Witch Party

We had a great time at the first annual (Lake Elsinore) Witch Party. We ate yummy food, played some fun witch games and made a witch craft. Love all my witch friends!

Crazy Hair Day

Tera and Ashton had crazy hair day this week for Drug Awareness week. They had fun with it...

Mazzi also wanted in on the action, so we sprayed some red hair spray in her hair. It turned it a dark shade of pink and she loved it. I thought it was pretty cute too. It took about a week to wash all the way out of her hair.

Glen Oaks

We had a nice afternoon in Glen Oaks with a few other families. The kids enjoyed picking flowers, making apple cider, and being around their buddies.

Mazzi's Friends

Mazzi has started to have a few play dates with some of her buddies and it is so fun to see them play dress up and giggle together. Here are two of her best little buddies- Lyric and McKynlee.

My kids

Mazzi- 2 3/4 years old

Mazzi is very good at entertaining herself. She goes around the house and outside the house singing to herself and playing with dolls or on the scooter. She loves to categorize h

er toys and I can often find all the "My littlest pet shop" toys in a line, as well as the barbies, princesses, books and movies. She loves to eat go-garts and pancakes and is obsessed with helping me bake anything. She will often get the mixing bowl and say "I want to mix." She is my little buddy and I love running errands with her and hanging out with her during the day. I don't know what I will do when this little one goes off to school and leaves me all alone :(. The other day running errands we went to a bank that had concrete balls in front of it and she got very excited and ran over to stand on top of the balls. After she had stood o

n each one, she smiled at me and said "Your turn." It was so cute that she wanted to share that fun experience with me. She chatters to me the whole time. We talk about what color everything is and get samples at costco together and she tells me if clothes are "toot" (cute) and likes to place random items in my shopping cart without me noticing. After each grocery trip or walmart/target trip Mazzi getes a resses and she

knows it. She always grabs it and puts it on the counter. Also the other day we went to Lowes and got a 2x4 to cut. She knew the saw was loud so got out of the car and ran half way down the aisle away from the saw and plugged her ears making a silly face. She copies any silly face I make. She loves to give me kisses and brush my hair. She loves to watch "agains" (backyardagains) and dora. She is beginning to be potty trained, but refuses to go #2 in

the toilet. She makes my life so happy and I absolutely love this stage with her! . (I wrote this about 2 weeks ago and want to take some of it back!) She has all of a sudden become such a stubborn little stinker! She freaks out when she does not get her way and yells all the time. This stage shall pass though, but what a change in a short time! Luckily there are still several sweet moments with this little one.

Tera- barley 6

Tera is constantly leaving sweet notes around the house that say things like "I will never stop loving you," and "I will never forget you" or "Thanks for helping me write notes." All written with her spelling. Tera can go from sweet to mean in 2 seconds. She can go from writing me a nice note to telling me "You are meanest mom ever." There's no in between with her. Shes a good sister to Mazzi and loves to play school with her. She wants to be a teacher. She writes books all the time and loves to scrapbook with mom and have

me watch old family videos with her. She loves memories (like her mommy) and likes towrite list of things to do and things she wants (also like her mommy) She does not like socks, underwear, any uncomfortable pants or shoes and does not like getting her hair brushed in the morning. If anything is uncomfortable she has a fit! She memorizes things easily and is a good student at school. She loves chili, trail mix and crepes. Her favorite thing to eat is Dennys baseball pancakes and she loves her Nana. She has a lot of good friends and is a good friend to them. She loves to play with Tatum, McKenzie and Hayley to name a few. She is a thoughtful girl and giggles easily. She is a joy to have around- unless shes not.

Ashton- almost 8! Is constantly planning something. whether it be a play date with a friend, a garage, sale, making his room into a library, or building a lego kingdom. If nothing is going on he will ask "Can we do something exciting?" He is obsessed with Takis (a Mexican chip- he's eating in the pictures) and loves to tell me about the latest commercial he saw and what I should buy from an infomercial. I will not be surprised at all if he grows up to be a very successful salesman of some sort. He is also the king of negotiating. I have to remind him often that I am the mom and some things are not negotiable. Some things are negotiable though- especially when he looks at me with that cute mischievous, big-boy, gonna need braces on teeth- smile. He still has a way of getting me to do just about anything for him. He's my boy. He will still give me hugs and kisses, but not in public. In public I just get a boomerang kiss. (He kisses his hand then boomerangs it to me) He is still not loving reading or homework, but is doing better and whining a little bit less each day. He eats more than I do now and is very tall for his age. He is still doing tae kwon do and I think he is the best kicker in his class. He has great form and powerful kicks. I love his silly personality. He makes me happy.

