Grandpa and Grandma Come to Visit

My (Laura's) parents are here visiting and we are loving it! They arrived on Saturday afternoon and Elijah got right down to business . . . time to play!!!

Today we went to a beautiful beach (new to us): Lechuza Beach. It was a bit of drive to get there but well worth it! Even though the beach is public, it had a private feel to it, right behind many celebrity homes. It was not busy or crowded so we had plenty of space to spread out. The weather was perfect, warm enough to want to cool off a bit in the cold water, which we got used to after our legs went numb. :) Elijah had a great time playing in the sand with Grandpa and Grandma while Natalie wished she could explore the sand more. (We decided against that though and kept her contained in her pack-and-play. Great idea!!!) At the end of our time there, we saw a large group of dolphins swimming and jumping in the water. Amazing! What a great end to the time at the beach.

Hope you enjoy some pictures from our time.

Play Time

On Thursday morning, the Peters Family came over to our house so the kids could all play together. Here are some pictures from our time.



We also ate lunch together. On the menu: hot dogs and salmon patties. Masterfully grilled (of course). Yum!

Earth Day

Today is Earth Day! Did anyone do anything to celebrate???


Here's what we did to do our part to help the Earth:

1) I mowed the lawn with a gas powered mower letting off emissions into the air and thus polluting the environment.
2) Laura did three loads of laundry (using hot water)
3) Elijah played in the sink today with his toys (wasting tons of water by filling/re-filling the sink over and over and over again)
4) Natalie dirtied 5 disposable diapers.

Ok, we did do some good things today also:

1) We watered our plants and trees.
2) Laura walked to the store with the kids.
3) Laura used canvas bags for her groceries.
4) We recycled our paper and plastics.

It looks like we did just enough good things to cancel out all the bad things we did today. Could be worse, could have been better. Happy Earth Day!

It's Spring Time!

The wait for it to finally be strawberry season was killing us, so in anticipation of this year's strawberry crop, I did what any fruit loving enthusiast would do...I built a planter box large enough to provide enough space to grow strawberries until our hearts were content! In case anyone cares, the dimensions for the planter box are: 8ftx2ftx2ft (LxWxH).



We transferred all of last year's strawberry plants from our sad, little pots in our courtyard to their new home. I think they'll be much happier here.


Also, Laura wanted me to post a picture of our new patio set be bought at OSH on Super Tuesday in February. Yup, we finally put it together.


There's nothing like anticipating Spring and Summer (at the same time)...eating lunch outside on a warm sunny day, cooking on the grill, eating fresh strawberries - could life get any better?

What an interesting looking bean?

Continuing the Pizza Hut conversation about finding things in your food...

A few weeks ago, Laura was preparing some beans for the burritos we were having for dinner and she found a small rock in the can!












So, she called Rosarita and they sent us two coupons good for any Rosarita product.










They also sent us an envelope and requested that we send them the rock, probably so they could verify the claim. The envelope they sent us was enormously gigantic! As you can see from the picture below, I put the rock on the envelope to show the comparison. Can you see the little black speck...uh, I mean rock. Exactly what would you find in a can of beans (6 inches tall) that would need such a huge envelope (approx. 20"x14")??? Anyway, the free coupons are appreciated :)

Our Visit

Today we went to my parents house to visit with them. We got there around 10:30am. But before we got there, we saw a few signs for garage sales so we thought we'd take a short detour and visit some of them. Here are the new additions to our family:


Right away when we got to my parent's house, I went with my dad to go get our van window fixed. We had a new window installed in December, but there was an air leak that made it pretty loud when driving, so we finally got it fixed. We thought it would only take 45 minutes to get it fixed...it ended up taking 3 hours (boy were we wrong).

While I was gone, Laura went to another yard sale and came back with another purchase:


It was pretty hot today. I think the temperature was 94 degrees! Elijah went swimming and then we all enjoyed cool popsicles. Natalie especially loved eating her popsicle with Papa!












For dinner we had pizza. While we were waiting for the pizza to come, me, Elijah, and Nana put together a Dinosaur puzzle.












All together it was a good day. Elijah had so much fun, he didn't even take a nap!? Both he and Natalie fell asleep on the ride home. We all had a lot of fun.

Counting Crows

For all you Counting Crows fans out there...please don't be jealous...we were able to go to a free concert they were doing at the Grove on Thursday to promote their new CD - "Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings."

Laura read a small little write-up in the LA Times about the free Counting Crows concert (being sponsored by iTunes) that morning at breakfast. It was going to be happening at 4pm that afternoon. We HAD to go!

We got there early, sometime after 3pm, and were walking around killing time, when we saw our friend, Bryan. He and Jenn, another friend of ours, also came to see the concert...so we hung out together and got a place to sit in the grass. That way Elijah could play.










The concert was pretty sweet! We got to hear some of their new stuff and a lot of their older songs. The concert itself was 2 hours long and there wasn't really a bad place to watch from. It was neat being so close!!!











After the concert, we went to the Farmer's Market and got some food to eat. Laura got Chinese and I got a Burger and Fries. It was a fun time, but the kids were exhausted and it was time to go home...totally worth it though.

Our Butterfly Friend

Well, it finally happened!!! Three months after it wrapped itself into a cocoon, our little poop caterpillar finally emerged as a beautiful Swallow Tail Butterfly.












We noticed it this morning after we ate breakfast. So, we brought it outside and cut the top off our soda bottle and let it go. Elijah was especially interested in it...and almost ended up smashing it with his finger (but we quickly took care of that).










Fly away little butterfly...and try not to get eaten by a hungry bird!?