Too Cute!

As part of my birthday present Peter ordered these cute outfits for me online. Every time we went to a build a bear workshop they never had these, but we found them online once and thought that would be a fun gift for Peter's dad as he is so into German folk dancing and such. After more consideration we decided it wouldn't be a great gift for him, but we really thought we needed it for my collection. The topic was dropped awhile ago. Then on my birthday Peter said he ordered something for me but it didn't arrive on time so he would probably save it for Christmas. After all he did say it was probably something more that we would both like than just me. I was a bit curious, but was fine with waiting until Christmas. Then last week we were looking at our credit card bill and I asked what he bought at build a bear. He was like, "ah man you weren't supposed to see that." The funny thing about it all is he can't hide gifts from me well so I figured I would find out before Christmas anyway. So back to the story...I am now trying to figure out what he could've bought at build a bear and then it hits me. "Did you buy the folk dance bear?" His response (he runs upstairs, comes back with the package) "uh well Happy Birthday." He pulls out the two outfits and aren't they adorable? I ran upstairs and found two naked bears and clothed them. They've been sitting on our couch for awhile.

A funny thing-I took a few pictures today, like 7 of them and finally got one right. I said that it was hard to get their eyes just right. Peter's response-"Well I don't think they're blinking." :)

Too Many Choices!

How do the guys on HGTV do this? Peter wants to paint...he thinks starting with our downstairs guest bathroom will be first. Here are the paint samples that we picked up, what do you think?
The above samples are from Frazee, the ones below are from Behr.
These are the Venetian Plaster and Bellagio Faux samples. We're seriously thinking about trying a Venetian plaster in a neutral color...but we're keeping our options open.

So what do you think?

Soil, Sea World, Spiders Oh My!

Whew what a weekend!
Saturday we got up at 6:30, threw on some clothes and then I headed to my parents house while Peter headed to his parents house. Peter picked up Chris' truck and my dad and I borrowed my brother's truck and then we headed to Evergreen Nursery. We were there at 7:22am-they open at 7:30am. We got in and got out with two truck loads of amended soil and were at my work at 8am. I had a few parents meet me at the school and we unloaded the two trucks into 8 planter boxes in 1 hour and 20 minutes! It was amazing how fast it all went. By 10am I was back at my parents' house picking up my car and heading home.
We got cleaned up and then headed to Sea World. Peter's company was having a company day at Sea World. We got into the park for $17 each and also each received a $15 voucher good for food or merchandise throughout the park. At 6pm the park closed, but everyone wearing a special tag got to stay until midnight. There were a ton of people there! Peter had no idea the company was that big. (Many people came from Utah too.)
We managed to walk next to each animal during feeding time. I don't know how we managed to do that, but every place we stopped was feeding time. The otters we saw first. They were super cute. They were playing with balls that were stuck in ice. One kept trying to crack the ice to get the ball out. Ice was flying everywhere. We also saw the bat rays. The dolphins were also playing with balls, hitting them with the tip of their nose and sending them flying into the air. There was also a log type of thing that they kept rolling on top of. Next we saw the turtles...the baby ones were being fed. There were a couple big ones sleeping and a couple of big ones swimming, but they were separated from the babies.
We fed some ducks with the pellets that were left on the duck food table. It was like checking to see if all the candy was dispensed....and guess what?! Someone left some food behind so we picked it up and fed the ducks. Saved us 50 cents from buying our own, though I did offer it to Peter. We all know how much he loves the ducks. The seals and sea lions were also being fed. We had to laugh at the fish vendor sign...in case you can't do math they spell it out for you: "1 tray-$6.00, 2 trays-$12.00, 3 trays-$18.00, 4 trays- $24.00, and 5 trays- $30.00"

At some point we went to see the Clydesdales. We had to take a picture of Chris here for Peter's brother Chris.
We also touched sea stars and nearly got attacked by one giant one. Peter got his picture taken with a "I'm getting attacked by a giant star" face on, but it came out blurry. Many of our other pictures came out blurry too. We met up with Greg, Ellen and Ethan and had dinner followed by the Shamu show. Before the Shamu show Greg and Peter had fun putting coins in the water cannons and squirting the rafts as people came by on the Shipwreck Rapids ride. It was a chilly time of the day, so the people on the ride were just plain crazy. They were drenched when the guys were done with them. At one point Greg put the quarter in and told Peter when to push the button. The people got soaked and all looked back to where Peter was pointing at Greg. It was funny. Another time Greg waited for a raft to come close and then he slammed down on the cannon button. He hadn't put any coins in, the people on the raft were like "Oh no...followed by oh." That was hilarious!As we were leaving the park we saw this advertisement for the Wild Animal Park. It was too funny to pass up.

