Happy Thursday.

Happy Easter Early!

Happy Easter! How cute are they? I love them so!

Ryan, Wayne & Craig

What do these three have in common?

By the end of March I will have seen them all at live tapings of their shows! How fun!! Have I said lately how much I love SoCal?!
Who doesn't love Idol? Ok, Chris doesn't, but I do - and have for years, although I wouldn't have been watching this season if it weren't for Mom and Dee who were watching while we were up in Pismo. So, happily, I was watching this season and then Laura called and invited me to a taping. It was so fun to see them sing live! I feel so invested in them now, go Crystal!

And then Laura got tickets to the new, Let's Make a Deal. That was so much fun. Like Price is Right but with costumes. Of course Lori, Laura and I didn't get picked, but we had awesome seats, thanks to our places in line 20, 21, 22 and/or our cute, creative costumes. We were the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. I still don't know what date our episode airs (I'll post when I know), but we were right behind Wayne the whole show, so you'll see us a lot.
And Chris loves Craig Ferguson so I got tickets to his show for date night this week. Craig Ferguson is super funny and we're excited to go out together, alone!

T-Ball!

I can't believe we're here already. My baby is old enough for organized sports. Seriously????
But how cute does he look in his uniform?
Adorable!!
Team cheer and let's go get 'em! (Hey coach dad! How fun is this?!)

Cute #8 first in the line up:
In the field - which, we discovered, for Shea means standing there either staring at the dirt, or full on getting down and playing in it. I didn't get a picture of that one, but I'm sure he'll do it again next week too. :-) It was pretty embarrassing announcing to all the parents that yes, it was my kid playing in the dirt while the ball sails over his head.

Ok, to be fair, the ball never sailed over his head. It almost never made it past the pitcher as all 12 (well, 11, since I can't count Shea since he was playing in the dirt) boys would rush it as soon as it hit the ground. It was so cute, they were like magnets to the ball! I need to get video of it next week.

Getting ready to bat:
Shea was the last batter for his second at bat, which in T-ball rules means that when he hit the ball all the runners run home a.k.a. home run for Shea! He was super excited!
So it was hot and long for these little guys, but they all had fun and are pumped for next week!
Only grandma and grandpa are required to watch the home run: :-)

Green Day

We love it! Thanks to the Irish in Chris, Saint Patty's is always a big day at our house. This year we partied with our friends! Thanks for celebrating with us guys. :-)

We decorated:
We crafted:

We ate:


We decorated cookies:

We gave away gold!:
Hope your St. Patty's Day was as fun as ours!!

A daily conversation...

Every day for the past six months, sometimes more than once in a day, Clare and I have had the following conversation WORD FOR WORD after she hits someone:

Me: Clare, did you hit _______?
Clare: Yeah.
Me: Is hitting good or bad?
Clare: Goot! (most of her d's come out as t's)
Me: No, hitting is bad!
Clare (with comically exaggerated surprised/interrogative intonation): Eess baaattt????
Me: Yes, it's bad. No hitting.
Clare: Okay, datty.

5 minutes later

Me: Clare, did you just hit _______ again?!?

I'm thinking it's become a game to her.

Oh Vera

How I love your bags!
My first was given to me by my sweet friend Meg when Shea was born, who knows about all things good and expensive. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven - ok, he's a boy, but his diaper bag is all about me! Pink and orange paisley??!! What's not to lluurrve?!!
And then I moved to LA and found a Vera STORE! Who knew? And I bought a purse. I couldn't quite get away from the pink paisley, but this one had a little yellow, and purple and it was perfectly me! I saved up, paid full price and never looked back.
Then, while on vacation last month, we walked past a store in Solvang that had all their Vera 50% off!! All of it!!!! I was in heaven. I picked up this gorgeous little guy, "Imperial Toile." A beautiful chocolate brown with pink edging. Love. It.
Even Clare is in on my obsession. (Ok, her's isn't really Vera, but hey, if she made them for little girls, it would be!)
My mom thinks there's something wrong with me that I want a paisley, quilted handbag and not something leather with studs and buckles. She thinks Vera is strictly for the 65+ crowd. I couldn't disagree more! Look at all that cuteness!!
This sassy little number is what I've got my eye on next. It's called the cha cha. Now I just have to convince Chris of my "need." :-)

Hair

Have I said before how happy I am to have a little girl's hair to do??? SOOOOO HAPPY!! Here are a few of our recent experiments. And thanks always Lauren for the inspiration. (Ok, inspiration nothing, I just copy her!! :-)

Happy Valentine's Hair. She loves it!

Crisscrossy braids and messy buns. (My favorite!!) She doesn't love it! (No, she always loves her pretty hair, but she was sick and mad that I was making her sit there.)

Loves!!

Clare LOVES babies. My little sister's darling five month old, Makell got all the loves she could stand and then some from Clare while we were there. I wish they lived close. Clare wanted to do everything for the baby including feeding her and washing her bottles. Thanks Jaimee for being so sweet to her and letting her help!


And grandma and grandpa. We love you so. So much more than we can say, so we'll just try to show it in loves!

A U.E.

Or Unplanned Event as my grandpa calls them. He says you can't take a vacation without one. I concur. Here's a doozie...

While we were in Pismo we decided to go play on their famous sand dunes. So we head out to the beach. You stop at this booth where you pay $5 and the CA Parks Dept. people tell you to drive your car out onto the sand. Yes, drive your car out onto the sand! Oh, and stay on the hard packed sand they say. At this point it was a good thing my dad was driving my van because I never would have done it - way too chicken! And if Chris had been with us, we never would have done it - way too careful! But hey grandpa, he's up for adventure so onto the sand we drive.
Freaky is all I have to say. Maybe if you don't own the car it's cool, but for me it was freaky. Here we are following my aunt and uncle and then parked on the beach at the dunes.

So we had a rolicking good time at the dunes. We rolled, we summersaulted, we layed. We also ate it, got it stuck in our eyes and had it in every revice but hey!



And then we headed back. And then we got stuck.
Super stuck. We were not going anywhere!! What they hadn't warned us about when we paid our $5 was that the tide was going to come in. I'm not a beach bum, I didn't think about that!!! So on the way back to the road there was almost no hard packed sand left, the water had covered it all. So as my dad explained it his choice was water or the soft sand and the soft sand seemed the safest option. Ok, I definitely agreed with him there. So what to do? We're standing around deciding if we should try to dig, or if we should ask a passerby for help. We're laughing a lot and I'm freaking out a bit. And then a Parks Dept. truck pulls up. The lady turns out to be soooooo nice, but she rushes up to us and says, you know that the tide will be past your car in 40 minutes right?! WHAT!!! WHAT???!!!! WHAT??!! We have less than 30 minutes to get it moved or it will be floating out to sea. (And yes, she said it happens every week. Really?! Really??) Anyway, Holy Crap! So all of our slight panic turns into major panic and we call the tow number she gave us. She assured us they could be there in 5 minutes but 25 (horrific) minutes later they finally arrive.
I didn't get a good shot of the water, but it was under the back wheel by the time they got there and got us hooked up:


So while we were waiting, these two other cars got stuck too.

And these local punks were taking bets on who was going to wash out to sea first. I guess that's what you do for fun on a chilly Friday if you're from Pismo beach. :-)
The view from the van as the tow is pulling us to safety.

The relief on my face as they did so!!
Thanks for such an eventful vacation dad!!!