Photo dump!

Yes,I know it's been FOREVER since I posted....we were super busy with camping toward the end of August...then school started (and kids are in two different schools now)... and I have been teaching yoga a lot. All that equals very little time to blog!

So in an effort to catch up, I am going to dump a bunch of photos in the post and let them speak for themselves! (click on any photo to embiggen)

Camping in Big Sur with our good friends:

Stopping on Highway 1 to take a sunset photo

sun setting in the fog

kids on the big sur river by our campsite

Monkey Boy on the rope swing

Little Man and his pal on the floatie

Monkey Boy was fascinated by the water skaters and caught a bunch!

The kids loved jumping off this log into a pool

We camped at Big Sur for three days and then headed up the coast to Monterey, where we got to visit Cannery Row and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

MB said his favorite fish were the sharks, and LM liked the sunfish the best.
They both enjoyed petting the batrays, too.

We got home just in time for Labor Day weekend, then it was back to school!

How did they get so big?!


LM walking to school...


Thumbs up for his new classroom


MB as a first grader!


walking into his new school...

We are finally settling into the new school year routine so hopefully I will have more time to post. There has been a lot going on in our house besides camping and school....!

wordless wednesday: annual strawberry picking trip

complete set here

first words

Little Man's first written words
"cat"
"hat"

telescope

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love thursday

loving-

-the call of "trash truck! trash truck!" every Thursday morning as Monkey Boy and Little Man climb up onto the top bunk to look out the window as said vehicle makes its way around our cul-de-sac

-coming out one morning and seeing this:

evidently, LM was having a 'sleepover' & MB got out his own blanket/pillow to imitate big brother.

-how Monkey Boy can pronounce lots of words really well, but still calls LM "ba-wai" (for 'brother')

-insulated coffee mugs- so I can make coffee in the AM and still drink it hot two hours later (because any mom knows how difficult it is to actually get a cup of warm coffee)

-curbside-to-go at the local restuarant (where they bring the food to your car & you don't have to get out when picking up a to-go order)

-Monkey Boy blowing kisses & laughing when I 'catch' them

-toddler toes

-concentration:

-how Little Man has to read a story out of his children's bible every night, then take the bible up into his bed with him. He sleeps with it next to his pillow!

-how Monkey Boy sees trains everywhere (he even pointed at this screen on my laptop and claimed there was a train on it)

what are you loving this Thursday?

how a grumpy monkey wakes up

love thursday

loving-


this quote:
"Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michaelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children. " Pablo Casals


-the feel of freshly washed quilting fabrics out of the dryer; folding them just so and sliding them into place in the stash:

-new crafty fun:

-chocolate

-peanut butter n chocolate

-soaking in the bath with one of these

-seeing Little Man in the preschool newsletter

-crafty fingers:

what are you loving this Thursday?

one of these is not like the other

The Dearest on the left, Monkey Boy on the right. Hmm....is there some sort of family resemblance going on?

quilt-y potential and a visit with granny

Material Possessions, a local quilt shop, has a Superbowl weekend sale every year. They mark all fabric 20% off, then have a special selection of fabrics that are $3 & $4 a yard. This sale is usually controlled chaos- lots of ladies wearing appliqued sweatshirts jostling each other to browse the special selection fabrics. It all starts when the shop opens at 10am on Saturday and I heard that the line to get in the door was at least half a block long this year.

Luckily I didn't show up till 10:30am...so I was able to walk in and the whole selection/cutting/paying process was actually fairly painless. I was looking for some fabric for a train quilt I want to make for Monkey Boy. I found all of these in the $4/yd pile:

They might not all be used, but at $4/yd, I figured I could always make something else out of them if they didn't end up in the quilt.

Then I spotted some gorgeous 30's reproduction fabrics also at $4/yd. I wandered around some more and look at what I came up with:

The top four fabrics were $4/yd and the bottom one was 20% off $7/yd. I am seriously thinking of making a quilt out of these because I love the red and blue so much.

These will hopefully turn into a lovely chenille & patchwork scarf (similar to the one in Denise Schmidt's quilt book):

And somehow I couldn't pass up this sweet color combination:

day 35 of 365

After shouldering my way out of the store (it was like being a salmon fighting its way upstream!), I met with the Dearest and my Mom for lunch with the small men. My Mom loves hanging out with them, and she spoils them rotten (isn't that what grannies are for?). Just a couple of images of the afternoon:

(more photos here if you're interested)

All in all, a great way to spend a lovely Saturday!

the right time of year to visit D-Land

It has been raining for the past couple of days and it looked like rain again this morning. So what did we do? We played hooky from school and work and went to Disneyland, because we locals know that crappy weather = the shortest lines & best times.

Today could not have been more perfect. First, the monorail (or "Spencer train" as Monkey Boy calls it) was finally operating again. So the small men were quite happy and so were the Dearest and I since that means we don't have to walk all the way thru Downtown Disney, or put up with the lines at the entrance. Woot!

The park was so empty that we basically walked onto every ride. The most we waited was about 10 minutes. Plus the employees/cast members were really easy going today. There was a lot of "Oh, you don't have get to get off when we're done. Go ahead and go again." The musical bands were out in force, too. I think we counted three bands in one circuit of Main Street!

