The last day of school we went to Josh’s last baseball game and then headed up to Idaho for a week. It was beautiful. We met up with Grammy, Papa and Auntie Aubree in Twin Falls, and stopped to actually see the falls. I have a deep and abiding love for all the brown signs you pass on the free way announcing historical landmarks/points of interest.
It was beautiful; and we got more pictures from this 30 minute rest stop than the rest of the trip combined.Continue Reading
How I Survived Camping at the Beach…..Day 1
“I can do it as long as they have showers, ” I said. “No problem. San Onofre has showers.” he replied. So I was on board. Max is old enough that it’s not terrible to camp with him. Camping is cheaper than hotel rooms, making our travel budget stretch just a little further and allowing Justin to get more surfing time in, which makes him incredibly happy. Camping seemed so exciting when I was growing up… because we NEVER did it. I can remember camping twice before marriage (girls camp not included… and when my mom was in charge of girl’s camp we stayed in cabins.) So I am a complete camping newbie.
The day of the trip we got stuck in some bad construction traffic. We pulled into our campsite around 11 pm CA time which is midnight our time. Justin looked at my face and said, “Do you want to just find a hotel?” I was tempted, but I held strong, and now I want to marry the tent we recently purchased. It says on the box you can put it up in 10 minutes. Not true, you can put it up in 5. We had our kids in the tent within 15 minutes of arrival. Then I meandered over to the bathrooms to brush my teeth and saw this….Yep those were the advertised “showers”. Outside beach showers. I tabled it for later and headed back to the tent. I crawled into our tent and listen to our neighbors talk and laugh loudly with their lanterns shining directly into our tent for the next 2 hours until the park rangers came and shut them down.
The next morning we helped Justin skope out a surf spot and then went and cuddled back in our tent. The sun comes up about 5:30 am in the summer in CA now, in case you were wondering…Continue Reading
Some Little Things
Josh discovered that static electricity allows balloons to stick to walls. There were days of entertainment as a result of this discovery.
We had so many fun cousins come to visit. Sadly this is the only picture I got…. The two Max’s…
Anna and her friend doing “experiments.” This one involved water and lots of food coloring.
Our yard (otherwise known as our dirt patch) has looked like a homeless person lived in it for weeks – much to Justin’s dismay, while these girls perfected their fort. (with some help from other friends). Please notice the shelves for towels and the plants for decoration. They had a bathroom for a while until I in a flash of understanding pointed out that they couldn’t really use the bathroom or it would really start to stink (not to mention they are outside in full view of everyone). The bathroom disappeared after that and Anna sheepishly confessed that they had been using it… silly girls. We took the fort down last week and I have to say I miss it.
Mother of Six
Last year my amazing parents decided to take each of their kids on a trip. So last September Justin and I got to take an unforgettable trip to Florence and Rome, see the historical sites and spend some quality time with my parents. While we were gone my sisters, friends, aunt and Justin’s parents watched our kids. This last week was payback time. My next sister, Amy and her husband took off for Dubai and Saudi Arabia for 2 weeks. My kids were over the moon excited to have their cousins stay for a week. We picked them up in Vegas on Friday afternoon and drove straight to Josh’s pinewood derby. And then it rained and rained and rained. I had fun plans of going to the sand dunes, to the park, building a clubhouse, the red cliffs….so we had to readjust a little bit.
Saturday I decided to take advantage of having Justin around and we headed to Jumping Jacks and Penguins of Madagascar.
Excuse all the blurry cell phone pictures. The last one is my favorite. All the parents trying to take cell phone pictures of their kids.
Some energy expended we headed to the movies that afternoon and GASP bought popcorn. My kids were kind of stoked since I NEVER buy treats at the movies. It’s just so dang expensive, but this was a special occasion. The rest of the week we got creative.
We took a trip to Michaels and got some crafts going for the big kids while the little ones snoozed. Or in Josh’s case a magic kit. He used to be my one that would check out every craft book from the library and suddenly he’s too big. tear..
We went to the library and played leap frog (not me, I just demonstrated the leap frog thing).
We just gave up and played in the rain. My personal favorite was monkey in the middle in the rain. They were so excited to be outside and so happy. Becca just wanted to be the monkey so everyone was happy.
I learned something about these two… they are TERRIFIED of dogs. Our neighbors dog got out while we were playing outside. Max excitedly runs up to it. Becca excitedly runs up me screaming hysterically. I got Becca and Kelsie inside while trying to get the dog to go home. Unfortunately I hadn’t closed the garage door and the dog got in the house. I hear screams from inside. Becca and Kelsie are on the back of the chair as high as they can get while the dog runs around them barking. I didn’t even try to hide the fact that I was completely laughing at those two cute girls. They refused to get off of the chair for at least an hour.
Finally the last day was sunny. We went on Art Around the Corner’s Statue Scavenger hunt.
And a picnic in town square. It was chilly but worth it. And this is how you end a walk with two three year olds at nap time.
Love these cousins so so much!
Justin was very tired by the end:)