Easter 2008

We had a fun Easter this year. A playgroup Easter party at the park, a helicopter Easter egg drop/hunt, and an awesome church service on Sunday to celebrate the life we have because of what happened the weekend of Easter. Here are a few pics from the events.

Carson surprised us so much by wanting to stand next to the Easter bunny for a picture. He had no reservations whatsoever and was thrilled to give a good smile and hug the bunny. It cracked us up so much, and he was so proud of himself and thought it was so fun. He kept saying how soft he was. When we got in the car he said to us, "I wasn't quite sure what smile I was going to do when I got my picture with the bunny, but I decided to do this one..." and then he showed us which one he decided to do. It was so funny.

We made hot cross buns this year, it was Carson's idea and they were pretty yummy.

Our ham, spinach, cheese croissant strata

Fruit Pizza

Livi loves to blow bubbles!!!

HAPPY EASTER!

A New Polka Dotted Project

I've been finding some great links off of How About Orange's blog to cute and easy projects. I've been wanting to learn to sew something new besides the purses I make for the Christmas boutiques, so when I found this link, I was excited....it looked easy enough to follow the directions, and the pictures she had of ones she made were SO cute. So I gave it a shot. I didn't want to buy material for my first one in case I totally messed it up, so I found some scraps in my closet...an old sheet that was all frayed on the edges, but good enough in the middle for what I needed it for, and then some left over polka-dotted fabric from when we recovered our dining room chairs.

It was fun to make and I like how it turned out. I'm excited to try it again with different fabric!

Last Year's Goals (2007)

I realize it's almost a quarter of the way into 2008, but I wanted to list on my blog the goals I had for 2007. I had this list hanging inside the medicine cabinet in our bathroom, so I could look at it every day.

For the record, I am not a goal person. Never have been. But last year I felt very inspired for about 10 minutes and these 10 goals came to me one after another, so I grabbed some paper and wrote them all down. Once I got to 10, nothing else came. It really was kind of funny the way it happened, but I'm so glad it did, because it was really fun to have that list to keep looking at and to have things to look forward to try to accomplish. Out of 10 goals, I achieved 8 1/2. I feel pretty good about it.

So here they are (or were):

1. Read 5 Books (non-children's types) - didn't accomplish - I maybe read 1 1/2. Sad but true. This year will be different!

2. Finish Livi's first year scrapbook - Yes! It was so fun, and I'm glad I did it. I started with hers because it was freshest in my memory.

3. Start and Finish Carson's first year scrapbook - Yes! Fun as well, now I need to figure out what to do with all the other pictures we have from the last 4 1/2 years (since we bought our digital camera). May be a goal for this year.

4. Join a couple's small group - Yes! It was only for a 7 week study, but we did it!

5. Buy a tuning fork (actually I wrote down pitch fork, but then crossed it out when I realized that's not what I'd need to tune the guitar, that would come in more handy if I were a farmer!) and relearn how to play my guitar - some kids songs, worship songs and Christmas songs. - This was a 2-part goal...and thanks to Jason for buying me a tuning fork for Christmas, I was able to achieve the first part of this goal....now I need to put that nice gift to use. :-)

6. Knit something new - Yes! I knit Livi a little jumper dress and that was really fun. I've come to realize though, that as much as I love making things with yarn and fabric, once the project is done, I've looked at the material so much that I get tired of seeing it. The dress is a really pretty color aqua blue and makes her eyes stand out.

7. Ride my bike - Yes! I love riding my bike. I used to ride a lot. In college I had pretty sweet calf muscles from all the riding I did. And I have some pretty cool scars on my knees from my wrecks, too. But ever since we got pregnant with Carson and moved to CA, I hadn't ridden my bike! So this was the year I wanted to change that. We bought a bike seat for Livi, so now I can ride with the kids, and it's been SO much fun! I hope to do much more of it in 2008. I've always dreamed about family bike rides. :-)

8. Go to Colorado for a girls trip (with college friends) and for my 30th birthday - Yes! Got to do both in the same trip! It was such fun and I have great memories of it.

9. Get away for a night with Jason - Yes! While we were visiting CO again in August, we got away for a night without the kids and stayed in a very nice Inn in Niwot. It was a lot of fun and I wish we could do it more often.

