It's a Girl!!!

We finally had the opportunity to find out the gender of our baby on Tuesday afternoon. After much searching, the technician finally found 3 lines, which apparently means that we are having a girl! I am a little apprehensive about the idea of having 2 teenage girls in my house in about 13 years....a little scary. Mark has decided that he will need to have a shop built. I told him to make sure I have my own padded room next to the shop. :) We are thankful for the blessing of another daughter and look forward to the next chapter of our lives as our family grows.

LegoLand

While we were in San Diego, we were able to go to LegoLand for the first time. I think it had just opened when we still lived there, but haven't had the chance to go. What a great place for little kids! Just about everywhere we went, there were legos for Maggie to play with. Which, I guess since we were in LegoLand, shouldn't surprise me, but still. They were in places that were pretty smart. Like, when we were standing in lines, there would be a line for adults to stand in and then there would be a central play area with legos for the kids to have something to do and everyone could keep their sanity.

They also had a fun water play area that Maggie could have stayed in all day. Did I mention that just about every day we were there, the weather was in the 60's?? This particular day, I think was about 68! Gotta love California Christmases!

Super-Charged!

My really cool dad got us some great seats to the Charger/Denver game. He picked them up for us a couple of months ago, when the game was just a regular game. We were pretty excited to go being that we don't get the chance to go very often. Then, the team actually started to win and Denver started to lose and this ordinary, end of the season game turned into a Division Play-Off game....and WE HAD TICKETS!! Awesome! Needless to say, we were VERY excited to go. When we got to San Diego, my dad told us that he wouldn't be offended if we wanted to put the seats on Craigslist or Ebay and make some money...the seats were going for about $250 a seat. After thinking about it for about a minute or two, we decided we'd rather go to the game. How often would we get a chance to go to a game like this?

After waiting an hour and a half to just get into the parking lot, we headed in to Qualcomm Stadium. We met my brother and his wife, Liz at our seats and had a great time! We had really good seats and got to see some terrific plays in the end-zone and of course, the Chargers stomped the Broncos so badly that their coach was fired just a couple of days later.

Now, if only they can keep the momentum going...maybe we'll get to see them in the SuperBowl!

Christmas in San Diego

After spending our first day in San Diego getting last-minute presents, we quickly got dressed to head to the Whelan Family Christmas Eve party. As long as I can remember, my dad's brothers and sisters have gotten together every Christmas Eve. I was glad that we had the chance to go this year. We haven't been since Maggie was 6 weeks old. Every year, our family seems to grow just a little bit more. This year, there was a new addition and 2 fiancees to meet. I think my Aunt Gee counted 22 great nieces and nephews. It's always fun to see all my aunts, uncles and cousins. A little overwhelming, but a lot of fun.

My mom bought Maggie this Christmas dress and a matching one for my niece, Kayla. Maggie didn't quite like the idea of wearing a dress (she kept asking me where mine was :) ). She finally gave in when she realized that the slip underneath made a neat swishing sound when she twirled. Maybe she might give more dresses a try.

This is a picture of Maggie with my niece Kayla, and my nephews Blake and Cameron. It's hard to believe that Cameron was younger than Maggie when he was our ring bearer 11 and a half years ago.

My mom and dad bought Maggie this cool LeapFrog ClickStart computer sysetm for Christmas. She thinks she is such a big girl sitting her at her "computer desk" playing computer games all by herself.

Of course, a trip to San Diego wouldn't be complete without going to Balboa Park to ride the carousel and the train. This time, even the butterflies and airplanes were open and she got to ride those for the first time.

Road Trip Entertainment

This is a video of Maggie (and Mark and I singing back-up vocals) singing to Laurie Berkner in the car. How could I not record it?! (Thanks, Matt for helping me with the video up-load!)

Road Trip!

So, we found out that our flight had been cancelled at about 11:00 am (our flight was scheduled for 4:45pm). We packed up our stuff into the car, made a few trips to stock up on snacks and tire chains and hit the road. We got to Portland (which had been basically shut down due to snow-fall) by about 6 or 7. Because they had had so much snow, the roads were pretty bad. Not only did they have compact snow on the road, but chains had been required all day, so they were very rutted and BUMPY!! This meant that in order to get through without giving us all whiplash, we had to drive not more than 15 miles per hour. Yikes. But, we weren't going to let that stop us! No way...keep on going. :) We continued on until we got to the town of Roseburg, which was about 2 hours north of the CA/OR border. We found a Best Western and CRASHED!
We figured that Maggie would get up at her normal 7:00 am and we would get up then and grab a bite to eat and hit the road. Maggie never sleeps in, even if she is up past her normal bedtime. Not this time. Our room was so nice and dark, that I woke up, rolled over looked at the clock and saw 8:00 on the clock. Whoops! Maggie was still OUT! So, that was how our day started. A bit slow. We got dressed, went down to the awesome FREE breakfast, checked the roads on the FREE Wi-Fi, and headed out by 9:30. A little later than what we hoped, but didn't let it phase us.
We drove on. And on. And on....I think you get the idea. We didn't even get to Sacramento until about 5:30pm or so. If you know anything about the state of California and where San Diego is compared to Sacramento....then you understand the drive we still had ahead of us. We really wanted to get there...nothing was going to get in our way. We pressed on and drove into my parents driveway in Carlsbad on Christmas Eve at about 3:30 in the morning, just as my dad was getting up to go to work. We were exhausted! Mark figured that we had spent about 18 hours in the car, just that day alone.
We praise God that we made it successfully, without any car troubles and with a 3-year old who travelled like a pro. We couldn't have made it without the prayers of family and friends...and a laptop that plays movies and an iPod loaded with Wiggles and Laurie Berkner.

Change Of Plans....

The Saturday before Christmas, Mark and I packed up the Yukon and headed over to spend a few days before our flight was "scheduled" to leave on the 22nd. We had a great time visiting and seeing how much Camden and Shelby have grown.

This is what we were driving into on Saturday morning....not looking like good travel weather.

Here, the kiddos are making grocery lists. (There was so much snow, we couldn't even get out to get T.P.!!)

Okay, so this isn't the most flattering photo of us, but I thought the boys would appreciate this picture that shows both Tara and I as the computer geeks we are. However, we are being crafty here. We are practicing our digital scrapbooking skills.

Here, Aunt Tara is reading the hilarious book, Olivia, to Camden and Maggie. I couldn't believe how intently they listened!

Here is Maggie in the snow, the morning that we were to fly out of Seattle.

Apparently, Seat-Tac International is not exactly prepared for this much snow-fall, and ran out of de-icer. Our plane would not be leaving on this day. We couldn't even get a new flight until the Saturday or Sunday after Christmas. Bummer. Well, let's just jump in the car and drive! It's only 1500 miles! Can you say Road Trip?