Donatelli Family

Christmas update

2012-01-26T21:22:00.000-08:00

Wow I haven't blogged in forever! I just uploaded all my pics and the same as it was months ago, they refuse to get into order, is there something I need to update with blogger? I never had this problem before!

I'm going to do an update through pictures, going backwards in time.

We have been ripping our house up again these days. Trying to get stuff done before baby girl comes in April. We have a lot of unfinished business going on, chair rail in the kitchen and hall, all new doors and moldings, new cabinets and this kitchen work. After finishing up the chair rail in the dining room we decided to take a few feet of the wall out to open up the walkway. This is the before and I never took an after haha, just picture the wall smaller and now you can see my entire kitchen.

Dean gets involved in the demo, we tell him he is the only one strong enough to do certain tasks and he loves to help.

We removed the small strip of wood that divided the rooms, soon it will be one smooth ceiling. We also have added a cabinet above the bar counter, as well as one in our bathroom. Need to take pics of those once they are completed.

Another big project is the baby! I'm now 28 weeks! I cannot believe how gigantic I am this time around, I have blown up so fast. At my last Drs appt she told me I have low blood sugar and that I gained too much weight, how nice right!? The baby room is coming along, I learned how to make a quilt and finished making the blanket for her bedding. I also refinished a dresser, I'll post pics once the room looks more put together.

Christmas was great this year. I somehow managed to match Dean's wrapping paper to his pjs, not on purpose! He was in full camouflage hahah!

Ok this blog is pissing me off so badly, it wont even let me write anything next to the pictures I'm talking about, nothing is going to match up. Basically you'll see pics of Christmas day and eve, a day we spent at Kathy's house to see a Christmas light show on a train. A sad picture of Dean on the couch, he was sick for a week before Christmas, 104 fever, didn't eat, puking in my bed every night, the worst thing he's ever been through in his little life, it was horrible! Luckily he got better right in time for Christmas and had a great time. We put carrots out for the reindeer, Santa ate his cookies, each year gets more exciting and fun.

It's a girl!

2011-11-17T12:34:00.000-08:00

After saving an attic full of boy clothing I found out this baby is a girl! I was really surprised because I just kinda figured it would be another boy but Dean told me the whole time it was a sister =) We are starting to pick through names and I'm hoping to decide on one soon so Dean can have something to call her. We are all so excited,!

Here is a little pregnancy questionnaire I found-

How far along: 18 weeks
Total weight gain/loss: I don't own a scale, but I'm guessing about 4 lbs
Maternity clothes: none yet but the pants are getting tighter!
Stretch marks: none and hope it stays that way
Sleep: I wake up a lot and end up thinking about random things at 3 in the morning. Sometime I think up some of my best ideas at that time.
Best moment this week: finding out were having a girl! Right when she went in for the shot I didn't see a dangler and cried a little tear. haha!
Miss anything: going on rides at Knotts would be fun! Or drinking more than water.
Movement: All the time, the kicks are getting stronger.
Food cravings: not anymore, only when I was grossed out by most foods would I have a craving.
Anything making you queasy or sick: not anymore.
Have you started to show yet: Yeah the belly sticks out, more at night or when I'm full of food.
Gender: Girl
Labor signs: none
Belly button in or out: in
Wedding rings on or off: I only wear them when I'm not at home
Looking forward to: Thanksgiving food, family and black friday shopping!

Halloween

2011-11-01T19:39:00.000-07:00

Once again blogger uploads pictures into a sloppy mess.

Here's my 15 week baby gut, the thing has been sticking out much more these last few days, or maybe it's all the halloween candy.

We did our carving the day before Hween

Dean was so grossed out touching the insides

By the time we carved both our big pumpkins, the crappy tools they sell at target were about ready to snap. So for Dean's pumpkin we busted out the drill

I know it looks like Dean peed his pants, but its water from when he carried his wet pumpkin.

We were all ready to go trick or treating. This year was great, he really knew what was going on and couldn't wait to go get candy and see all the kids dressed up.

What's new

2011-10-29T11:01:00.000-07:00

Ok this blog is all screwed up, the pictures aren't aligned and I'm not about to try and figure it out. Sorry about that!

Looks like were starting with some of the Knott's pictures. We went to Camp Spooky where the kids can dress up, trick or treat, do art and crafts, mazes and other fun things.

Dean loves the carousel

Ok here's a random one that blogger decided to put right in the middle. My belly shot at 11 weeks! This pregnancy has been very different than when I had Dean. I was sick a lot more, I've blacked out and get light headed daily. Gained weight faster because of all the morning sickness, only food made me feel better! Luckily I'm now 15 weeks and at least the sickness has pretty much gone away. We will hopefully find out boy or girl on November 15th!

We hit the pumpkin patch for pictures and a few rides.

Dean just woke up from a nap and wasn't in any mood to pose for me.

more Knotts

And here is a picture of Dean before his first day of preschool! He started in September but my mom has all the pictures on her camera. He absolutely love school and get excited each Tuesday and Thursday that he goes. It's so cute hearing about what they did at school, even though getting him to tell me about his day is pretty much impossible. "What did you do at school?" Dean - "play"

Bachelorette getaway

2011-09-20T20:20:00.000-07:00

7 of us girls packed up on Saturday for a night in San Diego for Shannon's bachelorette party.

First things first was grocery store for candy and booze.
This is the view from our balcony, we stayed in Mission Bay. It was nice waking up to the sounds of the seals barking outside.
Before going out for the night we got all ready, drank some, did a funny question game and hung out in the room

Shannon and Kathy
being silly
bride and Kristen
and with my mama

and me
our cousin Amanda
Kelly brought a bunch of pink bachelorette gear and everyone was ready to go.
After riding in the crazy taxi cab we arrived at the Shout House, a dueling piano bar.
There were at least 8 other brides to be in the place and some dude bought them all shots
The music was awesome and the guys were hilarious. Amanda was dancing it up.
girls, girls, girls. Shannon was brought on stage and while she was sitting on top of the pianos the guys sang a hilarious song about everyone in the bar doing her or something along those lines hahah.
spilling beer haha
At the end of the night we all got into the bags of candy and junk and had a feast.
The next morning we had a struggle trying to find breakfast food. After an hour we ended up at the Wave House and had super good food right on the beach.

A few of the girls went on a huge wooden roller coaster and then we headed home! It was a super fun weekend and we will be having more fun next weekend at the bridal shower, and the guys will be going on a fishing trip.

Poor old blog

2011-09-20T19:48:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize how far behind I really was on this thing. Here's a recap of what we've been up to!

Dean still has his ugly chickens that I hate. Of course I feel bad since he loves them but seriously, the little poopers need to move out already. And they haven't even laid a single egg, not that I would eat them anyways!
Sometime when the OC fair was open we went to that, so long ago I can't remember. We watched the hypnotist, played games and the kids went on rides. Oh and can't forget the funnel cake =)

My cousin Shannon and her fiance Grant finally got here from New Zealand!! They have been here for almost 2 months so these are pretty old. Our big reunion was to go to the wedding dress shop and for Grant and Brandon to have a surf day.

Shannon got the dress, it is so pretty I just love it.

After, we had a nice lunch at a mexi place and saw Mr. Big from Sex and the City there, Idk who that is since I've never watched the show before.

Another fun event was the Taylor Swift concert! Kristen, Jenn, Tim and I had an amazing night. Kristen and I already had awesome seats and then Taylor came out to a little stage in the area right where we were sitting. We were standing at the side of the gate singing along all excited and then Taylor's mom who was in the sound booth grabbed us to go and be right in front of the stage. After playing there for awhile she went back to the main stage but we got to stay inside the sound booth and watch the rest of the show with an even closer view. She puts on such a great show! Then her special guest was Justin Bieber, it was insane how high pitched the shrieks were that came out of all those crying teeny boppers.

Don't mind my chins please =))

More exciting stuff coming soon!!

Day 8

2011-09-10T09:36:00.000-07:00

Day 8 – A song to match your mood.

And that's all I have to say about that.

I forgot

2011-09-08T13:12:00.000-07:00

We went to the river and I totally forgot I was doing that 30 day challenge ahha! Guess I'll pick up where I left off.

Day 7
Your dream wedding-

My dream wedding would really just be a vacation somewhere amazing. I'm not huge on weddings, so much work, money and stress! Don't get me wrong, I love going to weddings and enjoy everything about watching and attending, but after I planned my own I realized what work it was.

Just send me here and throw in a trip to the courthouse haha

River Trip

2011-08-21T19:44:00.000-07:00

Last month we went on our yearly trip to Parker, AZ with the Van Duyn family. It was so much fun and hot as hell. The first day all Kristen and I did was sleep or gambled haha

Here we are when we finally made it out on the boat.

Nick let Dean drive the boat back into the dock each time and he loved it so much. He was very serious.
Dean's birthday was when we were out there. We got a little cake and he got a few presents to open.
Kristen- he loves this guitar and amp, he rocks out all the time.

Of course anything Cars

He was eating like a chicken.

Crazy hat crew

I'll let you guess why Nick swam so far aways from the group ahahahHappy with his Auntie

Dean decided he was ready to go home!

Not too many pics this year but it was tons of fun. One night we took the boat out and less than 5 minutes later a huge storm hits, crazy winds, raining, insane thunder and lightening. Once we all ran inside it was awesome to watch from the room. Lots of gambling but no big winners this year. Besides that just lots of boating, playing at the indoor water park and eating tons of calories.

Birthdays

2011-08-08T22:02:00.000-07:00

My birthday is 1 week before Dean's so really at that time all I'm thinking about is his bday, not my own especially now that I'm getting so old! But Brandon is all about celebrating so he set up a taco Tuesday night at King Neptunes for whoever could come.

The only semi decent pic we got as a family.

Kathy, me and Kristen at Neptunes

Dean having fun with the arcade games

Hanging with Megan

Kathy and Carl, bro and sis. My dad can never take a serious picture! With our mama mia

For Dean's big 3rd birthday we were actually on our yearly river trip to Parker, AZ. I let him open his gifts early because I didn't want to pack even more stuff.
This was his big gift. It's a castle with a dragon that has secret hidden things and makes noise. Basically it's a boys doll house.

Next post will be about our river trip!

6

2011-07-27T10:21:00.001-07:00

Day 6 – A photo of an animal you’d love to keep as a pet.

