my dear mikey, happy fifth birthday to you, sweet son!  how proud i am of the big boy you are now.  it seems like just yesterday that you were my tiny little baby, and now look at you!  being my oldest child, all of your firsts are firsts for me as well.  i want to take pictures of each of your milestones so that i won’t forget them because it feels like the time is passing all too quickly. this past year has been especially exciting and fun as you started preschool, your very first year of a long academic career!  at first, i was sad to see you go…

*interrupting the vacation recap for a special announcement.* after waiting, and waiting, and WAITING (mikey would have wanted me to add that last ‘waiting’), it’s finally mikey’s turn!!  so, happy happy birthday, my dear little guy.  so hard to believe, but my mikey is now five years old!!! let the festivities begin!  we kicked off the celebrating a little early this year since phil is on call tomorrow and will miss mikey’s actual birthday.  so we surprised him from his afternoon nap/rest time with an early birthday present.  i thought i’d go crazy with how many times per day mikey’s asked me if it was his birthday yet and if…

alrighty, so moving right along…  after the aquarium, we spent the following day hanging out with my brother’s family.  we always have so much fun with them that it usually ends up becoming a marathon day spent together with both my brother and i lamenting how it still didn’t feel like enough time.  i love that guy.   but anyway, that day we were able to go to laguna beach together and the kids had a blast playing in the sand.  unfortunately, i forgot to bring along my camera!  but then i was able to just relax and enjoy the day instead, so it’s all good.  but here’s one pic…

so like i mentioned before, phil returned to work this past sunday night after two weeks off for vacation.  and we definitely made the most of his time off with lots of outings and good ol’ family fun.  now that we’re back to our regularly scheduled program of daily living, i’m going to relive all the fun time together here.  like a fine wine (or so i’m making up since i’m not much of a drinker), vacations need to savored and experienced slowly to be fully appreciated. so i’ll focus each entry on a single outing (except for this one…  rules were meant to be broken, right?), otherwise, packing it…

ok, so we just got back this evening from a week-long vacation in palm springs.  it was wonderful!  but it went all too quickly.  and my poor phil had to jump right back in to work tonight on call.  sigh.  on the bright side, i do have lots of pictures to share.  but first, i wanted to get in this entry about a special gift i’m working on for phil.  his birthday was a couple of weeks ago, but i wasn’t able to finish it in time.  mostly because phil needed the computer last month to work on a poster for his work conference (the reason why we were in…