1st week of summer vacation!

Now that my big girl is out of school, we have EIGHT glorious weeks of vacation. No soccer, no dance, no school, NOTHING but good ol' summertime fun! :) I am bummed it's only 8 weeks, I'm used to getting 3 months of vacation from when I was in school but she will be back at the end of august. Since it feels like it will be such short time and it will fly by, I'm DETERMINED to make it as fun as possible and do as much as possible with my two kiddos. This first week was actually FULL of fun stuff: trip to the city for a picnic lunch by the Golden Gate Bridge, playdate with old (and new) tvam friends, movies, Father's day, Library.... sheesh! I'm tired just writing about it all.
Here are a BUNCH of pics of all the fun :)
My loves enjoying a lunch with the best view, the Golden Gate Bridge Playing with our friend's dog, we were dog-sitting for a week :) playing soccer, as always! ;)
My loves <3

This 3 year old has the funniest fake smile!
Love this drive :)
Father's Day brunch at Daddy's favorite, Country Waffles in Danville Library fun, playing with puzzles
Library fun playing on the computer, my big girl :)
working hard on their computers LOL
my chef baked some delicious healthy chocolate chip cookies! we went to go see Brave, and she LOVED IT! The princess in this movie reminds us all of our own Princess, not your average girl, a bit of a tough side to her ;)
closed eyes because the flash was too bright in the theater lol

Bad mommy moment for me, I completely forgot swimsuits for our water playdate :-/ LOL



Celebrating my AWESOME girlfriend's birthday at one of our fav. spots, Underdog (toxic-free zone LOL)

she loved my gift, we laughed so hard when she opened it! LOL

BFFs <3

All this fun and we are barely on our first week of summer! can't wait for the next 7 weeks of fun!!! :)

my little boy's 3rd birthday party!

I CANNOT believe my little baby is no longer a baby and is 3 years old now!!! This is the first birthday where the kids are old enough to really say what "theme" they'd like for their party, and my little man chose "Cars" He loves those movies and wanted Lightning McQueen and Mater everywhere! I was not feeling super crafty and I totally gave in to the idea of having this be a complete "party city" party LOL. I found water bottle labels and from there it was just downhill and ended up doing a bunch of personalized things, so much for a party city shindig! I made signs for the food table and named it "Flo's Cafe" and it had "cozy cones" with popcorn, I had the crafts table for the kids and named it "Ramone's House of Body Art" as the kids got to decorate their own small wooden race cars and could put tattoos on themselves. I had another sign for the table where the goodie bags were and where the presents were and it was "Mater's Tow" table. I made from scratch healthy chocolate cupcakes recipe here and I made a cream cheese frosting, recipe here The frosting was not healthy at all but it was sooooo yummy!!! Overall my little boy had a great party and all the little guests did too :)

Ladybug's Open House at school!

So back in late May, my big girl had officially been in school for almost an entire school year, and we were at open house!!!! I was so excited to see everything she had been working so hard on this whole school year! I know i'm using a LOT of exclamation points but I really do feel them to be necessary to explain how excited I was :) We got to see all of her work and everything displayed in her classroom and she was very proud to show us all her work and what she had learned. It was funny to see how much she truly had done because EVERY single day I asked her "so, how was school? what did you do today?" and I ALWAYS got the same response, "it was good, we did journal and recess" Not very informative! At last I got to see all the things she had done and I could not be more proud of my little student :))

Easter

This Easter was super fun for my kids; and I'm SO GLAD it's over with LOL. They have sooo much candy it's ridiculous! Putting their baskets together was stressing me out as the day got closer, because I just kept buying random trinkets or things I thought they'd like, and I realized that there was no theme to the baskets, and definitely almost NOTHING easter related ugh! So at the last minute, I did buy some bunny and spring things and in the end they loved their baskets.

We are also so BLESSED to have amazing friends, and one friend in particular had an Easter party for the kids and it was amazing!! Sooo much candy, sooo much love and thought into all the homemade decorations and games, it was super fun.

