Where Did Fall Go?

I'm now 7 months pregnant and I know that with Christmas coming baby Benjamin will be here before we know it!  Maybe knowing that we'll be a little more homebound soon, we've had quite a few fun family adventures in the last few months.

One day while Nicholas was in school, Samantha and I went to a local aquarium with some friends, Samantha's best friend Violet and her brother Becker.

We went down to San Diego over Veteran's Day Weekend to spend some time with my sister Monica and her husband Andy.  They just bought a new house and Monica recently started renting an art studio for her to do all of her amazing art work in.  We spend a day at the San Diego Zoo and she also took our family pictures at beautiful Balboa Park, where her and Andy got married 4 years ago.  It was a great trip.  We definitely don't get down there enough to visit them.

The next weekend, Circus Vargas was in town.  It had a great family feel and the acts were classic and fun.  Nicholas' favorite part was the guy who could balance just about anything on his chin.  

We hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

Catching up!

Okay, so I guess I have a lot of catching up to do...it has been almost a year since I've updated this blog!

Here are a few highlights since last October...

For Halloween, Nick was Yoda and Samantha was a butterfly.

Nicholas got to try out Tae Kwon Do and made it to orange belt before we took a break for baseball.

In April, we went on our annual spring trip to the desert to spend some quality time with CC and Grandpa, and the cousins.

In May, Chris and I got to go to Maui for a week with out the kids!

 In June, Nick finished Kindergarten.  He had a great first year at Fern Elementary with Mrs. Kawaguchi.

I did my second sprint triathlon in Redondo Beach.

We started off the summer vacation with our annual trip with our small group families to the desert. 

Over 4th of July week, I took the kids to Tennessee to visit some dear friends who moved there.  Nicholas and Luisa were born 2 weeks apart.

We got back and headed to a beach house in Newport Beach to spend some quality time with Pops and Grammy.

 We ended our summer with our 4th annual Yosemite camping trip.  This year we had 10 families in our group!  20 adults and 27 kids.  We had an amazing time.

 I went back to work at the end of August.  The kids got to spend a whole week up at Pops and Grammy's new lake house in Lake Arrowhead.  We joined them for Labor Day weekend and enjoyed some down time on the water.

Last week Nicholas officially became a first grader!

We will be spending this fall and winter preparing for baby #3.  Baby boy Chapman is due on January 20th and we are so excited!

Samantha and cousin Luke are quite amused by my growing belly!

I'll try and be better about update with posts...hopefully it won't take me a whole year next time!

Clydesdales and Athenas

One of Chris' friends asked him back in May if he would do a sprint triathlon with him.  Chris said no way, but that I might be up for it.  I've actually always wanted to do one.  I swam on my high school swim team and have always loved to ride a bike (you can't survive 4 years at UCSB without being a pro on a bicycle).  Even though I don't like running, I've done a few 5k's and even ran a 10k a few years ago.  So, a triathlon has been on my "bucket list" for a while and I figured why not now!  Once I committed to the training, Chris took up the challenge as well, and we ended up both doing the Carpinteria Sprint Triathlon on Sunday, September 25.  It was a 1/2k swim, 15k bike, and 5k run.  Being that neither of us are the most dainty of people, we qualified to race in higher weight groups.  Chris raced as a Clydesdale and I raced as an Athena! 

I felt pretty good coming out of the water.  During the training, my biggest challenge was overcoming my fear of open water (you know...all those creatures!)  After a few ocean swims I realized I didn't really even think about it when I was out there swimming.

Swimming was the most difficult for Chris.  This is true for many people who do a triathlon, so he's not alone.  He trained a lot in the pool just to be able to swim a long distance and not drown!  He did great!

It was raining during the race, so the roads were pretty slick.  We saw quite a few people skid and take pretty hard falls.

I struggled through the run part with a strained calf muscle that I had been nursing for the last month of my training.  I managed to hobble the last 2 miles and wasn't that much slower than my normal slow running pace!

We finished and survived!  We are even planning on doing it again next year!

Do we have a future triathlete on our hands?

I recently pulled out a few of Nicholas' baby clothes to save as a keepsake.  Samantha got a hold of the outfit that Nicholas wore home from the hospital and discovered that it fit perfectly on her baby doll.  Since he was only 5 lbs 11 oz when he was born he was still swimming in this preemie outfit.  He's still our little guy.  Samantha is catching up and they are now both wearing size 4 pants...

This praying mantis was my excitement for the day.  I drove away from work today without realizing this guy was sitting on the hood of my car.  He crawled to this spot on my side mirror and rode all the way home.  Nicholas and Samantha put him in a glass jar and watched him for a while before we let him go.  He's a long way from home, but hopefully he likes Torrance as much a we do.

Samantha's First Day of School

Daddy had the honor of taking Samantha to her first day of preschool. Sadly, I had to work.

Her best buddy Violet was waiting for her and didn't want to go into class without her.

She jumped right in to the first activity and had a little sticker fun with her classmates.