catching up with pictures

Nothing too exciting going on lately.  We have been hanging out at our house lately, doing a few things so the kids are loving the pool!

 And the park that is right around the corner.  It's super cute, and has tennis courts and a nice walking trail.

 We actually had to drain about half the water from our pool and fill it up which took FOREVER!

Naturally we took the time to get a 75 cent  dozen donuts at Krispy Kreme (which means we had 2 dozen donuts for the 4 of us to eat...I'll let you do the math!)

 Lots of time at Home Depot.  The kids (do not!) love it!

 We are having our ceiling's scraped before we move in...what a mess...glad we are not doing that ourselves!

 Carter wants to "make something" every minute of every day.  These are binoculars made from water bottles, paper plates and duct tape.  He uses so much duct tape we had to buy more yesterday.  He's gone though an entire roll!

 And this is Addison's favorite spot.  On the laptop on my unmade bed.  Webkinz.

We are still having lots of fun!  We are excited to get into our house though.  We will move all of our apartment stuff in by August 1st and then once the floors are all done we will get all of our stuff out of storage, hopefully the next week.  

Lucky 13

Today is the day...we officially own a home again!  

 You mean our 7 week vacation is OVER?  wah! 

We are going to have a few things done to the house and move in at the end of the month. 

This year really is our LUCKY 13...Marty and I celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary while we were in Utah.  

(We had to laugh because although we always have fun on our anniversary, this year we were at his parents house, last year we were at my mom's house, the year before we were in Yellowstone in his parents motor home--with them--(having just recently returned from Trek) and the year before that I left for Girls Camp early the next morning...we have had some very romantic anniversaries the last few years!! ;)  Maybe some year we will make it to Hawaii!)

But, we had fun going to two movies (Spiderman in the afternoon, Snow White in the evening) and out to eat at one of our favorite restaurants, the Melting Pot.  Oh, and looking at flooring at the Home Depot!  

Happy Friday the 13th.  Hope it's lucky for you too!

July already??!

Well, it's been over a month now since we moved here-6 weeks to be exact.  I can't believe it's July already (or that it's nearly 2:00 a.m. and I am still. awake.!!??)   We are doing lots of fun stuff, hard to believe this is our life sometimes!  :)  

But, the kids still make forts:

 we are (still) LOVING being so close to the beach!

 (these Sea Lion's are at Santa Cruz, and you can get so close to them!)

 we grabbed some soup on the pier the other day when we were there, and I just thought the views were so pretty:

 Carter is a really, really good swimmer now.  I think he's diving for rings in this picture.

 We've seen a couple of movies at the theater ACROSS THE STREET (I'm not being obnoxious, I swear, I just can't get over the stuff we have so close!)
Over the weekend we saw Brave...super cute!  This is the ONLY smile Carter would do...I think he was trying to fit in with the crazy boys.  He does a good job and could definitely give them a run for their money!

We are hoping to close on the house on the 13th which we are excited about!  I am meeting the flooring people at the house tomorrow to measure and find out how much that's going to cost!  I'm guessing it won't be pretty.  

 At least the flooring is. 

 Pretty I mean.  

(remember it's 2 o'clock.  In the morning.)

Happy Monday!!

surprise!

yay!  Marty surprised us and came home a day early from his trip!  He scared us though because he pounded on our door at 9:45 last night.  Carter of course ran over and whipped the door wide open...I had a brief moment of fear, hoping it wasn't some crazy murderer on our doorstep!  :)

I planned on taking the kids to the Jelly Belly Factory today so we are waiting a few hours and hoping Marty can leave work early and come with us.

for now, I will leave you with a couple of pictures I took walking around by our apartment (I can't express how unbelievable it is around here...we wish we could just plant our new house in the apartment location...I guess that is why our 1 bedroom rent is nearly as much as our 5 bedroom house is going to be!)

No, he is NOT really drinking from the doggy water fountain, just pretending.  People are seriously dog crazy around here!

Marty did not get to join us today.  :(  But we still had fun!  

Muir Park

My mom and I decided to take a drive to Muir Park (it took us about 45 minutes to get there) with the kids. I can't get over how beautiful it was!  WOW!  I know God's whole green earth is beautiful, but I am just noticing it so much here.

 These little chimpmunks were so cute!!  And everywhere. (Why aren't MICE this cute??  I kept thinking if they were mice, people would be screaming and running from them...instead everyone oohs and aahs at them and takes their picture!)  :)

 This is a hollowed out tree.

 See the owl?  He was sleeping and there was a small group of people looking/taking pictures of him and as soon as I snapped the picture, he looked right at me.  So fun!

 The kids had a little treasure hunt to do while we walked through the park, and this was the reward at the end (there is a little treasure box with a combination lock hidden behind this National Park Symbol).  It was a LOT of fun!

When we left the park, we saw a sign for Highway 1 and just took it on a whim across the Golden Gate Bridge.  It was amazing!  

and then stopped at the ocean for a bit.  It was a little cold, but fun nonetheless.

 And, of course, beautiful!  :)

Not sure what our next outing will be.  House stuff I suppose.  I think I found my flooring so as soon as we close on the house, it will just be boring house stuff for you to read about!  

My mom leaves tomorrow (boo!), and Marty will be home in a couple of days (yay!) so until then I will think of something fun to do.  Any suggestions?

Beautiful Oakland Temple

Grandma Vegas flew in.  YAY!  We decided to detour up to the Oakland Temple on our drive home.  Wow, it was BEAUTIFUL!!

Happy Weekend!

Friday

The kids and I drove out to the Oakland Zoo.  We had a good time!  They have a sky ride there so this picture was taken from up above.

 This giant turtle could have been the favorite animal of the day though.  He was HUGE and awesome!

 Cute little palm tree that we drive by when we get on the freeway and my kids are always like "oh, that's so cute!" so I took a picture so we could remember it.  Ya, I know...;)

 Saturday

We decided to drive out to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk beach again.  So did the rest of the state apparently.  There was SO. MUCH. TRAFFIC!!  It's normally about an hour and 15 minutes or so, but took us over 3 hours on Saturday!!  

 This is just a little inlet of the ocean.  The water was so dang cold!  No idea how the kids stayed in it for so long.

 Sunday

We celebrated FATHER'S DAY!

 Minecraft has been the game of choice around here lately, and Marty was glad to have uninterrupted play time all afternoon.

 The new grill...we needed one for our apartment, but this one will also be so great for the beach and camping.

 It was a great, happy weekend!

Grandma Vegas is coming in a few days and we can't WAIT!!!