Happy Mother's Day...

Happy mother's day all you mamas out there (and yes I am fully aware that it's almost June)! For my special day the girls, Ben and I took a trip to Ventura just to wander the parts we haven't seen yet, which are numerous. We started at the Seaward beach district and enjoyed the sand for a little bit then walked a block down the street to Seaward's Fish and Chips and had the best fish and chips and chowder I have ever had in my life. So much closer than Carpinteria too! Then we headed downtown to wander Main St, browsed antique shops, played outside the mission, enjoyed some much needed Starbucks and headed down to the pier to enjoy even more sand and so the girls could play at the playground on the beach. After we played for a bit we headed down to Ventura Harbor Village where we played in the arcade, ate way too must salt water taffy and watched the sunset into the ocean. The perfect way to end a most perfect day.

Enjoying the sand before lunch

Waiting for our lunch... so serious!

Always stealing mama's drink!

Mmm... so good!

Playing in the fountain outside the Mission

Nothing beats a playground right on the sand!

Abby was crazy good at this... it was almost scary!

Look what I won mama!

Watching the sunset

I think it was more than time to end the day!

Heaven on Earth...

This last weekend we were incredibly fortunate to snag a beach cottage on the highly coveted Crystal Cove State Beach (between Newport Beach and Laguna... just in case you were wondering)! Somebody just happened to cancel their reservation for a Friday night (you crazy, crazy people) and I just happened be online at the right time and got extremely lucky. These places go fast... I mean really fast. There's only 13 to rent from in the state park system and they are all gone, within minutes of the morning they open reservations for 6 months in advance... it's absolutely insane. I've wanted to go to Crystal Cove ever since we moved to socal and I still can't believe we even spent the night there on the beach and on our anniversary to boot. It truly was the closest thing to heaven on earth. Ben and I could have stayed there forever and been perfectly happy, well Ben might want his xbox eventually though.

We stayed in Cottage #27 - The Dive Shack. It was built in 1931 and completely decked-out with vintage nautical trinkets... the kitchen cabinets were even built of wood from a shipwrecked boat. It totally reminded me of a grandma's beach house... from the decor all the way to the smell. Definitely not a hotel/resort experience and if you didn't enjoy summer camp or loosely "roughing it" it's so not for you, but for Ben, I and the girls it was awesome. You still had a bathroom with a shower and in the kitchen there was a microwave, fridge and a toaster. No stove or oven though since they don't allow any open flames, but you could bring a little propane barbecue to use in the backyard.

Our cottage was the one in the middle between the palm trees

The view from our balcony... so cool to be so close to the ocean and watch everyone play in the sand.

The girls watching daddy boogie board from inside... almost the whole front of the cottage was one big glorious window.

Oh sunsets why must you happen way too fast?!

The girls had their very own room... it was really a loft and they totally loved it.

The living room where Ben and I stayed up way too late the night before watching the waves.

The backyard from our bedroom window.

Playing around outside while enjoying our coffee before heading out to the beach. Ben is up the the loft area.

Wandering through the tide pools while the tide was out that morning.

Back to the beach for one last time before our wondrous, way too sort, but totally amazing 19 hours is up.

The view from up at the Shake Shack (the banana shake is awesome, by the way). You can see our backyard with all the beautiful pink and red wild flowers in bloom.

I cannot wait to go back and for longer than one night... hopefully we'll get lucky again someday soon!

Still here and kicking...

Hi everybody, we are all still here and doing well, just nothing really new to share. It's been kinda of a slow(ish) month, which has been absolutely wonderful... I guess you could call it the quiet before the storm when the month of May rolls in and it's non stop craziness. So we're all just taking it easy, spending lazy days at home, and enjoying each others company before all of our schedules go berserker with multiple birthdays, our anniversary, I think there's a holiday or 2 thrown in there, doctors appointments, visits to the dentist, school assessments for kindergarten, family from Seattle visiting, not to mention playdates and other fun stuff that gets thrown in the mix. It'll be fun, but definitely crazy! Here's to a couple more days of the simple and boring... I'm sure going to miss you!

Happy Easter...

Happy Easter everybody! I hope everyone had a nice and relaxing weekend. Our day over here was a little strange and slightly off in all things regarding planing for the holiday, but the day itself ending up a lot fun... more on that a little later though. The girls woke up to Easter baskets outside their door, it's how we do it every year... Lizzie was so excited she slept on the floor right by her door. Their baskets were a combination of handmade and store bought stuff. Books, an artist pad with drawing supplies, eggs filled with candy and little animals, cute little linen bunnies, Abby's had a zhu zhu pet hamster ball and Lizzie received her 100th littlest petshop toy (so nuts that she has 100 of those little guys)!

We all woke up around normal time (for our house anyways) at 8ish, opened our baskets and then went downstairs to enjoy breakfast, coffee, and some video games. I went upstairs to take a shower and get ready for church, Ben joined me upstairs slightly later and we came down to this...

Abby had climbed up onto the table and proceeded to crush all of our eggs that we had decorated together the day prior. Good thing they were all blown and just the shells, but we barley even got to enjoy them before they were all totally destroyed. There were a couple left so Ben let Lizzie finish the last of the eggs off. It was a huge mess... shells were everywhere!

Also before church I was baking these cute little cakes in the shape of a lamb that we could decorate and eat after our dinner and this is what happened...

