Central Coast

My mom and dad took us up the Central Coast for a week in Feb. We had such a blast! We really missed our Daddy, but he got so much done without us and we got totally spoiled by Grandma and Grandpa.
Being relatively new to California, I had no idea what the Central Coast was like. ITS SO BEAUTIFUL! We stayed in Pismo Beach and got to do so many fun things...

We played at the beach with our cousins, chased the waves and dug for treasures in the sand.

Hee hee.
We checked out the monarch butterfly park
(Uncle Matt, you got the best photo!)

We got to eat at the famous Cracked Crab! (Oh. my. delicious!)



We spent an afternoon with the elephant seals. They are so ugly! But you could sit there forever and watch them. (And no, they're not dead!)

We visited the Madonna Inn. Everything is pink! The paint, the cakes, the napkins, the sugar (seriously!) the benches and every last bit of the decor. I do not have a photo (thank goodness) of the giant waterfall urinal in the men's room. But I'm pretty sure peeing in a waterfall with grandpa was the highlight of Shea's trip.


We went to Solvang. It's so cute! We shopped, we tasted every Danish pastry in sight, I found a new Vera Bradley purse for 50% off! And... I bought my aebleskiver pan! I sense a party coming on!

We encouraged babies and kids to play with weapons. :-)
The toy bow is now Shea's favorite toy.

And all the sudden we realized that my sister's baby had grabbed the toy bowie knife. It made a great chew toy, but looked so freaky we had to take pictures
I love her "I will get you" face in this one. :-)

The village

I know I've bragged before about what a dream this phase of our lives has been. A DREAM! I love it here. I love SoCal. I love the weather, I love, love, love being at home with my babies. I love my job. I love our ward. I love my calling. I love that Chris gets to be home with us a lot. I love being able to do all the fun SoCal things, Disneyland, the jewelry district, the museums, the beach (even though I secretly hate the beach) the food, etc. etc. etc. There's so much fun stuff to do here. It never gets old. But what I really really really really really love is the Village. Or rather the people in the village. I love that at least twice a day I can walk directly outside my door and find this:
5-10 of my favorite women on the planet and all their kids. I am in heaven and my kids are in heaven! What will I do when we don't have this?

I love these women. Jaime and Lauren are the most service-oriented, loving, thoughtful, kind women I know. They babysit my kids, they make us dinner when we're sick or stressed, they always have the ingredients that I forgot to get from the grocery store, they even anticipate my needs. Before I even started thinking about Clare's birthday, Jaime and Tamara brought me their cupcake books and Lauren called from a good Albertsons sale to see what cake mix I would want and then bought it and brought it to me! They tell me about good sales, they share shipping charges with me, they always let me vent and always have good suggestions for everything!!

I love you!! I love it here, I never want to leave. Washers and dryers are overrated. :-)

Happy Birthday Clare!

Clare is so so sooooo 2! She knows exactly what she wants and how to get it - and watch out if she doesn't!! She's also beautiful, funny, sassy, smart, sweet, cuddly and we ADORE her.

Happy birthday my beautiful girl!!!

Here she is in all her "I'm the princess today" glory!
Her garden party:
(So much easier than a cake - I might do cupcakes every year!)
Grandma! We could not have survived this week without you!! It was so busy and you were a lifesaver. Thank you so so much for all your help!! We were so so so so glad you could be there for her b-day. And Aunt DeeDee coming was the icing on the cake! In Clare's own words, "It's so fun!!!"
Getting instructions on blowing out the candle. (Which she apparently didn't follow very well, so thanks Bentley for the help!!)

Partying. (Sorry moms, for the green frosting that you saw repeatedly over the next few days! Hee hee.)



Giving loves!
The happy girl with new baby Molly when it was all over. I think that smile says it was a successful day!
Happy Birthday Clarey. We love you!

Calling Grandpa

Clare spends, I don't know, 18 hours a week on the phone with her Grandpa. She really, really loves her grandpa. "I call bampa" is something we hear whenever anything cool, exciting, sad, happy or even just a little bit eventful happens in her life. I think it could be because of this:
She spent most of the first two weeks of her life, asleep on grandpa's chest. So she does talk to grandpa a lot, but most of the hours she spends on the "phone" she's actually not on a phone at all. In fact, we've discovered that almost ANYTHING will double as a phone for her. Some of my favorites:
TV remote controls, calculators, car keys (w/ buttons of course) the car stereo remote, legos, the thermometer, a toy fart machine, finger nail clippers, blocks, assorted kitchen utensils, my hair pick, her brush, the camera, a fat marker, my lipstick and lately any scrap of paper. I know, she's creative. :-) I've been trying to get pictures lately of her various conversations with grandpa. Here are a few:

Scrap of paper~

Program from a baptism~
Calculator~
Thermometer~
Remote~
Fart machine :-)~
What will Clare do when you're here grandpa? Who will she call??? :-) We love you!

Afternoon Snacks II

This week's completely unhealthy snack was not Chris' fault this time. Shea saw some character on the Disney channel making smores - and wanted desperately to try them. So we did! Clare picked hers apart and just ate the chocolate (a girl after my own heart) but overall they were a sticky, yummy HIT!

Rainy Days

Are so much fun!! Look at those faces! That's pure joy!
We puddle jumped to our hearts' content yesterday.
It was a little hard for mommy, who's not a fan of doing extra loads of laundry, but I took Jaime's advise and just let them be kids! It was so so worth it, they had so much fun! Clare kept telling daddy later on, I jump puddles!!! We were soaked to our waists, I've got a whole extra load of laundry and I'll do it again tomorrow!!!!
Happy SoCal rainy days!

Superhero II

We added a mask to our superhero outfit. Yeah, he thinks he'd bad! :-)

Cool homework assignment

One of Shea's homework assignments this week was to find his favorite books, spread them all around him and take a picture. It warmed my heart when we were pulling out his favorite books and we had about 30! I made him put some back so we could fit them all in the picture, but I LOVE that my kids are readers and love books as much as I do!!! :-)

Afternoon Snacks

For us an afternoon snack is usually some nuts, a banana, some fruit snacks, pretzels, edamame, fishies, yogurt or something like that. This semester Chris is home on Thursdays. I think it's definitely going to be the kids favorite day of the week as this is daddy's idea of afternoon snacks:



They're only a tiny bit excited! :-)

"What is..."

Occasionally Shea still takes a nap. And when he does he gets to stay up a little later. Yesterday he napped and last night he got to stay up with mom and dad and watch Jeopardy. One thing Chris and I love to do together before we go our separate ways for the evening to work. Last night Shea was killing us. He kept hollering out answers before the contestants could answer, the problem was, his answers had nothing to do with the questions or the categories. Some of my favorites from last night were: "What is a tree!" "What is an elephant!" "What are dinosaurs!" We tried to explain how it all works, but then gave up, because his "answers" and enthusiasm for the whole game was too much fun!
Our kid is cool. :-)