Happy Birthday Rylee

I can't believe our little Ry Ry is 1 year old.

We had a little Birthday Party for her today and this is the Hat Cake I made for her

And she was such a little lady about eating it, she didn't even dig into the piece we gave her. She loved all her outfits and presents and so did her sisters...

Spring Into this

So I'm going to play catch up... first with a couple of Easter Pictures

Of my adorable kids and hottie husband.... aren't they cute!

Now Spring Break... we started our week with a trip to the park where we had a picnic lunch

Chased the ducks...

and where I tried to keep track of my four kids plus my niece Lexi... Jesse thought I was crazy for going by myself

But it was a blast...

When the wind picked up and cut our play time short though we decided we needed to take a trip to Nubi's (my favorite place in town: A serve yourself Frozen Yogurt shop).

The next day we picked up our new puppy Tonks... Short for Miss Nymphadora Swan Tonks.. (the kids couldn't decide whether they wanted to name her Miss Swan or Nymphdora Tonks, let me rephrase: The Girls couldn't decide. We're still working on the whole compromise thing with them)

Wednesday we left the puppy the desert and Jesse (he was taking a class) for the beaches of Santa Barbara

Where we went to the Ty Sea Center a really cool museum on the pier..

While we were there we got to pet sharks and hold spikey things like this, They even have a life size gray whale and her calf hanging from the ceiling (that I think is glass blown.)

After the museum we took a stroll over to Mother Stearns Candy Co. and stalked up on candy

For the ride... Let me just say this thing is harder than it looks especially when two people are pedaling for six. But we pedaled up and down the beach for a while and the kids loved it. They kept saying faster faster... (probably becuase we were going ridiculously slow)

Thankfully the kids were spent after dinner and pretty much passed out once we got to hotel.

They woke up Thursday morning ready to roll and rested up. So we headed for breakfast on the beach... and ate yummy California Burritos and Orange Juice Pancakes at the Shoreline Cafe...

Then literally a stones throw from the ocean we set up our stuff

and just played in the sand for a while...

It didn't take long for the kids to start asking when we were going to the Santa Barbara Zoo

And meet up with their cousins... the monkeys!

The coolest thing about this small zoo is that you can feed the giraffes. The kids loved their big purple tounges...

So after a fun filled day in the sun we packed up our stuff and headed home.

The only thing that could have made it better would have been having Jesse there. I'm glad that my friend and babysitter Kacy was there with me, I just hope my kids didn't scare her off from having kids of her own someday.