7 things

So its going around, list 7 things about yourself that others don't know, (my friend Brooke said exciting but I omitted that word as I made my list but I wouldn't necessarily call it exciting) here goes:-

1. I love to make lists. There are little papers all over my house, grocery lists, Costco lists, target lists, things to do today lists, things to do during the week lists, places I'd like to go, wish lists for me, lists of things to buy for my girls and Eric for birthdays and Christmas, a list of things to do with my dad when he visits (in November), the list goes on.....

2. I love, love, love to travel. I want to go to Paris, Italy, Greece, Spain, Canary Islands, Bermuda, travel up the west coast, travel through New York up to Niagara Falls, Cape Cod, Hilton Head, go to Disney World, Iceland......

3. I was a vegetarian for about 8 years.

4. I like to drink out of a straw.

5. I wanted to be a school teacher (and maybe someday I will).

6. I feel that I am a total underachiever.

7. I have no self control if there is chocolate in my house I just have to eat it!!

Tag your it.

So proud

O.K. so this is not intended to be bragging and I am only writing it as I feel a sense of accomplishment and believe me I am as far from Susie homemaker as anyone can get it seems these days. A few weeks ago I bought some herbs at the garden center and put then in a planter in my yard, today trying to figure out what on earth to make for dinner and not really having anything in my cupboards I opened the 'Better Homes and Gardens' cookbook, I have pasta, canned tomatoes and a rouge green pepper in the fridge, so that was my starting point and decided to make the classic spaghetti sauce, I had all the stuff except marjoram. Anyway, the recipe calls for fresh (or dried but I had fresh) basil and parsley and so there I was so proud of myself as I walked out into the yard and grabbed myself some fresh basil and parsley, and the accomplishment comes in as I have not only purchased the stuff, actually got around to planting it, kept it alive (and for the basil it is amazing as the dog has dug it up twice) but I have also used it, yay!! And I cooked it whilst both girls napped (at the same time) this afternoon, and about that I do brag but only because I can literally count on one hand the amount of times this blessed event has occurred since Sara was born.

Happy Anniversary

To my wonderful husband HAPPY ANNIVERSARY,

8 wonderful, fun filled years today. He bought me chocolates and I got him a new office chair. I am excited to grow old with you, love forever.

Carnival

Friday night we went with the Roberts to the little Carnival at the Sherman Oaks Park. They had some cute rides and Kate had tons of fun with her absolute best friend Keaton.

They first rode the train and it went on forever, so long that the kids began to get a little bored but at least we seemed to get our moneys worth. Then Kate rode the carousel, it was super fast and here she is hanging on for dear life!!

At the end the kids went on this huge inflatable slide, they both loved it and we ended up using all of our left over tickets for it, they went down it about 6 or 7 times each, the lady running it was real nice to them. Sara came to, here is another take at my self photography.

The Thompsons and the Roberts.

A day in the life

So nothing to interesting going on at the Thompson's, Kate and Sara have begun playing together. It only lasts about 10 minutes but its adorable and I love it. Thanks Amber (my very generous sister-in-law) this is Sara's #1 favourite toy.

This is our jump 'n' slide by Little Tike's, it was a chunk of change at $200 but worth every penny, Kate plays in it at least once a day. Sara loves it too, she has just worked out how to get herself down the slide so now I have to sit at the bottom to catch her. (this picture was taken yesterday but I put it in as I didn't take any as they played in it today)

The girls wore their matching shirts today that Kate had picked out at the store, I think they look cute and so I tried to get a picture of them but I seem to miss the shot because of the delay of the digital camera (isn't it a bad workman that always blames their tools!!)

Here is Kate coloring away, she just sat and colored for over an hour I was quite impressed, I was putting Sara down for her nap and when I got back she was just singing to herself. "Hap birthday to you, hap birthday to Darby, hap birthday to you" over and over, so cute. (We had just left Darby a message where Kate sang happy birthday) so here is a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Darby who is 2 from Kate.

