What We've Been Up To

I've been a bad blogger.  I know.  I'll give a quick rundown of what we've been up to, but the details and photos will have to come later!

In June we moved from Oklahoma to California with a short stop in Utah to see family.  Once in California we spent almost 3 weeks living in 3 different hotels while trying to find a place to live.  The cost of living out here is insane, and a lot of the rental places want to see that you have three times the monthly rent in income, which we don't have at this time.  I finally found the perfect house for us and had to convince the landlady that we were the perfect tenants regardless of our income.  We managed to convince her and got the house.

We moved in two weeks ago and I've been working at unpacking and organizing and getting rid of all the junk that's been sitting in storage for 2 years that I can't believe I packed in the first place.  It's been busy.  So once I have the house looking like I want, I'll post pictures of it.  If you really want to see it in all its messy glory, Anton posted pictures on his facebook.

My brain is not working right now, so I really can't think of anything else to say.  I'm know, I'm boring.  I'll try and be better about posting and even using pictures!  If anyone is out in the Bay Area anytime, drop me a line and we'll get together and play!

Our Weekend

Fun weekend!  Friday night we went and tried a new sushi place.  It was okay.  Not the best we've tried here.  It was pricey too for the quality.  But it was my Mother's Day dinner out, and I'm worth splurging on.  :)

On Saturday we went and visited the Museum of Osteology, or in other words, a bone museum.  It was pretty cool.

There were skeletons of all shapes and sizes.

The biggest was a whale.

There were rhinos and hippos and even human ones!

There was also a scavenger hunt for both the kids and the adults.  I learned all sorts of things.  Did you know the myth of the cyclops originated from the unique shape of elephant skulls?

Look at its one eye!

The kids loved it there, and it was just big enough/small enough to keep their interest.  You could even pick up your own bones in the gift shop.  Want a human skull?  It'll only set you back $1650.  Maybe I'll donate my body for display.

We went to a BBQ that night with the guys from Anton's class.  It's weird to hang out with a bunch of young single guys.  I don't have much to say to them about anything.  Oh well, it was still nice to be out with adults.

This morning for Mother's Day Anton made me Creme Brulee French Toast for breakfast.  It. was. so. good.  Make it.  You can even sub out the whipping cream for fat free half and half and it'll even be almost good for you.  Anton topped it with fresh strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries.  You won't need syrup for this.  It's good all on its own.

Then in a mad rush as we were running out the door for church the kids gave me all their cute homemade gifts and flowers from Anton.

Alex even still has breakfast in his mouth, that's how rushed we were.

Then after church I spent the rest of the day doing whatever I pleased, from reading to playing on the computer.  I wish it could be Mother's Day every day!

Vote for me!

I've entered a contest to win 100,000 SkyMiles and I need your votes to win!!

Go here and just click the red "VOTE" button.

(My sister and I enjoying a free hotel night before going on our cruise!)

And if you can get lots and lots of people to vote for me, maybe I'll take you on a trip with me!  :)

Success!

After almost a year of "practice," Alex finally rode his bike alone for the first time today!  Thanks Grandpa for the training wheel and pedal removal that made this so much easier!




He's such a big boy now!

Get Your Kicks...

We had a crazy fun day yesterday!  This post is going to be heavy on pictures, light on text, so settle on in and get ready!

First, we went to an Easter egg hunt put on by the city.  It was insane.  Here's a rundown of how it all went:

Visit Easter bunny:

Do first egg hunt for 5 and 6 year olds:

The field was empty of eggs in under 2 minutes.

Play on the bounce houses while mommy waits in line for face painting:

Pet the animals at the petting zoo while mommy waits in line for face painting.

Do the egg hunt for the 3 and 4 year olds while daddy waits in line for face painting.

This hunt was much calmer than the previous one.

The haul!

Finally, get faces painted!

The snow cat cub.

Spiderman!

Then we hopped in the car and headed out to Route 66!  It runs right through town here.  Our first stop wasn't historic, but it was pretty cool.

We went to Pops.

It's a gas station that also happens to have hundreds of flavors of bottled pop for sale!  The whole front of the store is glass, and the windows are lined in pop bottles.

Look at them all!!

They have shelves and fridges lined with all different flavors of pop arranged by color and flavor.

We picked out two six-packs.

We ended up with: Fizzy Lizzy Pineapple (super good!), Boylan's Creamy Red Birch Beer (bleh, Anton liked it though), Round Barn Root Beer (the local brew), Leninade (had to get since it was in Russian), Maine Root Sarsaparilla, Gale's Root Beer, Dog n Suds Root Beer (notice the root beer trend?), Cool Mountain Black Cherry, Carousel Green Apple, Capt'n Eli's Blueberry Pop (okay), Gardena Grape, Americana Orange Creme (can't wait to try!).  It was tough to choose what flavors to get, and I'm sure Anton would have walked out with all the root beers they had if I'd let him.

They also had a burger grill, so we had lunch there, and it was pretty good too.  We ended with a giant ice cream sandwich sundae that about busted our guts.  Yum.

Then we headed slightly down the road to visit the famous Arcadia Round Barn:

It's 113 years old and completely round.  Fancy that.

It's been refurbished, so it's not original materials, but that's how it would have looked.  Up inside the top of the barn it had really cool acoustics.

Alex loves to hear his echo, so he could have played in there all day.  But we were pooped and needed to get home.  

We drove a little bit farther down Route 66 before turning around and heading home.  Here we crashed on the couch and watched Tangled and called it a good day.

Random Funny

(Random picture of Ella.)

While talking with Ella about what Easter means, I was describing why we have Easter eggs:

Me:  What comes out of an egg?

Ella:  A yolk?

Me:  No, what does an egg make?

Ella:  Cookies!!

The Goings On

Just a random catch-up post of things that don't necessarily deserve a post of their own.

The other day Alex wanted to do my hair, and was quite adamant about how he wanted it to look.

He was sure that two ponytails were not enough.

So I got three.  I had to help do the ponytail holders, but he divided it all up and told me where to put them.  He's a nut.

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There's a place here in town that has a bunch of bounce houses and swingsets inside.  I had a 2 for 1 coupon so I took the kids last week when Ella didn't have school.

My camera was not cooperating, so most of my pictures ended up looking like this:

See Ella slide!

Still not good, but that's as good as I got.  But when attempting to get a cute one of the kids, they were losing their patience waiting for me to get the camera functioning right and I ended up with this:

My vampire babies are too cute!  I had to leave the red eyes just to make it more authentic.

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And in light of the recent scandal with the air traffic controller falling asleep on the job, I just had to post this.

Anton went to an informational meeting for NATCA, the union for air traffic controllers.  They gave out a bunch of free stuff, including tickets for two free alcoholic drinks at the get-together.  Anton also came home with this:

Note the bottle cozy and the bottle opener key chain sitting on top of the folder with the big word "Safety."  Do you sense a theme here?  From conversations I've overheard and people I've met in the ATC world, it would seem that drinking is a major life theme for a lot of these guys.  Someone in Anton's class even asked the instructor what the legal blood alcohol limit was for coming in to work.  Now won't you feel safe next time you hop on a plane?  :)