Family Pictures

I gave a little taste of our family pictures that we had taken and then it got busy and it totally slipped my mind to post the rest of them! Here are some of our favorites! We were really thrilled with how they turned out and I can't get over how OLD my girls are getting!

Mexico Cruise!

10 Years ago in August I married my best friend... We decided to celebrate our upcoming anniversary this year by doing something a little big and going on a 7 day Mexican Riviera Cruise! Doing something ON our anniversary is a little tricky since we are always at Church Camp and can't take another vacation around that time. So we decided to go early this year while the girls were on spring break!

We left a day early and went to Disneyland for a day WITHOUT the kids! It was so nice to just spend some time alone there with each other!

 Sunday we boarded the boat and set sail at 4:30pm.

We had an AMAZING time! We had 2 days at Sea including our first formal night.

Tuesday we made it to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. It was beautiful. We decided to be a bit adventurous and we rented 2 jet ski's! It was SO much fun! I wish we could have got pictures of it! Probably the highlight of the cruise for me, splashing through the ocean!

Wednesday we had a 2nd Day in Cabo San Lucas and we went Horseback riding on the beach. It was about a 35 minute drive out to a Ranch. We rode for an hour along the prettiest beach! Chris was a little leery of doing this but he did great and I THINK enjoyed himself! :)

Thursday we docked in Puerto Valarta, Mexico. We weren't as impressed with this port as we were with Cabo, but we still had a great time. We checked out the city and the beach a bit before we decided to go back to the boat and I got treated to a facial and a massage! Yay!

Friday and Saturday we another 2 days at sea trucking back to Long Beach. We were really fortunate to be sat with some really awesome people at our dinner table!! We really hit it off with 2 of the couples. Jennifer and Daniel were on their honeymoon and from Portland, Oregon. John and Beck are also coming up on their 10 year anniversary and were from Melbourne, Australia! We had a great time hanging out!

All in all we had a really wonderful time! Great Memories, much needed relaxing and now we are back to real life and being busy again!! Here's to 10 awesome years!!

Mexico Cruise

Cydney turns 8!

I am a couple weeks late with posting this but on August 18th Cydney turned 8!

Cydney has been such a blessing to us. Chris and I keep commenting about how much she has "grown up" over the past month or so. She is like a mini teenager! Her birthday list included Clothes, A diary (to keep her secrets in), a journal to write her songs, and a real guitar to learn how to play on! I don't know what "secrets" an 8 year old has to keep, but thankfully she is awesome about talking to mom :) . Its so exciting to see her turning into such a sweet spirited young lady. She always puts others before herself and is such a good big sister! It feels like just yesterday we were holding our teeny baby girl. I'm trying to cherish every moment we have with her as they truly do grow up quick.

We had a birthday dinner with Grandpa and Grandma ON her birthday at BJ's. She got her "real guitar" from Grandpa and Jonas Brothers (EEK!) tickets from Mommy and Ashli! (I'm honestly very excited about this lol) She gets to bring a friend and she chose her cousin, Jordan! We go next Friday!

For her birthday party this year she decided that she wanted to have her first sleepover and with a Twilight theme at that!! Needless to say Mom was very excited about the theme! lol I had a lot of fun decorating with all my Twilight swag, and it was such a fun party! I made "Eclipse" cupcakes, they played Pin the Heart on Bella and Twilight Bingo, ending the night with watching Twilight and New Moon. The last one passed out about 12:45am. It was fun, but 8 screaming girls was LOUD!

Here are some pictures from our fun nights!

Cydney Birthday

Church Camp 2010!!!!

Its that Time of Year again!! Chris made this Really Awesome Commercial for Camp this year!! Its coming up quickly August 2-6 2010 so start making your plans! I know it will be truly awesome!! And seriously... How awesome is my hubby? :D

San Francisco Trip!

On April 2nd I turned 20 something..... According to my blog title... haha ok 28. I need to milk the "20 somethings" as long as I can OK! Now leave me alone!! Being that Easter was the 4th it was a bad weekend for us to do much of anything for my birthday so we decided to plan a little get away for the following weekend!

Chris was able to get Friday off and we went to San Francisco for the weekend. This was something I was particularly excited about!! We used to go to SF a LOT when we lived over in Martinez. We would hop on "BART" and 40 minutes later we were in the city for a nice date. Not so easy being at least 2 hours away now. So it's been a good 4 years since Chris and I have been able to do this which has made me sad!