Kate read Ten Little Ladybugs and was so proud of herself that she just had to read it to daddy when he got home. If you haven't got it, its real cute and I think the illustrations are adorable. "ten little bugs on a leaf, then there were nine little bugs....." (for anyone wondering I'm not sure why she chose to read in the bathroom but she just wanted to sit on her steppy stool so we all crowded into the bathroom for her recital)

Then tonight I gave Kate 3 forks to set at the table, I thought she would just dump them on the table, I've never asked her to do it before. Anyway, when I came in with the food there they were, one in each place (and you can see her little hand pointing at a job well done!!), what can I say, she's my first child and she always astounds me at the things she knows and does everyday, its true they really do pick up on everything!!

That was our day, now both girls are asleep (I was going to sneak in and capture the blissful moment but the battery died in my camera) Eric is putting up the antenna for our wireless Internet and I am blogging. What a day, and if you made it to the end of this and are not some type of relative (and truthfully I started this for my dad but sadly enough he hasn't even check it out, his loss huh??!!) then I'm impressed and thanks for bearing with me as I blog aimlessly about my two little wonders.

Fun at the LA zoo

Today we got off to a good start. Kate's cousins, uncle, grandma and grandpa all left by noon, I had folded all of the laundry that I had been putting off for the past 7 days, made a pork tenderloin for dinner (really tasty for the recipe click here but be warned its my new recipe so if I am scheduled to bring you dinner or I invite you over its probably what I will be making!!) and Sara took an almost 3 hour nap. Then she woke up, I fed the girls lunch and for some reason Sara began to be all whinny and I began to feel my sanity slowly slip through my fingers. So I asked Kate if she wanted to go to the park or zoo and she chose the zoo, so off we went, here is a little re-cap of our afternoon.....

We checked out the new spider exhibit, its pretty cool, they have some real huge hairy spiders, we went through once, then Kate said, lets go again and so we went again and spent about 20 mins in there. Some of the spiders were hiding and so she kept asking, where's this one but some of the big ones you just couldn't miss!! She also asked the names of each one and I have to thank the zoo for labeling all of its exhibits because I must have seemed like the most intelligent mother on the face of the planet for knowing each spiders real name!!

So for any of you who visit the zoo regularly like us (and if you want to go but don't have a pass call me, I can get you in for free and we love going) it was pretty much the same old, same old, lions, giraffes, zebras, camel, elephant, orangutan etc, etc we caught the Nubian Ibex's having a little táte-a-táte and check out the photo I took of myself and Sara, not too bad if I do say so myself!! I'm glad we went, it made me realise when I was there that I love going with my friends and their kids but sometimes I like to just spend time with my girls, I got to listen and talk to Kate the whole time, even if it was just 3 year old talk it was wonderful and even though I didn't finish my dishes, vacuum and do some of the other things on my to do list for the day, I spent quality time with my girls and that to me makes my day a success. Plus, I think I managed to tire them out!!

Full house

Today we swam and had a BBQ, it was quite delightful. Eric's parents are in town, his younger brother and his two kids, then his other brother, wife and 3 kids came and my sister-in-laws brother and his new wife came. I had also signed the missionaries up for dinner so they came to eat also. I love having a full house, I can't wait for it to really warm up, the pool was nice, some said it was a little chilly (78 degrees) but I am a swim-a-holic so there was no stopping me. I hope that we can have huge swim parties all summer long, all are welcome to come and swim and grill and as far as I am concerned the more the merrier.

Fun with the cousins

Kate has two of her cousins in town from Utah, I love it when she can get together with them. I didn't have any cousins growing up, no aunts, no uncles and therefore no cousins so it seems super fun to me. Here she is with McKenna who is 7 and Carson who is almost 3.

Here is the big difference to me between boys and girls. Carson is so excited to catch a potato bug (we have tons of them around our yard), he kept bringing them to show me and as rough and tough as my little girl seems, Kate usually just screams and stands ten feet back "its a bug, there's a bug!!!" Today though, inspired by Carson she let one crawl across her hand.

Another day at the Thompsons...

Our dog Britain likes to catch lizards, we have a small grass area and whenever I walk on over there is usually some poor lizard on the grass that wasn't quicker than the dog. Today she all of a sudden takes off down the side of the house and I am just thinking that she has gotten herself another piece of prey, as I got closer I see a snake and Britain is taking off with this little dead bird, I'm assuming that the snake had the bird and Britain was a little cheeky and took it from the snake, anyway, its cool and a little scary at the same time to have a snake in your yard, this one was the 2nd I've seen thus far.

