The Beach

I mean come on! How stinking cute can one girl be??!!

Don't you love this suit?! Thanks Ney Ney for starting the girl out on the right track fashion wise. Goodness knows her mom can't be counted on for that.

(By the way - if you're a beach lover, you might want to skip this section, it'll be a real downer. :-)

We don't get to the beach much. I HATE it! Ok, I don't hate it. I definitely don't hate the ocean, I love that it's there, I love the cool ocean breeze that blows all the time here, I love looking at it - I just hate the sand. And I mean really hate it. It starts with packing up for the beach, it's such an ordeal - agh! And then trying to picnic there, sand everywhere, sand sandwiches, trying to keep it out of Clare's mouth, last time we were there she wouldn't stop sucking on sand covered carrots. Then there's making sure Shea, when he's brave enough to venture to the water doesn't get taken by the undertow and trying to keep all our extremely pale bodies sunburn free. It's exhausting. And then I get home and I have a sandy car, sandy junk everywhere, sandy kids who track all that sand in. You have to bathe everyone right away and re-clean the house and the car, do more laundry... Agh. I swear, I can only muster up the energy for it rarely. But they have such fun...



I don't know what other moms do because they really, really, and I mean REALLY love their kids, but I take mine to the beach. :-)

It's all fun and games until someone starts puking.

Ah. Sick again. This time it's sweet little Shea and he's puking his guts out. (I know, weren't you dying to know that!) Maybe it was yesterday's lunch?:
Yup! That's crickets and orzo with red peppers and excited as he looks here, we both chickened out. :-)


Maybe it was just too much fun in one weekend!! We did a marathon Disneyland day. Usually when we head down by ourselves on a weekday we just stay 3 or 4 hours, but we stayed 9 hours on Friday. Our passes are blocked out for the summer here soon so we have to squeeze out every possible hour - that and we went on Small World for the first time in over a year and they loved it so much we had to keep riding it over and over and over again. :-)

Then, back to the above pics. Yesterday we went to the Bug Fair at the Natural History Museum. Tons of fun. We held and petted tarantulas:

me and Rosie (yes! I held a tarantula! Crazy!)

giant African millipedes,

huge stick bugs

and tons of other creepy crawlies. The highlight was the bug chef who prepared this delicacy for us. I wanted to leave before samples were handed out b/c Clare was so tired and hungry and hot, but Shea would not go before he got his chance to eat a bug. And, well, yep, as previously mentioned, after all the tears to stay, we both chickened out when it came time to actually eat. Probably best considering all the throwing up that ensued when we got home, I can only imagine cricket orzo added to the mix. UGGH!!!

What goes through a boy's mind?

When he decides that the appropriate place for one of his dinner peas is his ear?????

Is it that it's just too perfect a fit to resist? Or that the color goes great with his green t-shirt? Does he think it'll improve his hearing? Did they taste like ear wax to start with? Was it just boredom?? I guess I'll never know.

(He knows, by the way, definitively now, that his ears are NOT the appropriate place for peas!)

Pirate Parrrrty!

Ahoy Mateys ~
Shea turned 4 this week and we had a big ole pirate bash. Complete with:

~All his friends!
(Next year I'm so going with the, you get one friend per year, you know, 5 years old, 5 friends - we had a blast this year, but it was a little chaotic!)

~A big pirate ship birthday cake!
(I hate that cake - that cake and I, we are NOT friends. It's just too disappointing to work for 8 hours and have it not turn out how you wanted. Stinkin' perfectionism!! Although, I will say, maybe, maybe it was worth it for the looks on their faces. How cute are they, tongues hanging out and everything?)
~A treasure hunt!
(Super fun, that I'd do again in a second.)

~Real pirates!
(Aka uninvited neighborhood grandmas stealing our party candy and party favors. I kid you not!! One grandma was stealing pirate gummies out of the bowl when she thought Chris wasn't looking. And another grandma (if you live between 3161 and 3191, you SO know who I'm talking about!) was walking around the playground waiting for kids to momentarily abandon their pirate gear,
which she was then taking and hiding under her coat!)

~And we can't forget the loads of awesome new birthday presents that Shea can't stop playing with.

Thanks so much everyone for making his day AMAZING!!!!!

That was some good ocean!

Just a boy and his best friend - laughin' 'bout pirate stuff. You wouldn't understand. :-)

(Thanks Morgs and Karly for the pics!)

Coloring

I know lots of kids love to color lying down,
but...

...there's got to be a more efficient way. :-)
I don't know why she loves this - every single time she gets a hold of a piece of paper and pen, she lays down on her back and colors away.