I really don't ever wish to have pets because I don't want poop in my yard. But if I ever had a family member that had one of these I would love to come play with it for awhile. Teacup piggy!!

Plus I already have an animal-

Day 5

2011-07-26T09:20:00.000-07:00

Day 5 – A photo of yourself two years ago

2 years ago at the LA Roadster Show. This is when I hacked my own bangs off but made them too thick and had to pin half of them back everyday haha. Don't cut your own hair, lesson learned.

Day 3 and 4

2011-07-22T19:43:00.000-07:00

Day 3 – Your idea of the perfect first date.

Something fun, like a theme park that way there is always something to do.

Day 4 – Your favorite photograph of your best friend.
I know it's old but it is so cute! My two besties

Day 2

2011-07-21T08:59:00.000-07:00

Day 2 – A photo of something you ate today.

This is all I have had to eat so far today. Cinnamon oatmeal..blahh.

But the river trip is coming up so gotta get in shape 1 week before I have to wear a bathing suit. That always works right?

On another note, last night Brandon got 2 baby chicks. They will be living at the office/Dave's place. Right now they sleep in a big box, the guys are going to build a coop soon. Dean was the most excited I have ever seen him in his whole life. He spazzed out and fell on the floor with excitement. He's been very gentle and lets them sleep, but cannot stop checking on them every 3 minutes. He named them Chicken Littles.

30 days

2011-07-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

I'm jumping on this bandwagon. I never update my blog so hopefully I do more than just the first day of this!

So here is my Day 1 – A photo of yourself and a description of how your day was.

It is only 9am so I'll tell you how yesterday was. I worked, Dean was kinda in a hitting mood so there were a few time outs. Went home and cleaned the house but it was so hot I had to quit. Watched a few episodes of The Office, I started the show from season 1 and in less then two weeks I'm already on season 6, it's so funny! Went to the grocery store, worked out and went to sleep. The end!

Day 2 – A photo of something you ate today.
Day 3 – Your idea of the perfect first date.
Day 4 – Your favorite photograph of your best friend.
Day 5 – A photo of yourself two years ago.
Day 6 – A photo of an animal you’d love to keep as a pet.
Day 7 – Your dream wedding.
Day 8 – A song to match your mood.
Day 9 – A photo of the item you last purchased.
Day 10 – A photo of our favorite place to eat.
Day 11 – What’s in your makeup bag?
Day 12 – A photograph of the town you live in.
Day 13 – Your favorite musician and why?
Day 14 – A TV show you’re currently addicted to.
Day 15 – Something you don’t leave the house without.
Day 16 – Your celebrity crush.
Day 17 – A photo of you and your family.
Day 18 – Something you crave a lot.
Day 19 – Another picture of yourself.
Day 20 – The meaning behind your blog name.
Day 21 – A photo of something that makes you happy.
Day 22 – A letter to someone who has hurt you recently.
Day 23 – 15 facts about you.
Day 24 – A photo of something that means a lot to you.
Day 25 – What’s in your purse?
Day 26 – A photo of somewhere you’ve been to.
Day 27 – A picture of you last year and now and how have you changed since then?
Day 28 – Your favorite movie.
Day 29 – Something you could never get tired of doing.
Day 30 – A photograph of yourself today + three good things that have happened in the past 30 days

Sprinklers and sparklers

2011-07-06T19:11:00.000-07:00

So now we are in July! The weather has definitely been getting a lot hotter. Dean likes to cool off by playing in the water, either outside or he asks for a cool bath.

baby butt crackWe have a dirt patch in the back that he races cars through, one day he filled it with water. I come outside to discover Dean turned into a wolf man.kindly showing me his mud piesthen he got all Problem Child on me and flung it towards me.

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Last Friday I went from Burbank to Huntington Beach doing wedding planning with my aunt Kathy, it's for my cousin Shannon's wedding! Since she is still living in New Zealand until August we went to check out wedding dresses for her at http://www.unique-vintage.com/ Kathy had her laptop with the webcam on and Shannon got to see me try on all the dresses to see which she liked best. It was so much fun, the dresses are seriously amazing and the prices even better. The whole store is retro and I wanted everything. When I was shopping the site before we went I fell in love with this bathing suit and luckily they had them in stock! Can't believe I'm posting this nerdy picture and my whitey legs haha-

After trying on all the dresses and dripping with sweat we headed to the Original Bob's Big Boy! I wish I had some of those fries right about now.Kathy took me to her old childhood neighborhood then we made a few more stops after sitting in hellish LA traffic.

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4th of July

We had a BBQ and fireworks at our house this year which I loved because I didn't have to leave my house.

Hanging with Ryder and Dean, impossible to get a good picture these days

The dudes BBQ'n - Chad, Brandon, Frank
Shawn feeding Candice a hot dog hahah

Grandpa Carl telling the kids to behave

My street was a full on warzone, the neighbor had a truck load of illegals and it was just insane. I never got more than 3 feet away from the front door.

I have been dying to try the sparkler words since I read about it last year. It is so fun, I have more and am going to practice this weekend.
LOL

This almost says Dean

Hope everyone had a great long weekend!

What we did in June

2011-07-06T18:04:00.000-07:00

I took over a month long blog break, I'm so bad! This will be the first of two posts so I can break things up a little.

Way back when on June 2nd was Kristen's 23rd birthday!! Man we are getting old. A group of us went to Goat Hill Tavern, mmmm mmm do I love to drink cider =)

Me, Kristen, Candice.

Birthday girl and Nick

Hanging with the hubby

Shawn and Kristen looking a little squinty

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Next is Shalyn's baby shower for Gage! It was great to see everyone, the kiddos got to hang out and I shoved my face with food all day!
Stefani, Shalyn, Christina and me. The OC Dental Society girls

There was a craft table for the kids, of course Dean puts on the 'stache

Little Guido

And here is a recent picture of Gage!! Such a cutie, looks so much like his big bro, Gavin. Can't wait to meet you soon!

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The dudes have gotten all into fishing again. We've made a few trips to Ralph B Clark Park. I love that park, it is so clean, nice play grounds, cool fishing ponds.

Come onnnn Dada!

Future angler

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Annual Father's Day Hot Rod Show

This year it was done indoors, of course the one year it isn't sweltering hot outside. We saw tons of cool cars, hung with the family and ate a bunch of junk food.

Ryder in the little race car

Dean's turn

A photographer came and took these cool shots of the boys playing in my dad's old '32

Zoomars

2011-06-03T19:49:00.000-07:00

Today Kathy, Ryder, Dean and I hopped on the train from Orange and went to San Juan Capistrano to visit the Zoomars petting zoo. The boys loved the train ride of course! When we arrived they went straight into the cage with tons of bunnies, guinea pigs and a blind chicken.

Feeding them snacks

Dean immediately wanted to hold something and the guinea pigs were easiest to catch.

Dean has always been such a huge animal lover. It makes me so happy to see him so caring, loving and gentle to any kind of animal he meets.

ok sorry I had to post all of those, I love them all!

Ryder was a little nervous about how to hold the piggies at first but he got it!

Not so sure about the chicken haha
Kathy had to protect the poor blind chicken from this big humper rooster

Next we hit the goat pen. We couldn't even walk in there because they were attacking us for the veggies.

But we didn't put the veggies up high enough because they got them all, if only I had the pic of the goat jumping on you Kathy haha

Cheesers

I am in love with the design of this bird! This might sound weird but its colors and patterns would make the cutest purse, not out of the actual bird, just the design! So pretty.
The boys got to take a ride on the kiddie train and then they hung out on the play ground for awhile.

I have never seen a swing like this before- back to back

Next up were the pony rides. They did so good, I was expecting one of them to get nervous but no one did! Ryder got this cute pony-

Blond boy on a blond horse

Then Dean got on this horse. His head was bouncing around like a bobble head, it was so funny.
Then his horse guy decided to make the ostrich want to eat my child. Seriously look at that evil thing!! I have seen Dirty Jobs and I know how crazy those things are!

I guess Dean's horse wanted to get glamour shots done

My lil cowboy

After the petting zoo we had a nice lunch and went to go see the SJC Mission. After learning you have to pay to get in and we only had about 30 minutes until the train came we headed towards the park. Not even 5 minutes into playing Kathy notices Dean walking a little funny. I go to see whats up with him and see mud running down his legs, only the mud wasn't mud if you know what I mean. Somehow I managed to clean him off in the bathroom, luckily I brought a diaper and shorts in my purse. His underwear were blown to smithereens and he had to leave in wet shoes but that didn't ruin his day! He happily walked back to the train station while telling me his newly found information " I have diarrhea!" hahah. About twenty minutes later we were on our way home and they were more than pooped out.
Thanks for another fun time Kathy and Ryder! =)

Hanging out with friends

2011-05-22T19:19:00.000-07:00

I finally have some new pictures to use to update the ol' blog! The past few weeks have been fun, trying to get Dean out having fun as much as possible. He has lots of friends in the neighborhood which is so awesome! We go to Knott's Berry Farm for an hour or two, he loves Snoopy. Lots of bike rides, especially now that Brandon put a motor on his bike. He got a bubble gun for Easter, it's harder than I thought to get a cute bubble picture.

When dada was working on his bike all weekend Dean gave his a fine tune up

A few days ago The Wedge had some major waves going on. Shannon, these are for Grant.

Dean made sand angels and ran around with random kids.
Jumping back more than a week I met up with my old coworkers from the Orange County Dental Society. We went to Downtown Disney and ate at the Jazz Kitchen. I sure do miss working with my friends! Christina and Shalyn were pregnant together with their last babies and again this time. Shalyn just had her newest addition Gage this morning! Can't wait to go visit them tomorrow =)

From the left is Stacy, Christina, tall giraffe, Shalyn and Stephanie

Then go back even more to Mother's Day. We finally got to meet our long distance friends that we met through Shannon and the blogs. Mel and her family came on an American vacation from New Zealand. Ending their cross country trip in CA we got to have 2 fun days together. I don't have any pics from our BBQ but I know someone took some!

We did the Farmers Market in Huntington Beach and ate dinner at Ruby's Diner.

walking Main St.

Clyde, Brandon, Craig, Brianna, Mel, me and Dean and Ruby down below.