We decided to drive the "long" way in and avoid the Giants opening day traffic and go across the Golden Gate Bridge. Chris had never driven this way so it was a nice little drive! The weather was GORGEOUS!! We visited the Walt Disney Family Museum at the Presidio when we got into town and it was just AWESOME!!! If you ever have a chance to go, you must! I was a little bummed that we weren't allowed to take any pictures but it was def worth the trip over there!! They told us it would take us about 2 hours to go through and I thought to myself "no way" when I heard that but sure enough... about 2 hours later we found ourselves exiting!

After we left the museum we decided to be a little "touristy" and do things that we had never done even though we had lived in the bay area most of our lives! We drove down Lombard Street and after we checked into our hotel and walked around a bit we rode the Powell St Cable Car over to Ghirardelli Square. Yes we had never done either of those things!! lol

Saturday we met up with Nic and Melissa and my childhood friend Derek and his wife Tahnee for lunch at Joes Crab Shack. Derek and I grew up together in Madera and he is now an awesome photographer! He did pics of my girls in July and is going to photograph Nic and Melissa's wedding. They were meeting up in the City that day to shoot some engagement photos! After watching the Bush Man for a while, We had a fun and embarassing lunch (that involved me doing the hula for my bday thank you Melissa) and then headed our seperate ways.

Saturday night we went to the Giants home night opener at AT&T Park! It was the first game the Chris and I have gone to alone in probably over 5 years! I love going to games. I love the atmosphere, smells, sights and sounds. Especially with the views of San Francisco Bay in the background! It was especially awesome because we got to see the ceremony for Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum recieving his CY Young award for the 2nd year in a row! The game was dissapointing as they lost and we had some exceptionally annoying fans around us, but all in all we enjoyed the time together!

Sunday we had a nice drive home and got to enjoy dinner and a movie before we went home to the girls who were really happy to see us! It seemed like Bella's vocabulary expanded over the weekend and she babbled all night telling us all about HER weekend!

Here are some pictures of our trip!

San Francisco Trip!

Cydney's Baptism

There is no greater thing than watching your kids have their OWN love for God I am convinced. Cydney has always been a special girl. Slow to anger, Quick to Love. She is not your typical "kid" by any means! She was her Papa's "Bossy Mess" as he affectionately called her!

A couple weeks ago Cydney came to the realization that she needed to ask Jesus into her heart and for him to be her Saviour. She came to Chris and I and sitting on our bed in our bedroom, she prayed the most grown up prayer I've ever heard and asked him to do just that. Talk about one of the most awesome moments as a parent!! She was so excited and at 9:30pm proceeded to call everyone that she knew to tell them. lol Including the next day everywhere we went... Lilly's preschool teachers etc.. haha

After Cydney was saved she immediately asked when she could be baptized but we really wanted her to understood what it meant so we sat down and explained to her a little more about it. That "baptism" didn't mean you were saved, that Jesus was baptized before he started his ministry and that it was a public statement of the inward change in her heart. Once she heard all the details she was even more excited and wanted to do it as soon as possible. She wanted everyone to know!! :)

Yesterday Cydney was baptized at our Church, Cypress Baptist by Chris. Our pastor had Open Heart Surgery about a month ago and due to that is unable to perform baptisms right now so the church was glad to give Chris the authority to baptize Cyd along with two other young men, Phillip and Brad. It was his first and he was super nervous but he did Great! I was so proud of him!!

Here are some pictures of the awesome event! Hope you enjoy!

Cydney Baptisim

"The Wall"

When we moved to Sacramento 3 years ago Chris started working from home and the extra room became his office. Instead of removing what he deemed the "ugly" wallpaper he decided to utilize it as a way for everyone that visited the Crain Household to leave their "mark". When Bella was born, He moved his office over to the church leaving the extra room vacant. A good family friend of ours, Ashli is now going to be living with us for a bit and asked if she could paint! We of course didn't care but I decided to take some pictures of the wall first before the wallpaper came down. It was really cool to see all the people that had left their touch over the past 3 years! We are SO blessed to have SO many amazing friends and family in our lives! Thank you All for being there! We love you!

Halloween!

Yes.. It's almost Christmas.. Yes.. this is a Halloween post... Lol Deal with it! haha

For Halloween Cydney was Snow White for the 2nd time.. She is her favorite Princess, and her costume from 2 years ago still fit her so she wanted to give it another go! Lilly was Belle... HER favorite Princess, and she used her costume that she bought with HER money that she took to Disneyland in April! Finally Miss Bella was her favorite little friend Minnie Mouse! This year we decided to forgo the traditional trick or treating and head out to Lilly's school, First Baptist of Elk Grove for their Harvest Festival! It was absolutely wonderful!!! The girls just LOVED it!

