Easter

Easter here was beautiful and we kept it easy.  My kids loved playing with the neighbor's little ducks.

 Sunny and simple. Doesn't get much better than that.

Soccer Girl

I now officially have two kids in soccer. 

She loves playing and, as a bonus, she looks so stinkin' cute in her cleats!

Spring Break

Due to a mishap in the vacation planning process, The Man had to work on Spring Break. So the kids and I took a day trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium without him.

We spent the entire day there and the kids loved it! Can't wait to do it again next year.

We found....other ways to spend our time that week.

We did get to spend some time with Dad at the Drive In. We love to throw a blow up mattress in the back of the truck and bundle up.  They always show a double feature, but since it was Spring Break both were kid's movies. We stayed up until 11:00 that night. Great way to end the week off!

Ugh

Daylight savings for a child is like a full moon for a werewolf.

Updating

I have grown tired of waiting to remodel the house.  I decided to take matters into my own hands and paint some of the ugly 90s oak cabinets in the kid's and the master bathroom.

I heard of this great product from Rustoleum for painting cabinets without sanding so I gave it a shot.  I don't know how long the paint job will last, but I am extremely pleased with the final results. 

Here is the kid's bathroom before:

And here it is after using the base coat and the glaze provided.  It has the beachy, driftwood type feel I was going for and I love it!

 

 

 There was enough left over from the kit to do the master bath (and probably another two bathrooms after that if I had them).  So I decided just to use the grey base coat and no glaze on ours.  No before picture, but it looked just likes the kid's cabinets.  Here is the after:

When we moved in, the white hardware on the cabinets looked so bad that I removed them all and we just lived without knobs. Once I painted them grey, though, they looked gorgeous. So satisfying for $75 and a week's worth of work

Sports!

February was a busy time.  We ended basketball season and started baseball season. 

Here he is with his basketball coach getting his medal after the final game.  The coach was really awesome, but I think the Boy's basketball career is over.

And this is Opening Day for youth baseball.  He is on the Giants this year with a couple of buddies from his class.  One of his coaches actually played for the Oakland A's so we are thrilled to be a part of the team!

Happy Birthday, Boy!

The Boy turned seven. He's just not a little boy anymore.  We celebrated with his choice of meals, which was:

Spaghetti for breakfast

 Pancakes for lunch and pizza for dinner

 Some presents followed by a lively game of laser tag with dad

  And a minion cake

He is wishing really hard here.  Happy Birthday my Boy!

It's Christmas Time!!!

Man, oh man did we have a busy holiday season.  I don't even remember the order of most of these things so I'll just randomly throw them all in. We did:

A youth activity at church, where the girls played games with the kids for two hours so the parents could go Christmas shopping.

Rode the carousel downtown by Santa's workshop (how I miss the Strong Museum of Play).

 

Went ice skating for the first time!

 

Saw Santa a number of times including when we went to check out the light display with our friends, the Whites.

 

Went to a Christmas Eve service with the Rileys who later joined us for our traditional Bethlehem dinner on the floor (no pictures included). 

 

 

 

 Opened stockings Christmas Eve and presents Christmas morning of course!

And since The Man had to work, I took the kids up to Tahoe as guests of the Rileys.  The Boy has been wanting to be back in snow so I sucked it up and made the drive.  We did sledding and the Boy even went snow skiing for the first time.  Unfortunately I was not supermom that day and left my camera at home.  But he did really great for his first time and I was proud of him for trying something new!

Phew.  Let's get on with normal.

Thanksgiving 2013

We celebrated Thanksgiving here with The Man's mother and father and one of his sisters (who was about 8 months pregnant) and her husband. We figured we should probably buy a dining room table for such an event, so we broke down and did it.  Here we are:

We also invited our neighbors, realtors, good friends, and all around great guys the Rileys to join us. It was a nice dinner where I did very little of the cooking or cleaning!

Bigger Girl Bed!

In order to accommodate more family members, and to allow the Girl to grow, we put away the toddler bed for good and got her a big girl bed!