E Quotes

So here are a couple of fun recent “E Quotes”.

 

Eating corn on the cob for dinner: “Dad, something’s weird. Every time I finish a piece of corn, it looks like a rectangle!”

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Sometimes I go out jogging in the morning before the kids wake up. One day when I got back, E said:
"Mom! While you were gone I made you a fruit salad for breakfast! It’s got green apples, red apples, and fruit loops!”

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One time when he was little, we were driving through In-N-Out and they had a big picture window so you could see all the workers inside preparing the food. Spotting this, E yelled, “Mom, look! It’s our friends in there!”

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That’s it for now. Stay tuned for more E quotes! :)

Janae got married!

Last week we were so excited to take a little family vacation and head off to Utah for a wonderful event – Janae and Topher getting married! Nathan took a few days off and E got to do an independent study program from school so we didn’t even have to miss any days, thankfully.

We had a great time driving up there, with the kiddos happy in the back seat and Nathan and I listening to a good book on tape. I’m not a big desert fan, so I don’t really love the drive, but having my hubby and family there with me the whole way made it better.

The first night we got there, we got to hang out with my sister Ang, and it was fun to get to talk with her for a while. She’s such a cute girl and is so good with our kids. I just love it when she’s around because she helps me out with them so much. Plus it’s great to have a chance to catch up with her and find out all about the latest twists and turns of her fun, college love life. ::wink:: We love Angela!

The next day we went to a baby shower for Renee, and it was a lot of fun to get to see so many of Nathan’s family members that we rarely see. Renee and Lewis don’t know what they’re having (boy or girl) so it was fun to see what kind of gifts they got. ;) I can’t wait to see what they end up having! They’re going to make great parents.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures at the shower, I was more concerned about E not trampling over Lewis’ grandmother’s garden, ha.

Craving some yummy food, we met up with Angela and Tom to have dinner at Benihana. Outside the restaurant, there was an art installation with hundreds of rubber hoses buried in the ground and sticking up all over the place. The boys had the best time running around the tubes, pretending it was a jungle, an obstacle course, and a swamp.

Of course, the dinner was delicious! I always love going there for the yummy soup. It’s one of my favorite things. The show is usually pretty good, too, and the boys love watching the food being prepared. It also seems like the chefs put a little more effort into it when there are kids around, too. :)

We had such a fun night with them! I love getting to hang out with my siblings, it’s always so much fun. I sure do miss them!

Oh yeah, forgot to include the Angela creeper photo:

Part Two coming soon…

E’s funny sayings

Sometimes it’s a roller coaster living with a child like my oldest, E. He’s remarkably smart, has a mind like steel trap, and he likes to store new vocabulary words or phrases that he reads or sees on TV. And while he thinks he understands the context in which they should be said, he’s still not that socially mature, and tends to repeat these new words or phrases at random times, which can either be funny or embarrassing – sometimes both.  And then other times he just says funny stuff because he’s E and that’s part of his personality.

A friend of mine suggested I start writing down these funny things that E says. I have to admit, I’d thought about doing this before (and have a few scraps of paper with quotes on them that I just couldn’t resist writing down) and that was just the reminder I needed. So, please enjoy, some fun and funny E quotes:

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E: “Mom, can we go to Ralph’s (our local grocery store) tomorrow?”

Me: “Why, bud?”

E: [He slams down four quarters on the kitchen table with his hand.]

“So I can spend these four bad boys!”

 

--Pause for dramatic effect--

 

“That means these quarters.”

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While eating his frozen lemonade at Disneyland, E realized it was starting to melt in the hot sun.

E: “Mom, I’m going to wait until it’s all beverage, then drink it up.”

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At the salon, waiting to get his hair cut, looking through a look book (with a lot of examples of haircuts).

E: “Mom, you should get your hair cut.”

Me: “Should I get it cut as short as yours? Maybe just chop it all off?”

E: “Yeah. Or you could look through this book, there’s a segment for girls too!”

Still at the salon, while I took W into the bathroom to go potty.

E: (to the hair stylist) “I want to cut my hair like this!” (points to a faux-hawk in the look book)

Stylist: “Is that OK with your mom?”

E: “It’s OK with me!”

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There are a lot more where these came from, so I’ll try to get some more written down. For posterity, right? And maybe this will garner me some sympathy points when he is older and realizes what it was really like to raise him! ;)

Oldies but goodies

I came across some old photos tonight that I just had to share. They’re from March of ‘09.

