VEGAS!!!

Yet again, this is a blog post that should've been done in the beginning of august, when the trip actually took place but hey, better late than never right???

I try to go out to vegas to visit my family as often as I can. Anytime any of my old friends from LA go I try to see them too. It was a 3 for 1 deal for me this trip because not only was I going to get to see my old childhood friends, but we would see my mom and step dad AAANNNDD from Rickey's side of the family we were having a mini-reunion!!!! LOTS of people to see and lots of catching up to do!
I was there for a total of one week in vegas with the kids... rickey flew out a few days later and met up with us there. I went earlier than him because my old childhood friends were going to be there to celebrate our friend Lindsay's birthday!!!! I could NOT pass up the opportunity to catch up with my old "dreamer" friends LOL... so off I went on a road trip, just me with both kids in the car for 11 hours!!!! but I would do it all over again for those girls, I love them very much and I'm sad I don't get to see them as often as I'd like. The celebration plans included one night of a "menswear" theme and all of us ladies dressed up in our glam fabulous menswear inspired outfits and EVERYONE looked soo gorgeous!!! It was definitely one of those "what happens in vegas, stays in vegas" kind of nights ;)
All the ladies looking beautiful!

The birthday girl and me!

A few days later, Rickey's mom and step dad, 2 sisters and nephew drove from LA to Vegas, and his sister from texas flew with her two little kids. He also has another sister in vegas so we were able to get all the cousins together for the first time!!! We had a girls night out for us grown ups, the girls Alyssa and Ja'Lynn had a "slumber party" and just overall it was a lot of fun to see family members that we rarely get to see. The kids had never been with all their cousins before so that was a really nice thing to be able to see them all together. They are all very close in age so we knew they would love playing together and spending time together. We were together for 5 days and that time just flew by way too quickly :( it really is hard though to get the whole family together when we have his mom and 2 sisters in L.A., one in vegas, one in Texas, and us up here in the Bay.... but we are glad we were able to get together and hope to be able to do that again very soon and not let years go by before we all see each other.
Of course we stayed with my parents so the kids and I also got to spend time with them, which is always nice because my mom has a very close relationship with my kids and when they get together it's really special for all of them.
It was a good week trip to take and as much as I loved seeing sooo many people I love, by the end of it I was VERY happy to be back home, in my own bed, in my tiny matchbox condo LOL.
There were LOTS of pictures taken but I don't have them all so for now, I'll just post what I do have.

Tooth Fairy Time!!!

I don't want to forget these special moments and that's why I like to blog. The fact that I blog about events WEEKS after they've happened shouldn't matter LOL, it'll still be recorded here for me to remember. July 22nd, I was working out in the living room and Alyssa comes out and says to me, "mommy, I just lost my tooth" I was mid push up and literally jumped up and asked to see her mouth. Sure enough, there was a hole in the bottom left front. Here's the kicker, she LITERALLY lost the tooth! It popped out of her mouth when she was "pretending to be a puppy" and had the corner of one of my decorative pillows in her mouth and she was shaking her head fast and let go of the pillow. The pillow went flying out of her mouth and so did her tooth! So it took me about 15 minutes of searching on the ground for a tiny little tooth but thank goodness I did find it! That night she was sooooooooo excited to have the tooth fairy come and visit her. When I went to her room to get the tooth that night, I did find a note she had written for the fairy, asking if she could please keep her tooth! LOL I asked her about the note the next morning while I was making her bed and she said she wanted to keep the tooth as a memory. I told her the tooth fairy "buys" the teeth so she really does need it, and she was fine with the money she got from it but I just thought it was so sweet that she wanted to keep the tooth. <3 Yes, I know it's a bit more than a month ago that this happened but now it's in writing and I will be able to look back at this post and be taken back to that sweet memory of my baby girl's first baby tooth.

P.S. Here she is BRIGHT and early at 5:ish AM showing me the sparkly $5 and fairy wand the tooth fairy left her ;)

Sea World Pictures

Once again, my horrible blogging skills have made me fall behind on our family's doings so I'm just now getting around to posting the sea world pictures. I did at least get the rest of the san diego trip's pictures up when we went on the trip ;) here are some of the many many pictures I took during our trip to sea world, I can't wait to take the kids to more amusement parks now that they are getting old enough to enjoy more rides and shows/attractions!

Our trip to San Diego!!!!!

This past week was soooo much fun for our family! We spent 5 days in San Diego visiting family and we cannot wait to go back! We stayed with Rickey's Uncle Mark and his wife Dori, and their 3 kids who are all super close in age with our little ones. These kids did not go to sleep before 10:30pm every.single.night. we were there!!! They were just having too much fun for a regular bedtime and I must say, they loved every second of their past-bedttime shenanigans. ;)


We spent the 4th of July with them and they live in the most awesome block with neighbors that are super friendly. They even have a 20+ year tradition to shut down their street and do a pot-luck and the kids of the neighborhood put on a "bike parade" and they had yummy food and PLENTY of drinks for the whole neighborhood (even at nighttime they brought out HOT yummy coffee and baileys and other "adult additions" for coffee; that's my kind of party! ;)


Uncle Mark and Rickey are VERY competitive with each other so besides playing xbox games EVERY night, they played so many other games at the block party and watching them get so competitive was absolutely hilarious!!! From ping pong to bean sack toss (even a little indoor soccer!) they were at each other and even asked us wives to get in on the action and team up to do the water balloon toss game! (I ended up not playing with Rickey due to someone else wanting to play with him more but whatever...) it was still funny to see how competitive they got to even want to do a married team match against each other.


We also did 2 days in Sea World and oh.my.gosh. it was super fun!! The kids were loving every single second of the shows and we got to see Dolphins up close and put our hands in the water to touch them! We saw dolphins, penguins, polar bears, beluga whales, of course Shamu killer whales, sharks! Sea world has a few kiddy rides and a HUGE play structure and we spent plenty of time there too. it was a great time and even now at home the kids keep asking when we will go back and see the animals again.


Saturday we all had a chill day just hanging out in the backyard enjoying the sunny San Diego weather. We filled up the kid pool and while the kids swam the adults soaked up the sun, chatted up and sipped on grape soda vodka drinks :) yuummmmm! Alyssa and her oldest cousin Ryen put on a "tv show" and were crafting for hours to put it together.


Every night they all cuddled for bedtime story (read by Aunt Dori) and on the last night the two girls decided to read a story by themselves and it was SO sweet to see them take turns, each reading one page.


We absolutely enjoyed every day we spent and can't wait to go back.... lucky for us they are planning a trip up to the Bay Area in a few weeks since Aunt Dori also has family in SF and we will meet up with them again then.


I took WAYYYYYY too many picture but I'll try to not go too overboard posting them here... key word here is "try." So bare with me people.

4th of JULY slide show... yes there's lots of pics.. sorry I tried to cutdown but couldn't LOL

2nd week of summer

This week was not as busy as last week, but we still had good times :) Scooter playdates with BFFs, haircuts for us gals, swimming playdates, and our new sunday ritual; soccer for daddy, park play for kids and mommy gets to relax ;)
here are some pictures of what we did.


she loved getting her hair cut and blow dried <3
this is Mommy's relaxation on sundays while the kids play at the playground and daddy plays soccer on the field next to the playground :))
a very crappy phone pic of daddy gettin' down on the field ;)
swim playdate with the Besties is always a good time :)) This next week will be soooo much fun, we are going to San Diego to visit family, can't wait for all the fun in store!

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 :)