Birthday Joys

Although today is my actual birthday, Mom and Megan and Kayleigh and Savannah took me out to tea for an early birthday treat, since I was going to LA on my birthday.  We went to the tea shop in Pleasanton and ate in the garden. The food was so beautiful, and we all had a great time visiting and giggling and drinking copious amounts of tea.  Savannah and Kayleigh thought of a dozen different party themes and are planning a tea party of their own.  They discovered peanut butter and marshmallow creme sandwiches.  Kayleigh says they are hecka good.

Packing and Purging

I am getting things organized for the movers.  I found things that have been packed away for 5 years, most of it going to the Goodwill.  I have eliminated about a third of the stuff in storage, trying to reach a goal of being able to pack it all in to a 30 foot moving truck.  Thanks God for my friend Kerry who has been an absolute miracle worker, helping me get my stuff together.  We are almost done and soon will be packing the apartment up. 

I am spending my birthday this year in LA with my sweetie.  I am driving down to find a house.  We found one that we love, and we hope we get it.  Just in case, we are still looking at others, but our fingers are crossed.  Finding the right house has been a challenge.  We want to find a place we can make our home.  A place that our kids will love, and that has all the amenities we are looking for.  We love the town we are moving to, and are really looking forward to getting settled and being together as a family.

I don't know how people do these cross country moves, or international moves for that matter. I am really struggling to keep it all together and organized. 

I am dying to do some artistic project, but between my recovering arm and being so busy, I just haven't had the time...  My hope and goal is to get it all organized in the new house the first week of June, so I can start creating things in my new studio right away.  I am really looking forward to a new space, organized and clean where I can spend HOURS making cool things.  6 more weeks and it will all be over. 

Breezie Loo turns 3

My niece the adorable Breezie Loo as I call her had a birthday today.  SHe was so funny singing happy birthday to herself.  Here she is opening her presents, wanting to play with each one and getting mad at us when we took them away so she would open the next one.  I love little kid parties.  Reminds me of all the themed parties I threw for my kids when they were little.  Clowns, pirates, space robots, renaissance faires, tea parties, the jungle, Chuck E Cheese... Those little people birthday parties are over for me now, but man I miss them.....

Easter Break and Touring through LA

The kids and I came down for a week to see Paskie and have a little vacay.  We ate at Forest Gumps the first night and passed the Forest Gump trivia test with flying colors.  It is our all time favorite movie, and we quote it all the time. 

We visited the Long Beach Aquarium on Easter Sunday.  We had fun petting the stingrays and the giant crabs were incredible.  I loved the seahorses.  We have been to a lot of aquariums, and I prefer the one in Monterey, but this one is really nice, and has an arboretum outside with sweet little parrots that perch on your shoulder and drink nectar from a cup.

We went to Knotts Berry Farm, Had the famous Chicken Dinner and the Berry punch.  I couldn't ride anything with my shoulder still in a sling, but had a lot of fun walking around with my honey looking at all the museum exhibits and shows.  It was fun to watch the kids running from ride to ride deciding on which one they wanted to go on first. 

Pascual had to work during the week, so the kids and I went to the La Brea Tarpits museum on Tuesday.  It was cool because it was free day, but there were HUNDREDS of elementary school kids running around on a field trip and it was difficult to see some things.  If you are in the Los Angeles area with kids, definately check this place out.  Kayleigh enjoyed seeing all of it because she had just studied it in school.  Standing next to a mammoth skeleton, you really get a feel for how huge they actually were.  It is a cool experience, and they have the lab there with glass windows where they work on things and you can watch the technicians as they clean the bones. 

We went to Philippes for lunch after the tarpits.  My great Grandpa used to take my grandpa here, and my grandpa took my dad and his siblings.  This has been here since 1907 or something like that.  They make the ORIGINAL french dip sandwich.  The legend goes that a police officer came in to get a beef sandwich and the sandwich maker accidentally dropped the bread into the meat juices.  The police officer told him to use it anyway.  He came back the next day with several friends for another of the french dipped sandwich.  They aren't sure if it was called that because the owner Philippe was French or because the officer's name was French, but the sandwich was born. They were so good, Zack ate two of them.  It was a quick but fun trip.  We haven't been on a family vacation in 5 years, and it was so fun to get to experience a new area, and see some of the touristic parts of our soon to be new home.  I think we are going to love living down here, once we get settled in.