10. Try yoga - Yes! A friend of a friend who is now my friend was teaching a little yoga class for some gals at her church on Wednesday nights for free...so I decided to try it and it was great. It felt so good and my friend is a Christian so there wasn't any of that potentially weird yoga-y stuff. Just good ol' stretching and relaxing. I loved it, but she didn't continue it after the summer, so it didn't last long, but I achieved the said goal. :-)

So 8 1/2 out of 10. Not bad for a non-goal person. It was really fun. I have very broad goals in mind for this year, so I think I need to sit down and get some more practical ones on paper. It feels good to accomplish things I've set out to do. Every day of this new year I've looked at my list in the bathroom because it just makes me happy that I actually wrote some goals and accomplished most of them. Here's to the other three quarters of this year left to do some new things!

A Trip to the Snow

We went up toward the snow this past weekend with the Thomases and the Mathisons and we had such a great time with them! There was no snow at the cabin, but we were able to drive a ways and find a perfect sledding hill. It was just right for the kids and even really fun for us!
Our camera decided not to work past Friday, so we didn't get any pictures, but if you look at the Thomases website by clicking here, By did a great job summing up the weekend.
We look forward to doing it again guys!

We did, however, get some pictures of our tour at the Jelly Belly Factory on our way up to the mountains and that was a really fun time. Carson loves Jelly Bellies, so he had a super time seeing the way they are made, and of course sampling a bunch of different flavors! We came home with a bag of Belly Flops, the Jelly Bellies that don't make it past the perfection point, so they are funny shapes or bundled together, etc. Very yummy indeed.

One of God's blessings to start off a day with joy that in my mind began way too early:

And of course, this:

Quality Assurance

We had a computer crisis this week and it just made me want to remind you all to back up your computers if it's been a while! We used to be good about doing it monthly, but this time it had been since before Christmas, so when our computer went kaput this week, I was really nervous. But after 48 minutes on the phone with a guy whose accent was very hard to understand, especially on top of my rowdy kids who just couldn't seem to behave and leave the room....let's just say we had some major conversations after that phone call and a few consequences... we got it working again!!!! I was not a happy mama during that phone call, except for the fact that the man was helping me bring my computer back to life! I kept having to remind myself that "this phone call might be monitored for quality assurance purposes..." Why was I more concerned about that than the fact that God is the one who is more concerned with the quality of my heart and the way I was treating my kids by yelling under my breath (if that's possible) and treating them not calmly to try to get them to leave the room. Sometimes looking back on a situation I can't believe I couldn't find a better solution to a problem than what I was trying. I know other things play into that like the fact that I was a little stressed with the computer, and that I had to strain to hear the wonderful computer man and understand him, and that "computer" is not my first language. In our house we are really working on having our kids obey us the first time we ask something of them, and then we can discuss it after they've followed through if they still feel the need. Let's just say it doesn't come naturally.
But I'm thrilled that our computer is back to life and we didn't lose anything, we just had to "reinstall our operating system". So go back up all your stuff, it would be sad to lose all those wonderful photos and music and everything else. :-)

Garrapato State Park

We had such fun exploring Point Lobos a couple weeks ago, so the next weekend we decided to try out another park just south of it, Garrapato State Park. This one consisted of little pull-offs along Hwy 1 that had a bunch of little trails that meandered along the steep cliffs by the beautiful raging water. This one had me gasping a bit more than the other park because of the steep drop-offs, and we had to be sure the kids stayed right by us, but it was SO incredibly beautiful. It literally took my breath away for a minute just looking at the beauty of it all. We walked along the trails and sat and had our little picnic lunch, and then we got back in our truck (yes!! we got a truck, I love calling it that!!!! I've always wanted a truck! - it's a Honda Pilot) and drove to the 2-mile beach (although it didn't quite stretch 2 miles while we were there cuz the tide was so high). I have never seen such huge waves, it was awesome. It didn't take Carson long to get wet, he just loves the beach. He found a huge piece of a kelp tube that he was wrangling in logs with, his imagination just goes wild when he's out there, it's precious. It was a perfect day to be out there, the sun was shining bright and warm with a coolness in the air that was just right. It's fun to explore the beauty around here this time of year when there isn't the crowd of summer travelers.

Our new wheels...Jason was trying to get a magazine-type photo shoot of it. :-)

This was just a crazy looking tree

The seas have lifted up, O Lord,
the seas have lifted up their voice;
the seas have lifted up their pounding waves.
Mightier than the thunder of the great waters,
mightier than the breakers of the sea -
the Lord on high is mighty.
Psalm 93: 3-4

For the Lord is the great God,
the great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth,
and the mountain peaks belong to him.
The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.
Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;
for he is our God
and we are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care.
Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts...
Psalm 95: 3-8

Dishwasher repairman, please come to our house!

Carson, 10 months, loved to spin the spraying arms like a propeller.

