Alyssa the cheerleader!!

Ive been majorly slacking and totally behind on my blogging!!!! (Not surprising at ALL) but this summer Alyssa started cheerleading for our towns tackle football/cheer team.  I volunteered to be coach so it's been fun to coach her!  She and the rest of my squad has gotten so good I'm so proud of all my girls!!!

I am now teaching them their competition routine and can't wait for them to compete!  Get ready for major photo bomb, I have about 2 months worth of pictures to post!

At Cheer Camp infront of our awesome decorated tent!

Banner paint party, we painted a banner at my house for our football players to run through after half time :)

She was too excited and couldn't wait to try on her uniform when we got it :)

Cutest cheerleader EVER!!! ;)

Her poster I made for Homecoming Game

Alyssa and her friend Charlize showing me their Cheer dog tags they got at the homecoming game. 

We show our Hurricane Spirit!

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

AJs first field trip!

Now that AJ is a big boy and in preschool, he's been doing a lot of firsts. He had his first field trip and it was to our town library.  We've been there plenty of times but going with his classmates was special, especially because he for his very own library card for the first time!

I love that his preschool will do a monthly field trip; next month we will go to the pumpkin patch!

He was telling the librarian about his book he picked, it is about pumpkins/Halloween :)

He used the self check out and did it "by himself" like a big boy ;)

AJ loves his teacher

AJ has been in preschool for a few weeks now, and this morning I walked in on him playing pretend. He got Alyssa to join in as the student, and he was Ms. Becca his preschool teacher!!!! It's so cute to see him reenact the activities he does at school. I took a video of it but can't post from my phone so I will upload it later.

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No training wheels!

So summer break is coming to an end and before the start of school, my big girl wanted to learn to ride her bike without training wheels.  One day, (yes it only took one day) and she's got the hang of it!!!!

So happy and proud of my big girl :-)

Mother's Day

This Mother's Day was a wonderful day and I was treated like a queen from beginning to end! I had sent the hubby a few pointers of what I'd like to do for the day (like a hilarious blog post i saw online of ten things mom really want for Mother's Day) and he really pulled through on making it special.

My day started by him taking Cody out in the morning in attempts of letting me sleep in. Cody decided 15 min later to cry up a storm and I woke up but it was still a great morning because he got the kids their small breakfast. Alyssa gave me her gifts she made me in school and they were so sweet!!!! she made me a painting that I plan on framing and putting in their playroom, and she wrote a book about me and it was hilarious!! He got the kids dressed and ready and we headed out for our first meal out aka- I'm not cooking today LOL. We wanted to do a brunch and tried out a diner that had huge burgers and the most tasty garlic fries I've ever had!!! I'm a huge garlic fan and thankfully he is too so we shared the huge basket lol.

We then took the kids to get their hair cut, is it weird that we chose to do this on Mother's Day? It just came up in conversation at brunch and we decided to just take them in after brunch if they could be squeezed in and it worked out for them to get their haircut :)

We went home and I got a lovely and soothing foot and hand rub from my three loves. They also painted my toenails and it was such a terrible job but at the same time the BEST pedi I've ever had! Seeing my 6 year old try so hard and my hubby try even harder to paint my toes was so adorable I was smiling from ear to ear :)

After relaxing from all the pampering I took my nap- and let me say this- OMG a nap in the day when it's not in the "newborn" stage is unheard of around here! It was pure bliss and I woke up feeling refreshed; and starving ready for a Thai feast!

We were driving to the restaurant when he hands me a paper. Instead of buying me a card, he decided to write a letter. He is like most guys in the sense that he's not very romantic and I've learned that this is just how he is, it doesn't mean he loves me any less than he does. So to read this was soooo sweet and surprising and unexpected! In his words, "I wanted to give you something from my heart, not just a prewritten card someone else wrote" I thought my day couldn't get any better but this letter was the best part of my day, well besides getting Alyssa's gifts she made me at school. :)

So we went to the restaurant, had a lovely dinner and I truly must say, having an entire day off from my "mom duties" was EXACTLY what I needed. I feel refreshed and appreciated. It was a wonderful Mother's Day for me and I can only hope all you other mommies out there felt the same kind of love and appreciation I felt from my little family. :)


AJ giving me his gift, a headlight for my night runs!




