were bad.  It certainly made for an exciting ride home.  :)

We did get home safe and sound.  Rebecca and I took the girls out to get our nails done.  MJ is under the dryer.

Cecilee got her toes and fingers done.  We all enjoyed that pampering!

More photos of Cecilee's baptism to come...