Oh yes, we also upgraded our passes and got silver passports to Sea World for $49 each instead of the usual $89 each. So now we have year passes to Sea World, Zoo and The Wild Animal Park. We haven't gone to the wild animal park yet...so that will be another adventure. When they were printing out our passes I started laughing...then realized which pass had my name on it. One pass had dolphins on it, the other had sesame street on it. I got the sesame street pass. What a bummer!

Sunday morning as I was getting ready for church I put my skirt on the bed and went back for a shirt. An eight legged nasty creature was found on the bed. I was like, "eh eh eh ewww, no...not on my skirt...oh no you don't, it's in my skirt!." Peter heard me and came running upstairs. While I was trying to look for something to squish the spider with it had gone from bed to top of skirt to inside of skirt. I finally grabbed some tissues. Peter told me to wait, he was going to look for the vacuum. Well I didn't wait, I squished the spider inside my tissue and then threw it in the trash. Then I shook out my skirt several times, gave it a complete look down and then proceeded to finish getting ready for church. While I was downstairs ironing my shirt Peter was in the pantry looking for crackers. He jumps out screaming, "That's spider territory." I thought for sure we were going to have another spider incident...we didn't. He was just letting me know that there could be a spider in there, but he never saw one. About a month ago he saw a spider run across the front of our pantry floor and into a corner. We haven't seen it again. So whenever we go into the pantry we're careful.

Another Birthday

28 Years young yesterday :)

Labor Day Weekend

We had a great weekend! First of all it was a whole whopping three days for me, four for Peter. We both were thrilled to have some relaxing/fun time. I went to work Friday while Peter got stuff ready for our camping trip. I came home, packed up some stuff and then we headed off to borrow some camping gear from my parents. Then we drove to San Onofre State Beach where we met up with Chris, Mary and the girls. They got there a bit before us and had already set up camp. They had a big three bedroom tent and had brought Claire's portable crib. We had a two man tent that I put up by myself in about 10 minutes or less. We were cozy.

Claire spent the majority of the time eating dirt.
Peter made kabobs for dinner for the adults. The kids had hot dogs made over the camp fire. They were delicious!

Camille and Ellie were excited that we were there. They saw the camera and struck a pose.
Saturday morning we had pancakes, eggs and bacon. Then we headed down to the beach. The girls loved playing in the sand. Claire hated the beach water and especially the waves. Mary tried to put her down and she was like an infant on fresh cut grass. She didn't want to be put down. Her legs instantly shot back up. It was funny. We didn't have to worry about her going into the water, she kept her distance. At one point they all got hungry, but they had super sandy hands, so we were feeding the girls some Cheetos. I love the expression on Claire's face here.

Saturday afternoon we headed home and relaxed. Monday we got up early and headed to Home Depot and Lowes and bought redwood. Then we headed over to my work and built four garden boxes. Next weekend I have a few parents helping me shovel dirt/mulch into the boxes. My students are really excited to go out and plant the garden again. (We had four boxes planted last year, but had to take them apart to move out a temporary building.)

Wicked/Luau

Last Saturday we went and saw Wicked at the Civic Center. It was great, except for the seats. We had the stair railing in front of us so we had to slouch to see between the bars. As long as we didn't focus on the railing, we hardly noticed it, we were also sitting really far in the back. We went with Chris, Mary and Laurel. Chris made the comment as we were sitting in our seats, "If there's a sudden change in cabin pressure, air masks will drop from the ceiling..." We were about 7 rows from the very back. People around us were using binoculars. We had fun! While we were there we went ahead and bought tickets to see The Lion King in a couple of months. Apparently if you buy tickets directly at the civic center you bypass the $2.50 per ticket service charge as well as the $6.75 per ticket, ticketmaster charge. I think we'll buy from the civic center from now on.

Then tonight Peter and I went to a Luau! While honeymooning in Hawaii, we were bummed that we missed the Luau there, so Peter found one near here. It was down on Shelter Island. The food was amazing and the entertainment was great! Here's the menu:
I tried a bit of everything except the green salad, salmon and white fish. For dessert it was hard to tell what each dish was so I just grabbed one. I ended up eating pineapple upside down cake, Peter had mango cheese cake.

It was a bit dark so we didn't try to take any pictures, so here's Peter's famous stick drawings. He had to add a few "features" to his drawings, after all they were all wearing skirts. :)

As Seen on TV!