Alyssa giving me my new running shoes, and posing LOL





All my wonderful running gifts!




Best garlic fries ever! Shared this huge basket at brunch with the hubby




My HUGE BBQ burger! It was delish and I definitely will run all these fluffy calories off ASAP lol




Every year Alyssa picks a flower for my hair on Mother's Day :)







The kids after getting their haircut :)







This is exactly our kitchen! :)



Hahaha she drew our new couches perfectly ;)



I wouldn't mind a big purse ;) and look at Cody's evil teeth lol!



We totally sing like rock stars in the car all the time :)



The view!!! Lol







My babies trying so hard to paint my toes... It was terrible but sooo sweet of them :)





Like I said, terrible lol
























- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Monterey Beach Trip!

Last weekend was a very fun time for us. One thing Rickey and I have been saying is we need to actually REALLY Plan some trips, we always *talk* about taking trips and never actually go! :( so this past Friday, Rickey went to home depot (our second home at this point haha) and came back and said, "it's going to be so hot here this weekend, we should do something, lets go somewhere, lets go to the beach." I said, "ok, sure which beach?" He said, "lets go to Monterey, lets stay there this weekend" I said, "wait, you want me to book a hotel for tomorrow???? Isn't this kind of, like, totally spur of the moment unplanned and SO NOT like you?" Hahaha he said, "yeah, we always say we should do this or that, but we don't go so let's just go for it!"

So Alyssa runs to get her little suitcase and is super excited to go to a hotel, the poor girl hasn't been to one in so long because all the trips we DO make are visits to family so we never stay in hotels. I asked my Facebook friends for recommendations, and went to my trusted yelp to see reviews and help me choose a hotel. With this being such a spur of the moment trip, my top 2 choices were booked but I still found an awesome hotel. It's the only hotel in Monterey with beachfront access, and they are pet friendly so our Cody would be able to come along with us and we had an ocean view room. It was so beautiful!!

The weather here at home was scorching so we were hoping for a little bit of that heat to be at the beach but here in Nor Cal, beaches are always overcast and cold. :( it didn't matter though, we just wanted to get the kids out and even if they just played in the sand and got their feet wet, they still had such a blast. When we got there, the sun was out but it was in the 60s, so still chilly. We played in the sand, built a sand castle, raced around with daddy, and just had so much fun!

We checked into our hotel at 4pm, had a few hiccups- they didn't have us in a pet friendly room and we were going to have to wait 1 1/2 hr but the hotel manager was very helpful and got us in a pet friendly room, still with an ocean view in 10 minutes and gave us vouches for the hotel restaurant. We finally went to our room, got all cleaned up from playing in the beach and headed out to dinner. We ate at the restaurant in our hotel since they gave us $50 vouchers and while the food was nothing to rave about, it wasn't awful it was pretty average, I'd give it a 6-7 out of 10. The thing this meal has that made it great was the view! Eating while having the ocean right I front of you was simply stunning!

After dinner, we decided to get a few things from a nearby grocery store and have dessert in our room in our pjs and be super comfy. We made banana splits and watched shrek and the kids fell fast asleep. The next morning, Alyssa and I had our breakfast on the deck watching the ocean waves and we saw a "pirate ship" which was the most amazing thing to her. :) she also could not believe that people were out there so early in the morning paddle boarding, she said the water was just tooo freezing for her to ever go in so early LOL.

We lounged after breakfast, I read a book on my kindle, the kids played with Cody and by noon we were checked out of our room. Rickey has been to Monterey plenty of times before for work related reasons so he took us to this little hole n the wall Mexican place for lunch and it was sooooo naughty and delicious! All in all, it was a short but sweet trip we took and we can't wait for our next trip, we are already talking about when the next 3 day holiday is and what we want to do.