May 2013 in pictures

Just to keep things interesting, I just looked back through my phone and found pictures from May that I never posted...so you know, here they are...after the June pictures...at the end of July, because that's how we roll.

 Fun in the bath.

 This is a super old pic (like from February), but just in case I never posted this on the blog, I had to share!  These are two of P's buddies from Square 1.  I love these babies' mamas and love that we all had toe heads! :)

Back to May...here is P reading "by myself."  He likes to take a book, go just far away enough that I can't touch him, and will look back at me from time to time while reading a book of his choosing.

 Helping me clean the cat hair off the couches!

This is from Easter weekend at the ranch (which, I suppose, was at the end of March and not May...this post is out of control).
P sees that daddy is sleeping...

 And when daddy sleeps, P eats as many chips as he wants. :)

 Love this picture Cousin Whit took of the ranch.

 Mom and Dad. :)
 

My precious grandparents.  I love the way my grandma is looking at my grandpa. :)

 Drumming on the couch.

 Rocking the headband in the car...

 ...and while drinking water.

 This sweet boy has the most sensitive skin.  Here is a horrible hive that he got from some hair stuff used when he got his haircut.  Needless to say, we won't be using that product again. :(

 This was my loot from my Mother's Day goody bag from Whole Foods.  It was a crazy awesome surprise.

 P enjoying some strawberries at Whole Foods.

 Reading a favorite book - The Cow Who Clucked.

 Running around the trees in the park.

 Rockin' some sunglasses.

 3 school buses...at 1 time!!?!?  Life is good.

 

Which month's random pictures are next? :)  Stay tuned...

June 2013 in pictures

Due to my blogging delinquency, we are once again going back in time to look at months past, but alas, it is what it is.  Here's the month of June told through a totally random assortment of pictures.

 I checked out the new Pearl Cup coffee shop by my house one Saturday afternoon while P napped and enjoyed a latte and a good book.

 P fell asleep on a morning run after waking up too early.

 Got together with some friends for a cookout.  Here's P with his buddy Jay playing with stickers.

J's been making some real progress in the backyard this summer.  Here's a before and after of the bed right outside of our back door.  Our trumpet vine has yet to bloom (boo), but everything has been growing because J installed drip irrigation.  Go figure, if things get watered every day, they grow!  Seriously...drip irrigation has changed our life.  I highly recommend it.

 5 minutes before this picture was taken, P was fully clothed.  He proceeded to ask me to remove his shoes, then his shirt, and then his pants. :)  Happy summer.

 We were able to go and say hello to our neighborhood cows several times this month.

 Sweet sister had two baby showers during the month of June!

 The doves that live in my grandparents' courtyard laid their second set of eggs for the summer in my grandma's hanging basket.  Here are the two babies. :)

 While shopping for tri gear with dad, P figured out the age-old childhood game of "disappear inside the racks of hanging clothes in the store."

 I got new running shoes...the uglier they are, they faster you go, right? :)

 Mom and dad went to Italy to celebrate their 60th birthdays this year.  P enjoyed being able to chat with them via FaceTime.  Technology is pretty cool.

 P had a blast at our dear friends' little girl's 3rd birthday party.

 Elephant + sprinklers = so fun!

 Playing with the bubble machine after lunch.

 After his haircut we walked down to J.D.'s Chippery, and my little boy who doesn't like sweets asked for a "cookie bite." :)  There may be some evidence of his cookie bite of choice on his lower lip.

 On my flight to San Francisco, I had to watch the NBA Finals Game 7 like this...on the laptop of the guy who sat in the row in front of me.  Since I couldn't listen to the game, I also followed along by watching the ticker on the bottom of the screen while having my TV tuned to ESPN2.

 Got off the plane just in time to watch my beloved Spurs lose to the Heat. :(

 After a number of trips to Braums where sweet P didn't get anything while Mommy and Daddy did (it's not our fault - the kid really doesn't have a strong desire for sweets!), we got him his own little cup of vanilla yogurt.  He enjoyed a few bites and then was "all done!"  Not to worry...I helped him finish it. :)

 P went for his first ride in the car grocery cart.  He loved it.  I got a hardcore arm and core workout.  Those things are NOT easy to steer!

 P enjoyed a popsicle. :)

 At small group we had a sno cone party. :)  Yum!

 P wanted his water table to be a swimming pool.

P has gotten back into enjoying the game of turning the lights on and off.  He'll come up to you and say, "Hold you."  At first you think he's wanting to snuggle you, but you soon realize that he's only using you as a means to an end - you're taller than him, and he needs your height to help him reach the light switch.  At GiGi and Gramps', P found another solution...bypass the middle-man and take matters into your own hands.

 J and I celebrated our 8 year anniversary with a dinner out to Nicola's at the shops at Legacy thanks to a giftcard from his parents as a congrats for completing his Ironman.

The End. :)

Recent books I've read...and you should, too!

I don't read nearly as much as I did before having P, but every once in a while I have an opportunity (read - choose to use my time differently) to do so...and the five books I've read this summer have been outstanding!  If you haven't read these, I would recommend them in a heartbeat! :)

 

 

Now to find the next great read! :)

Girls' Weekend - San Francisco

Editor's note:  I composed 99.9% of this blog post the week after I returned from my trip to San Francisco.  Some sort of distraction - laundry to be folded, dinner to be made, my 2.5 year old needing help with Percy the train (the possibilities are truly endless) - kept me from adding the final sentence before posting, and then life happened, and now it's more than a month after my trip.  Sigh.  I guess I can relive my trip while reading through this last time before posting.  :)

My best friend from high school lives in the Bay Area (although not for long! sniff...sniff), so we decided to have one last hurrah out there together.  This was actually my 4th time to go to the Bay Area, with my first time being to visit her when we were in college, the second time with my family for a summer vacation - although we managed to spend an afternoon together as well, the third time was for her wedding, and this last time was the farewell tour.