Cruisin' it up...

A few weeks ago we went on a four day, three night cruise to Catalina and Ensenada Mexico with our good friends, the McDowells. We had such a nice, relaxing time and enjoyed each others company. It was so fun having just adult time for four days straight and just doing whatever we wanted to do (not what the little munchkins wanted to do) Not having to be responsible for a few days.... no taking kids here and there, waking up on our own time table, no fixing meals, grocery shopping, making beds, doing dishes.... oh, it was heavenly! Just thinking about it makes me want to go back! Not that I don't love my life, but I do love a break from it :)

We always enjoyed meal time. We ate constantly on the cruise. We decided we liked breckfast, their deli bar and the melting chocolate cake the most.We had a fun group that we sat with at dinner. Wish we would have got a picture of the whole group, but we just got one with our buddies. After dinner there was show time. We sat through show time two nights and then decided we wouldn't torture ourselves anymore. The shows were absolutely horrible! It was hard not to laugh and cry at the same time.

The second day was our stop at Catalina, which is so close to Long Beach that everyone joked that the ship went in circles waiting till mornign to get there. We just enjoyed walking around Catalina and being tourists.

The one bad experience of the trip happened when we rented this little golf cart. Matt started driving around a little crazily (as crazy as you can be going 5 mph) and he didn't stop at a stop sign. In fact, he even swerved and pretended he was going to hit a pedestrian, but the pedestrian was facing the other way and never even knew. But, apparently someone who rented the carts out saw and followed us yelling at Matt to stop. He was such a punk and lectured Matt for along time and even went so far as pulling the keys out of the ignition and saying he didn't think he was going to give them back. He called secruity and asked them to keep an eye on us because we were "being stupid tourists." He then made sure Matt was going to drive more safley and then THREW the keys back at Matt and drove off. I have never been treated like this in my life! Even as a teenager. I was so ticked off. And, while a part of me is proud of Matt for keeping his cool, a bigger part of me wanted him to just sock the guy in the face. I mean seriously.... who treats people like that? Even if they do run a stop sign going 5 mph?! See, just thinking about it and I get all fired up again. So, after this guy who has all sorts of power control issues (obviously) got done harrassing us we finihsed our tour of the island, but I was in a bad mood for the rest of the tour.

After the tour we went parasailing. It was very pretty and relaxing. I thought it might be a little scary being up so high because I am afriad of heights (I think the rope was 800 ft) but it wasn't at all.

That night on the boat was formal night. We enjoyed dressing up a little (though I refused to wear a dress) and taking some cheesy romantical pictures.

Niki and Clint- so cute. We had such a great time with them! We were always laughing (or eating) one of the two...

Our final stop was Ensenada, Mexico. We decided to go horseback riding on the beach. It sounds nice right? It turned out to be kind of lame. We go these horses who looked like they were in no condition to be taking us on rides and then they just followed the horse in front of them and walked along; no running or anything exciting. And, the beach wasn't a pretty beach either. Oh well, we can claim we were adventurous (or tried to be)

Matts horse was big and pregnant and would just wander off into the bushes to eat. Matt felt so bad for the horse, being big and pregnant and all, that he would just let her do whatever she wanted.

After the magnificent horse ride we went up to La Bufadora, a type of geyser in the ocean. The way down to the geyser is surrounded by markets with people yelling things like "99% off today" or "Practically free," stuff like that. We avoided the shops on the way down but stopped in some on the way back up and got a few souvenirs for the kids, vanilla, churros, mangos and coconut. Matt looked at a pair of glasses in one store. They started out saying they usually sold for 75.00 but they would give them to Matt for 35.00. They kept going down, and by the time he walked out of the store they were down to 10.00! He still didn't get them though.

Our last day was a day at sea. On the boat we enjoyed laying out and reading, playing ping pong, shuffle board, watching karaoke and the comedians, going down the slide (Niki and Clint refused), going in the hot tub, making friends (Demetri?), and playing mini golf. We had a great time! Can't wait for our next getaway!

Good chooser

Before getting in the car to take the kids to school Matt and I hugged, kissed, and said goodbye. Tera made the sweetest comment after witnessing this PDA. She said,"You chose a good one Mom." I asked her what I chose good, and she said "A good husband." I agree. Matt is a great father, husband and provider. And I..... am a good chooser :)