Here is Ruby, Mel and Craig's daughter. She is the cutest, sweetest little girl. Brandon and I kept talking about how we wish we could keep her forever. =)

It was great getting to meet everyone and I wish we all lived closer and got to hang out all the time!

Potty time

2011-05-04T17:22:00.000-07:00

I decided after the kitchen was done and we weren't living in a hoarders style house, I would get back into potty training. A couple months ago we tried and things were going ok but not great and Dean and I both were getting upset and it wasn't worth it at the time. So now were back at it and just since those few months it is going much better! It is definitely worth waiting until your kid can communicate well, Dean can talk so much now and it's way easier for him to understand whats going on. I'm finding this whole process to be more hilarious than anything.

Me- "Dean do you need to go potty?"

Dean -

"No mama, I peed outside. I'm a dog"

"Not yet, maybe later."

"I'm going outside to poop in the grass"

"Yeah, ruuuuunnn to the potty, hurry!!"

His new thing is being a dog haha. He is so independent and has to do everything himself or he gets super emotional, so it's great that he will run to the potty himself. Our big problem the first round was dropping logs in his undies, I can handle it in a diaper way better than trying to shimmy a turd down in his underwear without it falling on the floor. Today we had a major breakthrough and as I was on a work call he comes running in "mama come look, I pooped in the potty all by myself!!!" luckily the customer didn't hear that haha. He made sure to not flush and proudly showed it off because he knew he would get to go to Target and pick out a new car. We even survived the entire trip in Target and left with dry pants.

I sure hope he continues to get better because there are so many pluses. I'll get to keep that $50 per box of diapers, all his pants will fit another year and I think those little baby buns are super adorable in Micky underwear.

Bike ride and water slide

2011-04-24T20:00:00.000-07:00

Saturday we had some great weather and finally got out the bike rack (thanks Kathy!!) and headed to Huntington Beach. We met with our friend Ricky who lives right near Main St and went cruising the boardwalk. Dean was getting excited to get in the sand so we stopped for awhile to let him run free.

Rick and Brandon with their matching bikes and Red Bulls
Poor guy needed sunglasses
A pine cone!

Rick kept tossing a pile of seaweed at Dean and he was terrified of it. Later that night he was telling me "Ricky frowing the little plants" it took me awhile to realize he was talking about the seaweed. What's scary about it?! haha

At first he was nervous about the water But that ended quick

My little churro

After we ate lunch at Aloha Grill and met with Keith, Amanda, Ryder and their friends. We didn't stay too long because Kristen and I had plans to go see the movie Water for Elephants.

Auntie Kristen surprised Dean with his first of many Easter baskets. Thanks Kristen =)

He is in love with the Chipmunks movies right now and thinks he's Simon with these on. My little nerdy.
Then Grandma came over to babysit and brought some more nice stuff for her favorite grandchild. Dean always calls himself Grandma's Boy.

We had a long night at the movies, LOVED the movie by the way, baking for the easter party and sewing skirts with Kristen.

So every morning Dean wakes up from his own bed and comes straight in to mine to cuddle for awhile. For some reason he decided to skip that today and went ahead and found his Easter basket. He opened everything, ate some candy and then came and woke us up to show what the Easter bunny brought. I'm gonna have to set my alarm this Christmas or I may miss everything!

Each year we get together with Brandon's family for a big lunch and the egg hunt. This year we had 5 egg hunters and 120 or more eggs!

We woke up to rain but luckily it cleared up enough to be outside.
Aunts Laura and Stephanie got all the kids little bags of candy and toys, the biggest kid of all had fun with Dean's new kite. The plan was for the kids to play on the water slide but when it was raining and cloudy out I figured that wasn't going to happen. Well obviously kids don't care about freezing as long as they are having fun. Dean loves the water and wasn't going to miss out, so he went at it wearing just his muddy jeans and his monster truck tattoo. The tattoo that I let him put on this morning, making sure to put it high on his arm so it wouldn't show in any of his Easter pictures. What's more white trash than a monster truck tat and a jean pants bathing suit?

But what does that matter when you are this happy!

Cousins Amber and Camille

I need to frame this one

We had a great Easter weekend and I ate at least a half pan of brownies and a bag of whopper eggs. I am not allowed to go to any stores until all the clearance candy is gone.

Easter Eggs

2011-04-21T21:51:00.000-07:00

Tonight we colored Easter eggs! Dean had a lot more fun with it this year. He's super excited for the egg hunt and talks about the Easter bunny and his basket all the time.

This picture cracks me up, like he's plotting something evil.

Super excited! He looks so washed out in these pics =/

Admiring all his work

Of course Dada couldn't help but start eating the eggs before I could even get a picture with all of them. Here is what happened when he got a piece of hard boiled egg.

Can't wait to give him his basket on Sunday and watch the kids go crazy for their huge egg hunt!

Pretend City

2011-03-28T20:29:00.000-07:00

Going back more than a week ago we had a fun weekend with Kathy and Ryder. Friday they came to hang out and the boys got to play at our house and we went out to Chili's for dinner. Dean sure gets hyper and wild when he has friends over, he was driving me nuts haha! Saturday morning Kathy picked us up and we went to Pretend City in Irvine. The boys loved it and had so much fun playing with everything. You go through each spot in the city and do different jobs. Mechanic, carpenter, farmer, chef, post office and so on. Here the boys are being police dispatchers, I think. The little outfits were so cute, little mechanics!

This was probably Dean's favorite place to play, on the stage!

He was a human version of one of these- Ryder's boots were made for dancing hahah

Farming area Ryder is chicken little

Baby chicks remind me of one thing, the episode of 'I Love Lucy' where she has hundreds of chicks in her living room, so cute and funny!

Ryder just making sure Aunt Kathy is all good

Hey uncle Carl, I think you have a new fishing buddy! This was a great place and we will definitely be going back, anyone wanna go, let me know! Thanks for inviting us to hang out Kathy, we had a great weekend =)

Vegas Vegas Vegas!

2011-03-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

If I think of Vegas the first thing that comes to my mind is Chevy Chase in Vegas Vacation, love that movie! Kristen, Nick, Brandon and I took a weekend trip for Nick's birthday. We stayed at The Mirage, it was a great hotel and right in the middle of everything. Kristen and I did lots of walking and shopping, while the guys would walk the strip, gamble and have some beers. The shopping was more window shopping because a lot of the stores there are really expensive and we are just too cheap haha. The first night we drank in our room and went crazy jumping and dancing on the beds to Katy Perry. The hotel guys shut us down because our neighbors complained so we went out to a few other hotels. I really don't remember what we did but I know we ended the night eating 50 chicken mcnuggets.

The Mirage volcano

Kristen sippy sippin the champagne the hotel gave us

Stinking up the room

Ready to go

So I guess you could call this the before picture. I maybe drink once every 6 months so 2 drinks is all it takes for me to have a good time. This was 1.5 drinks in and we were losing at the keno machines. After losing we went back to the room, had another drink or 2 and started our dance party. Note the banana on my head..I think it was when I was putting random crap all over myself and pretending I was Lady Gaga.

This is Saturday night after another day of shopping, eating and losing at Keno. We decided we weren't drinking anything that day and got to see a lot more of the hotels and the strip.

We are always wearing stripes and boots.

We spent some time at the Bellagio losing more money. Brandon and Nick smoked cigars and pretended to play so they got free drinks haha. Kristen and I played keno for a while, I lost everyone's money. Some weirdo was following the guys around, was always right where we were and eventually Nick told the hotel security. The guy got pissed and took off, don't know what that creep wanted from us.

Made it back to our hotel but Kristen and I couldn't stop playing, we stayed up till like 3 I think!

This is where the Beatles show is, we really should have went to see it but were too cheap haha

We made it home about 5 on Sunday. My mom stayed the weekend with Dean and he had so much fun. She took him to Knott's Berry Farm twice and I'm sure raced cars the rest of the time. He still talks about his fun spoiled weekend and asks for "Gamma to spend the night again"

Breaking walls

2011-03-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of catching up to do! We have been living in a mess for about a month now. I try my best to keep it clean but I'm starting to adapt to the filthy lifestyle after so long.

Here's a little rundown of what we did, this started mid February.

The wall tear down-

I dunno about you, but this is what I need to feel safe while helping.

Dean is a much better age for house repairs. When we first bought the place he was about 6 months and it was hard. Now we send him outside or to his room to play, he sometimes gets mad that he's not helping-
Hello open space
Next came moving the light switches-
Knocking down some more overhangs
The beam hanging between the dining/living room was rotted out by subterranean termites. Those are their dirt tunnels

Replaced the old beam with a new smaller one, just higher and not rotted.

I have two more posts coming soon, but for right now I'm going to spend a few hours at Knott's Berry Farm with the dude.

February Happenings

2011-02-19T10:41:00.000-08:00

Feb. 4th was my dad's birthday. Dean sang Happy Birthday allll day long.

Anytime we go to my parents he loves on his doggies. Poor Sandie is getting old and even though Dean tries to ride her like a horse she still is so nice to him. Ween on the other hand is a mean old man with gray hairs, he too is nice but gives off warning growls haha
Here he is with Megan's dog Lola, all he wanted to do was cuddle her in the blankets.

Valentines Day I ate lots of candy, got these pretty flowers and Brandon made a nice steak and chicken dinner, even if the propane did run out =P
Dean's mop grows so dang fast he was due for another cut. He behaved a lot better this round and I think it was because of his stylish hair cutting cover outfit thing. A pink shopping bag clipped to keep the hair off his back.
plus an unlimited supply of peanut butter m&ms popped into his mouth on demand,

See what happens when you eat too many m&ms!!
Yesterday was a rainy day off work so we went out for some fun. First we hit Prehistoric Pets in Huntington Beach. A reptile pet shop with tons of turtles out in the open in an inside pond. HUGE snakes, 200 lb turtles, lizards, ya know, everything that's gross.

From there we went to Huntington Beach to do a little toes in the sand. Little Huckleberry ran around in the cold, threw a few sticks, ran from the water and 10 minutes later we were frozen and done!

I also started potty training. He loves wearing his Mickey underwear but not as much as he loves pooping in them. I stocked up at the Dollar Tree with lots of prizes for dropping a bomb. He only got 2 prizes, so after so many of those stinky days I have gone on a break. I'm not gonna get stressed out and disappointed over that everyday!

