Lists with Friends 2014

My Internet and real life friend, Elizabeth wanted to get the old scrapbook gang together and came up with a fun idea of doing lists. You can make a list of anything you want, even your grocery list. Pretty easy, right up my alley. Right? So here goes nothing. I'm going to try and post a list once a week. Seeing as it's been almost a year since my last blog update, it can't hurt. I present to you, my first list. Ta-da! Things I need to do: 1. Relax, too much detail to go into here. Trust me, I need to relax. 2. Get outside. Seriously, it's a gorgeous day here in So. Cal. 3. Figure out what's for dinner. 4. Finish taking the Christmas decorations down. 5. Vacuum. Boring! I hate to do it, plus the electrical here is a guessing game. I can't remember what I can unplug to plug in the vacuum. I really don't need to blow another fuse. 6. Plan a birthday get together for my new teenager and my soon-to-be 6 year old. 7. Think about where to take my parents for their 50th anniversary. 8. Finish Mindy Kaling's book, "Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?" 9. Watch the new Project Runway tonight. Anyone else watching the all stars? 10. Write my first list. Done!

Any "May" a Beautiful Change

Wow, it's already May? It is embarrassing how I have let this blog go. A little while ago, my friend Elizabeth emailed me about her sister Katherine's new book, Any Day a Beautiful Change. I'm horrible at paraphrasing but here goes: There is a lot of excitement surrounding her book, her first! And they were inviting people to blog about a beautiful change that has occurred in their own life and share that with everyone by linking it up over at Katherine's blog. Well, truthfully I didn't give it a whole lot of thought. You'll understand why in a minute. I have read the responses posted so far, and all are so good and compelling in their own way. I've thought briefly about writing about becoming a mom, and it's too much to put into words for me right now. I thought about sharing our homeschooling journey, and that's a tough one. It is hard for me to write about that in a way that people understand. Those were two ideas I had, but I kept tossing them aside. I really wanted to write something for Katherine. I've had the pleasure of meeting Katherine, twice! We have daughters born pretty darn close to each other, and truth be told I think about her Juliette when we celebrate Audrey's birthday every January. So what could I write about? As I sit on the computer and look around at the living room, my eyes don't know where to go. There is chaos everywhere. Not the normal chaos of having 3 kids at home, either. We are moving. I'm packing up our home. Our first official home, the one that we brought our babies home too, the one that is a hop, skip and a jump from my sister's house. Our house that holds my beautiful built in book shelves, oh how I love those bookshelves This doesn't sound like a beautiful change, and it certainly isn't right now. Far from it. But, I know that it will be. I don't know when, and I don't know how. I just know. We need more room. It's as simple as that. Robert needs a space to work from that isn't the dining room table. So we are taking a huge leap of faith and will sell this house, to buy another one. The good news is that we are staying in the same city, and while I won't be within walking distance to my sister, it will be a short drive. Long live beautiful changes!

You can get to Katherine's blog here

Hello again...

Happy belated Halloween. I don't know what possessed me, but I was looking through this old blog and I missed it. I simply just missed it. So I decided to dust it off and post. I hope you are sitting down. We had some glorious rain this morning, I was hoping it would continue all day long but that didn't happen.

Here are some photos that I love for reasons you will understand.

Charlie requested the Purple Dinosaur when he was in pre-school. Look at him holding his hands up out of nervousness and look at Audrey below doing almost the same thing.

My mom added some purple grosgrain ribbon at the tail, which made it easy to carry and a flowery patch on the tail from when Charlie wore it and it dragged on the ground. Simple and easy and as good as new!
"The brothers", as Audrey calls them were thrilled to go watch her little Halloween parade. So were Grammie, Papa and auntie.


Happy November!

Easter

Hope you had a lovely Easter.

Legoland!

We went to Legoland yesterday with some families from our school group. One of the moms in the group called Legoland, and I don't know how she did it but she finagled a great price for us. It was busy, it is spring break, after all. Despite that, you know we had a good time. Even with the crowds, the sun that would pop up peridically and the long, long lines. We cannot or will not be deterred! Here are some photos. I can only take credit for the ones that Robert is not in, otherwise they were all taken by him. The park closed at six and by then, it really was time to go. We had dinner in downtown Carlsbad at a great Mexican restaurant and a nice drive home that wasn't filled with traffic. All in all, a very good day.

Welcome! Of course it is made entirely of Legos.

A little preview of the much anticipated, Star Wars Miniland...

Audrey's first ride!

Every bit as cool as it looked...

Oh Chewie...

Don't let that smile fool you. She didn't know whether to be scared or not. Either way, she LOVED it.

Everyone loved this one...

Yay for Bob the Builder!

Aquazone fun...

Mapping out our next adventure...

True love...

Good acting boys, I'm sure everyone will believe it is cold...

CA history day

Hello! Still here, I just like to keep you guessing. :) Just kidding. We had a great December and a really nice January too. Maybe I will get on the ball and post some pics. from last month. After all, it was a big deal around here. Audrey turned 3! And in December, Harrison turned 10! Double digits. We had a lot of fun on his birthday, we took a tour of a local airport with his friends. But for now, I am posting pictures from yesterday. We went out to Orange to the Irvine Ranch Park. It was a beautiful day, I am glad it was yesterday and not today. Today it is raining lightly. The park put on a California History Day for 4th graders complete with a train ride, a gold mine, panning for gold and a visit to a miner's camp. We all went and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We met up with a few families from our school group and went on our tour with them. Here are some photos. Enjoy!

flop

Well that December daily(ish) business sure was a flop, wasn't it? I had great intentions, yes I did. I have a computer full of photos just waiting for captions. So what happened? I wish I knew.

But today was definitely worthy of a post. Not just because it is 1/11/11, well that and it happens to be my parent's anniversary. :)Happy anniversary mom and dad.