vacation memories

first stop when we got into town - lunch at Tyler's! 

lots of time in the pool

kisses from Daddy at dinner

Thursday night street fair in downtown Palm Springs

Grandpa "babysitting"

packed up and ready to hit the road for home!

whoohoo!

we're on vacation!

ready for a break

you can still see lots of not-yet-put-away stuff behind Leila ... most of my cabinets are filled but there is still some random pieces that I don't necessarily want to get rid of but they don't really have a place either. single dishes that don't match any sets (in size or design), my fourth fondue pot, and miscellaneous kitchen utensils that I use only once in a while. other than that, mostly what's over there is food since our pantry is currently unavailable due to an unforeseen problem in our renovation process. 

tomorrow we're leaving all this behind and heading to Palm Springs for a week of playing in the pool, lots of golf (for Wes), margaritas downtown (after Leila's bedtime, of course) and visiting with some favorite friends. as soon as we come home again it will be back to work setting up our kitchen for functional use again, but until then we're going to forget all about it!

collections

I collect cookbooks. I love them. I love bright pictures of beautiful food. I love to read about new techniques and cooking methods and flavors to try. I love to sit down with a pile of cookbooks each Saturday afternoon and plan out my menu for the week ahead (of course trying to overlap ingredients as often as possible to save money on the grocery bill, but still have unique and interesting meals each night). This is my cookbook collection as it looks right now ... stacked up in our guestroom, far away from its home in the kitchen. Dad and Wes built me a shelf to house my cookbooks in another week or so when this chaos is behind us. I hope it's strong enough to hold them all!

What do you collect?

Happy Thought of the Day

Happiness is ... upacking your wedding china after 3+ years of being in storage and loving it just as much as the day you added it to your registry.

summer camp

first I need to apologize to anyone reading this who expected to find some sort of craft or yarn projects being highlighted on this blog. obviously things are a little chaotic at my house this month and I'm not getting any projects done. But that's about to change and I'm so excited!! Kristen and I are signed up for six weeks of projects and inspiration starting in June :) Mostly I am looking forward to spending some time with Kristen making crafts and chatting and eating yummy snacks. All the fun projects (and the fact that if I have time to craft, that means my house is back in order) will be a bonus.

so close

so close to a finished kitchen ... just need the range to be delivered and installed, the faucet and dishwasher to be installed and one other cabinet to be installed. had a little snafu with that last cabinet, but at least I can start unpacking boxes and putting the majority of the kitchen in order. this is the fun part! there are a number of boxes that I packed up over three years ago when we moved from our big apartment in Ventura to the smaller place (in order to save more money on rent to purchase our home! it was a good decision at the time, but I miss all my pretty wedding dishes). like Christmas in May - can't wait to open all the boxes and see what surprises I find.

Visiting GreatGrandpas

this weekend we strapped Leila in the car for a road trip to Oregon! she was quite the trooper for seven hours in the car on Thursday and Friday and a long 14 hours on Sunday. Three days of driving for one day of visiting isn't the best ratio but between Wes' work and our big kitchen project, that's the best we could manage this year.

Friday morning we had breakfast with Wes' Grandpa Jim and his wife, Mary Lyn before heading to Redwood Country and back to the 101 for the final push into Brookings, OR.

Grandpa has a large piece of property in back of his house with tons of animals that roam in the hills. He puts out deer feed every morning and it was enchanting to watch them emerge out of the trees to eat breakfast.

Since it was raining pretty hard on Saturday, after feeding the animals we just hung out inside most of the day. Leila enjoyed exploring a new house and even pulled herself up to standing for the first time! She didn't get totally upright, but this is the first time she's gotten her legs under her on her own, so that was exciting for all of us to see.

Later she celebrated her accomplishments by blowing raspberries with Uncle Luke.

Sunday morning we got up early and said goodbye.

Four generations!

Leila in the car - five hours down, just nine to go. She did great until Santa Barbara. By then it was way past her bedtime and even though we put her in pajamas and she nodded off, the headlights of cars behind us kept waking her up and mostly she was just so sick of the car! Thankfully from SB it's less than an hour to home. She is so happy to be in her own house (even though it's noisy and confusing with all the workers here today) that all morning she has been crawling back and forth looking at her toys and books and jabbering to herself cheerfully.

the big day!

here is our IKEA kitchen flatpacked in the garage! after today all of this will be ... 

here ... 

here ... 

and here! 