They tasted wonderful, but even after letting them completely cool they stuck like mad to the cake pan, even after a liberal greasing before baking. So much for dessert, bring on the jelly beans!

After church we stopped at the store to pick up some wine for dinner and Ben for some odd reason grabbed some chicken wings... which he really, really wanted for lunch. Didn't he know I had a ham lunch/dinner planned for that day?! So my plans were pushed back and Ben barbecued some wings for lunch... on Easter. By this point the events of the day were more than enough to make any girl cry and I went and took a nap with Abby.

After a most wonderful nap we did an egg hunt outside on the patio, the grass was all wet from the rain and it was super windy outside so it was short and sweet.

After the hunt I started to make my dinner and then just relaxed and play some games.

At least I think can cook so dinner turned out great... I thought anyways... who knew Ben doesn't like traditional meals?! Next year I'm sleeping in and making chicken curry for dinner!

Happy Birthday To Me...

Yep, it's true, I turned another year older last weekend. I had birthday cake and Ben barbecued on Friday, Saturday was spent just relaxing at home, drinking lots of coffee and playing games, with a little trip to Lowes so I could get a tomato plant and some other plants for our patio... yes, I am attempting to grow a plant, we'll see how long that lasts! ;) And then on Sunday we wandered out to Santa Barbara for some brunch and spent the rest of the afternoon at the zoo and beach. Is there really any other way to celebrate your birthday then dedicating a whole weekend to it?! Thanks for all the wonderful cards, presents and wishes... you guys are all too good to me!

Mmm, birthday cake from Porto's Bakery that my awesome husband so wonderfully picked out for me. He's so good, it's totally my kind of cake... vanilla, strawberries, and lots of creamy frosting (their frosting is absolutely delicious) and it only tasted better the next day!

Ben had to totally graffiti the box so no one would eat it at work, since the bakery is right down the street from him and he did it on his lunch, and they do get cake every now and then for work... so spoiled those Insomniacs are.

2 Year Check-up...

Okay, okay... I know Abby's birthday is in December and it is now March, but hang with me, I'm a little preoccupied these days for some strange reason. ;) In my defense though we did just have her check-up only 3 weeks ago (very busy doctor's office lately) and not 3 months ago.

Her appointment went great, as usual. Nothing crazy, nothing really out of the order, only one shot and we even had a really nice chat about Abby's speech and what is really necessary and not... more on that later. Abby weighed in at 30lbs 1oz, 34 1/2" tall and a head that's 48 1/2" beautifully round. She dropped from 98 percentile to 74... yay she's finally slowing down. Abby's a healthy, spunky, extremely curious little girl (who thinks she's hilarious by the way) and full of way too much energy for her mama to handle sometimes... so much for my quiet one, huh?!

In regards to her speech, she's getting leaps and bounds better than a couple months ago. Her vocabulary is increasing every day and she'll actually talk to you if you ask her. We went through all the evaluations and expressed interest in a speech program manly because I wanted to see what they could offer her... turns out it's really not much different to what we're already doing here at home. The regional center doesn't even really offer a true speech only program, Abby would have to do early development with an emphasis on speech. I guess every insurance company out there will not fund a speech only program unless it's cause by a traumatic head injury, so they structure their programs to cover a wider variety of areas to get funding and include coverage from the insurance companies... they are a business after all. So in the end it's really not worth it for Abby to go through all that for something she doesn't need, or for something that's a broad approach to something specific that we could work on. If after she turns 3 and for some strange reason she is still behind they have programs that are speech specific through the elementary school where you're working one on one with a speech specialist. I'm not too worried... kids are just different and do stuff at times that work for them, not us. Plus with the way the school cut-off dates are down here Abby has a full 3 years before we even need to start thinking about school (she misses the cut-off day by 2 weeks). A lot can happen in 3 whole years.

Hanging Out With Some Monkeys...

A couple Saturdays ago Ben and I volunteered at the Gibbon Center clearing brush and making the grounds fire safe for all of the monkeys (and the people who work there). The center was really neat and a lot bigger than we both had thought it would be. They do awesome work there breeding, studying and working with various zoo exchanges to help educate the public about these little monkeys (which I guess are really apes, since they have no tails) some whom are even endangered. Ben was completely stoked to find out that there are monkeys (and lots of them) less than 15 minutes away from where we live. He seriously could have stayed there all day, but we were only there for a good chunk of time in the morning up until the early afternoon. I'm sure he'll go back some weekend and sketch for hours though. After completing our allotted time we received a tour of the grounds and got to see a ton of gibbons.. I guess it was a little cold out that day so we didn't get to hear them sing to each other... bummer, but we did get to see at least 3 mama monkeys with their new little babies... so cute. As a nice bonus we did our volunteer work thru Disney's Give a Day get a Day program, so now Ben and I have free tickets to Disneyland... yay!!! But we would go back a help out the center any day regardless of the free tickets... we kind of have a thing for monkeys!

Breaking down the bigger chunks so they could be used for firewood...

We cleared out the hills in the back of the complex of fallen brush and dead trees.

Our tour guide, who relocated from Hungary, to study and help breed endangered Gibbons... was telling us about that little guy up on top through her really cool accent.

One of the many new mamas in the center. I believe this little one is only 6 months old.

Thanks again Heidi for watching the girls!!!