Family, family and more family.

We've done a new thing in my family. 4 nights at the beach. 10 kids and 7 adults. Always busy, but quite possibly the best time we've had together. Mom and Dad took the grandkids to the beach and enjoyed the sun while the kids spent 2 hours building a dam! Ratio of Grandparents to Grandkids - 1:5 The 7 eldest grandkids The Simmons-Sypkes-Slemmer-Owings Hot Tub Party! Me and my beautiful niece who made sure to bring nail polish for the weekend so we could do our nails and toes - thanks Erica, I love you!!! Grandma brought lots of carboard tubes - a day's worth of entertainment turning out tons of fabulous creations and one tired Grandma. Laura made Rosie the Princess Giraffe, and Daniel made spy glasses, not that they need explanation... Sisters.

More of CA time and friends

Just sharing more California pictures, that's all... Our old house and backyard. Accommodation doesn't look like anything special, but who wouldn't love this for a backyard? Our place was on the left - of the 4 sections, ours is the second from the end. Small, but I'd live there again just for that backyard. My beautiful 97.5 year-old friend Mary. Still feisty. Daniel and Elise played so well together, like no time had even passed. So did Nick and Audrey (considering they had never met each other and couldn't talk!) The adults played well together too, grabbing any chance we had to chat and catch up on life after Stanford, life with more kids, life, life, life... there's so much, we needed much more time, but we took what we could get with these great friends and loved it! A 4-night sleepover at Zara's house meant little sleep and endless fun for the kids. Thanks Wang's for taking time out for us and letting us crash your place.

Friends.Keys.Teeth.Wallet.Sanity.

We've spent a week at Andrew's 1-yr Stanford reunion seeing old friends, meeting new babies, re-meeting kids who are a year older than when we left (which is a huge % of their lifespan!), eating, drinking, and trying to sleep in between. It's been a bit of a blur. Here's my blurry thoughts: 1. Apparently the U.S. has a big effect on Nick - he sat up on his own for the first time the day we arrived, and got his first tooth the next day. 2. Our kids travel and do jet lag pretty well, all things considered. But when there's three variables (er, I mean kids), and they get up briefly overnight 2 times each, and one of them, being 6 months old, is awake and smiling from 12-2am, the mother doesn't get much sleep at all and takes a whole lot longer to get over jet lag. 3. Kids become friends again like no time ever passed, and adults can too. 4. If you're the adult, it's pretty annoying to lock your keys in a rental car along Hwy 1 between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz. And then strange to feel both thankful and annoyed to the person who arrives and jimmies it in 30 seconds. But if you're the kids who get to play in the dirt and rocks and find flowers to put in your ears while all this is happening, it's not so bad. And if there are a couple of friends who you were supposed to be meeting in Santa Cruz who happily get in their car and drive 45 extra minutes to come meet you, you know they are really good friends. 5. Living in community here was really fun and I miss it. 6. I think it's funny that I still get surprised by how big things are in America - the picture below is of a regular coffee cup and 1.18 Litre bottles of shampoo and conditioner!!! 7. Any family who has a 6 week old baby and chooses to put up with our troops in their house for 4 nights are either numb or really coping well. 8. On Friday it rained all day, I lost my wallet and my sanity. I'm not kidding. Wallet still missing. Sanity a bit back in tact. 9. I can't wait to see my family tomorrow. 10. I realized I would have preferred to pack the car and drive to Oregon from here rather than fly. Bummer bout that.

Out the door!

I'm back - it's a bit token cause we're about to walk out the door - literally in 20 minutes! Gee I must be dedicated to blogging. LOL. But anyway, here's a few shots in no particular order. Nicholas turned 6 months some time ago, my friend Kathryn had a baby boy Andrew, we spent Easter enjoying surprisingly great weather at Bruny, and the next week and a half getting ready to go to the U.S.!! We leave the house in an hour - i'm the most ready I've ever been, and the least stressed (thanks to a couple key babysitters, thanks Sharon!), so here's hoping that things keep looking up for travelling with 3 kids for the first time!

bloggin bloggin

i'm coming back, really i am. i couldn't believe it when i saw that it had nearly been a month since i'd last blogged. life just keeps on going, blogging or no blogging. will blog soon...

Photo culling

Digital cameras create nightmare amounts of photos. Isn't that right Dad??? So I've been culling photos in an attempt to enjoy the collection more. It works. And in the process I found some that I had completely forgotten about. --- Daniel saw this while driving and said, "Mom, I just saw a sign that said kangaroos can lift cars. But kangaroos can't lift cars, can they?" Gotta LOVE that.

Videos

Now that I have a newer version of my Mac browser, I can finally upload video on blogs and youtube. Yay. So here's a few random ones - mostly for my family who have yet to meet Nick, and who haven't seen the kids in ages. :( I did it the easy way and uploaded them to youtube. You can copy and paste, or just go to www.youtube.com, search for 'sypkes' - I put that label on all the videos I upload. Nicholas or Necklace? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPYOxHjC4Fs The kids http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WpbSzHh8y8 All mummy's kids are growing up http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlMqyzqM7qU\ Brothers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmj9VhYo1FM