This is exactly what I feel like...."hmmmm, how does this work?" Or rather, "how can I get this to work again?" "What's wrong with this thing?!" We've been having dishwasher problems for a while now, but it's gotten to the point where I can't even use it anymore, which has really made me appreciate having a working one. I'm not sure what's wrong with it, but it has tons of build-up in the spraying arms. I've wasted many hours scraping bits of dried up white stuff out of the holes with a toothpick (which has been partially satisfying), only to have it all come back again after we run it the next time. We've tried many loads of just a bowl of vinegar (a tip I found online), changing soaps to one the Maytag guy recommended (and it just so happens to be one from Trader Joe's!!!), we've tried cleaning it out every time, even taking the arms out of the washer and scrubbing them in the sink. We've tried JetDry, which has actually made a positive difference in the appearance of our glasses, but has done nothing to help our other problem. I always make sure to have hot water running in the sink before we turn on the dishwasher to ensure that the hottest water is filling up the washer. But...a couple of times I've tried starting a load and opening it up to see what might be going on in there and I felt the water and it's not been very hot at all, barely warm actually. So now I'm wondering if maybe the heating element is broken and so it's not melting the soap and therefore not cleaning the dishes. I've got a call into the repairman, but it's taking a long time for him to respond....there was only one guy in the phone book....so I guess I'll have to wait for him. I know we have REALLY hard water, so maybe stuff has been building up for some time, but I'm so done with having all this white crusty stuff in my life. I think I'll put calling the repairman again on the top of my to-do list for tomorrow. :-) Along with getting some new shoes for Livi...I feel like her feet grow so fast. And they are SO wide, which makes it a little bit harder to find shoes that fit well and don't smoosh her little toes. I wonder if I can tackle 2 problems in one day (or maybe I should lower my expectations and make it one week!). Wouldn't that be nice....but the latter problem will be much more fun to deal with, shoe shopping, yeah, bring it on!!

Fun with Friends

Our friends, By & Ty, and their 2 precious little boys came to visit on Sunday and we had such a great time with them. We watched the Superbowl and ate dinner and hung out after the kids went down for bed. Then we spent the morning at the beach on Monday. The boys had a blast playing in the sand with their trucks, and Livi, of course, enjoyed just chilling on the beach towel!
Thanks for coming down you guys, we are looking even more forward to our time in Tahoe in a month! Yay!

This was before Elias got wet from head to toe by a small surprise wave. :-)

Point Lobos

We had such a great time exploring a new area today. There are so many beautiful places around us and this year we hope to get out more and get to know it all better. We went down to Point Lobos, just outside of Carmel, and we walked on a couple different trails, one in the Cypress forest and one along the rocks down to some tidal pools close to the water.

Carson has such an adventurous spirit, we had to be really careful to be close to him next to the steep dropoffs and slippery rocks. He was having a ball climbing and exploring. He brought his little binoculars and I think he looked out of them almost the whole way down in the car ride.

We went down to a little beach area that was all dark pebbles mixed in with all kinds of really cool shells and rocks, dead crabs, huge pieces of kelp and long pieces of kelp tubes that Carson was having a blast trying to pull out of the rocks. It was fun to discover a new part of God's beautiful creation. Oh yeah, and we saw a sea otter carrying her little pup on her chest, I just love them, they are so cute. And...did you know...we have about 100,000 hairs on our heads and sea otters, in just one square inch, have 1 million hairs!!!! That's how they keep warm since they don't have any fat. Very cool fact, I thought.

Not too convincing...

Carson very often tries to convince us that he's not tired. He must be afraid he's going to miss out on something if he dared to take a nap. He was crawling around on the floor saying he wasn't tired over and over when the next thing we knew, he was fast asleep on the floor under the sewing machine. Silly boy. He woke up with scratchy carpet cheek.

Livi Counting

Quotables

"Cleaning while the children are still growing
is like shoveling while it is still snowing."
(Oh, SO TRUE!!!! I saw this on a MOPS email last week and I can't remember who said it, but I've been thinking about it every day since then).


Livi's version of the ABC song:
"A-B-C-D-E-F-G, how 'bout I not sing with you."


And then the best....following is the last paragraph of a Christmas letter we received from some friends that live here, and it really touched me. Sometimes other people can put words to my thoughts so much better than I ever could. May it bless you as well:
"To end this letter we are tempted to close with the words "God Bless." We would say it with all intentions of wanting you to excel, succeed, prosper and be kept from difficulty and pain this coming year. But what we really desire for you is that you really live and prosper with the abundance of God. So, this year we will pray that no earthly luxury would cheat you of true prosperity, which is an abundant life in Christ. If ease and earthly success is given in the process, we rejoice with you, but if you experience hardships and trials this coming year we pray that you cling to Jesus, the giver of abundant life."

