Thursday, October 25, 2012

Fluffy Cloudy


Meet Maya's pet: Fluffy Cloudy.

I wish I had taken photos of her when we first got her.

She was tiny.
We've only had her a couple of months but she's 4x as big now.

Maya likes to make sure she gets her exercise so we put her in bathtub to run around.
We tried letting her out in the backyard for exercise but she ran away.
Woody and I spent 20 minutes sprinting all over the yard and into our neighbors' yards trying to catch her.

She's still getting use to us I guess.:)






We love her though. 
Hopefully we'll grow on her.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Love notes


Owen was asleep.
Woody was asleep.

I was grading papers in bed.
Maya was quietly doing something in her room.

It was 9:30 pm.

Then my sweet little girl sashayed into our bedroom with those two index cards up there. She gave me mine and then set two she had made for Woody on his side of the dresser.

I want to squeeze her so hard sometimes she's so adorable. 
I would love for her to be asleep at a normal five-year-old bedtime but if she's gonna stay awake at least it was to create something so sweet.

The next morning (today) Woody left notes for them next to their breakfast dishes (he generally leaves before they wake up).

That is Owen playing Wallball and the waterfall is one of his new moves.


Maya's was a picture of her favorite swimming move, the cannon ball.


Owen came downstairs first and saw the notes and started cracking up.
Those are the sweet moments you hold on to.


Owen created that zombie platypus up there and now wants to make a real life version. He's still trying to figure out the materials he needs to pull it off.

The purple house is a frequent drawing of Maya's (tho the colors change).
I smile ear to ear every time I see her draw a house with a big fat heart in the middle of it.
There's no place like home.

And, finally,
I leave you with Owen's Christmas Wish List. 
It's double-sided and now onto a third page.
Sweet kid:)

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Happy Birthday Star girl!


Our sweet Starfish turned 10 this weekend!

 Up there is what she looked like when we first brought her home. Back when she had a bed in every room (including me and woody's bed), weekly playmates @ doggy daycare, and weekend trips to the dog park. 

For her first birthday down there I baked her dog treats from scratch and we met all her friends at the dog park.


Now she's lucky if someone remembers to feed her twice a day.
Just kidding. (Kinda.)

But these two did change the dynamics quite a bit for our beloved Star.


 We love her so much and have been so happy to have her for the past ten years!

We sang her happy birthday today and ate a cake in her honor (she got a mint bone to clean up her horrendous breath).



Happy Birthday girl, we love you!

Sunday, October 14, 2012

the rest of SF


I realized I never posted the rest of our fabulous SF trip.
These are from our last day.

We parked @ the Marina and walked over to the Exploratorium in Presidio Park.











It was a spectacular day.






Then we drove over to the Golden Gate to take a little stroll before we headed back to Willits.


It's an amazing view of the city and the bay.
I highly recommend it. 


Friday, October 12, 2012

Before and After: under the the kitchen sink

Want to know what I do when I have a mounting work load so intense that it practically gives me heart palpitations, disrupts my sleep, and leaves me with an all around on-edge feeling?

Think I get up before 5am, put on a pot of coffee, roll up the sleeves on my bathrobe and tackle the never ending grading that confronts me?

Huh-uh.

(Well, sometimes I do.)

A sane person would get their s*** together, grab their red pen, and get to it.

Not me.
I clean.

Today, inspired by this, I tackled the cupboard under the kitchen sink.

Here you go, as promised: 

The before...





And,
The After...


I ripped out the old contact paper and put a fresh coat down (something I bought 7 years ago when we moved in).


I bought a few bins @ IKEA and used one of them to organize the cleansers
and took the trash bags out of their giant Costco box and put them behind the newly cleaned trash can.


DO NOT underestimate how happy this can make you.

I keep going in the kitchen just to look at it.

Took ~30 minutes, tops. 
Probably 22.5 minutes.


While I was doing this I was thinking about when in my life I decided to be on the organized, neat side.

I was a slob as a child. 
I didn't care about order or cleanliness and my sister and I lived very happily in our pit stop bedroom.

I'm not entirely sure when it changed. 

I guess once I realized the world was a messed up place and I wanted to keep my little corner under some control.

Still thinking about that.

Anyway, once I cleaned under there I attacked a couple more drawers in the kitchen...


This is the: nuts, seeds, chocolate chips, powdered sugar, cookie cutter, sprinkles, random baking stuff drawer.


Yikes!

With some more IKEA bins I organized all the sprinkles and cupcake wrappers in one bin and food colors and cupcake toppers and candles in another...





Voila!
A place, more or less, for everybody.


The bottom drawer is where I store onions, potatoes, shallots, garlic, ginger, brown bags and refrigerator magnets...

Now it looks like this...

I still have the mounting work load but despite the minimal progress I've made on it today, I do feel a lot better.


I just baked this lasagna and at this very moment am poaching some pears in a little apple juice, sugar, and butter.

Smells amazing in here.

Cleanliness leads to good things.

Happy organizing loved ones!