Monster Truck Jam

2011-01-30T19:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the day Dean has been waiting for! He woke me up that morning by calling off all the names of who would be going to monster trucks. We went 2 hours early and had a tailgate party, Tim brought his BBQ so we had tacos and burgers.

Chad of course goes everywhere without a jacket. He had to bundle up like a bridge troll.

The truck on the right is Backwards Bob, drives backwards...woooo.

The nice little boy next to us wasn't wearing his ear covers so he let Dean use them. Right when we put them on him he started screaming "stuck!!!" I figured he hated wearing them even though he left them on. A minute later hes still yelling because his legs went through the folding seat haha.

This is what someone taught him to do while he was cheering for the trucks.

Brandon got way more excited than a lot of the kids.

To Shannon - the family sitting next to us, see the little boy...they moved here from New Zealand 3 years ago and love it here. Tell Grant haha.

Cool old hot rod truck

Almost rolled it

Dean was star struck. Bad to the bone!!

Sweater makeover

2011-01-28T23:15:00.000-08:00

I have been loving the thrift stores these days! I happened to go on a day where most clothes were $1, I really need to keep track of whats on sale each day so I know when to go. I got a blazer and this old grandpa sweater for $1 each. I figured if I ended up ruining it I wouldn't feel bad since it was so cheap.
Here it is before. Too wide, sleeves were huge with big puffy shoulders.

after tightening everything up the sleeves were still looking bad because of the shoulder poofs. Even though I have no sewing experience I hacked the sleeves off and performed surgery on the sweater haha.

All finished! You know I'm too lazy to change out of my pajamas for a pic.
Dean loooves to model

Knotts and work

2011-01-28T22:12:00.000-08:00

Last weekend we + my mom and dad all got Knotts Berry Farm year passes, they are only $60! Dean loves going, he always asks me if were gonna go see Snoopy.
These little cars are so fun and fast.

Papa and Dean on the short bus haha

Gotta get a pic with these ladies.

All week Brandon was working on repairing our patio. What started out as replacing 1 board turned into a lot more. It looks so nice now that all the rotten wood is gone.

I got the chance to leave the office and go to one of the job sites where the guys are repairing and re-roofing 30 carports. That day they rented a fork lift to remove a huge beam and I was there to take pics.

OMG last weekend Brandon was doing a treatment for gophers. What they were doing was setting off smoke bombs in the gopher holes to get them to vacate. Well the bomb pusher downer stick actually punctured the bomb and a huge flame burst in Brandon's face. It singed his hair and his upper lip. Once it scabbed I could not stop laughing and calling him a hair lip, I know that's not nice.

Here they are removing the beam

and putting up a new one. It was fun getting out for the day!

Girls Gone Bloggin

2011-01-25T13:49:00.000-08:00

My cousins and I have started a new blog! Check it out.

http://girlsgonebloggin.blogspot.com/

Salton Sea Friend Trip

2011-01-25T12:46:00.000-08:00

We had so much fun on our little weekend trip to Salton Sea with a bunch of friends. We got to camp in Tim's tent trailer, so nice having a bed!

Kristen making her bed in the back of Nick's truck

A little batty bat

Wind blown and pitch black

Slab city. A whole town of trash, trailers and hippies.

Salvation Mountain. This is all made of hay, clay and water. If you see the movie "Into the Wild" which I highly recommend, you will get a good look at the mt. and city.

A view from the top

The dudes

The ladies

After we took a drive to the Sea. It was pretty filthy, dead fish and bones everywhere. The water is so salty that if the levels get to a certain point, which it is very close to, there will only be 1 type of fish that can survive, all the rest are dying off.

The last evening we took a long, bumpy offroad trip to this point. The sunset was beautiful. Too bad there were soo many bugs we didn't stay long.

Christie and Kelly hanging with Dean at their camp spot.

He sure loves those bikes.

Kristen and I had a little fun playing with this mustache. When you breathe the hairs would go up your nose and it tickled soo bad!

Learning to sew

2011-01-07T21:15:00.000-08:00

I recently stumbled across a new blog. This girl buys clothes from thrift stores and then with her magical hands she turns them into the cutest pieces that fit her perfectly. I'm just a beginner when it comes to sewing, really I don't know anything and I mess things up more than I can make something cool. So I started off doing what I thought would be the easiest.

Brandon took me to the goldmine of thrift stores, 2 stories and 50% off day. I got 2 super long skirts and one dress all for $7 buckers.

Here is one skirt before (don't mind me lookin like a hobo in these pics):
Gave it a trim and now here it is! That is also the scarf I made during Xmas break.
I also sewed the scraps into a scarf, ain't that just dandy haha.

So here's to hoping I get better at this! Brandon wants me to learn how to take shirts in to get a better fit...we'll see how that goes.

So this is the new year

2011-01-05T16:33:00.000-08:00

So our super extra long (thanks to the rain) vacation is now over! We had big plans to cut out a kitchen wall, put up base boards, new light in the bathroom....we didn't do any of it! haha. Instead we all got sick with colds, I watched at least 10 movies or more, ate a box of sees candy, learned to crochet and finished 2 scarfs! We enjoyed our house, just relaxed and got cozy on the couch a lot, unless we were out at Christmas parties of course. I'm glad to be back at work, it's good to have a routine and something to force me to wear all the clothes I buy, rather than living in PJs. If I was a stay at home mom I'd probably end up selling all my clothes and just live in sweats, sounds like the life!

New Years Eve isn't something I ever really care to celebrate. I get tired and the fact that I'm a sloth makes it hard to get me anywhere. I swear I have fast forwarded into my 80's. I really wanted to hang out with our friends and my sister for the night but the guys ended up all going out to some party. Kristen, Dean, my mom and I hung out at my parents house. We were making scarfs and relaxed for the whole night, see I'm 80! Plus the idea of drunks on the road didn't sound fun. We ran outside at 12 and Dean woke up for it, so we were screaming and balking like chickens, ok that was only me haha. As for the whole resolution thing, I don't do one. I figure if there is something I need or want to change I'll do it when I think about it, not because the calendar has changed.

Sunday we went to Mt High for some sledding! Snow was falling and it was gorgeous. I need to live where it snows, one day.

Here is how our day went in pictures=D

In order to make it up this slippery slope we had to get pulled up on the shovel haha

Kristen modeling her men's snow outfit

Fascinating snow ball

tasty

Me on the left, Kristen on the R

he loved sledding more than anyone there

Tim and Jen

Kris getting crazy on the mountain

showing off our cool outfits
Horton hears a who?

SO funny with the big hands

every time we go to the snow we put a little snowman on the hood. Its always fun to watch him melt and fly away

Straight from the snow we went to explore these cool rocks.

Dean and Kris
My child thinks he can keep up and tries to rock climb until he's angry and frustrated
We told Kris a train was coming haha

Posing

Tim is that little tiny thing at the top of the mt.

Christmas Time

2010-12-27T15:36:00.000-08:00

Dean was asleep when we got home Xmas eve. I stayed up late doing presents, baking cookies and taking bites out of them.
He was excited to see the cookies, not as much because Santa ate them but so he could shove one in his mouth at 7 am.

We had a few people over in the morning and Brandon made us the best breakfast burritos.

Kristen knitted this loop scarf for me! I didn't even know she could make this kind of stuff, I love it =)

Dean and Desi had fun playing while waiting to rip open their presents.

Kristen and Brandon hanging out.

Our stand in child haha
I wish this pic wasn't blurry!

My aunt Kathy gave me a great idea, she would always wrap my cousin Shannon a few gifts which were really things that she just took out of her room as a joke. So Brandon got his ugly sweater haha.
Christmas hugs

Dave and baby alive

Christmas was so fun this year. Nothing is better than seeing Dean's face light up over everything from Santa, strings of lights, helping me wrap presents and his favorite, the Grinch. Getting to spend time with everyone is my favorite part of the holidays and makes me wish we could do it more often. Dean has enough new toys to keep him busy for a long time, so many Disney Cars toys, everyone knows his favorite!

I thought I would share two of my favorite recipes on here.

First are these super easy but oh so good candied almonds. I am a huge fan of buying them from Farmers Market but now I just make my own.

Recipe from http://www.melskitchencafe.com/

Makes about 2 cups of candied almonds

1 egg white
1 teaspoon cold water
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups unsalted almonds
½ cup packed light brown sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Line a large (11X17-inch) rimmed baking sheet with foil and lightly spray with cooking spray.

In a large bowl, beat the egg white until stiff peaks form. Add the water and vanilla and beat again until stiff. Add the almonds to the mixture and stir gently to coat the almonds with the egg white mixture. In a small bowl, mix the brown sugar, salt and cinnamon. Add this mixture to the almonds and stir gently to mix well. Pour the almonds out onto the prepared baking sheet and carefully spread them out into a somewhat even layer. Place the baking sheet in the oven and bake for about an hour, stirring/flipping every 15 minutes, until the almonds look and feel dry. To check to see if the almonds were done, I carefully picked one up in my fingers and when I pressed around it, I didn’t get any wet sugar on my hands. The coating on the almond felt hard and crunchy. Cool completely before serving or packaging.

--The next recipe is for my favorite ever Chocolate Chip Cookie. I have made SO many different CCC recipes and to me none has ever been better than these.

2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted

1 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1 heaping tsp cinnamon

1 tbsp vanilla

1 egg

1 egg yolk

1 1/4 cup chocolate chips

walnuts are optional

It is said if you let the cookie dough sit in the fridge overnight the cookies taste even better, like the dough is marinating =)

Preheat oven to 325. Mix flour, salt, baking soda and cinnamon. In separate bowl cream the butter and sugars. Beat in vanilla and eggs. Combine ingredients then stir in chocolate chips. I believe my cookie scoop size is 1 1/2 tbsp and I bake cookies for 14 minutes. Cool 2 minutes then move to wire rack.

The cinnamon in these is what makes the the BEST!

