today.....

we spent the morning at the zoo

we watched Spirit take a bath :)

he played on the monkey bars :)

they pretended to be monkeys and dinosaurs :)

they played FOREVER in an old tire

and in this big eggshell

and on these gender specific posts :)

we went to the beach (yes it was freezing:)

they played tag

he collected little white shells

we saw the last sunset of 2010

the boys played outside with fireworks and laser pointers and other things i am scared of (Aaron kindly took this pic for me because i was too scared/cold to be outside :)


happy new year!!*

*(even though it's an odd year and i absolutely don't like odd things... i am willing to give it a chance for a day or two ;)

blurb and eyelash curlers and coupons

today i got a very bossy email saying if i don't order my blurb book within 24 hours it will be deleted! gasp!! i leapt out of bed to go back to poring over every border to make sure they are all perfectly straight and full bleed (mistakes in photo books printed on premium paper = very very very bad) and to gently nudge every arm/chin away from the cut-off edge around each page. oh gosh - 24 hours? really? why, blurb???!!! it's not fair - i only finished it yesterday :(

i really wish my camera came in bright red like this one... or better still bright yellow! but with the option to still be black... hmm, maybe a little cozy rubber jacket would do the trick, i should invent one

i just went to target to buy eyelash curlers and found these for ONE DOLLAR! i was happy to pay up to $16 but one dollar???! such things put a spring in my step for the rest of the day

however watching extreme couponing last night made me extremely sick. and only slightly with jealousy, because i can never get anything worth having for free (though a dollar for the eyelash curlers!!? they were practically free!! and i went for eyelash curlers! it's not like i bought something i don't drastically need!) those people were buying 200 boxes of pasta :| and not even to give to starving malnourished people - oh noooo, to keep in their garages. i thought i was nuts because i had 8 boxes of pumpkin bread for emergencies (whatever's in pumpkin bread with cream cheese frosting with half the sugar, i am clearly deficient in it, because i can't stop eating it :)

what about bugs!! those moth things that fly out of pasta scare me to death and force me to immediately burn all of our food and order takeout... don't those people worry about bugs? and eggs of bugs?! or see imaginary mold on food that wasn't bought that week? because i do!! and the soap - i don't care if i can get 100 bottles of 'tropical mango' or 'spiced apple' hand soap for free, i don't want to use it!!! if my hands don't have that squeaky clean neutrogena smell, life just isn't worth living :|

with that i have a hankering to make oatmeal with nutella and watch some more Dr Drew. i wish the subtitles for Celebrity Rehab were always placed over the face of the 'celebrity' and not over Dr Drew - if i was doing the closed captioning, they would never ever ever cover Dr Drew's face :)

it was this cold yesterday (we switched to flannel sheets... that's seriously cold:)


but he is just like a little warm ray of sunshine

and so is he :)

blurb and sluts and coupons

finally
finished my blurb book this morning - hurray!! 120 pages (no more no less, the price goes up after 120 pages ;) arranged with calm, chronological perfection. then today... i took more pictures :| what to do... which pictures to X out or squeeeeeze in with other pictures that don't really belong together, thus making me feel slightly sick everytime i open that page. oh sigh, i just hope i don't meet George Clooney or anything really interesting tomorrow or friday... because the book will surely become a point of even more stress if anything photographable happens...

finally
got steroids injected into my tennis elbow today and a huge wad of bandage around my arm so people would feel sorry for me (the best part:)

finally
saw real snowflakes falling today - the first since moving from England. i don't miss it that much (it's cold and not very fun to walk in) but driving in a winter wonderland was quite wonderful :)

slightly shocked
at Danny's new Roald Dahl poem book... i am sure reading Cinderella labeled a 'slut' is going to result in an inappropriate comment on our next trip to Storybook Land at Disneyland.... but i had to say it, because it rhymed with 'nut', as in the chopping off of heads :|

completely
loving that when i watch Up with Danny, he covers my eyes at the part when Ellie dies because it always makes me cry (how i love his tender care-taking little ways:)

also completely loving
him call San Francisco 'france-and-sticks-go' :)

almost
got my ass whooped dancing to Big Girl (you are beautiful).... by a BOY! (who i am sure has read some way to cheat online) BUT that was soooo not going to happen!!! i had to totally bust out of my elbow bandage to win (and probably set my healing back a few days....)

