Wow!

I had to share what I saw tonight. I was sitting in my chair working on the computer and I looked up and saw this beautiful site! I went and grabbed the camera quickly before it got away from me. What do you think?



Even as brilliant as the colors in these photos appear, the intensity of the colors were ten-fold in real life. I love sunsets! It was worth the mosquito feeding frenzy that occurred on my arms and legs while taking the photos.

Splish, splash, we're having a blast!

The last two days the kids and I have been in Boise playing in the waterpark - Roaring Springs. On Saturday we played for about 7 hours and even though we had sunscreen on, we all got quite burned. I later realized that the sunscreen I was using was water resistant, not waterproof. The temp reached 96 and there we were offering our skin to the UV rays! Needless to say, I bought waterproof sunscreen today and that, along with temps of only 86, made for a much more comfortable day. Here's Seth playing in the spray area, waiting for the bucket to dump:

On Sunday, we met up with some friends we met at the CHASA retreat at the Great Wolf Lodge. This is Maggie and Lacey. Lacey had just come down the blue slide and her hair was pushed over her face. Maggie didn't like this slide but she made Lacey get over her fears of the other slides as you can see in the next picture.
This is Lacey and Maggie as they came down the "family" slide. They were nearly the last people allowed to go down this slide since the park closed at 8:00 and this picture was taken about 7:55. Once Lacey got brave enough to go down the slide, she wanted to do it over and over again. I had predicted this very scenario earlier in the day and sure enough I was right. Thank you Maggie for getting Lacey to do the rides!
There are a couple more pictures on the Picasa site. Unfortunately, I didn't get very many because I was in the water quite a bit. Also, I have hardly any of Seth because he was always with me if I went in the wave pool or lazy river. He had a great time though and has already fallen asleep about 15 minutes into his new movie. I'd say it had something to do with the movie being boring, but if you know Seth, you know he can watch the dumbest movies and think they are totally entertaining, so.....I'm betting it's all the fun he had!

Southern California!

Yesterday, we arrived home from Disneyland and San Diego. My plan, of course, was to post pictures while we were there, but we were on the run from 6:30 in the morning until midnight almost every night. We packed a lot of activity into 5 days! Our flight to LA was as nice as a flight can be (I'm not a fan, but I just grit my teeth and bear it). There were extra seats on our plane on the way down so Coconut and Black Dog got a seat to themselves. Lacey insists on buckling them in whenever possible. = )

We started our vacation in California Adventure because two years ago, we did not get to spend much time there and it was raining. Lacey and Seth enjoyed their time in this playground area that had these rope bridges and ramps that were as far as three stories above the ground.

This time the weather was hot, hot, hot, but it made for beautiful evenings. This is looking out from the pier at the sun dial carousel and the swing ride in the orange. Behind the sundial is the Maliboomer (looks like three towers). Seth and Erik rode this ride, you zoom up to the top in about 2 seconds and then bounce similar to being on a bungee. There is a video on the picasa site http://picasaweb.google.com/familyhendrickson/ . As you can probably imagine, I was holding my breath and cringing the entire time they did this ride -- scariest 30 seconds of my life. = )

Next was the electric parade. I have uploaded videos of this too and they turned out really nice. Everything about this parade was gorgeous, I could have watched it for hours.

Lacey was able to get a few signatures for her autograph book. Here she is with Cruella DeVille. She also got Cinderella, Fairy Godmother, Jasmine and Sulley.

Seth wanted to pose under this Indiana Jones sign. Unfortunately, we got two different fast passes for this ride, and still were unable to get on it because something always happened during the hour of our fast pass. Oh well, we will have to wait until next time.

On Friday night, Lacey and I did the wait for the fireworks by getting up close to the castle. We watched the show from Main Street the night before but Lacey couldn't see how the castle changes colors so on Friday we waited it out and got some good pictures too. Erik and Seth got bored waiting so they left and rode rides.

