Thursday, February 26, 2009

Happy Birthday Baby Boy!!!

Today is Christian's 11th birthday! Ahhh, where did the time go?! If I was a better blogger (and had more time today) I would go through and scan some way cute baby pictures of him. But alas, I'm pressed for time (and I really am not 100% on how to use the scanner).

Christian is such a goofball! Since Pre-k his teachers have always told me... "He is so smart! And he is also sooo social!" Anytime he's ever gotten in trouble at school (and there have been a few times!) it's because he was goofing around and talking too much.

He's also way girl crazy! Scary! When we got his Pre-k yearbook (and everyone since then!) he was showing me his class and he said "That's my girlfriend. And (pointing to another picture) that's my girlfriend. And that's my girlfriend." I knew I was in for some trouble then and there! His teacher here in Penn Valley told me that he's a total babe magnet. I told him it was all in the big ears. The ladies love 'em!

I love that he is so sensitive! I love sappy songs and when they tell a really good story I'll make the kids listen to them and see if they can figure out the story, and then I'll explain the parts they miss. He has fallen in love with so many sappy songs that way. :)

I also had him trained at a very young age to run up ahead of Lex and I and open the door. Such a little gentleman! He has also been the official bug killer since he was big enough to kill bugs. Even when he was scared he would always buck up and do the squashing for me. Seriously, what a gentleman!

For his birthday I made him baseball and basketball cupcakes for school and a cake for home. Then he wanted to go to a Japanese Steakhouse for a delicious steak dinner. My friend Joy recommended a restaurant and it was sooo good! We had such a fun time! Some pictures from Christian's special day...

Opening some new clothes this morning before school.

I know my cake decorating skills still need some work, but I was pretty proud of myself! I've come a long way! (ps - we dropped our camera the other day and the viewer is all messed up, so I thought this was centered. Oopsie. :)


At dinner...

Addie's reaction to the fire.

The chef was sooo talented! And he agreed to a picture with our birthday boy!

So fun!

Coming home to cake and ice cream.


We can't believe your 11 Bubba! We love you and we're so proud of all you do! Happy birthday!

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

LA baby!

So originally we had planned on going out to Santz Cruz for our long Presidents Day weekend. Then I got to talking to one of my best buds, Autumn, and we decided we should definitely meet halfway somewhere (she lives in San Diego). We looked online and came up with San Luis Obispo or the Sequoia National Forest, which we both liked equally, so we, being the wonderful wives that we are, let our husbands decide where we should meet. They both chose San Luis, and off our planning began.

It didn't get far however because I one day mentioned to Autumn that Matt really wanted to take the kids down to Universal Studios sometime. "Let's meet in LA!" Autumn said. Hmmmm, LA?! Maybe this could work, I thought. I checked flights and found some very inexpensive Southwest flights and whammo, it was off to LA!

Our adventure started at 11:00 Friday morning with a wonderful hour long drive down to the Sacramento Airport. After parking the car and shuttle bussing it up to the airport, we were on our way! Addie did really well on the flight. I fed her during take-off and she was totally fine the whole time. Granted, it was only a 1 hour flight, but still, she did surprisingly well.

I guess at one point it got a little loud and she couldn't quite handle it. So darn cute!

Our first adventure was to meet up with some of Matt's junior high friends, Dan and Susan. We met up with them in Long Beach and enjoyed a nice dinner at Islands. Of course I only got two pictures and the other one was notso-hotso, so here's the good one. Susan, I'm still waiting for some real dirt on my husband for next time!

Saturday morning we headed down to Hollywood Boulevard!

The Walk of Fame! Here's the fam posing by some of our favorite stars. So fun!


Next was on to Graumans Chinese Theater. We saw all the hand and foot prints, but I'm still not sure who Sid Grauman was... anybody know?



On the 3rd floor at the mall by The Kodak Theater (which was getting all geared up for the Academy Awards this Sunday!) there is a great photo op with the Hollywood sign. So cool!

After that we started getting bombarded by people offering us Movie Star Home tours. At first we just walked on past, but then we decided to get a picture in front of this cool convertible limousine.
Seeing our amazement over this, the driver pounced on us! After we told him there would be 8 people in our group (Autumn and fam were on their way!) he really started to wheel and deal! He offered us a great rate for a private 2 hour tour in a limo. We had originally planned to go to the Wax Museum and Ripleys Believe it or Not Museum, but for only about $20 more we found we could take this limo tour. I know what your thinking, movie star homes? Says who, right?! But it's something I have always wanted to do, as cheesy as it is! And it wasn't just movie star homes, it was all around Hollywood. So after Autumn gave us the green light we agreed to the tour. It was sooo much fun! Here we are outside the limo.


And inside...
Since we had it all to ourselves the kids were able to run around and stretch out. I know, not super safe... but oh well.

We got to stop and take some pics.

I took a bunch of pictures of the homes, thinking I would remember which belonged to which celebrity (supposedly), but of course I can't remember any of them. The kids remembered that this one is supposedly Miley Cyrus' house, or one of her houses at least. Christian even memorized the address so he could tell all his friends at school!

And then they let us out on Rodeo Drive for a quick 20 minute shopping spree. We kinda felt like The Beverly Hillbillies, so this was as close as we got to the inside of any of the stores. It was still very cool to see.

And Matt found his next car!

Yup, it's a Maserati. It was amazing how many super expensive cars we saw! By the way, did you notice mine and Matt's shirts? I had them made for us and gave it to him on the First Day of Valentines, it says Matt loves Michelle and mine says Michelle loves Matt. After I ordered them I started thinking maybe I should have made them the other way around, so his said Michelle loves Matt and mine said Matt loves Michelle... oh well.

