Easter Weekend at Grandma and Grandpa Downen's house

After the funeral we headed back to Valencia for more family time with the Widdisons, Banners, Dust & family, Grandma and Grandpa and Heidi and Alexis. Even Blake and Amy Ambridge stopped by and spent the night. It was a house full of people and fun!
Some highlights: Grandpa and I took the kids out to In-n-out for lunch, Easter Egg hunt planned by Ashley, the party girl, Water play time in the backyard, Down to the pool for a cold dip and then the hot tub, lots of time holding baby Kylie (especially Logan) egg dying and decorating, and Easter morning and then yummy easter dinner followed by opening the 12 Resurrection story eggs and Grandma sharing a very sweet story. Nice trip...that ends our Spring break. Back home to clean and do laundry. :-)

San Diego for Grandpa's Funeral

Grandpa Ambridge passed away on Sunday, March 24. So happy for him to have finished this life and go see Grandma in the spirit world. Hope they are having fun together. On the other hand, sad that Joan will be left alone. She is such a great woman and was so good for Grandpa. It was nice to see lots of cousins and extended family that we don't get to see very often. It was also great to see so much immediate family and the kids had so much fun with their cousins. Kortney was kind enough to let us come and stay with her for Thursday. We spent the day playing at the park, eating ice cream and playing in their fun backyard. The kids loved running around back there. And Kolby loved riding Kade's motorcycle around, even though it ended with a split lip as he flipped over the handle bars. He almost did one of his fainting spells that he loves to do at the sight of blood, but resisted and just fell into a very tired lethargic state. The kids were so great together. 

 The funeral was so sweet and there lay Grandpa's body, spirit definitely gone on to the Spirit world.

 After the funeral we all went over to Ponto beach, the one we would always walk to from Grandpa's house. Even though it was a bit chilly, that didn't stop the boys from getting in the water and having such a great time. I even got to catch up with my friend Jill Wilson who stopped by for a bit with her cute boys. Kids played baseball, crab hunting, running in the water, rock collecting, sand digging and had such a blast.

Start of Spring Break 2013

Start of Spring Break: Saturday Geoff ran the Visalia 10k (see Logan all decked out with Eliza's sunglasses and pink wallet and sunglass case), Monday - Big Easter Egg hunt and play time at the sports park with lots of ward friends, Tuesday - Zoo fun over Spring Break with the Lops and Abbots. We had a great time running around seeing the animals and especially love the bird show. Great way to start off our Spring Break (3/23/13-3/25/13). Eliza had strep throat but was still a good sport tagging along with us. And looks especially beautiful next to my favorite spring tree!