--Besides Xmas and eating like a pig my new thing is selling on Ebay. I was always curious but thought it was a complicated process to do the thing. Well I tried it out and it's super easy. I have been cleaning out my closet and selling my clothes that I don't wear, of course only if it's decent. The first month I tried it out and only posted maybe 10 things and they all didn't sell but I made a little over $100.00! Given that $50 was made on one pair of jeans alone! Now that Xmas is over I will be trying to sell more stuff, I just got 2 trash bags full out of my closet that I will attempt to sell. It feels good to get rid of stuff, I'm not ending up on hoarders! Plus I can fit new things =D

Well now that I have done my 38th post I must go back to cuddling my poor sick boy. He was fine this morning then something came over him, been sleeping a lot, fever and he barfed on his daddy right when he got home from work. Here's to hoping I don't catch the sickies in my house since Brandon has had a cold since xmas day.

Christmas Parties

2010-12-25T19:05:00.000-08:00

Last week we had a small get together at our house. We had food, drinks, friends and hideous sweaters. The non stop rain wasn't going to stop our Christmas cheer.

Here is Chad and Brandon doing their best "Step Brothers" movie pose.

Lately, every time Dean notices a picture being taken he sneaks in and gives his best cheeeeese! It's nice that he finally wants his pic taken.

Friends hanging out playing beer pong.

Megan, Dean and myself.

The following night was Brandon's family party. His family is huge, like 56 people in one house with pouring rain so we were more confined than normal. It was a great party with tons of the best homemade food. The kids drew names and the adults play the white elephant gift exchange.
Chad, Teri and Brandon.

There are SO many kids in the family so it's always a loud, crazy fun time.

One night Dean and I had some fun playing with some lights.

Fast forward through a week of rain, days off work and lots of Christmas shopping. Now were at Amanda and Keith's place. We met with Kathy and got to Skype with Shannon for about an hour. The boys opened gifts and went wild playing and dancing to Christmas music.
Dean and I with my cousin Amanda and Ryder.

We went to King Neptunes for dinner which doubled as our company Christmas dinner party. I wish I had pics from dinner!

Christmas Eve is when we have my mom's family party. Kristen, Candice and I always have such a wild time. We are more like 3 sisters than cousins.

Here they are decorating a gingerbread man.

Posing by the tree

Me and my baby boo. I'm so in love with their tree.

Kristen is so good to Dean, every time shes around I call her the nanny because she takes care of him for me. =D

Gift exchange fun. Candice, Austin, Grandma, Dylan, mom, and Vicky.

Here Kristen, your happiest moment of the night when you thought you were gonna get to keep this purse. Next year you need to change your strategy haha.

Dean pretending to be the dog from The Grinch

Austin, Gilbert and Dylan.
My funny cousins

Candice and Shaun with Candice and Shaun

Turkey kicked in

I'm loving this year, Dean understood Christmas a lot more and it was so fun telling him all about Santa and seeing him get excited. Hope everyone is enjoying Christmas time.

Stalker

2010-12-15T21:59:00.000-08:00

Ok, listen up. My new advice is DO NOT GO SHOPPING ALONE! I guess especially women, at night, with a child in a stroller since that was me tonight. I am shaking and crying as I write this, because even though nothing happened to me tonight the feeling of being followed and not knowing what this creep was going to do makes me sick to my stomach.

It was about 7:30 at night, just Dean and myself. Right when I started shopping at the entrance of the store two guys close to my age, totally normal looking, clean, looked like people Brandon would hang out with. I noticed them looking at me and 1 starts following me around very closely. He does this for only about 1 minute and is gone, I never see that guy again. So I'm shopping and wandering and I start to notice the other guy seems to be close by wherever I go. So I begin testing him, I'm looking at purses and there he is across the aisle holding a shirt in his hand and suddenly pretends he's looking through the clothes. I turn around, shop some more and glance back to where he was. He is standing behind a rack of clothing and peeks under the sign at me. I go to the little boys clothes, there he is about 10 steps away pretending to shop. He followed me EVERYWHERE for at least 40 minutes. I'm on the verge of throwing up, crying and I'm already shaking. I searched the store for the biggest worker guy I could find. I told him I know for a fact I'm being followed and I am not exaggerating. With a baby and stroller to pack in my car something is going to happen to me. As I was talking to the worker we were in a corner of the shoe section and the creep couldn't see us. So I go to check out and as soon as I am in line there he is. Standing at the end of the walkway, nothing in his hand and hes just casually pacing, then I see him staring at me and he gets on his cell phone. I know, I just KNOW he was calling the other guy, the first guy who he was with that followed me closely. The one that saw my face up close, then disappeared outside, so his friend could track me inside the store. By the time it was my turn to pay I turn around and he sat down right near the register, behind a sign, just waiting. Before I'm done paying the worker came up to me acting as if he knew me and asked if I was ready to go. He talked quietly and told me he could tell exactly who was watching me. We begin to walk out of the store and then what do you know, the creep moves to an electronic display, turned around and put his hood on to hide himself. Wonder why he is all of the sudden hiding? While loading my car I was frantically trying to throw everything in but at the same time searching for the other guy who I know was out there waiting for me. I'm sure he saw me, my car, I'm sickened. The worker who walked me out said he saw the guy wandering around the store for quite some time tonight. I warned him to watch for them both.

The second I left I was bawling. I don't know if they wanted to steal my purse? Why wait so long and follow me when there are people, tons of other targets as weak as myself? Most the other women there were older, why did they target someone in their age range...for a purse? Did they even want my purse, I don't even know but thinking anything else these freaks could have done, WHILE I HAD MY BABY WITH ME. If I didn't have someone walk me to my car who knows where I'd be. I should have had the cops waiting outside to catch them, but when I'm scared to death there is no thinking going on in this brain.

So I know this post is insanely long but I want to warn everyone. Be aware of your surroundings and call the freaking cops.

I did end up calling the cops when I got home, in case they do something to someone else I will hopefully not be as useless as I was tonight. I should have screamed at him in the damn store. But now he is gone free to do who knows what.

fa la la la lights

2010-12-08T20:14:00.000-08:00

Blogging really is easier when you actually keep up with it and don't let a month pass =D

First I'll start with the random. Dean is in a new stage right now, my little nakee boy. It is never too cold for an early morning ride with a bare butt.

Katherine and Magno's wedding gift finally came in the mail! It's a carved wooden sign, I love it as if it had my own name on it.
Dean picked out our Christmas tree this year. My lil lumberjack

Posing for a picture but he couldn't stop laughing because the tree tickles him. He likes being tickled though because he rubbed up on it so much he ended up falling in it.

Dean favored one branch with his ornaments.

Tuesday, Ryder came over. We took them to Houston St to see Christmas lights. The entire way there they would make fart noises and laugh hysterically.
Maybe we went too early but not all the houses were decorated like normal. This house didn't even have the lights on.

And here are my decorations. My favorite part about Christmas, well any holiday is the decorating! I must have bought 15 tubes of balls at the dollar tree, and I still want more.

Our tree with a gigantic bow because I haven't found a topper yet, and I've added more ornaments since this picture.
I made this wreath with balls and wire.

I made this frame by covering an ugly dollar tree frame with mod podge and scrapbook paper.
This is how our extra room looks now that Chad is gone. The closet has a sliding door that goes inside the wall and the carpet makes it really hard to open and close. So my fix was to sew a painters drop cloth and then painted a stencil on the bottom. I love drop cloths! For $10 there was enough to make at least 3 of these, it's also what I used to make my bedroom curtain.

New couch turns into a bed and lots of blanket storage. Don't look at the hideous window haha. I'm planning to put bamboo shades up one of these days.

Wedding and hot rods

2010-12-05T20:31:00.000-08:00

Thursday we put Christmas lights up on our house for the first time! Dean loves to turn them on and get all excited about them.

Friday was Katherine and Magno's wedding day!!! It was at the Ebell Club in Long Beach. It was a beautiful wedding in black, white and red with a Spanish theme.
I didn't bring my good camera so I didn't really get any good pictures.

Scoot, Magno, Gibson and Brandon
Gib bringing sexy back with his Justin Timberlake suit, me I look bloated.
With Zelda

Greg and Debbie walking down the aisle (Katherine's parents)

Megan looking pretty. I loved the big flowers in their hair.

Here comes the bride!
That is all the pictures I got of the wedding, I can't wait to see all their pro pics.

On Saturday morning I had to wake up and go straight to a baby shower for Brandon's cousin Ryan and his fiance Linda. They are having a little boy, Aiden. I love baby showers and getting to see all the cute baby clothes.

Today we went to my Uncle Roy's hot rod shop in Huntington Beach. A pin up model asked if she could take pictures with all the cars so Roy turned it into a big party. There was tons of people, food and cars. It started out sunny but ended up raining the rest of the day.
Dean loves this car, it looks just like Doc from Cars.

Here we are with the girl doing her photo shoot. She changed her outfit at least 20 times to pose with all the different cars. Dean and Ryder loved following her around and checking her out ahha

Amanda, Ryder and Keith

Roy's model A

We had a super busy and fun weekend. Now I'm exhausted, trying to catch up on all my tv shows and eat lots of candy.

38

2010-12-01T23:14:00.000-08:00

I just noticed while looking through old blog posts that in 2008 and 2009 I had the exact same number of posts, 38. So now for 2010 I am currently at 32. This post is to up my number so I can have 38 posts every year....I don't know why, but I just want to. With only 1 month left and the rate I do this thing I really gotta start living an exciting life so I have more stuff to share!

Where have I been?

2010-11-28T21:47:00.000-08:00

I fell off the blog wagon! I guess all the holiday business has kept me a little busy.

Here are some pics from a 1st birthday party for Dean's friend Ryan.

Debbie, Katherine, Megan and Annie at Katherine's bridal shower.

I love the towel cake Debbie made!! The little bags are personalized m&ms, so cute!
The ladies

The bride to be this Friday!!

My mom's side of the family always gets together for Thanksgiving. This year I offered my house for the party. We had more than 20 people and it was crowded but so fun. I have no turkey dinner experience so my poor mom had to pretty much do it all. Thanks mom!!

While we cooked Dean and his Handy Manny tools were working on The Beast.

I forced Brandon to try and carve his first turkey...John had to take over though haha.

Jimmy, Charleen and Grandma hanging at the snack table.

Austin and Dylan

Edward, I mean Nick and Kristen
Cousin Adam and the gobbler

My weird husband, he's loko.