It's so exciting and a little hectic around here. I'll be back later with pictures from our road trip to Oregon :)

like a whole new house

the new floor is so close to being done I can taste it!

here is the kitchen which they finished yesterday. (see the blue walls! the white patches are where the new cabinets will go next week.)

this was taken standing in the kitchen looking out into the great room. (the blue tape is holding down the planks they laid today until the glue dries.)

now Wes and Wayne are definitely in the homestretch! just these awkward angles around the front door and bathroom door and it's all done! next we'll have to put in new baseboards, but I think that should be much easier and faster than the whole floor installation. I am beyond thrilled right now and so incredibly thankful for Wes' willingness to do this for me and for Wayne's willingness to help!

new floor!!

last night Wayne came over again to help pull up all the old carpet. 

We're going to be replacing all the flooring in the downstairs of our house with the exception of the bathroom and extra bedroom. 

This morning work started bright and early. First they had to scrape up all the linoleum that was under the carpet (original to the house!) and clean up the debris. It was pretty noisy so Leila is glad they didn't try to do it last night after she went to bed.

Now they're actually staring to lay the planks and it's so exciting! I keep sneaking downstairs and just staring. Pictures of the good stuff to come soon!

drywall

My brother-in-law, Wayne, came over this afternoon to help Wes patch all the holes left behind from the demo. I can't wait until it's dry so I can start painting!! Installation of the new floor is scheduled to begin Tuesday so time is getting tight. plus, I just really love painting. is that weird?

our cowgirl

back in August Wes played in a golf tournament sponsored by the FBI. At the after-golf BBQ, he bought some raffle tickets and scored this awesome rocking horse built by inmates in the LASD correction center. We've been setting Leila on it ever since Wes brought it home (when she was just five weeks old!) but only recently is she able to sit on it without support and hold on while I rock it for her! She just loves it and I love having such a fine handcrafted toy for her room that even adds to the cowgirl theme.

aftermath

Good-bye kitchen!

Bright and early tomorrow guys are coming to demo our kitchen!

Can't wait!

We'll be putting in new floors ...

... and new lights too!

Thursday picnic

Leila and I are in Huntington Beach for a few days visiting my parents and yesterday we met up with my friend Leanna and her husband and parents for a picnic at Lake Park. Leila loved crawling around outside and discovering the eucalyptus leaves scattered across the grass just beyond the boundaries of our picnic blanket. She also tasted some new foods courtesy of my adventurous and cultured friends. 

after lunch we played on the swings, which is pretty much Leila's most favorite thing in life besides her Daddy!

Also, I should point out that Leila's outfit was handmade by Leanna's cousin. I am not sure if she sells them on etsy or anything ... I'll have to ask!

Great Race of Agoura 10k

My #1 fan after the Old Agoura 10k! It felt so great to race again ... my last "race" was the 2009 Surf City Half in which I was 14 weeks pregnant so didn't really give it my all. I've been running a lot and was hoping to come somewhere close to my pre-baby PR which I had in my head as 50 minutes. Then I looked it up and realized it was way faster than that ... but I stuck with my 50 minute goal for the 6.2 mile, incredibly hilly and challenging course.

I started out too fast and sort of fizzled in the fifth mile but still finished strong with a time of 52:32 and eighth in my age group out of 170 women! I loved seeing Leila and Wes cheering for me at the finish line. Such a great push for the last 100 yards. Now I'm on the lookout for a FLAT 10k to do soon and try to get under 50 minutes!

My sister-in-law, Whitney, completed her first half marathon today too! way to go, Whit!!

training for the Great Race

I'm so excited for my first post-baby 10k next week! The Great Race of Agoura is a super hilly course so this weekend while visiting Mom & Dad I took the opportunity to run some hill repeats at Central Park where our conference championship races were held in high school. It's always fun to run on familiar paths. Dad pushed Leila in the stroller while I was running and took these pictures from the top of the hill.