Happiness Is...

What is happiness?

Having two cute boys to cuddle with

Figuring out how to do "shooter" after 2 years of trying

Sweet smiles after a nice long nap

and... awesome beach days in the end of October!

Lazy week

We took this cute video of Ryker after family night last week on temples...

This week I did a whole lot of nothing. I wasn't feeling great and had little motivation to be as busy all day as we have been the past month. Despite feeling nasty I was glad to have the time to be centered in my life again, focusing on my kids and home and doing some fall cleaning, both physically and emotionally.

I'm sorry to everyone for being MIA. We're back!

Buddies

Due to an extended "June-gloom" period, we are finally having a summer... in October.

We went to Disneyland again (woo-hoo!) last week with Jared, and even got to the beach on saturday for our best beach day of the year. Who'dve thought it would be 75 and clear?

Lately I have been so happy to watch these two little guys play together. Now that Ryker is walking perfectly and talking too they are having a lot of fun.

Having a brother so close is the best- like a built in best friend every day.

Goodbye to the Garden

I spent the last four months trying my hand at gardening. I had always wanted to try to grow my own vegetables and develop a bit of a green thumb. I had a small plot in our complex that allowed me to experiment with growing tomatoes, peppers, and zucchini.

I feel like I learned so much, especially by doing it the wrong way. I learned to plant earlier, prepare the soil weeks in advance, water less on the leaves, find a plot that doesn't have nasty soil, how to avoid blight and other fungi, and more importantly to not expect a big return on my hard work the first season!

All in all our garden yielded mostly tomatoes, many of which were eaten by bugs (slugs!), or knocked off the vine prematurely by helpful neighborhood kids, in addition to a lot of basil. Our peppers never quite germinated except for a few that got gobbled. Bummer. It wasn't cheap, but I am glad I got to have a trial run before we can have a garden at our own home someday.

Go Bruins

Today Nicholas and I had a much needed father son outing. He has been asking to watch football for months and I always told him that football was on a break. Well after seeing it on TV for the last 3 weeks he finally convinced me it was time to go.
On the way there we listened to Surfin USA about 28 or 29 times and we are both experts at the lyrics if anyone needs to know them.
Once we got there we had to make the half mile trek through the golf course (if you have never been to the Rose Bowl it is surrounded by a golf course where everyone parks). On the way Kiki loved running up a hill, stopping at the top, and then sprinting down them. At the top of every hill he would look at me and say "this is big boy activities." Not sure what that means or where it came from but everyone who heard him thought it was hilarious. The other funny part was through the golf course they had one of those huge storm drain wash thingys (forget what they are called) with water running through it. Nicholas decided this was the cheyenne river and told everyone all about it.
Once at the game he had a blast eating licorice, grapes, and cookies. He enjoyed the game for awhile until it became just to darn hot. He really liked me dumping water all over him and it got us through until half time when we decided we had enough fun. So we walked for 25 min's back to the car picking up sticks and playing in the sand. Below is the video of a touchdown celebration. The first is a touchdown but the camera was so zoomed in I had to take a second video of Nicholas up close. In the first one you can hear him cheer and the 2nd is his dance.



***My absolute highlight of the day was while walking to the game Nicholas looked up at me while holding my hand and said out of the blue "Daddy, you're my best friend." So I of course cried in front of 100,000 people :)