Candice and Kristen

I love Chad's face hahah

Staying cozy inside
Candice's boyfriend Shawn was playing paparazzo all night. Can you tell we were all ready for this shot?
My dad doing who knows what.
Adam and Vickie
Here is how my house looked all decorated for fall. Of course 2 days later I decked the halls with Christmas balls.
I didn't have an ounce of energy in me to wake up at 3 am to do any shopping. When I woke up at 9 I headed to Target and found that they still had tons of the deals and bought a bunch of gifts! That new plaid throw was a gift to myself.

On Monday we went to the Ellen Show!! I have been wanting to go for SOO long but couldn't get tickets. Shalyn was able to get 4 and she had me on her list! Shalyn, Grant, Jamie and I headed out early because Shay's aunt works at WB and was so nice to give us a tour of the studios. It was so cool! We got to walk the streets of fake houses and towns, it was kinda creepy since they were all empty, it felt like the end of time. We toured inside the museum of costumes from tons of movies and shows. They had the Joker costume Heath Ledger wore, creepy Matrix guys and the entire second floor was all things Harry Potter. We had lunch and got in line for the show.

I will get more pictures up later from Shay. The show was awesome, I already want to go back. They get the crowd all excited and have everyone dancing during all the breaks. We saw Eva Mendez, a girl from The Office, Flo Rida performed and Ben Affleck! We were only 1...ONE!!! day off of being able to get the 12 days of giveaways show. I cannot believe my luck haha so sad. We did get a $100 gift card to Victoria's Secret which is nice =)

Tomorrow we will be buying Christmas lights for our house, I can't wait to see Dean get excited about all the Christmas fun. If only we had a tree already.

This is Halloween

2010-11-02T16:21:00.000-07:00

Here is what my "mantle" looked like for Halloween.
This is the coffee table I got at a garage sale and painted.

On Friday we were driving down the freeway passing El Dorado Park and I saw through the trees a fair going on. We had never been to this huge park before, it was soo nice!

These geese were scary! I refused to leave the car, Dean was yelling at them, Bub was throwing goldfish crackers and making them even crazier. They were trying to bite his butt haha.

All his ducks in a row then it turned into a scene from Ace Ventura and all these birds were swarming and I was screaming for my childs life.

We found the fair which was and Oktoberfest celebration.
Unlimited rides with admission and Dean did all he could. The roller coaster was built by toothless carnys and I was hoping it didn't collapse the whole 20 times we went around and around. I whip my lions mane back n forth.

the big slide was a hit

On Halloween we went trick or treating in our neighborhood.

Dean got tons of candy that I have been inhaling.

Tim and Jenn the crayons

cool house
Good thing it was Halloween so Bub wouldn't have to explain the black eye I gave him.

Our neighborhood was filled with a million kids! There was not even a minute you could leave the door because the kids never stopped coming. Dean loved handing out candy more than going to get it, he would yell at the kids "wait for me!" and would try to leave me for a new family.

Hope everyone had a happy Halloween! I already started buying more Christmas decorations today =D

Halloween Party and Pumpkin Patch

2010-10-24T17:35:00.000-07:00

Our friend Jenn finally turned 21 and had a costume/birthday party. Good thing because that was the only party we got to go to this year and I love Halloween!
This year I made Minnie and Mickey costumes for me and the little dude.

Bub was Dirt Nasty/1980s

Jenn the birthday girl, me, Zelda and Fred..I mean Scoot.

Nick's cousin Nicole, me, Kristen the can can dancer and Candice is one of the guys from Wayne's World (Idk I never saw the movie)

Grant, Shalyn and Gavin who isn't in the pic, were dia de los muertos skeletors. Dean cried and was so scared of their face paint haha
our mama the cat

Cheers!Brandon's dad set up a band for the night, before they started the boys were having fun playing around.

Last week I had plans to take Dean to Tanaka Farms for their pumpkin patch, it has corn field mazes, you pick your pumpkin from the vine, it just seemed so cool to go to a real farm. Well it was raining a lot so the place was bound to be a mud hole and we ended up in a parking lot patch, oh well!

This was the best moment in Dean's whole life. He drove this "popper" aka tractor like a wild man. He's still talking about how he crashed it and thinks it's the best ever.
Another car ride

Some leafy thing he found

Little pumpkin head.

His favorite pumpkins were the ugly, half black, warty gourds haha

This year he colored his pumpkin and it sits on the porch, every time he sees it he gives it a hug and kiss. Trick or treating should be really fun this year, I hope he's ready to hit all the houses so I can eat all that candy for him.

Things that we've been up to that I don't have any pictures for..

Last night Bub went on a party bus for our friend Josh's birthday and Dean and I hung out at Scoot's place for UFC fight night. Being the super nice wife that I am I got my wake up call at 1am and off we went to pick up the partier. That was the first and last time I ever do that, and I'm still expecting some type of payment haha.

This morning we went to the Los Alamitos Army Airfield for the Wings, Wheels and Rotors Expo with Nick's dad, brother and sister. I had never even heard of it before but it is done annually and I'm sure well be back next year. There was tons of hot rods, army tanks, helicopters, airplanes and more. The kids went in a few planes to explore, they even had free helicopter rides for kids 8 and up, I so wish we got to do that! Like an idiot I forgot my camera so all I have are cell phone pics that I will upload later.

So that's it for now since Dean is ripping my sweater off yelling at me to go play cars with him.

What we have been up to. (A Lot of pics)

2010-10-13T19:33:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty behind on my blog as usual. The first of the month Brandon and I took a little trip to the Gaslamp District in San Diego as a wedding anniversary celebration. Dean had his first sleep over at Grandma's house! She took him to a really cool park that had a huge airplane and he played for hours. If only he would have given her a peaceful sleep through the night...yeah not so much. Guess he just wasn't used to being somewhere that wasn't his house.Thanks again for watching him Mom!

As we headed out to SD there was tons of thunder and lightening but luckily the weather was nice when we got there. We first stopped in Little Italy and had some good Italian sandwiches at Filipes, since my dad swore by them even though he's never been haha. We got to our hotel which was so nice and cute!

Lounging

We did tons of walking up and down all the streets. Checked out lots of stores and even found a 3 story outdoor mall (yay for me!). Then we relaxed awhile and got ready to go out for the nightlife which is mainly what it's all about there.

We tried like 5 times to get a shot with the timer, we kept setting it too low and had double chins. So I was really making sure I didn't have one haha

We went to a bar called the Shout House which I loved. It was a dueling pianos thing, the guys were hilarious and dirty, just my kinda entertainment. After a few drinks we were gonna go check out another bar but the lines were all long. We headed to the room to drop off our jackets and ended up just falling asleep before 12, that's what happens when you have a kid I guess.

The next morning we got our free breakfast and went home to prepare for the bbq we were having that night.

Gibson, one of our very best friends who lives too far away for my liking was coming to visit! We had tons of amazing fattening foods and my best friends, what more is there in life?!

Megan and I have been friends since we were 5! That's takin it old school all the way back to kindergarten.

All cupcakes should ruin peoples teeth like this, its so funny

Megan and Kat playing champagne pong

Gibson, Magno, Katherine, Kristen, mom, Megan

Dean and Chad always party too hard

So jump ahead a week. Dean and I had some fun making gingerbread wiener dogs, cars and pumpkins.

the more he concentrated the longer the tongue got. (he totally needs a haircut as usual)

eating the dough which he continued to call poop.
while the cookies were baking he colored his pumpkin

I think he loves it

On Sunday Kathy planned a trip to the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana

Ryder came as Batman for the costume parade that we didn't make it to. Dean is so jealous of those abs

bed of nails!

The theme right now is bugs. They had some creepy crawlers that we kill for money haha

Everything is hands on and fun for kids and adults. I love places like this where kids can just run wild and touch whatever they want.
The wind tunnel was crazy!!

Despite what their faces say, they were loving it

Cool 3d maze

Of course Dean is such an animal lover he pet the rats.

After all the fun we went to Dave and Buster's for more fun and food.

Thanks Mel for the cute little Kiwi bird and ball!

They went on all these little rides and had a blast. There is a funny video on Kathy's blog http://kathy-olson.blogspot.com/ if you wanna see it.

If you have kids you should really take them to the Discover center. Its something new and fun to do and it makes them really tired and that's always a plus.

So now I'm all caught up finally! I have been preparing our Halloween costumes for Jenn's 21st party this Saturday, I'm Minnie and Dean's Mickey. Working on house stuff, just painted my new coffee table today, will have pics soon. Oh yeah big news is Chad moved out! We now have our whole house to ourselves and it feels like a whole new place with the extra space. We painted and I filled the closet the day he left. My elliptical made its way in there after chipping the walls and scratching deep into the floor, but now I run nightly after I eat kit kats and starbursts all the live long day.

Well Dean just passed out on the floor so I will take this peaceful quiet time to watch tv in more than 5 minute increments. kbye!

Long Beach Aquarium

2010-09-25T19:55:00.000-07:00

Today we went to the Long Beach Aquarium with Shalyn, Grant and Gavin (Bagin as Dean says). She got free tickets woo hoo! This was Dean's first time and he loved it. It was a good way to spend the day since it was like 3,000 degrees outside!

Big fish coming at ya!

Gavin's mama giving a lesson: Finding Nemo 101
Gavin petting bat rays and Dean pretending to pet them cuz he's scared.

Never looks

Show us Alice's hole. haha

Were underwater

Say cheeeeese

Getting a good picture with kids is usually impossible
Grant, Chad and Brandon

Yeah my kid is the one splashing all the other kids.

There was a water park area that the boys had tons of fun in.

Stopping the water with his head

After getting on a dry diaper we went back inside. No pants, wet shirt, shoes with no socks.

So cute

I love the jellies

After putting on dry pants we went to Bubba Gumps. It was our first time going and even though there was basically 1 choice for me on the menu it was really good! It was super kid friendly and I'd totally go back.

Here's Gavin showing his muscles.

Funny kids
Shalyn surprised them with a make your own sundae for dessert. It was so cute, you got to pour on your own toppings.

-Who needs a spoon?

-Of course

We had a great day, thanks so much for inviting us!

Right when we got home we hit the AC and all took a nap. It's almost 9 and I'm still in the same spot as when I got here.

The table that keeps on changing

2010-09-17T11:03:00.001-07:00

My little $12 table started out as a young, dark wood, baby.
Then to match my red dining room, table was red.

Dining room turned blue, table turned yellow

Today the little table got this new hand painted design! Soooo cute! I have to touch up a few spots so dont enlarge the picture haha.