Amen, friends!!

I've been "tagged" for a "meme"

So I'm not completely up to par with my blogger lingo. A couple of times I've been tagged for a "meme" (can anyone tell me what a "meme" is....what does it mean?! Is it cuz it's all about me, me?). So this one is just a list of several things about me that you may not have known....some are weird or surprising, I know. :-) And it's definitely not a complete list. Feel free to do it on your blog, too, I love learning those quirky or fun or new little facts about my friends!

I love the smell of fresh play dough (the store-bought play-doh brand)

I was the drum major (field conductor) of our high school marching band.

I always take my eggs out of the carton in some sort of symmetrical way.

I'd love to go to a U2 concert some day.

I like to jump rope.

I'm always playing some sort of tune on my fingers...sort of like constantly playing piano.

It feels really weird to put my left leg in my pants first or my left sock on first, etc.

I REALLY like the Gilmore Girls and wish sometimes I could be in their world. :-)



Bet you never knew I could make that face!

Or wear my hair so fashionably!

Mom time

My mom flew out here for a visit on New Year's Day and it was SO wonderful to have her here. I miss her tons!
We knew it was going to rain, so we took advantage of the 2 days of decent weather we had before it started to get wet and we went to the beach and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It was a great beach day (we still wore our pants and fleece coats, but it was pretty) and Carson had a blast in the sand and water, it just makes me so happy that we get to live here and go to the beach in January?!!! Cool. And then the rain set in on our way home from the aquarium and it rained till she left. So we had a lot of good hanging-out-at-home time.
I didn't take very many pictures, so mom you're gonna have to send me some! :-) Thanks for all your help around here, the kids had a great time with you and can't wait till the next time we get to be together.

A Touch of Color

We have a lot of white walls in our house. The trouble with painting in here is that all the walls seem to run together, so there are no good breaking points...if we paint one part of a wall we have to continue all through the house where we might not want that same color. But we did find a section recently that would work, so we we went bold and painted it a dark brown. I just love how a little color can really make a house feel like a home....it makes me want to do more of it in other areas. It's a lot of work, but so worth it. This area is downstairs in the hallway by the kids rooms and closet and garage and bathroom....so there were 5 door frames to go around in that tiny little area and then a big bare section of wall that you see when you enter the front door. We got another coat hook and bench with baskets from IKEA to go there so now we won't have piles of stuff on the floor all the time. I'm trying to get our house a little more organized and workable. I think I waste too much time looking for things as I'm on my way out the door, so I think having these baskets and coat hooks will really help...and I love the bench. The kids can sit on it to get their shoes on, or I can set things on it and for some reason a pile there looks so much better than a pile on the floor. :-) By nature, I'm a piler and Jason's a filer, and I want to be more like that because it's so nice when things are organized and put where they belong. We also got a little paper filer/pen & paper holder/counter organizer thing for the bar counter that tends to be a common resting place for papers that I'm not sure what to do with...so now I can put my piles in a file and make my pile look nice! My blog friend Rachel at Home Sanctuary is helping me with some organizing/cleaning, etc. ideas. You should check her blog out...it's so inspiring and awesome and funny and down-to-earth. Wouldn't it be fun to get to meet our blog friends some day? Anyways...here are some before and after shots...of course the pictures aren't quite like the real deal, but it'll do to give you an idea of the hard work Jason put into painting it so well! Thanks Lovey!

Christmas Tidbits

We tried making a gingerbread house from scratch this year and it turned out to be a bit of a bigger undertaking than I remember it being from when I made them as a child, but the kids loved it. We ran out of icing and ingredients to make more (I think I used too much trying to get it to stand up and stay!), so we didn't get to decorate it as much as the kids would have liked, but they were happy with it.

While we were making the cookie dough, Carson went downstairs to the garage to get a piece of cardboard for our base, and he decided to see what it would look like if he dumped a huge box of packaging peanuts all over floor of the garage! yikes....he didn't tell me about it when he came back upstairs, so imagine my surprise when I went down to get something else and saw this! He was a good sport about cleaning it up, although I admit, I was not happy to see this mess since the whole upstairs was chaos from our gingerbread making. Owell, it all cleaned up just fine.

Some snowflakes we made

Christmas Eve

Christmas Fun

We had a lot of fun trying to get a Christmas picture this year. We had to try it a couple different weekends to get one that would work. We went up to Mount Hermon Conference Center where it's really pretty and found a good spot with some pretty leaves in the background, and the kids were in great moods which helped. We had some fun playing along the way.