The best part of Easter for me was something my Ladybug did on Easter sunday at church. That morning, as she opened her eggs and saw the goodies she got, she realized she had money! (a few dollars nothing big) Hubby realized we had no cash (as always) for the offering and wanted me to ask Alyssa to let us borrow a few dollars. Well, as always, my questioning daughter wanted to know WHY we give money to church, what does it do and about a million other questions. After explaining to her why we offer monetary goods to God and what the Bible says about offering, she told us, "mommy, I've decided I should give ALL my moneys (yes, moneys) to God because it helps the church and God will bless me with money later on for giving him my moneys now." I told her she didn't have to give it all, even $1 would please God but she said "no mommy, I want to give it all" so she did!!!!!!!!

We will give her more money than she had to begin with soon, but I want to wait so she's not expecting it, as that's how it's supposed to work. Give to God, not expecting it back in return, simply having faith that he will provide all you need.

I will post pictures later, as always, I'm super duper lazy with uploading pictures. LOL

I've turned into an Organic Food Researching Maniac!!

I was chatting with a fellow SAHM friend at a play-date a few weeks ago, and the topic of conversation has started a whirlwind of changes in my home; more specifically in our food. We somehow got into the topic of organic food and she told me how she buys all organic food, and I told her that my husband would never go for all organic because it's just so expensive. She recommended I watch the documentary "Food Inc." to help convince my hubby of the benefits of buying and eating organic (I had told her he was a documentary lover.) I have always known that there are benefits to having an organic diet, but I did not know the exact specifics and I never really bothered to research specifics. I was not an organic shopper, and that was mostly because every time I walked passed an organic item at the grocery store, my jaw dropped to the floor when I would see the prices! I just wrote off organic food as something rich people and celebrities ate and it being "just another fad diet/food trend."

So that same night, I found the documentary on Netflix, and we watched it together. OMG- he was just as appalled as I was to see just how horrid our food in America is and how important it is to have an organic diet! We discussed and chose to start our "organic journey" with buying the "dirty dozen" organically grown only from then on. Since then, I have realized that when you buy in bulk, and buy sale items, organic shopping is not nearly as expensive as one imagines.

Long story short, I am now a maniac researching organic, local, grass-fed food and I thought I'd share this with you guys. LOL! I have read 2 books so far, educating myself on organic food and trying to figure out what I need to know to buy and eat to have the healthiest food for my family. It has been very interesting and I can see that this is now a part of our lifestyle that will stay with us forever. I hope everyone can take some time and really find out what is being sold to us in our grocery stores, and exactly how "healthy", and really how DANGEROUS our foods are in this country; it's a sad but very true fact that we are the most UNHEALTHY country in the world. The origins of our food is without a doubt a big factor of this fact in my opinion.

Valentine's day

Happy Valentine's Day!!!!!

We started our day by having breakfast; Valentine themed :) Heart shaped belgian waffles with heart shaped eggs! Alyssa loved it so much! we are doing heart shaped sandwiches for lunch too. She and AJ got their gifts from Mommy and Daddy after breakfast and she said, "mommy, this is the BEST valentine day ever!!" I will post pictures later.... can't wait to see what the rest of the day has for us.

New adventures... full of worries

Now that the hubby got the job offer of his dreams, we know we are on the fast track to living our life dream; suburban nirvana if you will. The only problem is that we will be taking a pay cut the first year, and he got offered the job position in one of the most expensive places in the country, San Francisco.

We knew we'd have to make sacrifices during that first year, but the daunting task of finding a new home in the area, although i'm VERY familiar with it, since we've been living here already for 4+ years, is taking it's toll on me. We currently live in a 1500 sq. ft. 3bed 2 bath townhouse. We are going to make 10THOUSAND dollars less a year, and that's BEFORE taxes are taken out!!!!

EVERYTHING i'm seeing is in the range of 900-1050 sq.ft.!! so we're cutting over 500 square feet! and not to mention, all of this for just 100-150 dollars less a month than what we currently pay!

We know that we can NOT keep our current place, and we know things will be tight that first year, but it's a very scary thing to think about... we will be bursting at the seams in whatever new place we end up in, and paying not much less. Ok, I'm off to continue my search, it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack. :(