Mirror Redo

2010-09-13T20:28:00.001-07:00

Ok I could not wait to start painting this bad boy. This is how it looked before. The unique shape with all the curvy details forced me to buy it.

Here it is today, if I would have posted it yesterday it was ocean blue with a dark glaze. Too bad it just didn't fit in now matter how badly I wanted some aqua color in here. I spray painted it white and went over it with dark brown glaze to show off all the detail.

I'm trying to slowly change the theme to a more coastal, light feel. My next big project is putting board and batten up around our dining room. To look something like this-

picture from

Whats new and a trip to the zoo

2010-09-12T09:59:00.000-07:00

Ok let me think back of whats been going on. Our Disneyland passes expired =( We took two trips that week, one time going with Shalyn, Gavin and Cindy. We love dland but I don't know if we will renew or not. Chad may be moving out of our house soon and I want to keep the bills down until we adjust to not having his moolah.

Dland pics I stole from Shalyn's blog.

Cute boys had lots of fun, thank goodness Brandon came that day because Dean was in wild child, should have been on a leash mode!

On Tuesday's on Main St in Huntington Beach they have the farmers market/street fair. They close it down to cars and have tons of food, street performers and of course all the good stores for shopping! On our way we hit Farmers Harvest, its my new favorite store! They have over 400 beers, produce, candy and my favorite is the section where you can serve your own freshly made peanut butter. We got the honey roasted peanut butter and I made peanut butter cookies with them, soo good! Last week we met with Amanda, Keith and Ryder at the st fair. We ate at Fred's where the kids went wild and did some shopping.

I've been in a crazy shopping mood lately, I decided today I will stop! It all started when we went to LA to check out the fashion district. It's so crazy and dirty there but I did find a really cute dress and some boots. Then I got that itch and ended up with 2 more pairs of boots coming in the mail, a package from forever21 and I'm still waiting for my new Kodak pocket video camera. I really needed the camera though, I have an old camera that uses those little tapes and I've been out of tapes for like a year and a half. I'm really sad I don't have a lot of video of Dean growing up! So now with a little camera that's the size of a blackberry and uses SD memory I can easily take as much video as I want.

My awesome boss (father in law) has been giving me Friday's off of work! It has been really nice because I have an extra day to do all my laundry and cleaning or whatever I need to get done. This Friday I wasn't in the cleaning mood and my mom had the idea to take Dean to the Santa Ana zoo. It is close by, really cheap and he had tons of fun.

Dean looks soooo much like his daddyo!! Here's him and grandma posing with a few llamas that you probably can't see.

Showing "Gamma" the lemurs. They were so cute how they sit up on their butts!

On our way we would ask what animals he wanted to see. "Ducks!"

When I ask for a smile this isn't what I had in mind. Speaking of, the pumpkin tooth kid is FINALLY growing another tooth! I swear he hasn't grown one in a year.

He found a friend to play with

Bald eagle

The biggest animals they had were the 2 camels. During the weekend you can ride them...no thanks!

Our next zoo adventure will be the LA zoo because they have the big stuff like elephants. Santa Ana was a great place though because its something to do for a few hours they had tons of monkeys and small animals to see. There are also play areas and a train. We missed out on the barn and train because they closed early but I'm sure we'll be back.

Yesterday we hit a few thrift stores. I'm trying to find pieces for our Halloween costumes, Dean and I are going to be mickey and minnie. Too bad I didn't find a single thing for the costumes! I did however walk into one store and immediately fell in love with a gigantic mirror, seriously I couldn't walk away from it, I had to have it. Then Bub was like WTF you're not getting that thing. Then I was like, Ohhhhhohoho yesssss I am, I'm in love with it and wanna marry it.

So anywho I gotta get off this blog now and go paint my new mirror!

Summer fun

2010-08-29T21:25:00.000-07:00

First I gotta get something off my chest. Today while driving home there was a pigeon walking in the street. I told Brandon to watch out and he tried his best, we looked back and the damn thing was smashed to death from our car! It was so sick and sad, but I think what kinda made it worse was he swerved to avoid it and ended up killing it!

I'm sooo happy the whole weekend was nice cooled off weather. Last week was just miserable, Dean played in the water and had popsicles dripping off his manly chest just about everyday.

My uncle John, Candice's dad, got a new yacht and invited us to go on a harbor cruise last week. It was a lot of fun.
Newport Harbor was filled with jellyfish!
Dudes. Josh, Bub, Nick, Shawn
John, me, Candice aka Kiddo
Pretty sky
twisting Josh's old mustache
Wishing Kristen was here
Back home Dean pretended he was Sponge Bob Square Diaper Box Pants

Kathy had Ryder last weekend and came by on Saturday for a little play time

Eating Gogurt, riding bikes and playing in the sprinkler

My dad has all these cars now. Dunno what the plan is for all of them but today the one got colored on as a toy for Dean to play with.
Lightning McDean car
serious as he tries to rip off the teeth

Not many projects going on lately. I have no motivation to even move when its sweltering hot outside. I did finally finish my other striped curtain and also this ironing board hanger. I totally copied the whole idea from the House of Smiths blog. Still gotta hide the screws but close to done. I was shopping for a cover for a long time and found this on clearance at Marshalls. I looove the print!

Craigslist and other junk

2010-08-17T21:04:00.000-07:00

I love to buy stuff on good ol craigslist but for once I tried selling stuff. I'm sorta called a hoarder in the house which is just Brandon's opinion. I'm so not a hoarder I just don't get rid of Dean's baby stuff, you never know! So I posted a wagon I got from Salvation Army for $25. I browsed around at other wagon prices and the new version of mine was going for $350! Mine wasn't in that good of condition but I got $55 for it. Wagons are not cheap so if I ever find another I'm a buyin and a sellin! I also sold a wine rack that Bub bought for $30 and I sold it for $45. I'm still waiting for someone to buy my wedding dress. Maybe this will become my new side job for decorating cash. All I know is I'm a true American Picker, not a filthy hoarder.

I finished one of my curtains, hopefully I do the other soon so it's not lopsided. And yes, I watch Jersey Shore mmmmk!

One of my favorite bloggers has an online store where she sells vinyls. I'm obsessed and want to cover everything I own in them. You can buy pre made or custom vinyls.

Also changed this guy again

now it matches my kitchenaid!

Headboard is done. You know you like my foot in there.

Before-
There is a foot board but it didn't come with a frame so Bub is going to buy wood and build one.

After-
I love the look of distressed furniture, as if we have had this forever.

That's all for today. Now I gotta go watch Teen Mom, nothing better than trashy reality shows!

House work

2010-08-15T22:01:00.000-07:00

I found a bed frame on craigslist! It is really hard to find something that is king size, wood and not expensive or ugly as hell. When I saw this for only $80 I really wanted it but Bub says I've been spending too much, and.....what's the problem? Anywho I won because here it is! You can't pass up a deal on CL or it will be gone and you'll be really pissed. I got the whole thing painted, now all that's left is to distress the wood. A simple, maybe 20 minute deal. Well I never finished it because on whim we painted our living room. Ever since I painted my dining room blue I really didn't liked how the colors met from the two rooms. But there was no way I was going to mention painting the whole living room, I was scared! That's time, money, sore arms, me nagging, Dean touching wet paint, just a big ordeal. So I was showing Bub pictures of my favorite living room from one of the 100s of blogs I read, not thinking it would mean anything. Than he actually brought up painting the room! He had no time to take those words back because I was already half way to Home Depot getting the paint. Here is the inspiration room http://bowerpowerblog.com/?p=2097 What I really love is that everything is simple. It gives the opportunity to change out accessories and colors so you can create different looks without having to redo the big stuff.

So here is a picture I took right before we started. Not that bad, but just soooo brown. We call it peanut butter walls. Picture wall with a little cheeser at the bottom. Oh can't forget the worst job in all of the world. Cleaning the blinds. Slat.by.slat. I saw way too many baby finger prints for my liking. This is after. A lighter color makes the room feel bigger. I distressed the wood on my giant frame.

I added stripes to my curtains. One by one it goes very slow, that's where I stopped but my original plan was to stripe all the way up.
So that is where it stands right now. I love it and still have plans for more changes. We did all of this between Friday and Sunday, I'm tired. Hopefully I get my bed done tomorrow.

Also here is a list of a few of my favorite blogs. It's where I get a lot of ideas and spend too much time getting sucked in and looking at all the cool stuff.

http://houseofsmiths.blogspot.com/

http://www.thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com/

http://thediyshowoff.blogspot.com/

http://bowerpowerblog.com/

http://betterafter.blogspot.com/

I'm twoooooo

2010-08-10T12:36:00.001-07:00

This year I decided to keep things small and simple. Last year was fun but with so many people and trying keep everything in order I barely remember it. I guess you always do the first party big even though they don't remember anything themselves.

Dean could not stay away from the "caaaaaaaaaake"

How old are you?

Opening presents with Aunt Kathy. Thanks for the Toy Story backpack, he loads it with cars and hauls it to work everyday.

Oreo and chocolate cupcakes. The number 2 on Dean's cake really stands for how many giant cupcakes I had to make.#1 broke into pieces instead of sliding out of the pan. =/

He did not cooperate for a single picture that day. Grandma Laura, Amanda, Kathy

Dean and Ryder chomping m & ms and playing
Opening a present from Ryder

aawwww Thanks cousin

cuties Ashley and Amber

Finally, the moment I've been waiting for all day.

mmmmmm

Grandpa Dave got him a bike. He has been trying everyday to learn to ride it.

Sharing the frosting with dada

and Zelda and Grandma
Tim and Jenn got him the cutest Buzz and Woody costume pjs. He loves them!

I'm Wooooooody. Howdy howdy howdy

A lil yeeehaaww boot kick

Thanks everyone for coming to see Dean on his birthday, it was a lot of fun and he's been having so much fun playing with all his toys.

Crafty stuff

2010-08-05T22:10:00.000-07:00

Last night I was on Skype with my cousin Shannon who lives in New Zealand. I probably wouldn't have posted all this stuff but she just moved into a new place and I know I wanna see everything she makes, so here is all my latest creations to share.

