The New Place

While the kids and I were in California, poor B packed and moved all of our belongings into a new place. Then he had field exams for finishing up his second year of grad school (he passed both!!) and school started and we flew in. We've been working all week getting stuff settled and I'd say we're now about 75% done. Some rooms are completely done. Some rooms have been done and are now messy again. Some rooms just need a little work. We're getting there.  Our new townhome is three levels (which seems to be the best part to the kids).  You walk in on the "basement" level with an unfinished office/workroom, laundry room, storage closet and bonus/playroom.  The second floor is living room, kitchen, dining room and half bath.  The top floor is the master bedroom and bathroom, two kid rooms and a bathroom. 

Hallway on middle floor.  Between living room, kitchen and stairways.

PS's room.  85% done.

The boy room.  It looks slightly better than this now.  No boxes.  Still a mess.  75% done.

Upstairs hallway looking from master bedroom toward PS's room.  Stairs down on the right.  

Bathroom on the left.

Kitchen.  This was several days ago.  It is 100% done now.

Hallway on middle level (with the FHE chart).  Kitchen at the far end on the right.  Stairs up at the far end on the left.  Stairs down at the front left.  Homeschool bookshelves and bathroom on the right.  Keyboard straight ahead under window.

When you come up from downstairs, this is the first part of the living room.  It's still a mess.

B's unfinished workroom with our giant desk.

Master bedroom.  Was at one point (as evidenced in this picture) very clean.  It's gotten a bit messier as we've continued unpacking boxes.

Living room.  B set up the bookshelves, chairs and couch.  I added the decorations/pictures on top of the shelves and the curtains.  We still need to decorate the empty shelf B left empty for decoration purposes.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Heading home we flew Burbank to San Francisco to Dulles.  Burbank was awesomely empty, no lines for security and both going there and coming home I didn't have to go through the x-ray machine, just a normal metal detector. Score!  The Burbank airport has stairs they wheel up to the airplane so you go outside and climb up them.  I've always thought that was fun and the kids thought so too.  Our plane from Burbank to SF was small so Little Guy and I were on one side of the aisle and Buddy and PS were on the other side (two seats per side).  The plane from SF to Dulles was a regular three seats per side of the aisle.  This meant the three kids were together and I was across the aisle from them (none of them would sit alone).  That was more difficult, and is one of the reasons they got ot watch the inflight movie which was Pirates of the Carribeean 4 (which I normally wouldn't have let them watch).  Little Guy fell asleep with his headphones on watching the pirate movie.  The first pictures are PS reading in the Burbank airport while we waited for our flight.

Ventura Harbor

Our last night in California we went to my mom's favorite seafood restaurant, Andria's, for clam chowder, fish and chips, and dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets (Little Guy). Then we walked around a bit and the kids posed in these postcard cut outs. Not sure how I feel about PS being a bikini clad mermaid, but she was thrilled with the dolphin one since her new dream is to swim with a dolphin.

Last Trip to the Beach (Pacific Ocean side)

I took the kids for one last trip the the beach the day before we went.  This is the kid friendly beach right by the Channel Islands National Park building at the Ventura Harbor.  We found a crab.  And some fun sea shells.  The kids liked the sand dunes.  And Little Guy enjoyed putting sand on Princess Sparkley's back while she laid on her towel. Afterwards we went to the Buena Ventura Mall which now has a two story Target (the kids requested that one as well once Grandma mentioned it).  We also ate at Hot Dog on a Stick.  Yummy cheeses on a stick.  :)

Random Pics

A couple of random pictures from California that don't really go with anything I haven't already blogged.

PS and Fenway got to be pretty good friends as well.  She was a little mad with him this day because he licked all the colorful paint off the butterfly facepainted on her arm.

Little Guy found the Nordic Track Machine in my brother's old room one morning. 

This is how I found him.

Facepaint

You remember this post... well we saw the lady at church the Sunday before we left and she noticed the remnants of a dolphin on Buddy's arm and said if we came buy she'd paint a new one for him.  We went over to her house that week and they kept them on until we got home to Virginia for Daddy to see.  PS got a butterfly this time.  And Little Guy was brave and had a spider ("Pider") painted on his arm. 