My sweet husband insisted that I take this trip as a thank you for being a supportive wife during his Ironman training (which I most certainly was) :), so I took him up on it.  I left for San Fran on a Thursday night and was there all day Friday - Sunday, and came back first thing on Monday morning.  It was the longest I had been away from my boys, but J did a marvelous job of holding down the fort, and I enjoyed some much-needed time where I was only responsible for me...ahhhhh. :)

When I arrived in San Francisco, it was around 9:00 west coast time, meaning past my bed time central time...but I couldn't just go to bed without eating something. :)  Justine loves a variety of foods, so she introduced me to Burmese food!  YUM!!! :)

Friday morning I slept in (meaning I woke up at 6:30, and it felt like 8:30...ahhhhh...and then I went back to sleep! :)), and then we got up and got ready to go and hang out at the beach in Santa Cruz.  Our first stop was a little french bakery for some treats to take with us. :)

After grabbing our lunch to go at an awesome little place on the boardwalk called The Picnic Basket (where I got a KILLER salad with roasted chicken, greens, stone fruit, red beets, pickled red onions, dried chilies, and toasted almonds tossed in a red wine vinaigrette - divine!), we made our way to Natural Bridges State Beach where we enjoyed an afternoon of...nothing....except for relaxation and beautiful weather. :)

The view from my towel.  Not too shabby.

Here I am being forced :) to feel the freezing Pacific Ocean...and there's the natural bridge that the beach is named for.

It's ridiculously cold.

Us and the natural bridge.

After relaxing on the beach we went for a nice walk along the coast.

Yours-truly out on our walk.

After our walk we got in the car and went for a quick tour of UC Santa Cruz which is the most ridiculous college campus I have ever seen.  Here is Justine showing off some of the trees in front of one of the college residence halls...crazy.

And then time for dinner...Thai food! :)  YUM!

Saturday morning we enjoyed a wonderful breakfast at a cute little eating establishment called The Crepevine, and then were off to enjoy the absolutely GLORIOUS weather.

We headed out to the Marin Headlands to visit Point Bonita Lighthouse.

Ahhh...to be wearing a sweatshirt at the end of June is glorious!

Point Bonita Lighthouse.

Standing at the new suspension bridge with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.

Lighthouse 2.

Lighthouse 3.

Check out the seals on the rock below.

Then we went over to the Marine Mammal Center which rehabilitates marine mammals from the surrounding area.  Here we are watching them feed some elephant seals.

Here I am with Elmo, the full-size replica of an elephant seal.  Kind of terrifying.

The center was redone about 4 years ago, and it is beautiful.

Cheese.

:)

View 1 on our way back down from Point Bonita.

View 2.  Again, the weather was unbelievable!

Driving across the Golden Gate Bridge.

Then we headed over the the historic Cliff House and Sutro Baths and hiked along the coastline.

Stunning view.

Our view while eating our lunch.  Not too shabby.

On our way back from our hike we climbed down a million stairs to the beach.  Cool to see.  Not cool to have to climb back up! :/

And then for dinner...we headed over the the Berkley Bowl - a little grocery store that first started in a bowling alley...hence the name.  It has the most unbelievable produce section!  I'm talking there were 12 kinds of sweet potatoes, and 30 kinds of apples, and fruits and veggies that I had never heard of before!  In fact, I ate lychee fruit for the first time.  YUM! :)

Sunday was kind of cold and drizzly.  We started out the day by going to Justine's gym and doing the Body Pump class that she normally goes to.  Thankfully, I chose to do Body Pump Lite - using rather wimpy amounts of weights - but boy am I glad I made that choice!  Two days later I was doing the jerky robot walk because my legs were so tired from all the squats. :)  After the class we went for a walk along the Alameda beach, which we had to follow up, with what I might claim to be the best ice cream I have ever eaten...

We went to Tucker's Ice Cream in Alameda and had macapuno (which means young coconut) ice cream and salted butter caramel ice cream.  It was killer.

Later that afternoon we ate crazy good pizza from this place that only makes one kind of pizza a day.  I wish I had taken a picture...it was on a sour dough crust and had mozzarella, ricotta, spinach, caramelized onions, and walnuts, with a lemon oil drizzle on it.  SO GOOD.  Then we went and saw the movie MUD, which was a good movie, at a little theater we walked to.  So fun!  On our way home I stopped along the way and took lots of pictures of all of the beautiful flowers because I knew my Grammy Sue would love to see them. :)

These were all over.

Monstrous trumpet vine.

 

 Beautiful hydrangeas in Justine's front yard!

 Close up. :)

And more flowers...

And more flowers...

And a trumpet vine over-taking someone's house...

And more flowers...

And more flowers. :)

After a fantastic trip, I started Justine's week off right by having her drop me off at the airport at 6:00 AM.  Ugh.  That was an early morning wake up call! :/  Thankfully, if I had wanted to do my early morning yoga, I could have done it in the SF airport.  Only in California. :)

I had the most wonderful time relaxing, enjoying great food, beautiful weather, gorgeous scenery, and quality time with one of my most favorite people in the world!  Here's to our next adventure together in the cornfields of Illinois... ;)