cuteness

Katie got her "driver's license" during our recent trip to Legoland.

Virtually all the other kids were laughing and driving into the curbs and each other.

Not Katie.

She was all business -- two hands on the wheel, weaving around the mini car crashes.

Last week her best boy friend (that's what she calls Jake) proudly presented her with his picture.

She has since tucked the picture into her wallet along with her license which she has been carrying around with her.

quiet time

Mo sleeps in the middle of the day. She is also somewhat of a light sleeper.

This means Katie and I do "quiet" activities during this time. I use quotes because I'm not sure anything a 4-year-old does ever qualifies as quiet.

We generally do a lot of outside activities like gardening, chalk, etc.

I saw this the other day and thought -- perfect.

Self portraits by Mama and Katie.

"The circle in the middle is my belly button... and those other two circles are my nipples."

Nice.

What do you do during "quiet time?"

in a race

to back things up.

What? You ask.
Katie ran her first "race" this weekend (a 1-mile fun run).

But, it got me to thinking. I feel like I'm in a losing race to back up the zillion pictures we take monthly.

My system -- if you can call it that -- is to burn photos on to CDs.

I am seriously behind. No really, like July 09 behind.

I've been looking into external drives (I've heard ClickFree is a good one) as well as online photo storing sites (Flickr as well as online storage options).

I know y'all take photos.

What do you know? What is your system?

Input please.

guess who

got her hair cut.

The little blonde tips are gone (but don't worry, I saved a little lock.)

last week before school katie is putting

on her socks and says, "Mama I want socks that go to here (pointing at her knee)."

"Oh, and I want them to be black."

Don't ask, I have no idea.

san diego - the hotel, the food, the sites, the rides...

I consider myself more of a minimalist when it comes to blogging. However, as I've mentioned before we don't vacation all that often, so when we do I tend to click away even more than usual.

That said, here we go...

When we arrived Katie was immediately enamored with our hotel room.

"Let's head down to the pool girls."

"I think I just want to hang out in the room Mama," she responded sprawling out on the bed.

Maddie on the other hand loved the hallway. She would break into this happy run each and every time we left the room to go somewhere.

Sea World was a hit. We saw all the shows.

We looked at things.

We touched things.

Possibly one of the biggest highlights was the Pets Rule show. After the show we got to "meet" some of the animals.

Glad we traveled all the way to San Diego to pet a dog.

As I mentioned previously, we did our fair share of eating on this trip.

Manhole pancake at the Potato Shack Cafe.

In the end I felt like we went from this.

To this.

Notice my little non-eater is still little in the second picture.

Legoland was also fun. We rode rides.

And, more rides.

Katie loved this one along with one of the roller coasters 3x each.

And, even more rides.

Unfortunately there were few rides Maddie could go on.

But she enjoyed climbing around in different play areas.

And, of course there were the self-made entertainment activities such as stomping in any small puddle of water she could locate.

Oh, and she was extremely pleased to have found her pocket.

Sometimes it's good to be one and easily entertained.

i'm probably jinxing her as i type

but I'm so happy for her. Last night Katie wore underwear to bed and woke up dry.

What I love the most is how elated she was.

My little big girl.

we are on a mexican food

marathon right now in San Diego.

We've been here, here and here (which is now this) so far for dinner.

Hey, we're good parents, we're not making them eat Mexican food for breakfast and lunch too.

hear mo roar

I love that this blog has become a way I can help capture -- and later remind myself -- of all the small details: the funny things Katie says, the crazy things they do, the big and little achievements.

We have a wide array of hooded animal bath towels. Tradition in our household goes you have to make the noise of the towel you are cloaked by.

why i love being a sahm

because when it's hot enough, we drop everything and go to the beach.

i love my life right now but

I miss traveling.

I just came across some pictures from our New Zealand/Fiji trip. It was our last big trip before we had kids. I thought I'd share some of them because -- sigh, it was a great trip.

New Zealand is an amazing place. It has beautiful glaciers, beaches, farmland and more. We spent multiple weeks taking trains and driving around mostly the southern island.

The people were so nice it was ridiculous. Every time we had a map out, a local would come over to us and ask us if they could help us out -- no joke.

The trip was Song's idea, so I have to give him credit for planning it. We did some really fun activities like black water rafting, regular white water rafting and canyoning.

I can't state enough times how gorgeous everything was. We had a couple of hotel reservations every couple of days and kind of wung it in between.

One of the best "detours" we took was to Milford Sound. The drive in -- which many people hike -- was just breathtaking.

When we got there we took a boat out to see what was essentially a land of waterfalls. I don't think I've ever seen that many waterfalls in such a small area.

I miss traveling because things are different than home. Like the fact that happy hours start a little later there.

And, they have super tall police officers who wear the shortest shorts (I know, we visited countless cities in New Zealand, and this is what I tell you about).

Fiji was also fabulous. Less adventurous, more relaxing though -- reminiscent of our Tahiti trip.

After flying into Fiji we took a puddle jumper, and then boat to the tiny, and I mean tiny, island of Mantangi.

It's a private island and we, along with a handful of other people, were the only people staying there.

Song still talks about having an outdoor shower someday.

I do think we'll travel more when the girls are a little older (and, I work a bit more).

I have visions of taking them to places like New York to see shows, Paris to eat crepes and baguettes and even back to New Zealand.

I have big plans for the Little Wickies.