Sprinklers

As our trip to Grandma and Grandpa's in California neared its end, I asked the kids what was left that they wanted to do.  They wanted to run through Grandpa's sprinklers so he turned them on for them one day and we tried to get Fenway in the water... turns out he hates water.  He'd run in the sprinklers to get his ball if he'd first checked it out and it seemed like he wouldn't get too wet.  Then he'd roll around on the grass to get all the water off.  Once he squeezed his way into a thick bush and back out again, it had to be just to get the water off.  He did enjoy drinking from the sprinklers though.  I like the tongue shot I captured.

Cousins

These are the three seven year olds.  My sister's son, C, was born in February,

 then Buddy in April and my brother's son, M, two days later.  They were all missing a lot of teeth.

 I didn't do as good a job capturing the 2-3 year old crowd. 

Little Guy is on the left.  He's January 2008.  My sister's son, J, was December 2007

 and her son, M, was December 2008. 

My sister's daughter, E, is about to turn 12, three years older than Princess Sparkley but the only girl in her family as well.  She used to give us her old dresses and clothes as hand me downs for PS, she now wears a larger shoe size than me and is only about 4 inches shorter than I am.

My brother's son, N, is just about a year older than Little Guy.

We let Little Guy go to Sunbeams with him each week at church (he's just three

weeks too young to be a Sunbeam anyway) rather than going to Nursery alone.

Fenway

I took the picture of Fenway standing on the lawn looking at the camera (what he's thinking is, "I sure wish I could eat that thing.")  Princess Sparkley took the other pictures.  I especially like the close up of his head.  And, amazingly, she got all these pictures without him getting the camera.

Princess Sparkley's Nature Pictures

Tree Climbing

I'm not sure my kids have ever really climbed a tree.  They like the idea, but they've never really had a good climbing tree to practice on.  There's one at Grandma's and Grandpa's though so today they gave it a shot.

Hollywood

 We started out the day at Cupid's Hot Dogs (65 years old this year).  Pinks has become the famous LA hot dog spot, and my mom made my dad take her there recently.  He said the only worse hot dog is the one at Dodger Stadium.  He's staying loyal to his neighborhood hot dog stand growing up.  We stopped at the one in Northridge, I don't think the one in North Hollywood is there anymore.  We went there a lot when I was a kid too.  This one had the same feel... order your hot dog, sit outside at a table.  No pigeons to feed bits of our bun to, but that's okay.

Grauman's Chinese Theater

We started out at Grauman's Chinese Theater where we saw two Darth Vader's, a Storm Trooper, Dora the Explorer, Elmo, Mickey Mouse, Cookie Monster, 3 Spidermans, a Jack Sparrow, etc.  One of the Darth Vaders waved and two Spidermans said hello (one was perched on a fire hydrant). We were mainly there for the Star Wars cast footprints, the Harry Potter cast footprints and just to see some fun stuff.

Hollywood Walk of Fame

When I gave Princess Sparkley some different options of things to do in California.  She liked the Hollywood Walk of Fame stuff because she's seen Charles Schulz's star in some of the biographies of him she's read.  We found his star along with Walt Disney's star.  In the search, we also saw the star for The Simpsons and a few others.

Hollywood Sign

She really wanted to see the Hollywood sign too, and I always do.  I had wanted to take the kids to Griffith Observatory years ago but it was closed for nearly five years for renovations when we lived here.  So we headed up and saw the sign.

Griffith Observatory

And then into the Observatory.  I went on a field trip here in elementary school.  And since we'd been driving around Hollywood hearing my dad tell us about places he used to go for movies, etc. (he's from North Hollywood) I asked if he went on field trips here in elementary school too.  He did.  It opened in 1935, before he was born. It's much improved from both of our recollections. 

There was an earthquake in the area about 10 minutes before we walked through the door (4.2).  The worker at the Pendulum informed us. We didn't feel it. We were outside taking pictures of the Hollywood sign.  He told us to check out the seismograph downstairs and while we were hopping up and down trying to make the floor vibration seismograph draw squiggles, there was another one. We didn't feel it either.  All 6 of us (the three kids, my parents and myself) weighed about 100lbs. on the moon.  I remembered thinking the different planet scales were really cool when I was a kid.  They were much improved and my kids got a kick out of them too.

Bath

Little Guy had a fun swim in Grandma's bathtub.

Grandma's Birthday

We've been lucky enough to celebrate my mom's birthday with her two years in a row.  Yesterday, and then last year they were in Virginia with us for Princess Sparkley's baptism.

