Beach Day

Paul took the week off to spend time with his friend from Arizona who stayed with us. We all went to a beach at Halfmoon Bay on Friday. Gabriel had so much fun chasing the waves. He didn't want to stop. As you can see by his wet shorts, we did get surprised by a fast-moving wave at least once. Gabriel just laughed and thought it was hilarious that the wave got him.

Family

We went to a wedding on Sunday evening. They had a fun photo booth set up where we took our pictures.

Sprinklers

It was super hot this weekend, so we ran through the sprinklers.

Projects

We've had Paul's old toy box sitting in our living room for a while now. It was covered in stickers, one from around new socks and several were pealed off. It looked terrible so I decided to make a project out of it. I scraped off the stickers, sanded down the wood, painted it white, and stenciled some letters on it "TOYS." What a difference.
After much debating, I decided to go for it! I went to Home Depot and bought several bags of sand and dumped them in his old swimming pool. I bought a second pool to be both the sandbox cover and a pool. Gabriel loves his sandbox!

22 Months!

Gabriel's first popsicle (frozen orange juice on a stick).
Two seconds earlier:
Two months until two years old!!

Wonderful Mother's Day

Today ... and ... a year ago

Is that my baby? He's so big now! (Thanks for taking this picture, Mike.)

We had our mothers (and fathers) over our house for a mother's day dinner. I had fun cooking up dishes that reminded Paul and me of our mothers and grandmothers. It was beautiful weather (a little on the hot side) and we enjoyed having family at our new house to make it feel more like a home.

Mud and Letters

I gave this paintbrush to Gabriel and showed him how he could "paint" with water on the patio. He liked that. Yesterday, after digging in the dirt, Gabriel preferred painting with mud. On himself. Gabriel painted his hand, his sleeve, and thought it was hilarious when I kept running away from him so he wouldn't get mud on me.
Gabriel is also very excited to be learning letters. We are so impressed, but I feel a little guilty because I think he should be learning the words for food and potty and other necessities. But it is so adorable how enthusiastic he is to match his alphabet magnets to the letters in his ABC books and on this alphabet computer which his daddy just got him (used too! yay for the internet).
He knows about half the letters, not always consistently. He sticks his tongue out for L and can enunciate the difference between N and M. (B, C, D, E, F, H is hard to say and sometimes sounds the same as X, I, L, M, N, O, P, T, U, X, Y, Z)