After three days in Disneyland/Anaheim, we headed for San Diego and went to Sea World. Seth and Lacey were third in line to get their picture taken with a Clydesdale. We watched him getting all prettied up for the event too and looked through their stables. I have a couple hundred pictures of Sea World and events from that day, but this was a unique picture of a flamingo. You must check out the flamingo video posted under the Sea World album on Picasa! We caught some bullying flamingos -- just watch -- you'll see what I mean.
Tuesday we only had a little time and probably should have done the zoo instead of the Wild Animal Park, but we did go on the Journey to Africa tour and got up close and personal with this lion. Unfortunately, Seth was just about wiped out after 4 days of walking, not to mention the "feels like" temp had to be about 120 degrees! Not exaggerating. While on the Journey to Africa tour, we truly felt like we were in the middle of Africa, complete with flies, smell, etc.

Well, this is long and only a sampling of the 530 pictures and videos that I took. If you want to look at all the pictures, sit down with a nice cup of coffee and use the slideshow.

Enjoying the sun!

I just had to share recent pictures of our babies. Here's Lily enjoying a twig:

And Chloe chewing on a leaf and enjoying the cool grass:
Aren't they the cutest?!

See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil

At Taylor's birthday party last week, we had all of the little ones together and got the cutest pictures of them doing See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil. Actually, we were trying to just entertain them and keep them all corraled in one place, but the result was adorable, don't ya think?

Cast for Kids Day!

Today was one of our favorite events of the summer. It was Cast for Kids Day at Merwin Park. Cast for Kids is an event at the Merwin Fish Hatchery for children of various abilities to catch fish and have a lot of fun. This is our fourth year, and as always, we had a fabulous time. Upon arriving we were greeted by a volunteer, given a T-shirt, a fishing pole and a tackle box with everything we needed, then it was off to the ponds. As you can sort of see in this picture, the ponds were stocked!

This was the first catch of the day -- 3 1/2 pounds!
This is the entire catch, a total of 14.2 pounds.

One of the most incredible parts of the day is after you have your catch (5 fish), they clean and bag the fish for you!
Thank you very much Cast for Kids! A wonderful event once again. Click here to see all of the pictures.

Tad - Week 1

I have to admit, Tad doesn't look a whole lot different, but he does appear to be a little larger. I have been feeding him the pellets that he came with but it seems I just clean out the mess the next day -- I guess he's a very light eater. Apparently he gets enough because he is still alive. = )

I tried a side view picture but he is a little hard to see. I keep trying to get a glimpse of whether he is growing legs yet, but it doesn't look like it. He seems a little shy and not real into letting me in on much information. Hopefully, by next weekend we can report some changes. Stay tuned.

Great Day for a BBQ

A 90 degree day did not deter us from having a BBQ where Erik could debut his famous ribs. On the north side of the house, the shade filled in and a little breeze blew which made the day quite comfortable. I can't believe I didn't take a picture of all of the food! You will just have to imagine -- we had ribs, chicken, corn on the cob, pasta salad, fruit salad, Joan's famous beans, cole slaw and rolls. There was also plenty of beer, pop, water and the best -- mudslides -- to drink, thank you Cindy! Dessert, provided by Goni, included fabulous chocolate/caramel/oatmeal bars (we must have the recipe!), mini cupcakes and homemade cheesecake! Renee also brought delicious chocolate chip cookies as an appetizer.


Logan had a blast playing with the big boys and sampling all the food. Here he is after he had eaten. I think he's trying to tell us it was chin-licking good.

Meet Tad!

Our new tadpole, Tad, arrived today. The kids and I will be watching him turn into a frog over the next couple of months and documenting his progress on the blog.
He doesn't have any sign of legs yet, but it sounds like it will take 2 to 4 weeks for him to turn into a frog. At that point, we have to feed him crickets -- yippee! Did I mention that I hate crickets! When cricket day comes along, I can positively say that I will be looking forward to release day. = ) I like frogs, but crickets are another story. In the mean time, he is happy in his new digs and probably a little frightened of all the changes, he wasn't exactly thrilled about the camera flash but I'm sure he will get used to his new celebrity status.

Happy Independence Day!

Check out these fireworks photos! I took them with my Canon, just holding it in my hands. I didn't think it would work well without a tripod, but I was pleasantly surprised. These are fireworks from our neighbors who do this every year and we get to enjoy the show. More photos are posted on the Picasa site.



Earlier in the day, we went to the parade and then had to have an elephant ear. It started raining as we were eating the elephant ear, so we decided it was time to go home. This was definitely one of the wierdest entries in the parade -- not sure what the point was supposed to be!