After our Hollywood tour we headed up for a scenic trip up Mulholland Drive. I didn't really know what was so special about it, but we found out that it's just a really pretty, windy road up on a mountain that overlooks LA, or is that Hollywood? I don't know, but it sure was pretty!

Since that day was Valentines Day, Autumn and I had called around and made reservations for us to have a romantic Valentine dinner at a nice French restaurant in downtown LA called Cafe Pinot. Even though we got all dressed up and we both brought our cameras, neither one of us thought to take a picture! And then on the way back up to our rooms we were gonna get some pics, but as we were walking down the hall we could hear poor Addie crying. And then as soon as we got Addie, poor Lexi started crying! She did such a good job babysitting, but Addie can be a handful when I'm not around. She assured us that she will never be having any kids! At least not for a good 10-15 years! That's some pretty good birth control!

The next day we were off to Universal Studios!
I almost passed out when I saw what was being filmed that day! Desperate Housewives!!! I know, it's not the best show, but they play it twice a day, and in the mornings when I'm cleaning and Addie's napping I like to watch it. Autumns a fan too! Hey, don't judge!

We had a blast at Universal, and got some silly pictures.


We saw some fun characters...

But the highlight of my day at Universal Studios was of course Wisteria Lane! For you non-Desperate Housewives fans, that's the street where all the action happens!

This was the best picture of me from Wisteria Lane. In all the other ones I'm looking around starry eyed saying "This is sooo cool!!!" The brown house is Mike Delfino's and the blue one is Mrs. McClusky's, in case anyone was wondering:).

Autumn bought the kids matching shirts for Valentines day. They all wore them to Universal Studios, but it was too cold to take off our coats, so when we got back to the room we got some cute pics.


On Monday we woke up to what looked like a hurricane! It was raining and the wind was blowing super hard! We had scheduled a whale watching trip for 9:00, but that got canceled. We decided to drive out to Long Beach anyway, in hopes that we could catch a later cruise. Turned out that all the whale watching was canceled for the day, but we did get to take a 45 minute Harbor tour. It was freezing! The water was super choppy but it was still super fun!

I always love it when my hair takes on a life of its own!

After the cruise we had lunch at the Bubba Gump restaurant which was sooo cute and fun! The food was delicious and the atmosphere was so cute. They even quiz you on your Forrest Gump knowledge.
Isn't that the cutest room?!

Autumn and crew left after lunch and we drove around Palos Verdes, Santa Monica Pier, and the LA temple as we waited for our flight, which was supposed to leave at 9:55, but didn't end up leaving until after 12:00! We pulled into our driveway (or I should probably say Matt pulled into our driveway with a carload of sleeping passengers) at 2:30. We've been exhausted all week and poor Addie's sleep schedule is totally and completely messed up! We also realized that it probably would have been cheaper and more convenient to drive, and considering the late flight, it really wouldn't have taken any longer! Ahhh, live and learn, right?! Thanks Dan and Susan, and Autumn, David, Taylor and Landon for the wonderful, busy, loud, and super fun weekend! Can't wait for our next adventure!

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Service for 5

I saw this on my sweet friend (and pseudo sister-in-law) Carlen's blog. Carlen is a creative genius so I couldn't possibly pass up the opportunity to have her make something special just for me! So here ya' go...

Here's the deal:
I hereby commit to offer
the first 5 individuals to comment on this post
a homemade gift of my choosing!
BUT,
in order to post a comment,
you have to FIRST post a "SERVICE OFFER FOR 5"
on your blog!

While YOU in turn
have the opportunity to do likewise to this post
and be the recipient of a fun homemade gift from ME.

And then 5 of your lucky friends will have the opportunity
from your post to be served by you!

There are of course some RESTRICTIONS
since I'm not superwoman!
1 I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
(though I'll give it excellent effort because of restriction #3)
2 What I create will be just for you.
3 It will be done sometime this year.
4 You have no clue what it will be... I may bake something, make something, or be really creative!
5 I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

Just remember the CATCH!
YOU MUST RE-POST THIS ON YOUR BLOG
& OFFER SERVICE TO 5!

(oh and be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it
so we can follow the trail of PAY-IT-FORWARD service gifts!)

HAPPY POSTING & COMMENTING!

Monday, February 9, 2009

Superbowl Part-ay!

I know I'm late on posting. Addie has decided she's not a fan of napping and she's turned my nice, scheduled world upside down! It's soooo much harder to keep things going without any baby breaks throughout the day!!! We'll be working on that...

Anyways, we decided kinda last minute to have some friends over for Superbowl Sunday. I'm so glad we did cause we had such a fun time! I resisted the urge to go way overboard on the food and kept it simple with 2-2 foot subs, pasta salad (which I kinda messed up by using mayo with olive oil in it, which I didn't realize until I tasted the pasta salad is low fat! Boo!), chips, and soda. Lori and family brought over Sara Salad (way yum! I need that recipe!), 7 Layer dip, chips and soda, and Kelly and family made delicious totally homemade caramel corn and ice cream here, yum! Hmmmm, wonder why the first thing I write about is food.... I did hear on the news that Superbowl Sunday is second only to Thanksgiving in the biggest eating day of the year. That's a whole lot of eating!

Here's the "after" sandwich picture.

I love food so much that I even love taking pictures of it!

How fitting that I took as many pictures of the food as I did of the people.

Okay, I promise to be a better photographer next time we have people over! Lately my photog skills are not so good! Gotta work on that!

We were bummed to see the Stielers win. I personally still have sour grapes over them "beating" the Seahawks in the Superbowl a couple years back. We thoroughly enjoyed all the commercials (I liked the snow globe one!) and even the game was pretty good. But of course the best part was the hanging out with friends. :) And the food...