We had my brother's family over for dinner Sunday (my sister's family had some sickies) to celebrate.

Ronald Reagan Library

We're a Reagan loving family.  When Ronald Reagan died the motorcade taking his body to the library for burial went through our town and our little family (PS was coming up on two and Buddy was just a couple months old) waited on the side of the road to show our respect with a lot of other people.  B and my brother and my nephew B went to the actual library as well within a few days to pay respect.

The library built an airplane hanger for a retired Air Force One jet just as we were moving from California to Kansas and we never made it over for a visit until today.  I don't think I've been to the library since I was a teenager and it first opened so I was excited to see it again... plus the air plane.

I kept trying to tell PS information about Ronald Reagan in the museum to which she'd answer, "I already know, I have a whole book about him."  True.  We have one of those kids' biographies about him.  She probably knows more than I do.

PS was our Reagan and Nancy Reagan expert (she also has a book about First Ladies), Buddy was our Air Force One and Marine One expert because he's seen a National Geographic movie (several times) about the Presidential airplanes.  He even pointed out to us on the giant mural which of the airplanes is the one that carries all the Secret Service vehicles.  Pretty cool.

Here's a picture of our picture.  Someday I'll scan in the real thing.

Mr. Fenway

Little Guy and my dad's dog, Fenway, are becoming friends. Little Guy calls him Mr. Fenway. Their friendship works best if Fenway is otherwise occupied. If not occupied, Little Guy gets licked in the face a lot which he does not enjoy.  Tonight Fenway was in the computer room on his blanket chewing a toy and Little Guy was brave enough to sit on his back for a second, like Fenway was a horse.  Mostly he's scared to go outside and get licked.  Buddy is pretty fearless around Fenway now and while he's out in the yard working on the fort Fenway follows him around and I can see Buddy talking to him.  The other day he ran into the house excited because Fenway had helped dig a really big hole in the fort.  PS does okay with Fenway.  Not scared, not really friends.

Buddy's Dolphin

We went to my parents' ward's Picnic in the Park last Wednesday, August 24th.  There is a woman who always brings her face painting stuff and paints all the kids faces.  Princess Sparkley decided she wanted something done, but not on her face.  She picked this beautiful unicorn.  Picture one is from my cell phone camera at the park.  Picture two is that night at bedtime in case they woke up in the morning and it was smeared too much.  PS spent a good amount of time at the park trying to convince her brothers to get something painted on their arms.  Little Guy agreed and backed out three times.  She finally convince Buddy when he found out a dolphin was an option.  Now he doesn't want it ever off of his arm.  The sad Buddy picture is three days after the picnic when I insisted he take a bath.  He held his arm out of the water and let me scrub around it.  Again last night (tonight is a week after the picnic) he had a bath, again with his arm out of the water.  It's hardly recognizable as a dolphin anymore, but I'm starting to worry that he may have a permanent smudge on his forearm.  He says we can't wash it off until I either find him a dolphin temporary tattoo, or he gets another one face painted on him.  Oh dear.

The morning of September 1 it looks like this:

This picture makes his arm look filthy.  It's not, just around the dolphin is dirty.  And most of that is paint.

Underwoods Farm and Produce

There's a little produce stand we always go to that has a few locations with Pick Your Own stuff and animals.  this little one near my parents added these goats a few years back with high up ramps for the goats to walk around on.  I love it.  The kids thought it was pretty cool.  We fed the goats, sheep, chickens and an alpaca.  Little Guy called the alpaca "the goat who looks like a lion."

Princess Sparkley behind the camera

Buddy is outside all day every chance he gets and Grandma and Grandpa's.  He's spent a lot of time in the backyard building a fort.  When the cousins come over, they are out there with him working on it.  He's also created some sort of slide in the leaves down the hill side.  There have been days when he's come in with dirt in his hair and teeth from sliding down the hill.  Crazy boy.  I sent PS out with the camera the other day to capture some pictures.  That pile off stuff next to the recycle container is some of the dead flowers Buddy had to pick in order to earn the few extra dollars he needed to buy a Lego Star Wars ship he wanted to get with his money.

My mom had a thing for collecting Beanie Babies in the '90s.  I had a thing for Barbies in the '80s.*

*I seriously can't believe how Eighties my Barbies are.  Wow.