We also did a "Costume Party" at TNL this year... it was so much fun... Chris and I dressed up as well as the rest of the "kids". :) Chris dressed up like the drummer from Blink 182, Travis Barker. He has been told on Numerous occasions that he shares a striking resemblance to him.. which I agree he does... although having seen Travis Barker in real life in Disneyland as recently as 2 weeks before our party... I have to say I think Chris is much more handsome! :P I dressed up as "April O'Neil" from the popular early 90's cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles... much to my disappointment... the cartoon was too old for people to recognize who I was. I was sad cus I thought I did a really good job on my costume considering I decided who I was going to be the day before the party!! I was CONSTANTLY teased by that name in grade school so I decided to embrace it... and it was alot of fun!

More that we take for granted....

Something was brought to my attention today that I wanted to clear up. In my previous entry I stated "Bestie and family have just moved out of their house and for lack of a better word are "homeless". They are basically living out of the hospital and Ronald McDonald House right now." I wanted to make sure that I didn't give anyone the wrong impression. Kristi and family DO have a place to stay. If you have been keeping up with their story and Kristi's blog.. you know that a plan has been in place for a little while now for them to move in with her mom while they wait to get "The" call from Loma Linda that they have received a heart for PrincessG. So YES They do have a place to live.

I was going to go back into my blog and change the way I wrote it... but I thought it was a good opportunity for me to write about more that we take for granted as my title states. The reason that I wrote "for lack of a better word are "homeless" is because.... essentially... That IS true. This is something that I have been watching my Bestie struggle with for the past few weeks. Quite suddenly her and her husband were faced with a decision on what was best to do for their family. What was Healthiest for BOTH of their Children. Not only for Gabriella but for PJ. Whether it was better to pack up and drag their entire family to Southern CA ... to a place where they know NO one so they can be REALLY close to the hospital.... Or STAY where they are comfortable... familiar and with their family. Stay where it is the healthiest for their children emotionally and contract out a medical transport for when they get the call.

They chose the later.. but that involved some heavy preparation as well. Very quickly they basically sold their entire "Home". They had to decide what was REALLY important in their life and what was REALLY a "necessity" and SELL the rest. Get rid of it! Couches.. Tv's... STUFF. Material things... How many of us would be willing to do that? How many of us would be willing to give up our STUFF?? Now I have had to live with "Parents" before. We lived with Chris' parents for almost 2 years when his dad was ill. While we were there we brought alot of our own stuff... But alot of it went into storage. Even when you have your own stuff it still isn't YOUR "home"! I remember what it was like to MISS MY stuff!!! I couldn't WAIT to get it out of storage. Paul and Kristi didn't just do that.... they purged. I cannot tell you how PROUD I am of them that they have made these sacrifices for their daughter. I KNOW it could not have been easy. Now by no means am I saying that it is "stuff" that makes a house a home.... but it is still HARD to have to make that sacrifice!

So Like I said before.... How much do we take for granted?!

Do we take our children for granted? Do we take their amazing little voices for granted?? Do we take our houses for granted?? I KNOW That I do!! I complain ALLL the time about where I live! JUST today I spent plenty of time complaining. We live on a BUSY BUSY road that they are widening to 4 lanes- CURRENTLY. Today the entire house was shaking.... and they have made it where we can't turn left out of our drive way... we have to go down to the next light and make a u-turn... incredibly annoying. It is an old house and things are constantly falling apart. The widows are single pane... the insulation sucks.... I could go on... But I won't... because you know what?? It is a place to live... and it is cozy and we have made it a HOME. We have made it ours with our Red Paint and our Vintage Mickey Posters!! It is a HOME with our Pencil Marks on the door frame of the office where our daughters have grown the past 3 years that we have lived here. It is a HOME where there are holes in the carpet from where Callie chewed when she was a puppy. For all those things I have learned to be GRATEFUL for. And I have also learned that there is so much that we hold onto that we don't NEED. I was also inspired to PURGE! I'm having a Garage sale on the 10th and getting rid of stuff that we don't need!!

So after talking to both Kristi and Paul today I know that I did not offend them in any way by how I worded what I did.... because essentially they DO feel "homeless". I pray that they can make a "home" out of wherever they are laying their head at night because they have each other. :) I know these next few weeks are going to be SO SO SO hard on them.... Keep Praying!!!

http://www.gabriellasheart.com/

Hmmmm A Decision

SO after much thought, I have decided to quit using "code" names on my blog. I originally did this to protect our families privacy from certain persons that I didn't want searching for us. BUT I've come to the conclusion that I have nothing to hide. God has blesses me with my amazing husband Chris, my beautiful daughters, Cydney, Lilly and Bella and I no longer feel that I need to hide who WE are because of other people. SO from here on Hubby, Sweet Pea, Moo and Baby Girl will be names of the past :)