off to climb the wooden hill to bedfordshire and watch a little extreme couponing so i don't feel like such a total L-O-S-E-R for having a (completely worn-out, well-used) coupon keeper in my purse :)

loving

loving
our very first christmas day spent entirely at home just the four of us - ahhhhh!! (that's the sound of angels singing as children play with their little toys for hours on end and Mummy having time for 'Married to Rock' and INDIAN FOOD for lunch!!!)

loving
most especially, my very adorable Hello Kitty stationery set. everyone has received a note in sparkly green/pink ink today (which Sam laminated with his new laminating machine and Danny read all by himself :)

loving
Despicable Me almost as much as Up... which was the cause of this morning's slightly horrible sore throat (sooooo much crying last night watching it, i love Up)

loving
that after being Santa and his helper for the past 10 years, yesterday we switched from boring old fart cookies to delicious delectable susiecakes red velvet cupcakes (duh!! why did it take us SO LONG to figure that out??!)

loving
my slow cooker :) it's magical!! however... not so much loving Jessica Seinfeld's lasagne recipe - it's just soooo blanilla. shoulda known, she's kind of blanilla too ;). next thing going in the pot, the fixins for mushroom fettuccine alfredo :) it's magic, you throw all the ingredients in - just like literally empty a grocery bag into it, talk on the phone for so long the battery goes dead, come back and there's a MEAL in there!!

loving
my hubbie for buying trader joe's entire supply of pumpkin bread for me, before it all disappears off the shelves for the next 40 weeks, i simply can't live without it. can't and shan't :)

this is his Barbra Streisand pose




Sam was Santa last night (he loved it!)


Jurassic Copter!

8am :)

puppy power!!

we got to visit Steph's new bundles of pure puppy joy, Canon Glitter and Nikon Shine, today and had soooooo much fun with them!! we also took one or two pictures :)

bedtime baking mats and married to rock

loving
bedtime. it needs to be bedtime more often!

not loving
Costco christmas card envelopes - they are honestly the work of the devil. you can't slice them open with your finger because the foil inside is soooo thick, that trying to do so sends shooting pains down your arm (or maybe it's just me and my terrible 'Thriller' elbow...) by the time i get the card out (i admit to having zero tolerance) the people on the card are creased and torn beyond recognition :(

loving
finding these baking mats today at Costco for a third of the amazon price (they were in my cart while i debated whether buying them would just encourage me to bake more, thus making me gain more weight and feel more worthless/less worthful...) for a third of the price we can use them for play doh!!

wondering
if i'll EVER watch this week's "married to rock"... it's wednesday and it was on on sunday... what is wrong with this picture??!

making, finally...
the blurb book. it's agony - i am torn between creating perfectly zen pages with just one or two perfect pictures on them and a whole lot of blank space, or awful busy collage pages with 9 mismatched pictures crammed together because i have SO MANY pictures to fit in the book... sigh, i should be more selective but i don't want to miss a significant story-telling moment from the year like the first picture of Clarice (we miss you sweet sassy Clarice...RIP) or the last day in Mrs Kay's class or the day we saw the dog whisperer :) i take a lot of pictures of very important things...

wanting
to adopt a shelter kitty but stressing that it will be one too many cats... but they do say, once you have two you might as well have ten (or is that children...? my rule with children is don't have more than you have hands :)

missing
cream cheese frosting... it's all gone :( would it be so terrible to make some frosting even though i technically have nothing to put it on, so i could just eat little bowls of it for each meal...?

off to bed! horray!!

cutest christmas concert EVER...


what we made tonight... ok i watched :)

Danny was very poorly on our trip to the mountains - i hope he didn't get Santa sick....


they behaved like princes and loved their first doggie vacation (so did we :)