Olivia's Walk-a-thon

Olivia put her effort into doing laps for her school's walk-a-thon. Too bad we stink at raising money for it and didn't put any effort into that. Oh well, there is always next year.





We still love our school's traditions though even though we are cheap! ;)

Noah Goes to School

I feel bad Noah has been in pre-school for weeks and I didn't blog about his first day. It was probably the anxiety of him not being potty trained that kept me from it. But he's come a long way in that department, thank goodness, and we celebrated his birthday at school, so I think it deserves a blog post.

He is only in school twice a week, tuesdays and thursdays from 12:30-3:30. It's a parent participation and I stay and help on thursdays. I had wanted a morning spot to better coordinate with Olivia's school schedule, but they were full, and this way I get some precious free time once a week. Not that I'm that confident leaving him there alone until he masters the potty a little more, but he is close if not there, amazingly.

But enough about the potty! He's having a good time and doing well in his little class. It's mostly play based, but they do good developmental activities that are fun too. They have a yummy snack with as much juice as he wants, yee haw.

Here he is in the birthday chair on thursday celebrating his upcoming birthday.



And blowing out the cupcake shaped candle.



My big guy! I'm so proud of him!

My new favorite shade

Fabulous Fig. What do you think? Is Revlon's description accurate?



Ha ha! I promise I didn't buy it because of it's name and the fact it's fig season in our backyard. Longs Drugs was having a Buy One Get One Free on Revlon lipsticks and it was very similar to my long time standby Rum Raisin.

Hm, I might have a thing about yummy tasting lipsticks, huh? But I definitely won't be wearing guacamole green eyeshadow this winter.

Go Giants!

Yesterday we had a great time at a San Jose Giants game. For those of you who know your baseball, no, that isn't a typo. The San Jose Giants are a field team near our house. Much easier to accessable than the San Francisco Giants not to mention a million times cheaper. The tickets were free. But that wasn't all the freeness, they were handing out free Drumsticks and little bats. Here are the kids enjoying their free ice cream.



Olivia even got her bat signed up the mascot, Gigante. Noah was mesmerized by him, from afar.





But the best part for me, other than the beautiful weather and the kids sitting in the stands nicely the whole time, was the beer batter being struck out in the 6th inning which means half price beer, woo hoo!

Still knitting

I actually took a break from knitting a bit this summer, didn't even take a knitting project with me on our two week trip to Georgia, amazing. But the break didn't last long, I'm back at it and have several projects in the works, even during the hottest part of the summer. Dedication, I tell ya.

Most recently I finished a purse. No, I do not need another purse, but I've been dying to knit this one. I'm so glad I did, very fun and overall I'm happy with how it turned out. The design is called Brea and the pattern is free for anyone who is interested. The knitting was actually quite quick and fun although it looks complicated. The worst part is always sewing it all together and sewing the lining in.



I am pretty impressed with myself for using recycled yarn from a thrift store sweater (the yarn was leftover from a sweater I knit for Olivia, got my use out of that one!) and an old belt from a rummage sale for the strap. The button and lining came from my sewing stash, so they were probably bought new at some point long ago, but still, not bad.

When a house becomes a home

I'm pretty sure it's impossible to pinpoint the instant when your house becomes your home, but I'm also pretty sure that picking out house numbers and mounting them on the house must be up there on the list. It might have something to do with the cumulation of all the house projects we've been working on lately, but they are no where near done either. There is just something about seeing those numbers on there.



Yeah, we've had the house for well over 3 years now. When we bought the place the house numbers were on the garage door. The garage door we replaced almost exactly 2 years ago. It isn't so much that we've been ashamed of the house for 2 years and haven't wanted house numbers, it's more that we've been waiting until we (and by we I mean Travis) finishes the outside stucco and painting to put them on. Still a long way to go, but little by little we are getting there.

Happy Anniversary to me

I am so blessed to be married to a man whose main goal in life seems to be getting a picture of me falling in a creek. He took no less than 10 pictures of me crossing a teeny, tiny creek just in case I happened to fall in. Aw, I feel the love, don't you?





















Don't worry, sweetie, it's only been 9 years, I'm sure if you keep trying you'll eventually get a pic of me doing something stupid. But you can be pretty sure it won't appear on this blog!

Keep Tahoe Blue

Occasionally I see bumper stickers around the bay area with this saying on it. And I wonder what hippy thing they are talking about. Until I saw Lake Tahoe in summer. So pretty. Yeah, I guess keeping it blue would be a good idea. It's beautiful in the winter with the snow-capped mountains surrounding the lake, but in the summer it really strikes you when you are not freezing your butt off.

And we actually visited the watershed there that keeps the lake blue. I forget the name of it. If I had it would have actually been quite educational for Olivia since she is learning about watersheds at school. I really had no idea what a watershed was. Now, I kinda do. Something about wetlands and the plant roots filtering out the water that passes through before it gets to the lake. But I'm sure that bit of information won't last much longer in my memory than the name of it.

We also took a short hike to a kinda castle there. Very interesting story about the wealthy woman that owned and built it, and how the government completely jipped her descendant when they bought it. But I guess I should be glad they did since I'm sure I wouldn't be visiting the wealthy person that owned if they had not. In any case, it made for some pretty pictures.