Here’s our little W as a baby, wasn’t he just the most adorable thing? Looking at these now, I can see lots of the facial expressions that he does today are the same as when he was a little goose. Too cute, I tell you!

(And seriously, posting with LiveWriter strips away all the yummy color that is supposed to be in these photos and I don’t know how to make it stop. It’s frustrating! But just imagine these pictures with gorgeous, saturated color instead of this bland mess you see before you. Ugh.)

I swear, babies are freaking adorable. Especially when they look like little old men. And speaking of little old men babies, my seester Ali is due to have her own very soon and I’m super excited for her! I’ll be so happy to get to go visit her and hold her little guy, and then I’ll be so happy to give him right back when he needs a change. I mean, what are aunts for! ;)

I really can’t believe my little old man baby W is growing so fast! I mean, he’s actually out of diapers and has graduated to the ranks of underwear-er! Miracle of miracles! I just know I’m going to blink and he’ll be off on his mission to some foreign land with no internet access. Craziness.

San Diego adventure

Today turned out to be a surprisingly fun day. Last night we headed down to San Diego to meet up with Nathan as he’s staying there all week for a client down there.

So we woke up in the hotel, got Dad off to work, tidied up the room, and left for our day’s adventure. I had wanted to surprise the kids and take them to the Children’s Museum, but found out it was closed on Wednesdays. Bummer for bad timing. Also, the plan to swim in the pool’s hotel was scrapped when I realized I had packed only W’s swimsuit and not E’s. Needless to say, E was devastated, since that’s what we had planned, so we needed to find something “just as fun” to make up for it.

So, we hunted for this little, well-reviewed bagel shop for breakfast, and after a few U-turns [Side note: Boy, do I miss my Droid incredible and its turn-by-turn navigation system. That’s one of the only things I miss from when I switched to an iPhone. I swear, I’m not fast enough to memorize a map nor do I have the capabilities to sit and watch my map to see when I have to turn and which way, etc. while I’m driving. So I tend to have a lot of wrong-way turns and exclamations of “Dangit!” or “That was the left I needed…” while driving in unfamiliar territories…] we finally made it to the bagel shop, which ended up being worth the crazy trip. I had a bagel with cream cheese and the boys had croissant breakfast sandwiches with an apple each. Yummy!

After that fun adventure, the kids kept asking what we were doing next when we happened to drive by a cool-looking park. Ding ding ding! We turned in, got out, and headed up to play. It was a really fun park, full of new equipment and seven or eight freshly-delivered mountains of new sand. Yeah, that was going to be everywhere. But at least the kiddos enjoyed it, and the weather was perfect so we had fun.

Once the kids got semi-tuckered out, we left the park. Of course, only after changing W’s massive poop explosion, complete with a new pair of pants. Yeah, that bad. And yeah, we’re working on potty training so I don’t have to worry about those anymore, but we’re still in-progress…

Anyways, I decided to head south a little more to Old Town San Diego and see what kind of fun we could find, and while driving around, I saw a sign for the Mormon Battalion visitor’s center, run by the church. I had wanted to check it out, but wasn’t planning on it this trip. I was excited that we just sort of happened upon it, so we decided to go visit.

The presentation was really fun, and it’s just a well-done production that tells about the history of the Mormon Battalion while keeping everything entertaining, especially for the kids.

I was duly interested, however, since the hubby and I had gone through the “Mormon Battalion call for volunteers” during our Trek experience in April, so I wanted to learn more about it and felt a little connection to that.

The boys were excited to pan for gold,

work the well,

make and build with bricks,

and wash some clothes the old-fashioned way.

They also enjoyed the view from the top of the tower.

But I think they enjoyed sitting in these rocking chairs the best! :)

Later, we walked down the street to the main Old Town thoroughfare and saw our fair share of maracas, cowboy hats, Mexican wrestling masks, and other silly souvenir-type stuff. Or at least I did. The boys could have stuck around all day perusing the “treasures”. By this time, however, we were all hungry so we stopped at a place called Fred’s for lunch. The food was good, and I was glad to sit in some shade for a little while.

W enjoyed practicing his photography skills:

Then we went over to a cute state park area that had a bunch of buildings facing a nice open area where the kids climbed around and used up some of their great energy stores. :)

After that, we were tired and wanted to head back home. So we walked back to our car, and discovered it was time to change poop explosion number two! Two pairs of pants in one day! Craziness. Thankfully we were heading back home and didn’t have anywhere else to go for the day.

