Slice of Life

The babysitter is due in three minutes and hubby is passed out cold on the couch. Wild Saturday!

Family and Travels and Family Travels

We just returned from five days of San Diegan adventures. Well, Natalie just returned from five days away; Keith and I took her down on Friday to attend Joel McHale's (of E Network's "The Soup") fantastic comedy show, left her at Auntie Ali and Uncle Jack's house on Saturday so that we could drive back up to go to a wedding (which was wonderful!), and then headed back down to SD to hang out with my dad and stepmom for three days. Enter a boat trip around the harbor, complete with wave runners and inner-tubes, a trip to the Wild Animal Park, and one fussy child thanks to a head cold and canine teething...

Have I mentioned how tired we are? And now we're screaming toward "Steen-O-Rama"--a family reunion for Judi's (my mom-in-law) side. Fortunately, it's in Yorba Linda.

Tonight has been a perfect answer to our frenetic pace. We've been catching up on our reality shows via DVR and are now dual-internet-surfing. Ahhh...

Please baby Bean. Sleep tight.

New Look!

Like the woman I am, I am always finding (small) ways to reinvent myself. My blog is no exception. So when I saw that Blogger had new ways to customize, I began dickering and came up with this scheme. It's uber-easy to read, which will hopefully make me more likely to blog more often. You see, there is so much tosay, but it's just that I'm so incredibly tired at the end of the day, I usually don't have enough energy to do anything but a status update on Facebook. Pathetic, I know.

Here are some milestones we've passed lately:

Natalie...

1. Says TONS of words, most notably: mama, dada, bubba (our cat Tony's nickname), nana, banana, doggy, kitty, boat, ball, cup, car, hat, pool, milk, diaper...the list goes on! She's going to Harvard, we're convinced.
2. Can sign a handful of those, including book, boat, more, and milk.
3. Has begun standing/dancing on her own two feet sans help via objects or other people. It's only a matter of minutes before that girl is doing kick-ball-changes around the dining room table. She certainly has the energy for it!
4. Reads CONSTANTLY. She is a sponge for new information and loves to point out favorite items in her books and name them. Loudly. "DUCK!" ... "DOG!" ... "BALL!" ... "KITTY!" She's even started identifying women in books and calling them "mama". Too cute for words.
5. Is altogether too freaking amazing. It's difficult to live in a house with this much fun, but we do our best.

Ponytails, pretty suit, and pool--could it get any better than this?

Keith...

1. Has refined his cardio-god skills and is now able to run TEN miles at a time. Who is this insane man I married?
2. Took me to Vegas for our first weekend away as a married couple rather than Mommy and Daddy. What a wonderful trip! Rejuvenating and refreshing.

Natalie, Ali, Keith, Me, and Lizzie at the All-Star Game Charity 5K Race.

Keith gets cozy with a golden croc at the Mandalay Bay Shark Reef.

I...

1. Downloaded an app called "Couch to 10K" (but have not gotten around to using it yet).
2. Won our Via Azul Golf League's British Open golf draft. Sweet! I made around $160 and immediately spent it on doorknobs (that all matched! at one time!) for our house. They look mighty purty.
3. Am still considering writing a (great American?!) novel, but am settling for an occasional blog post and a really great part-time job working with new teachers in our district. It's a change for the better and I'm looking forward to the new school year.
4. Actually got to go on vacation TWICE in the past few months. The first one was a girls-only trip to Ft. Lauderdale with Jen, Leen, and Ali. I'm still pinching myself that I have a husband cool enough to shove me out the door while he stayed home to babysit the Scush and friends cool enough to want to spend three days with me. Not a bad deal.

We verified that there is a large population of plastic women in Florida.

Tony and Cleo...

1. Are still cats who eat a little too much (well, Tony does) and cough up furballs.
2. Cuddle with the best of 'em.

And that's life for now. More to come...