Random Phone Pictures

Nate’s claws.

 

His bald eagle diorama. I’m so proud of him for doing his OWN work!

 

Nate with his friend Nathan and his cousin Allen.

 

The book shelf has filled in a bit more since this was taken. But these little ones look better than books.

 

Can you believe this was only 9 months ago? She has grown so much!

 

There’s her belly.

 

Making a mess and enjoying every second of it!

 

Playing together.

 

Diaper Heads.

 

Madeleine asked me to take this picture of them.

 

I found this picture. She was taking it of herself in her new Rapunzel outfit.

 

These are cookies out of playdough.

 

Yes. Yoghurt in the front, spoon in the back. picking her nose. Lovely.

 

Daddy’s Girl.

 

Ole!

 

Ergonomically-correct position for working.

 

 

My springtime piano-scape with flowering branches from my backyard.

 

I have tons more random pictures on my iPad that I will have to blog about soon. Fun stuff!

House: Kid’s Bathroom

Before

I love home decorating. Don’t most women in my demographic? There are millions of blogs demonstrating how to decorate your home, specifically, on the cheap.  It’s a huge trend right now. Anything thrifty, eclectic, dyi, upcycled, recycled, reimagined, repainted, reupholstered, redone, rearranged, re-ANYTHING. I think it’s a great trend. It’s wonderful that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to have your house look amazing. But, I have two problems with this trend. 1) It isn’t really my decorating taste. I love it, but it’s not really the look I’m going for in my own home; and 2) Forget decorating on the cheap. I need to decorate on the free. And my tastes don’t come free.

So, although I love imagining and designing and coming up with all sorts of ideas, my home is not how I want it to be. There are too many bare walls, windows, and corners. This process is going to take a long, long time.

I’m so close to finishing my living room but for now here is the “finished” kid’s bathroom…you know, ‘cause a room is hardly ever finished. Most of the décor came from the kid’s bathroom in our old home, it just took time to get it all put together again.

Now if only it was always this clean! Holy dirty bathroom, Batman! I swear, little boys are so gross. Add a toilet which refuses to be flushed (I’m sure it’s the toilet’s fault) and a can of poopy diapers and you’ve got yourself an explosion of fumes. But for now, it’s clean.

 

I bought two things. First is the bath mat. I actually hate these kinds of bath mats. They are too typical and the texture gets to me, especially when wet. But they can’t be beat for a non-slip, machine-washable, destruction-proof bath rug.

The second is the cute, tiny galvanized tub I got for 75 cents at DI. I am using it as a soap holder. I refuse to give my kids liquid soap.

 

There are 3 sets of 3 starfish representing my own 3 little starfish who share the bathroom. One set is on the counter, one is above the towels, and the last one is on the wall by the light switch (not pictured).

That’s it. Nothing fancy. It’s simple. I like simple. Not my dream kid’s bathroom, but cute enough.

Not an Entirely Golden Nugget of a Trip

Rob had a hazards training class last Friday in Las Vegas. Of course, we made it a family adventure. I decided to have us stay in a part of Las Vegas that I’d never been before, Fremont Street. I figured we’d all have the most fun possible if we just kept this a low-key trip and use all of our time swimming. Therefore, I wanted to stay somewhere with a super fun swimming pool.

The Golden Nugget was actually quite a nice place to stay. The casino was in an entirely separate wing of the hotel so we never had to walk through it. Perfect. We did walk by a few slot machines and the kids thought they were pretty cool, especially since they’ve been into Chipwrecked lately. The chipmunks do a bit of gaming and so Nate and Madeleine knew exactly what they were.

Back to the swimming pool. There was a good bit of shallow-enough-for-wading area, a couple of waterfalls, a tunnel area, a waterslide, and in the middle of it all, a shark tank!! It was so fun to swim right up to the glass and watch the beasts come toward you! The waterslide went right through the tank also. We all thought it was awesome. Of course, the kids mostly wanted to be in the hot tub. I remember doing the same thing when I was young. I was a little worried about the pool crowd, but every one was respectable. Here are some crappy phone pictures.

Nate sure looks tough. Those floaties really do it for him.

We ventured out the hotel to Fremont Street, on which the hotel borders. There is an overhead light and music show put on every hour at night.

 

The whole area is catered to a more, shall we say, mature crowd? There were very few kids and very few adults our age. Which actually, we appreciated. It toned things down a little. But don’t worry, there was still plenty of 90's saxophone playing and drunken dancing going on.

But that’s about it as far as the positives of the trip go.

All three kids slept the entire way to Vegas, which was smokin’ cool. But…it was because they were sick. Madeleine was okay, just felt a little off. Nate had strep throat. Bad. He wasn’t able to swallow anything. There was only one place in Vegas where we could’ve taken him but when we looked it up online, lots of reviewers warned people to STAY AWAY; that it was a filthy and horrible place. We ended up going to the InstaCare in St. George on the way home. By that time, his throat had open ulcers. He was hating life. Caroline would prove to get sick and have a high fever all the way home. When we took her in to the doc at home, she didn’t have Strep, but another virus.  Nate is just now able to eat normally again after 6 days and a lot of pain meds. Poor, poor kid. Caroline is fine now as well. Madeleine never did get sick. She has a supernormal immune system.

Anyway, not the best trip. At least we had fun swimming.

California Vacay: Wayfarer’s Chapel

Continuing our drive around the Palos Verdes peninsula we drove over Portuguese Bend, an active landslide, much to Rob’s delight. He found this completely fascinating. After viewing the huge scarp of the landslide from the road (way too large to photograph) we drove over the part of the landside where the road was constructed, and reconstructed, and reconstructed, etc, etc – you get the idea! The road crews were onsite doing continual repairs to the most twisted and damaged sections of road Rob has ever seen.

We made a stop at the beautiful Wayfarer’s Chapel, designed by none other than Frank Lloyd Wright. The spot was so beautiful and serene perched on top of the hill overlooking the grand Pacific. How far we felt from the crowded city.

 

Rob and I have determined that if we ever were to live in the Los Angeles area, Palos Verdes would be the area we’d want our home. All we need is about $5 million +. No biggie.

 

See that cliff down there? That’s our next stop, Abalone Cove.

California Vacay: Cabrillo Beach Tidepools

Photo taken by madlyinlovewithlife

On the fourth day of our trip in good old California we drove by the port of Los Angeles on our way to Cabrillo Beach. We all had a good time driving over multiple bridges and observing so much portish stuff. The large cranes were incredible. 

After the port we made our way to the tide pools at Cabrillo Beach. While walking past the beach to the tide pools we observed this scene and Julie made this image. Love the blue tones!

Nate on his way down the boardwalk.



And here we are!

A few close up images of the action. Who knew seaweed is so cool looking?



Ohhhh, that shell looks tasty.

I think I'll have some! Thank you!

Looking up and down the coast. 

We were all kinds of blown away by the large number of mussels. Check out these images! 

Cara was good enough to let me carry her around the tide pools. 

And some more carrying....

Squishy!! We love all the shells ingrained on the rocks.

Madeleine was pretty nervous about getting out into the tide pools. However, after a while she warmed up.

Nate loves to explore (he reminds me so much of Julie).

He thought this thing used to be a restaurant because there was so much fast food trash inside. Haha.