The boys loved the trip and I’m hoping we can do it again, with the hubby joining us for the fun family day next time. :)

Our summer schedule

Since this is our first *official* summer vacation with the boys, I figured we’d better make good use of it while we can. You see, I’m not really a good ‘schedule’ type of person. Don’t get me wrong, I like having a schedule and knowing when to expect things, but I just have not been that good at keeping to one. I start to feel trapped, like I won’t be able to do something if it’s not ‘on the schedule’. Or that I’d just end up feeling disappointed in myself because I couldn’t keep to it perfectly. Crazy, I know, but that’s how my brain works. It was easier for me to just do stuff when we could and if I had a long to-do list for the day, things mostly sometimes sporadically got done and I still felt free from having to conform to a rigid plan. Of course, I ended up feeling depressed most of the time because I never had time during the day when I felt it was ‘okay’ to just sit and do nothing. I always always always would be thinking of the things that I had to get done and felt guilty when I had to spend time playing with my kids instead of getting to that pile of laundry or something equally minute.

How silly of me.

This summer, I knew that in dealing with my oldest, having a set schedule would make life IMMENSELY easier for all of us. Because he is the kind of kid that needs structure, routine, and craves being able to plan his day based on what’s next on the schedule. So, for his sake (or at least, that’s what I started out telling myself), I adopted a plan that would allow us to get things done around the house, but then also have ample free time for having fun.

And I tell you what, the first two days have been brilliant! :)

Now, I know it’s only been two days, and you’re thinking, “Of course it’s been brilliant, it’s two days worth of having a schedule, nothing hard could have come up yet to challenge it.” Or at least, that’s what I’m hearing inside my own head. But it’s been surprising to see how flexible our little routine has been so far. And it just seems to be working. In just these first couple of days, I’ve watched my kids participate in daily chores with excitement because they know that once they’re finished with their jobs, they’ll be able to have free time and do whatever they want.

And the funny thing is, I’m feeling the same way. I’ve made myself a list of daily chores that I complete right along with my kids, and once I’m done, I feel completely free and able to do whatever I want. Without guilt! It’s actually pretty cool and it’s helping me feel good about our days so far.

I got the idea for this specific type of schedule from Vanessa Christenson in this post. I knew, as soon as I read that, that it would work for us.

And two days in, we’re still going strong. ;)

I’ll have to make sure to update as the summer goes on. We’ve already made a few small changes to the schedule, to fit our needs better, and I’m sure we’ll do that more throughout the summer too. I’ll let you know!

Oh, and I also wanted to mention that we’re doing a little Family Summer Reading Program that I got from here. It’s been so fun to see E and W both get so excited about reading and earning their Bingo squares! Definitely check it out if you’d like to see more reading and less screen-watching in your house this summer!

Bowling for compliments!

Just kidding, we went with the regular, old kind. The bowling alley close to us has a free kids program for the summer, where kids bowl free and you just pay for shoe rental. It’s a great program and we’ve loved using it so far.

Today was a fun time with my boys, and a great way to get out of the house so that the daily chores we had just finished would stay *relatively* intact.

What a ham! :)

We’re excited to continue using our free bowling passes this summer! We sure are glad for fun things to do when there’s no school to keep those kids busy! ::wink::

W selling lemonade

Careful, though, it can get expensive! ;)

Family Reunion!

Ohmygoodness, this vacation had been in the works for SO LONG that it felt like it would never, ever get here. But finally, finally, my entire family descended upon southern California and we got to celebrate my mom’s 50th birthday milestone! (Of course, if you talk to her, just pretend it was her 30th, okay? Thanks.) :)
The days they were here were filled with all sorts of laughter, fun, games, good talks, and just all-around family goodness. And as full as the days were, they still FLEW by with lightning speed so that what felt like 10 minutes after they showed up, I was looking around an empty house and missing them all.
What did we do? Well, here’s a little look-see:

We tried on sticky moustaches and accessories

Tom got a master photography class with Emily

We took portraits at In-N-Out

We went on a field trip to the Griffith Observatory in LA

…where we took more portraits. ;)

We got to see a lot of cool things at the Observatory, like this giant swinging pendulum.

We went to the beach (and even though it was cold and windy, we still managed to have a great time)!

We celebrated my Mom’s birthday at BJ’s (and yes, had yummy pizookies)!

Ang and the kids made a puppet show

And we all showed off our cool Nana shirts that commemorated the great event!

Of course, as is always the case, we were sad to have to say our goodbye’s once it was over. But I came away from it with such a good feeling and a fun experience. I’m so grateful for my family! And especially for the rare times when we all get to be together.