First is not my creation or my house haha. My mom put up outdoor shades and used one of Shannon's paintings to fill the gaps in between. Don't worry she gave it a good coat of clear gloss so it wont get ruined!
Today I got my mixer in the mail, third times a charm! I'm finally happy and looove the color, I rub that smooth baby every time I walk by it ahah. Also as you will see below is my best friend in the whole world, the reason why I don't get moody (as often), it gives me free time, joy, happiness and no more wrinkled fingers. I love you dishwasher, my beautiful slave.
As I have mentioned I'm indecisive about everything. Here is my $12 table that started out plain wood, I spent time painting it by hand dark red to match the dining room, then I painted my dining room blue! So now here it is yellow, I spray painted it this time and it was so much faster and easier.

We got a tv in our bedroom now, it's nice to be able to lay in bed and watch a movie. We aren't putting cable in there so we got a blu ray player that connects to the internet and we can stream Netflix for movies. Love it!

Finally got a ceiling fan instead of the classy, two bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling look. It kinda looks like it belongs on the Pirate of the Caribbean ride.

I bought this alarm clock for $2 and it was super shiny gold, I taped off the front and sprayed it, I love the old look of it instead of digital. By the way, that sucker goes off loud!
These curtains I sewed from painters drop cloth. Home Depot for 5 bucks and they look exactly like what I wanted for the room. I'm not done yet because what is hiding behind the left side is an ugly, bulky AC unit so I still gotta extend the curtain rod out.

Mr big man is now sleeping in his big boy bed! After sky diving out of his crib every night in the dark we changed it. He loooves it, being able to get in and out as he wants, hanging with Woody and Buzz just kicking back. Never enough blankies and toys to keep you company I guess.

I forget if I posted this already or not, so sorry if this is a repeat. I sewed place mats and pillows. You can kinda see the new ikea rug I bought today, seriously love that place and could have shopped for a few more hours if I didn't bring that child of mine along.

My purdy pillows. All the big ones are two sided.

Last is this laundry room sign I made awhile back. Too bad it's all done by hand because I wish I could add designed paper behind the writing. Whatever the room is hideous right now anyways =P
That's it for now, hope you enjoy looking at my house junk =)

My next post will be my 100th!

I'm in love with my 2 year old and my bathroom

2010-08-01T15:06:00.000-07:00

Before the bathroom pictures I have a few others.

Last weekend was a baby shower for Brandon's aunt Denise (Nenie) she is having baby girl number 4, Annie. The party was at Olive Garden, it was sooo cute, obviously because everything was pink =) I'm just so smart I didn't take a single picture =/ I cannot wait to meet Annie, she should be here very soon. Here is the diaper cake I made.

Dean being cute with his cars while I was getting ready in the bathroom.

Then of course he licked the counter....seriously?! when is it gonna STOP! I hate this whole exploring the world through your mouth, it's really grossing me out.

Now for the remodel! It started out like this...

Filthy, moldy, oldy, ugly, hairy, scary. I refused to shower without shoes, it was so gross I probably never showered at all haha. So it was disgusting and also a waste of space. Shower and tub separate with a tiny little sink.

After much swapping of plumbing and putting in tile we had this.

Shower turned toilet.

And now it is almost done! Being our 1 and only bathroom it is sooo nice to finally have it pretty and clean.

The sink I found on craigslist

Painted and new. The sign is because the water isn't running in the sink yet.

My birthday was last Monday, 26 haggard years old on the 26th! I was totally tricked by Brandon when he got me a kitchenaid mixer!! I always admire them and talk about how beautiful and wonderful they are even though I never even used one. It's supposed to be the best of the best ok! So he got me a red one, I ended up exchanging for this green apple one. But then since I am most difficult, indecisive and irritating person ever, I woke up this morning with a whole new color scheme in mind for my kitchen. Now greeny is boxed back up and I'm getting one in ice blue...I think. See how annoying I am, 3 mixers in less than a week!

A little make over for this set my aunt Kathy gave me.

And now of course the most important part of today.. Dean's 2nd birthday!!! I cannot even believe he has been hanging around here for 2 years now, time is flying, my baby isn't even a baby.

August 1, 2008 Just a little baby E.T.
2009- 1st birthday

Now he is 2, running, talking, happy, funny, full of energy ( I think he steals mine somehow to have more) so loving and nice, couldn't have gotten a better Dean.

We had a small birthday party for him yesterday, I will post the pics later.

Vegas

2010-07-26T16:40:00.000-07:00

My mom, aunt Charleen, Candice, Shawn, his mom, Brandon, Dean and I all went to Las Vegas for my cousin Candice's 21st birthday. The heat was insane, like 115 degrees of death. We went outside like once maybe. We stayed at the MGM Grand, it was really nice. I don't have many pics because most were taken on Charleen's camera.
Havin drinks in the room and watching Dean jump on the beds.

Bub loves to pose.

We mostly gambled the entire time. My aunt hit a jackpot of $600!! The rest of us either broke even or lost, I'm a loser =D

We went out the first night, tried walking the strip to another hotel. It was SO hot we barely made it, luckily I had a few drinks so I didn't really care. We ended up at Planet Hollywood. The twins gambled, we walked the mall, ate and as we left saw some pole dancers in the middle of the casino..let's just say I will not be bringing Dean back as a child. I felt like a bad mom even pushing him through there in his stroller and he was asleep. That was the only time I felt bad for bringing him there though, and that was late at night so it's bound to be wild. Our hotel was a lot more kid friendly.

There was a big thing in our hotel with lions in it. They were HUGE, it was very cool to see and Dean loved it.

The second day we gambled of course, were going to go to the pool because one of the Twilight guys were there but ended up falling asleep in the middle of the day. Walked across the street to the Tropicana and got chewed out by 4 workers for just walking through the casino with Dean in the stroller. That night we went out to dinner at Caesars Palace at the Cheesecake Factory. I forgot how much I love that place! After dinner I played a little Keno with my mom and went to bed. As for the rest of our crazy crew....mom and aunt stayed up all night gambling. Shawn, Candice and Bub hit the town until 3:30. We left at 6 am to beat traffic and that's when they all started dropping like flies!

Hope you had a fun birthday Candice, you are finally old enough to order your own drink.

4th of July

2010-07-26T16:18:00.000-07:00

I know I'm just a little behind, what's new?

The morning of the 4th I woke up to find my beautiful orchids bloomed. My aunt Kathy gave them to me last year at Dean's birthday.

This year the party was at my parents house. Lots of really good food, swimming, drinks and fireworks.

I love this picture, he loves his dog.

Uncle Scoot got him in

Mom and aunt Kathy, such a good pic of you guys!
My favorite picture ever. Kristen tried posing for a picture but a fly flew in her face hahah

Getting ready for fireworks

Having fun

First sparkler, he did 2 and sat back and watched the rest.

Sparkler rave party in the street,

When Dean woke up to go home he was so confused that the streets were empty and there weren't pretty things to look at anymore.

Rollin, rollin, rollin on the river

2010-07-05T14:55:00.000-07:00

Our trip to Parker was so much fun! It was at least 105 or hotter everyday, I hate the heat but being in the water it wasn't as bad.

This is the Bluewater hotel we stay at

Dad and Dean have matching sunglasses. Dean kinda liked the water but only while being held, he spent a lot of his time pretending to drive the boat. The first 2 days we hung out at the sandbar drinking and messing around during the day.

Nick loves his hat from China Town

Picture from our balcony. All the rooms have a view of the water.

I won $215 playing keno. Don't know how much I ended up putting back into the dang machine haha

Nick's brother Josh and girlfriend Tamra

Josh and Brandon are up there with a few other guys. The other dudes were up there for about 20 minutes being scared. I would NEVER jump off of anything!

Prom pose

Kristen is reading Eclipse. I was dying knowing the movie came out while we were there and I didn't get to see it. Still waiting for her to finish that book so we can go. HURRY I cannot take it anymore!!

Sunset
Night ride to the Roadrunner Bar that's on a floating dock

All the girls got the Road Raper drink.

There was a fire alarm and we all had to evacuate. Saul made sure to bring the beer.

One day we tied like 6 tubes together and connected them to the boat. We drove way out and attempted to float back to the hotel. It was fun but would have taken us about 10 hours to float back.

The last day we went to Lake Havasu. Usually we go out on the boats wake boarding and tubing but Nicks parents boat was having problems so we just went to where the London Bridge is and hung out there all day. The water was really warm there and we were parked on the sand so Dean was able to walk around in the water and play. Havasu was nothing like last year, we didn't see any wild and crazy girls with their pasties on haha
The to infinite and beyond pose that Dean taught us

I don't know how without any naps and being in the water and sun all day he lasted until about 10 every night. He's crazy!

Long car rides are not fun with kids. Tons of toys and snacks and maybe ear plugs =P

The last night of the trip Kristen won 800 bucks playing keno!! What a great way to end it. We stayed up way too late the last night gambling, drinking and watching the rock band in the bar. We managed to wake up and go home as a group but not without a few tire changes and blowouts on the way.

Big post before I go!

2010-06-27T09:31:00.000-07:00

We are leaving for the river today at 2. Headed to Parker, AZ with Nick's family and lots of friends. So I gotta catch up before I go.

Is this too inappropriate for a blog? haha! This is how I found Dean lounging with his popsicle.

Ryder turned 3! He had a safari party with face painting, a huge jump house and lots of good food.
Kathy, Dean and Ryder playing with all the new toys

the scary slide on the bounce house

see how scared Kathy is? AAAHHHHH

Dean and Josiah playing in the water
For Father's Day I made this picture for Brandon.

It was hard to get good shots of him holding the letters

We went to the hot rod show like we do every year. My dad has a booth there so it's nice to have a place to rest after walking around in the heat.

Kristen Barbie comes with her own matching car!
Papa and Dean eating donuts

The gang at the booth

Happy father

Brandon's dad and family also came.

Tweedle dorks
Papa, Aunt Desi and Dean

Carl and Kathy trying to win a hot rod. BINGO!

I decided to repaint the dining room. After priming it I was able to get Bub to roll all the blue after I kept commenting on how fast and good he is at painting.

Goodbye dark cave It is my current favorite room in the house. I made the stripey place mats and matching couch pillows yesterday, love my sewing machine! Dean had a little fun in the hose, Kathy his swim outfit still fits!

Hope everyone has a fun 4th of July! We will be partying at my parents and chunky dunking in the pool.