Little Man was very interested in going on all the boat-ish rides: the ferry to Tom Sawyer's island was a hit. We spent quite some time on TSI, running over the bridges and into the caves. (LM wanted to know if the caves were haunted. When I assured him that they weren't, he was finally willing to go in.) Then Monkey Boy and LM saw the big Mark Twain steampship and wanted to go on that.

Because they weren't at all busy, we were able to go up to the wheelhouse! The small men were super excited to be '' the way up high". I think Monkey Boy's day was made when he was allowed to pull the whistle. Check out the short video clip:

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We hit a couple of more rides after that and then headed on home as it was getting late. We're already hoping for more gray and gloomy weather soon so we can go back in the next week or two.

And for this week's love thursday, may I present the photo edition:


::brothers::concentration::joy::


What are you loving this week?

obesssion

day 30 of 365

how to cause and cure a migraine

Little Man is nearly five and somehow we have managed to prevent him from visiting Hell On Earth (aka Chuck E. Cheese). He's occasionally seen commercials about HOE/CEC, and now that he's in preschool some of his friends have told him about it. In the past few months he has asked several times if we could go to HOE/CEC for lunch so he can play games. I've always told him no, mostly because my one visit to HOE/CEC many years ago gave me an almost instant headache. I remember the place as being very dark, dingy, loud and dirty. So my motivation to go inside the local HOE/CEC was minimal.

But then we received a couple of birthday invites from some children in Little Man's preschool class. Both of them were for parties at HOE/CEC...one on Saturday (today) and one on Monday. Luckily my neighbor's daughter is in the same class so she was also invited, making it easy for us to swap watching the kids at the party. I took Little Man and Blondie to the party today, and my neighbor will take them on Monday.

I had braced myself for a repeat of my last HOE/CEC experience (this time including the fun of running after Monkey Boy, Little Man and Blondie). However, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. The local HOE/CEC is actually very clean, well lit and has a huge bank of windows to let in lots of natural light. They had all kind of arcade games, including skee ball (remember that?):

And of course Monkey Boy loooooved the train/trolley (he probably spent 25 tokens just on this ride):

While Little Man greatly enjoyed this contraption:

All in all, the experience wasn't as bad I thought it was going to be. Unfortunately after about half an hour I started getting a nasty headache. By the time we left, I had a nice little souvenir: a migraine. ugh

Luckily the boys crashed when we got home and I was able to take a short nap. When the Dearest arrived home from his workout, we decided to head to our favorite Shabu Shabu restaurant for dinner so I wouldn't have to cook.

Shabu Shabu is a lot of fun: they give you a big plate of very thinly sliced meat, another big plate of raw veggies and a pot of hot water. You swish the veggies and meat around in the water to cook them, dip them in ponzu sauce and eat up.

day 27 of 365

The small men always love Shabu Shabu- even if they don't get to do any swishing themselves. Tonight Little Man was putting pieces of carrot on his chopsticks and "warming" them over the pot like he was roasting marshmallows.

Monkey Boy's favorite part of the meal is the 'ndoodless' or noodles. He's gotten pretty good at slurping them up:



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The Shabu Shabu was good enough to cure my migraine and I'm feeling ever so much better now. :) Off to bed, because tomorrow I'm doing a yarn crawl with the lovely Ms. Chelle. Maybe I'll even take some photos (ya think?).

bubble-licious

day 23 of 365

hang in there

just a fyi- I'm wrestling with Blogger beta, which doesn't seem to like the changes I made to my previous template. I also tried installing Haloscan for comments, but now I can't get to any of the archived comments in Blogger.

*bangs head on desk*

Can y'all help a girl out and leave me a comment to make sure this damn thing is working? Does the blog layout look alright? I have Firefox and just want to make sure that all my tinkering didn't totally screw up the html for other browsers.

thank you much and we'll return you to your regularly scheduled program asap.

ps: LittleMan wanted me to 'put this on the computer', so here it is:

#21 of 365

ETA: Haloscan has been disabled until they figure out a way to install onto Blogger Beta without removing the exisiting comments.

sometimes the first cut isn't the cruelest

Yesterday I took MonkeyBoy to have his hair cut for the first time. The Dearest has been after me (in a nice way) to do it, but I've been resisting. LittleMan got his first hair cut when he was only 18 mos. old, but he had very straight, fine hair that was growing out all spikey on his head. Since MB's hair is so curly, it was hard to see how long it was growing till just recently.

We've had super low humidity (along with record near freezing temps) for the past week, resulting in some crazy MonkeyBoy hair:

He kept running around, pushing his hair out of his eyes and saying "hair-cut? hair-cut?". The other day my neighbor (who has 3 girls) offered me a barrette to hold MB's back. We had a good laugh over that one, but I realized that he really did need a trim at least.

So off to the local kids' salon we went. MB did *great*. He's seen big brother get several haircuts, so MB was excited that it was finally his turn. He really enjoyed sitting in the car/chair, but once the cutting started he wasn't so sure about the whole thing. No tears, just some very concerned faces:

I told the stylist that I didn't want all the curls taken off. Just a trim to neaten things up. She seemed to know exactly what I was talking about and we're all happy with the finished product:

Stilly my curly-top...still my little baby!