Mini Golf...

This is what we did on the actual day of our anniversary... mini golf. Well, really it a birthday party for Marcus, Lizzie's "boy"friend from school. It was the first time we played mini golf with the girls. Lizzie liked it, but Abby... let's just say she likes things a little more wilder than golf. :)

Abby was so into it in the beginning...

This is what she really, really wanted to do!

Just look at that form! :)

And now Abby's done and I think we're only on hole 4.

To Pasadena for Our Anniversary...

For our anniversary we decided we'd take a little drive to Pasadena. It's one of my favorite places to wander around for hours and hours, I absolutely love it there, plus it's really easy to convince Ben to go when it's the closest good art store to us. So with the girls in tow (yup they came too) off we went to celebrate! First stop the Art Store...

Ben (and I) were both in heaven stocking up on stuff we were out of and getting a couple of large canvases for later painting.

One of the guys that was testing all the pens with Ben drew this since he was wearing his Red Dead shirt... again!

I think the girls loved the art store just as much as we did!

Playtime at the park!

For dinner we went to La Grande Orange. It's in this historic old train terminal, so it has this really cool vibe to the place. It is by far my new favorite restaurant and I don't think the girls have ever been more well behaved than they were on that night!

Ben and his sketchbook! : )

Lizzie loved that her food was on this divided tray... she's kinda crazy like that, does not like anything to touch each other. Everything we had there was amazing. Ben had their burger on a homemade english muffin, so good, and I had the best salmon I'd ever had! Their sangria was pretty killer too.

My contribution to the art of the evening! : )

I love, love, love this picture!

Ah, dessert, it was almost the best part of going there. We all shared a make your own ice cream sundae, with a ton of different toppings to slather on top! After dinner we wandered the streets of downtown Pasadena, in awe of a places that didn't close at 9pm (like everything around our house), hit up the local bookstore and enjoyed laughing at ourselves as we walked around with two sleepy little children around 11pm while the club crowd started to come out of the woodwork. 

We're Walking thru the Woods...

Over the weekend we went for a walk through the woods over at placerita canyon. It had been raining the last couple of days, so it was crazy to see so much water in the creek. Normally there is nothing, well barely nothing, there. Abby was mesmerized!

We built boats and floated them down the creek

Abby could have stayed here for almost forever... she loved playing in the water, even though it was so cold.

They found a big, long stick and Abby was pretending to fish

Everything was so green and so not desert like... such a nice change.

In many areas the creek flooded the trail so people threw large logs over so you could cross without getting too wet.

Our little gopher friend that wasn't too thrilled we were there!

Lizzie dancing and singing to her echo!

Exploring the old Walker cabin

Disneyland or Bust...

The Thursday before Abby's birthday we went to Disneyland to celebrate... well really Disney California Adventure. We had our free tickets from volunteering earlier in the year and Abby wasn't yet three so off to Anaheim we went. Luckily for us Disney is pretty gracious and let us use our vouchers even though they had expired the day before... just one day, ugh and we thought we had until the end of the year. So after completely freaking out on the long drive there and waiting in line at the ticket booth we could finally breathe and relax.... thank you, thank you, thank you! We loved California Adventure. It has come leaps and bounds since I was there last time and so much more great stuff is in the works. It's way more family oriented, ride wise, than Disneyland and it felt like we could do pretty much everything all together as a family... the girls loved it. Too bad the new Toy Story 3 ride had a wait over an hour the whole day, oh well... guess we'll have to do a next time!

At California Adventure we watched a live performance of Playhouse Disney, did a little tour of the animation building... the turtle talk with Crush was pretty cool and got to see some really sweet Toy Story art.

 Along the boardwalk...

 After the Pixar parade they had bubble mania... I so wish Abby didn't fall asleep, she would have loved this!

 Daddy trying to win a bullseye doll... not so lucky, we both were horrible at it.

Watching the world of color. Whoever thought of the idea of using mist as a projector screen is brilliant!

And of course a trip to Disney wouldn't be complete without going to the Lego store.

Headed Out West For Father's Day...

For Father's Day Ben decided he wanted to go visit an old west town... a lot of us around here think he's been playing maybe a little too much Red Dead Redemption as of late, but whatever... it was his special day, plus it got us all out of the house for a really fun afternoon that we might not have done otherwise. We ended up in a little old town called Calico. It was back in it's day (1881) an extremely prosperous silver mining town, turned ghost town (1904), turned theme parkish restoration project (1951 - thanks to Mr. Knott of the Knott's Berry Farm fame) and then finally turned county regional park (1966). Actually getting to Calico took a little while (it's half way between LA and Vegas...around 2 hours), but it was pretty cool driving through the desert and seeing parts of our state we'd never even see before. The town of Calico was a mix of original buildings (around 5 of them), restored ones built from old photographs, and then just weird, quirky attractions built in by Mr. Knott... so the place kinda had this weird vibe of a cool, old, authentic, ghost town mixed in with an abandoned, old, theme park. It's totally worth the visit though, especially if you're on your way to or from Vegas. I think Ben and I want to go to Bodie next, since we both loved all the old historic aspects about Calico and not so much the added on stuff.

The entrance to Calico

Lizzie and Ben looking for the horses, which unfortunately were no longer there.

The old school house... this was a rebuilt building, but still had a ton of original artifacts inside. The school also doubled as a church on Sundays... who knew that's were the term sunday school came from. Ben and I never really put the two together until then.

Inside the school... wish I would have taken more pictures of the inside of stuff. I didn't realize how well you could see them until we got home.

An old house built under the cliff of a rock

In the pottery shop ( I did say it was mix theme park, right) the girls were making a horse medallion.

Panning for some gold...

The actual old, original saloon. The smell of that place was crazy, not in a bad way, but in a really cool, old, dusty book kinda way.

The main street in Calico

The glass bottle house... looked really cool, but one of the weird, quirky additions.

While we were there we took a tour of Maggie's Mine, which was an actual real working mine back in 1881. Hands down one of the coolest parts of the whole town... being able to go underground and freely explore the mine plus you still saw tons of sparkles in the rock walls.

Ben wandering the hillside above the mine

Ahhh, ice cream... it was hot and Lizzie liked Abby's better!

The girls in the general store, which was also one of the original buildings. Abby was loving all the candy lining one side of the whole store and of course right at her level.