our trip to the circus-3/23/10

i scored some awesome seats the circus in D.C. for a great price this year! we went opening night(50%) and got an extra 20% b/c i'm VIP;o). we sat center ring and only 2 rows up from the ringling bros. big wigs. this was ella's first circus and weston's second. they had a great time watching all of the acts and ella especially loved the tigers! weston loved when they shot the girls out of the cannons. although our metro ride back to our car took an hour 1/2, and we got home at 1:30...we still had a lot of fun and made some special memories:o)

weston waiting for our metro as we left the circus...
the tightrope walkers were directly in front of us and very close!
the kids enjoyed their $9.00 snow cones in the tiger and elephant souvenir cups! good thing we passed on the $12.00 cotton candy!!
the elephants are always my favorite part:o)
weston and ella had so much fun together on the metro playing together and entertaining everyone on our car.

My Awesome 30th Birthday!!

*READ FROM THE BOTTOM UP!!

maybe 30's not so bad after all!!

Lucky me to be married to such a stunningly gorgeous man! hahaha! we took this pic while waiting on the plane in wichita falls, tx. our flight home was somewhat of a nightmare and we ended up having to circle dallas (because of bad weather) a few times, land in wichita falls to refuel, wait on the runway for another hour, and then take off again. we rushed to grab dinner before boarding our last flight home and ended up making it home around 1:30a.m.! what a long day!

This was the airport in burbank, ca that we flew into and out of.

I wanted to try four different flavors of cupcakes (dark chocolate, lemon, carrot cake, and red velvet), so we got a dozen and i cut up mine into fourths. Sprinkles cupcakes are the best!!

jen, matt, chad, me, jason, krista, sean, and vicki at dinner

we ate dinner at the best sushi restaurant ever! i think it was called kwami (not sure how it was spelled though). it was seriously amazing! this is the black truffle creme brulee they brought me for my birthday! yum!!

after sprinkles, we got drinks at the lux hotel. lucky for us, it was happy hour and drinks were $5! score!

day 3

we loaded up in the morning and headed back to l.a. to celebrate my birthday (as if the day before wasn't celebration enough!). i demanded we get cupcakes at sprinkles ( my favorite!), so here we are waiting in a line that was longer than most carl's lines in the dead of summer! i treated everyone to a dozen cupcakes and we took them with us to be devoured later that night!

backyard..

i love the horse and carriage on the front gate to the house.

the front of the house we stayed in.

this is all of us after we got kicked out of winery #5 since they were an hour past closing time! oops! not sure who chad is trying to punch...

this is what our beautiful scenery looked like! amazing, right?

our driver took us by neverland ranch. this was the front gate and basically all you can see from the road.

the day we went wine tasting was cloudy, cool, and very windy! we at picnic lunch outside at winery #3 and almost got blown away:o)

i love these crooked looking trees and they were everywhere in santa barbara!

sean and vicki:o)

chad and sean at winery #2...

chad, me, jason, krista, vicki, and sean in front of winery #3...

day 2

bright and early the next morning, chad and i headed out for the most beautiful run of my life!! we ran 5 miles through the town and many vineyards. we even ran over olives that had fallen from the olive trees! it was amazing! i could definitely live there! after our run and delicious breakfast (thanks krista!) we left for a fantastic day of wine tasting! krista had planned our day with 5 wineries and i couldn't have been happier with her choices! we had a driver named erik that drove our minivan around all day and even joined us in the casino that found, at the end of the day. i had such a fun day, and chad and i even won some money in the casino! woohoo!

chad, me, sean, and vicki arrived in l.a. at lunch at the counter and loaded up our awesome dodge caravan that we rented and headed to santa barbara! we stayed in this little town called los olivos. it was so cute and smaller than bowling green, if you can even believe that! we had time to shower and get ready for our dinner reservations at the side street cafe (thanks, krista!). this is a pic of us enjoying our "pillow of love" dessert and some delicious wine:o) the chef patrick was very entertaining!

what lurks under the oven drawer...not for the weak stomach!

this is SO embarrassing and disgusting, but i had to share this with all of you in order to raise awareness for the necessary task of cleaning out underneath of the oven drawer. just in case you can't tell what everything is, because of the massive amount of dustballs and dirt, here is an accurate account of what we found under the oven drawer this morning:

1. weston's flip flop

2. a centrum vitamin

3. a video game

4. a pencil

5. an eraser

6. 3 letter magnets

7. a plate from ella's tea party set

8. 2 books

9. a ninja ring

10. a pen

11. a rose from ella's tea party set

12. $.26

13. a fake gold coin

14. a suction bullet from one of weston's nerf guns

15. a clapper

16. a barbie fake cereal box

17. a straw

18. a cup top

19. a sorry game piece

20. and a piece of pink chalk

seriously, if this post can save lives, then i have done my job!:o)

this has got to stop!

seriously, i can't take it anymore!! it looks like a blizzard is coming down at our house right now, the kids are home from school---AGAIN---and the roads are too bad to go anywhere!! someone with a snowmobile, please come rescue me! and bring a babysitter because 2 straight weeks in the house with my kids is starting to drain me. the novelty and the fun of the snow has worn off and now i just want to get back to a normal schedule and life without snow and ice. does anyone else feel this way???

Snow Storm---->take 4!

last weekend we encountered another snow storm that kept the kids out of school all week except thursday. friday school was cancelled when the next round of snow moved in. this is what it looked like early on in the day today. it looks much worse now with another foot of snow on the ground (last week we had a foot of snow too!). my mom got finley and donovan last night, so my kids spent the majority of the day over there yesterday and today everyone headed across the street to my house to hit the slopes! we had so much fun sledding, making a snow fort, and sipping hot chocolate! we only wish avey could've been here:o(

there's nothing better than sled races during a blizzard!

mom is getting ready to go down for the first time.

weston and granny came zooming down the hill!

we all worked hard building this awesome snow fort that could fit all of us, but finley and dono stayed and helped me finish the fort after everyone else had gone inside. we were the "dedicated" few:o)

i let them decorate the snow fort with squeeze bottles full of water that i colored with food coloring. i love squeeze bottles!

all huddled up in the snow fort with some corn pops:o)

not sure why they all look so crazy eyed in this picture...all i said was "smile!"

Isn't he getting big??

this dog is growing at a freakishly fast rate!! i was not expecting him to get so big so fast! is it too late to return him?

if you look closely at this picture you can see the hole where weston lost on of his front teeth. it's so cute! the other one will probably fall out today. it is so wiggly!

The Kids First Attempt at Skiing 1/23/09

A few saturdays ago we decided to take the kids skiing since we never got to go on our vacation. So, we packed up the kids and headed to Massanutten which is only a little more than 2 hours from our house. We ate lunch on the way and got there around 2pm and signed up for the 4 hour ski. The kids took to it really well! By the end of the day, weston was skiing solo on the bunny slopes and ella was skiing in between chad's legs. She got a little whiny towards the end of the 4 hours because she didn't eat lunch when we stopped, so she was really hungry. A hungry ella makes for a really grouchy ella! We all had a great time and can't wait to head to the slopes again! ella and west heading up the conveyor belt to ski down the practice slopes again.

first time by herself!

skiing with dad...

i love this picture! such concentration:o)

weston skiing down the "big" practice slope. unfortunately, i didn't get any pics on the bunny slopes because i had to focus all of my attention on staying with weston and making sure he didn't get run over!

Letting our legs take a little break while we watch weston ski...