Happy Birthday Dad!

Happy birthday to the best Dad and Grandpa out there! We love you!

Choo Choo!

Elsa and Henry are the cutest freakin' kids on the planet when they're together. Jeff and Mark had a dads date and took the kids to the Souplantation (seriously) and then played trains afterwards. These pictures make my heart melt.

 

But seriously Jeff. Where the heck are her gold glitter Toms!?

Dinner parties and gratuitous kayak modeling

We had Mandy, Seth and Shalom over the other night for an impromptu collaborative dinner. They brought leftover eggplant parmesan that we cut up and mixed with our pasta, their sauce, and our zucchini, then whipped up an easy salad with a mish mash of the combination of our crisper drawers. An awesome chill evening, and even the babies were easy! 

 

Yesterday was another gorgeous warm FALL day (I can't believe it's not summer anymore! It went by SO fast. Sad face.) so we hit the Long Beach Marina with our friends Lynne and Ray to go paddle boarding. Because I knew I'd fall off the board and don't like being submerged in ocean water (salty and all the sandy grit gets in your crannies- yuck), I opted for a kayak. Lynne took these shots of me and are the only pictures we got of the outing. I forgot my phone at home and I was scared to pull out Lynne's phone to snap pictures and then get blamed for dropping it into the ocean. So you'll just have to imagine Lynne kicking the guys' asses on her pink paddle board while they teetered behind her and slowly caught up to us (only because we let them).

I'm pretty sure Malibu Kayaks is going to be calling me soon to model in their next catalog.

We lounged a bit afterwards at our house, eating pita chips and making fun of Ray, the cat magnet, before taking it outside for dinner.

Ray introduced us to two new friends, Ryan and Jodi, who also live in Long Beach and happen to  also be awesome. Love them! They were a ton of fun, and look at the cute little hostess gift Jodi brought!

(The adorable plant. I had the wood cats- shocker- and the painting is Jeff's. And hell yeah Lynne, those are billy buttons.)

This is Jodi and she's a crafting maven. I got this picture of her from her profile on the MARTHA STEWART WEBSITE!! Seriously. She's one of the finalists in the American Made Awards! I wish I had known about it earlier because I would have blogged the crap out of the contest and made all five of my blog readers vote for her. Voting ended tonight though, but I got my vote in!

I'm jealous of her long ombre hair. Here are some pictures of the cuteness she makes:

Elsa would squeeze the heck out of these and shout "KEY! KEETY!" while pointing at them. Her website is stellaandmaude.com and is so dang lovely. I feel a girls crafting day coming on...

Garden updates

I think the last time I showed pictures of our new planter beds was back when we (Dad and Jan) first installed them, no? They looked like this:

And now, they look like THIS!

DANG! What you're looking at is three lemon cucumber plants in back growing up trellises, one huge zucchini plant in the middle, and five bell pepper plants up in front. I ripped out our radishes because they didn't do much. They were a disappointing heirloom variety. I'll try again after that zucchini behemoth is out.

The bells are starting to turn red too. I hope the zucchini plant doesn't destroy this little guy. Back off zucchini!

I'm purposely not showing the bed behind the garage. The basil has bolted something terrible so I need to hack it back. The squash is totally out, as are the lettuces, so once it cools the frick down, I'll plant some fall veggies back there. I'm not sure what though... Maybe kale or broccolini? I don't think it has the depth for sweet potatoes so those are out. This chart is neat:

Oh, and a special shout out to Mandy, who kept our garden and lawns alive during the crazy heat wave of 2012 when we were up in San Jose for a week and she took care of the boys and the house. Thanks Manders!

Enjoying the warm weather and the grass.

Elsa's ready to hit the Parker Palm Springs in this cute little mod number Auntie Lynne picked up for her.

She's finally big enough for this chambray ruffle butt romper from Old Navy! Shout out to Jessica (Elsa's stylist) for finding it!

Her hair was so curly that day, because of the dang heat wave. A little bit of sweat and her hair curls right up. Just like Mommy.