Have you ever tried these? You're supposed to be able to shove lots of stuff into a bag and then vacuum all the air out and have a nice flat pack to store. Well I was willing to give it a try.....And I like it! Now keep in mind I think they exaggerate a bit...there's no way any old regular vacuum is going to suck all the air out and make the bag flat. It's just not possible as they show in their picture on the front of the box. However it does say triple your storage space and I definitely have tripled my storage space!

Take this bag for example. It contains a queen sized winter comforter duvet.

This is what the bag looks like after I used the vacuum on it.

This bag contains one twin comforter, two twin sheet sets, 1 flannel twin sheet set, one bed skirt, two pillow shams, one queen duvet cover, and two pillow cases.

We had so much fun playing with what we could shrink we ended up shrinking the above items plus:
2 pillows, 2 baby blankets, 1 crochet throw blanket, 1 queen jersey sheet set, 1 queen fleece sheet set, 11 sweatshirts, and 5 extra blankets. I still have half of the bags left! I think it's a good sign that I'm running out of ideas of what to shrink.

Out of Order

I just got back from an interesting adventure. I went to Costco-normally an adventure, but for today I just got what I needed and left. Then I went to the gas station because I was seriously low on gas. There were three pumps on each side. I pulled in to the first spot and then noticed the lady in the second spot was leaving and the spot in front of her was open. So me being the nice person drove up to the front spot to fill up my tank. I swipe my credit card, push a few buttons and then the screen says to push the button for the grade of fuel and then remove the nozzle. Okay so far this sounds pretty normal right? So I go to grab the nozzle and....IT WASN'T THERE! I stand there a little dumb founded at the situation and clearly there was no nozzle, so I cancel the transaction, close the gas tank and pull to the other side. Here there are three stations again, two clearly marked with yellow out of service bags and the third....wait could it be???? It was missing the nozzle too. Luckily this time I noticed before putting my card into the machine. Okay slightly weird here! I pull back around to my previous side and go to the second spot and fill my tank. While I am there a lady pulls into the front spot. Her dad walks over from another pump and they start chatting. She goes to put her credit card in the machine and I tell her that the nozzle in missing. (Though I was tempted to watch and see how far she got before she noticed the missing nozzle.) They both look and start laughing. I mean really if the station is out of order they put the yellow bags around the nozzle to let everyone know not to use those pumps. Apparently they don't know what to do when nozzles go missing...no sign or anything. I think they all have hidden cameras and watch the people one after the other go and find out for themselves and bust up laughing in the background.

Two Years Later

Today we celebrated our two year anniversary! Peter bought me these pretty roses.
We went out to dinner at Marie Calendars. We were tempted by their pies, however we decided to stick with tradition. I got two miniature cakes from Edelweiss...Bavarian cream and raspberry to be exact-the same as our wedding cake. We split one and will enjoy the second one tomorrow :) I found this super cute card that totally describes me to a tee. Zoom in on the card for a good laugh...the best part is "criticized your driving skills..."

Peter got me some of my favorite gummy candies. Gummy peaches and sour gummy worms. Yes my hubby is a keeper. I picked up a memory foam mattress topper that is three inches thick. My parents have this exact kind on their guest bed that Peter and I have enjoyed. Peter has been just about nonstop talk over that mattress topper...I clued in and got it for him....for us :) It's wonderful!

We've had another wonderful wedding anniversary and look forward to many more :)

Adventures with soap...again!

What is up with me and soap?
I've decided that soap keeps picking fights with me and winning and therefore I don't like soap anymore. My latest adventure, I'm still trying to clean up. This bottle was full when I bought it. I drove home, opened my trunk and found a royal mess. Apparently the lid wasn't screwed on tight and it came off while I was driving and poured soap all over the inside of my trunk. Wish I took a picture of it. I bought a new swimsuit while I was out too. Luck would have it, it was covered in soap. I didn't know if the suit fit for sure or not, so imagine me trying to salvage the tags and try on a swimming suit that was basically swimming in soap. Luckily the suit fit so I cut the tags and threw it in the wash on the rinse cycle. I also threw in the wash cloths that I used to clean up my trunk...there were about 12 of them. Unfortunately I didn't think to rinse the wash cloths out before popping them in the washing machine so this is what I found when the rinse cycle was done.

OOPS!

So much for a quick fix. I ran the washing machine through a medium sized load and am waiting to see if that does the trick. I still need to take my trunk lining out of my car and go use a carpet shampooer on it. ARG!