The rest of our day was pretty routine, we swam at a friends house and didn't get home until after 5, I was hoping that as the girls had swam they wouldn't need baths. As I'm racking my brains as to what to feed my little darlings for dinner I come across a can of Chef Boyardee, its quick, its easy, why not I tell myself. My dreams of no bath, straight into jammies and off to bed were shattered, I was at least wise enough to remove Sara's shirt before letting her feed herself but both girls pretty much ended up orange (I would have posted pics of this too but I remember my friend Nanette telling me that she specifically does not like to see pictures of kids plastered in food, it must be one of those things where it is just cute for the parents, in any case I don't think a picture could have done it quite justice). So off to the bath they went. I filled it up a few inches and in Kate went for a good wash, but first she needed to go potty, then back into the tub. As I'm washing Kate, Sara who is still very orange and touching me all over, is pulling herself up on me and is trying to stick her hand into the toilet behind me!! Oh! la vida loca, sometimes I find myself wondering about these being the best days of my life!!

Beautiful, beautiful Santa Barbara

Today we took a family day and went out to beautiful, peaceful, charming Santa Barbara. If you haven't been it is totally worth checking out. When we first got there Kate wanted to play on the beach and so we played on the beach and Kate splashed in the water for about an hour, Sara thought that the beach was awesome too, to her it was just this huge all you can eat buffet!! Then we went to grab a bite to eat at a pizza by the slice place, Rusty's pizza parlour, on Waterfront. Then Kate and daddy rode the trolley before we went to the SB zoo. The zoo is cute, its quite small but there is plenty to see and do. The highlight was Kate feeding the giraffe, yes that's right, you can feed a giraffe, its awesome. Hope you all had a good Saturday and happy mothers day to all of my mommy friends out there.

This is Kate feeding the giraffe, forgive me for being in the way but I didn't know until after, I couldn't hear Eric yelling at me!! Ooops, we'll just have to go back again to get some better shots!! I'm actually really proud of Kate, I didn't think she would do it, she is totally afraid of bugs but give her a giraffe biscuit and she'll go right up and put it on the tongue.

Here is the giraffe with the crooked neck, they have a whole bios on her at the SB Zoo website but basically they don't quite know why her neck has grown like this over time and apparently she eats fine and doesn't seem to be in any discomfort.

If I had a million dollars....

Do you ever wonder what you would do if you had a million dollars? I love the song by The Barenaked Ladies, if you haven't heard it, download it, its fun. I like to romanticise that if I was rich I wouldn't change much about my lifestyle, would I buy a bigger house? a better car? I hope that it would just allow me to be more generous to those I love and care about, that when one of my friends is having a baby and I see a cute outfit that I could just buy it, that when I am shopping for my nieces birthday present I could buy her all of the cute dress up things I like and not just a small selection. Anyway, the reason for my ponderings is that tonight the Utah Jazz won and now go to the next round of the playoffs (I don't claim to understand anything of the process), Eric loves the Jazz and so tonight if I had a million dollars I would buy my wonderful husband a ticket to the game in Utah and fly him out there.

The wildlife of Sherman Oaks

I'm not sure if this really does constitute wildlife but I haven't ever seen a real live skunk before, this sunk and 3 others were out front of our house last night and today, (its gonna be great until Britain who spends most of her day barking at them through the fence gets sprayed!!). We live up on a hill and for all of the houses up here there is also a surprising amount of wildlife. There are all sorts of big birds circling in the sky, I can hear owls hooting at night and as I was leaving for church a couple of Sundays ago in the yard of the house opposite was a deer, I backed out of the garage and stopped, for a few moments Kate and I were able to watch the deer until it realised and bounded away. Then last night as I was walking the dog there were two deer, its an amazing sight but also makes me feel a little sad that we are totally encroaching upon their habitats. Eric's dad has told us many a story of him riding his bike up and down what is now the 101 freeway. It puts new meaning to that song 'They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.'