She surprised me by climbing in and out of her adirondack chairs with practiced ease. Try to ignore my dead lavender plant in the background that I killed with overwatering. So counterintuitive. It looks like it's drying up, so you water it, and that kills it even more. Bah!

A plea to someone who can knit

MAKE ME THIS! Please. Pretty please. I love it so much I kind of want to learn how to knit just so I can make 18 of these in different colors for myself. It looks tricky though so I probably wouldn't have a decent final result for many years. Instructions here on the Purl Bee, and my birthday is November 26th. THANKS!

Things Elsa and I want (Part 1)

Shopping post! These are things we want, buy them for us! (Wishful thinking, but sometimes it happens! The beauty of a blog. P.S. This would motivate me to keep posting Dad.)

A Roomba. I'm convinced we need this, because it took me about 40 minutes to vacuum yesterday around Elsa. Little girl loves the vacuum cleaner, and getting in front of it, and yanking out the cord. The Roomba will discreetly vacuum around the baby. And cats love it!

A clip-on light for my Kindle. So I can read it ALL THE TIME. Even in the dark!

Patch Fox lamp! I want this BAD. Like really really want it. I need to go to Target stat. It's so amazing. **SPOILER ALERT! I bought this after I wrote this post. I couldn't help myself. I told Jeff it was a gift for him and he believed me. It's totally for me.

Wonderworld Wonder Cleaning Cart for Elsa. She can follow our Roomba around and clean the rest of the house. Amazing!

I like the Wonderworld cart way better than this misogynistic cleaning trolley. Notice the "Girls Only" stamp. PSSH!

Dansk Kobenstyle 4 quart casserole dish from Crate and Barrel. Sooo mid-century modern scandinavian cool. It's a classic, and C&B brought it back!

Magic Unicorn Mask from Fred Flare. This would make a great YouTube video. I could rig up a camera to catch Jeff's reaction waking up next to me wearing this in the morning. Gold!

Is there a link for everything on the J. Crew website? Because I want it all. So many good things, I can't take it. The fall fashions are really speaking to me, and they deserve their own blog post. Closer to my birthday. :D

Kitty lovin'

It's a good thing those cats love her back...

Those secrets stay at home!!

Jan sent me this. I don't appreciate the insinuation.

Home Sweet Home Part Deux

Listen Brooke! You and your six words a day need to cut me some slack! These posts are effort. I don't think you realize the wordsmithing that goes into these gems.

Anyways, based on popular demand (my dad and Brooke), we're going to keep this blog roll going, starting with a part 2 of our Bay Area trip, using pictures stolen off Jeff's phone. Here we go!

One of the days we went to Jen's mom's house for a lovely lunch BBQ, and Elsa made out with Chloe, Jen's dog.

First time swimming! She looked too freaking cute in her little pink tulle bathing suit that Lynne got her. I'm pretty sure she peed all over my parents pool though. YouTube video of her first swim here!

We went and saw Abuelo and our family, the Olsens, up in Hillsborough too. They live up on a hill overlooking San Mateo with views of San Francisco. Gimme your house.

My mom is telling me something hilarious or scandalous here because I have that "DO TELL!" look and mannerism going on.

Sue's look here may have been her telling Jeff not to take pictures of her in her jammies and slippers for the blog, but I'm choosing not to remember it that way.

Elsa loved the ice in the beer tub. Perfect to slide down a baby's esophagus and choke on. Grampa was keeping a vigilant eye.

Okay, I just noticed this now, but HOW DID GRAMMIE GET A BLACK AND WHITE PICTURE OF ELSA UP ON THE WALL!?

Jeff says it's his mom, but no way. That is Elsa. Or genes are awesome.

 

Finally a picture of Elsie's buck teeth!

Did I mention in Part 1 how beautiful the wedding in Tahoe was?

Did I mention how we're friends with Joe from Linkin Park and we had seats so close to the stage that we could feel the heat coming from their stage fireballs??

Elsa and Diane Cristina! Both were super excited to meet each other. I'm sad I slept through it!

Elsa mastered going up stairs in San Jose. Not so much going down them.

Okay that's it! Get off my back for another week at least. THANKS FOR READING!