You have to love the magic of childhood.  These young years are so special it is just amazing.  I love the fact that even in the age of computers, high tech gadgets, etc. that a box is still one of the best things you can give a child.  Today I gave my son and his friend a box.  I told them to go color it and make it to something they thought would be fun.  The created a plane and ran around the front yard.  I love how creative they were and they had so much fun.  My youngest couldn’t wait to show his big brother what he made today.

Last night we had our monthly pug meeting.  I’m the leader of this local group and we are sponsored by Pictage our posting and printing partner.  The meetings are always good and it gives us a great time to get to know other local photographers.  We have lot of fun.

A couple of months ago I posted some pictures of us ripping the front of our house apart.  Many of you have asked what does it look like now.  It still needs paint, some new landscaping and a new driveway.  There might even be a porch one day if we can figure it out. But here is step two of the front.  The new french doors lead in to the office.

Mark and Lisa are a testiment to belieiving that special someone is out there.  I love that neither one of them had ever been married and they found true love in their apartment complex.  It is just a great love story.  They are a fantastic couple and was so much fun to be around on their day.  I don’t think either one stopped smiling all day.  The day was just filled with a level of excitement.  During their ceremony they had a reading from Dr. Suess, and a special friend singing at the ceremony and reception.  We also had fun stopping on the way to the reception to do a little hiking on the hillside.  It was just a beautiful February day for them.  The wedding was at Portola Valley Presbytarian and the reception was at the Corinthian Event Center in downtown San Jose.  Check out more photos from their day.

www.jilljohnsonphotography.com/slideshow/lisaandmarkwedding

So Cole instead of having a birthday sort of had a birthday weekend.  I went to a woman’s conference up in San Francisco this weekend with some girlfriends.  Cole was cool with that because when I’m not around they get to have sushi.  I’m not a big fan.  But I decorated our car which he just loves and we drove around like that all weekend.  Sunday afternoon he had a bowling party with about 8 of his friends.  How fun to see kids discover something new.  Many of the kids didn’t even know bowling existed.  They had a great time.

So, the beginning of March is always really busy for me.  My husband and my son’s birthdays are just about a week apart.  For Eric’s birthday a group of friends went up to the Go-Kart Racer in Burlingame.  It was a blast.  It’s an inside race track and the karts go up to about 40 miles an hour.  It was a riot.  We had to wear these headsock things and jumpsuits. It made you feel like your were ready to go all NASCAR. This little adventure was quite a work out.  Those little cars take all your muscles to steer.  We had a great time.  All of us were a little sore coming off from some little crashes(even though there is supposedly NO CONTACT) but it is well worth it.  This would be great for getting your bridesmaids and groomsmmen better aquainted before the wedding day. 

The second part of our trip we headed over to the Tampa area to visit my mom. She is what they call a snowbird.  She lives down there to get away from the Michigan winters.  Well, I have to say my kids are as big of beach bums as their mom and Grandma.  Even though we did do activities every day we always ended up on the beach.  The weather was beautiful and fantastic after all the rain we’d been having.  My boys love to feed the seagulls.  During the day I would have to find a deserted part of the beach front so they could go feed the seagulls.  My littlest loved it but yet was terrified of them.  It was all he could do to stand there and feed them.  They had a great time.  I took them to see the endangered Manatees at the Tampa Electric Company.  They made a natural habit for them to migrate to during the winters.  They are the coolest looking creatures. We also had a chance to go out in the swamp lands to look for gators.  That was definate highlight for them.  After the search they were able to eat some gator.  My oldest wouldn’t try it my youngest ate the entire thing.  Last but not least I ran in to one of my bridesmaids from my wedding.  I hadn’t seen her in two years.  Her family was down visiting her in-laws and our boys all had a great time skim boarding, boogie boarding, and playing in the sand.

Well we took a little time off during winter break to go and visit family.  It wasn’t suppose to be such an action packed vacation it just worked out that way.  We did the two extremes from the snowy mountains of Colorado to the sunny shores of Florida.  Our first stop was a couple days in Vail with my in-laws. It was fantastic for those of us who don’t live there.  We woke up every morning to big fluffy snowflakes falling every morning.  It was just breath taking.  The entire family rented a house and just had some fun in the snow.  One of the things we really wanted to do was go sledding.  It was quite an adventure finding a hill.  Sledding of all things has become commercialized.  I’m sorry I just couldn’t spend $80 for my family to sled for one hour.  So we headed out to the unknown.  For some reason I’m the only girl in the family that does these little adventures.  Lucky for us it was a beautiful day.  It took us about 90 minutes to find something.  Talking about pioneers.  We climbed a crest to see what was on the other side.  We found our hill.  No one had touched it.  We could blaze the trail.  Little did we know how hard it would be.  My nephew Josh is just over 6ft.  He started up the hill and sunk up to his chest.  I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breath.  Well, 3 runs and 1 hour later we finally had a path to sled down.  You have to love boys ( I was with my 4 nephews, 2 sons, and the 3 men of the family) they decided  to build a jump.  Josh was the first to come down with the tube.  He hit it straight on, went straight up in the air and landed face first.  He just laid there for a couple of minutes not moving.  Then he got up with that stupid boy smile at his little adventure.  Of course, they all had to do it.  Let’s just say lucky for them the snow was so deep and soft to land on and that their mothers weren’t there.  Below our some pictures from the trip.  The hill we climbed, my little guy resting on top after his big climb, and one of my favorites their grandma reading them a goodnight story.  Special Memories.