September and October

Warning: This is a long post with lots of pictures!  If I break it up I won't get it done, so here it is in one big, long post!

Cody and I celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary on Sept 7.  Aunt Marti flew in for the weekend and we left the kids with her Friday morning to Saturday afternoon.  We drove up to LA to see the Tonight Show.  It was fun and totally different than anything we have ever done.  It was interesting to see show biz behind the cameras like when Jay came out to talk to the audience before the show and told us to laugh at his monologue even if it wasn't funny.  And it wasn't funny but everyone laughed anyway.  The guests were Matthew Perry and Meghan McCain and ......  The musical guest was the best part.  We enjoyed ourselves even though the guests weren't that exciting.

Here is a screenshot of the back of our heads in the audience....we are the blue shirts right above the play symbol.  We had GREAT seats!

They don't let you take any pictures inside so this is outside in front of the NBC sign.  (And I am posting this picture even though I hate the way I look, because I read this article.)

 Then we went to Universal City Walk and walked around and saw the different stuff they have.  This is me trying to look skinnier by putting my hand on my hip, too bad it didn't work.

It is probably really obvious from these pictures that we were out of our element in the glitz of Hollywood.  It was fun though.  We saw The Avengers movie which we both liked and then ate at Tony Roma's and had frozen yogurt for dessert.  What a date!!

We spent the night in a hotel and then drove home through Hollywood....which was extremely crowded so we kept on driving.  We stopped by Hollywood Park to see the statue of Swaps out front.  This is as close as we could get without paying to get into the races.  Swaps was my grandfather and his brother's racehorse that won the Kentucky Derby in 1955 and was beloved by Californians in the 50's.  He was great horse that broke records, was named Horse of the Year and has a Swaps Stakes at Hollywood Park in his honor.

 It was a great date and we spoiled ourselves.  We are so grateful to Marti for coming to be with the kids.  They love her and we love her.

Eliza started a co-op preschool with 4 other sweet little girls and she absolutely loves it!

 First day of preschool!

Here she is hard at work at one of the stations during preschool at our house.  We do Montessori style learning stations for a part of the time.

A Saturday at Balboa Park trying to learn to use the new dslr camera.

Coulson flailing on the floor at the store because he couldn't get the truck out of the package.

Ward campout!!

Eliza's hiding place during hide and seek:

Our budding entomologist.

We went to the Air Show with some friends and it was so fun!  Coulson wasn't too sure about getting in the helicopter for some reason...

Eliza feeding Coulson some apple sauce while we watched the jets.  She is his mini-mama.

After seeing the jets zoom around in the sky and climbing inside a helicopter and airplane, what did Eliza say her favorite part of the whole day was?  Playing with Ellie!!  It's all about the friends!

Out for a walk one day....

Another day...

 We are loving the new camera.  It takes great pictures!

 Phone pictures after church...