Our Awesome Day

We had an awesome day today! We left the house a little after 8:00 am, heading for San Francisco. We had tickets for the King Tut exhibit at the de Young Museum. The tickets were for 10 am, but we were unsure how long it would take us to park in Golden Gate Park, so we left early. Since we were about an hour early (we had no trouble finding a place to park), we went into the Japanese Tea Garden. It is beautiful in there!

I love this picture of the boys, inside the garden. They had a lot of fun looking around.

A little before 10 am, we headed to the de Young, which is right next door to the Tea Gardens. We couldn't take any pictures inside the exhibit. It's really good though. Really crowded, but good. It's hard to believe the items are over 3,200 years old! Amazing. The boys really liked it too, and I enjoyed how Riley would explain stuff to Quinn.

Our exhibit tickets got us into the rest of the museum. We wandered around there, and then went up into their tower, for a great view of the city.

After the museum, we drove to the Golden Gate Bridge, and walked halfway across it. It was fairly clear today.

Kevin and the boys, on the bridge. This is about mid-span.

After the bridge, we drove toward the Cliff House, at the beach. We ended up in this park area near there, called Lands End, and then walked down to the Cliff House, and explored the remains of the Sutro Baths.

If you want to see the rest of our pictures, CLICK HERE. There are some really great shots of the bridge, and the gardens, and the museum, and the boys, and well, you get the picture. I have labeled the set "San Francisco 2/28/10.

Soup and King Tut

We ended up out and about for most of the day. We had to go to Sports Authority for the rest of Quinn's baseball uniform. After that, we headed to REI and Any Mountain for Riley's snow camping gear-he's snow camping next weekend. That stuff is expensive! Who knew waterproof gloves were so hard to find, and so difficult for one boy to get onto his hands, and so expensive? Who knew that one could pay $9.50 for merona wool socks? Sheesh. After those fun places (not), we went to Valley Fair. I so love that mall. What I don't love though is all of the people. It's always so crowded. We were going to have our dinner in the food court-they have an awesome food court, but it was so crowded up there, and so damn HOT, and noisy, we opted for California Pizza Kitchen instead. It's also in the mall. Oh and Macy's was having a one day, AWESOME, sale, which benefitted me greatly.

This is my favorite meal at California Pizza Kitchen. It's called "two in a bowl," and it's two soups-you get to choose them-in the same bowl. The green is asparagus, and the orange is tortilla soup. Yummy. I hardly ever get anything different.

We are heading to the de Young Museum tomorrow, to check out the King Tut exhibit. I last saw it when I was in 5th grade. Riley will really enjoy it, and Quinn says he will, because, he's "really into Egypt stuff." I have already packed my good camera. Hopefully it won't rain. If it's not too nuts, and if our passes haven't expired, we may pop over to the Academy of Sciences. It's just across from the de Young.

I am watching Olympics, but I am bored out of my mind with it tonight. As much as I like the ice skating, I hate the exhibition skate. I'm watching to see the bobsledders, even though I already know who won, thanks to folks on the east coast who have already watched it, and then posted it on Facebook.

Sorry I Was Sleeping

I meant to do this post last night, but once we got home from the Blue and Gold dinner, I fell asleep on the couch. I woke up long enough to watch Apolo Ohno get screwed out of his medal. Sorry about that (the lack of post, and Apolo). Anyway, here it is, and if you are VERY good, I may post again tonight! This could be your lucky day.

This is the cake we made for the Blue and Gold Dinner, for the Scouts. Every year there's a Blue and Gold Dinner for the Cub Scouts. It's kind of a big deal. There's food, and entertainment, and Scouting is celelbrated. This year it was a bigger big deal, because it's the 100th year of Scouting. Now you understand the 100 on the cupcake cake.

There was another Scout leader, who told a story about how Scouts got started. He was really good. He had all of these props and called the boys up, and dressed them as their part. Riley was a knight. I think he quite enjoyed the sword.

See that mass of blue? That would be Quinn. He was wearing a Civil War hat, and a really big coat. He loved the hat.

The other entertainment of the night were square dancers. They demonstrated for us, and then we all got to square dance. Quinn asked me to dance, because Riley wouldn't. Riley did finally ask my mom to dance. It was pretty fun, I have to say. Both boys even had smiles on their faces too.

Happy Saturday! Perhaps I'll see you later.

A New Toy

Today was my only "free" day all week. By free I mean I didn't have a meeting, but I did have to make a cake for Scouts tomorrow night. We are making another cupcake cake. This year is 100 years of Scouting, and tomorrow is the Scout Blue and Gold Dinner. We need a cake for the auction. Kevin made the cupcake cake last night, but the top stuck in the pan, and got completely destroyed-we didn't put any Pam on it, so I had to bake another top today. Oh, but first I had to go to the grocery store to get another cake mix. While I was there, I got some groceries, and a toy for Maya. I'll show you the pictures of the finished cake, tomorrow. It's festive-or it will be.

Here's Maya with her new toy. She was thrilled to get it. You really should see how happy she is to get a new toy. The toy lasted 34 minutes. Dang, that dog is destructive. Oh well, she had a blast ripping a hole in it, removing the stuffing, and getting the squeaker out, and had her typical sad face when I threw it away.

I played with some of my enamel flowers tonight, while watching Survivor. I am working on a necklace, but it's not quite finished.

I hope you all have a pleasant Friday!

The Hills Are Alive With the Color of Green

Wednesday. The middle of the week. It's almost the weekend. I am grumpy today.

I went to Macy's today-I thought a little shopping would help my mood. After Macy's, I went to Niles, to my favorite bead store, and this is the view from the bead shop. Look at those hills! We've had a ton of rain. A ton of rain=green hills, which =happy thoughts.

I even got the Amtrak going by. This little park area has just been redone. It's so cute. They are not quite finished with it, but when it's done, I'll take some pictures.

Look what I got in the mail today. Total yumminess. Alexander Henry fabric. This is 1/2 yard of all 16 prints. I love the colors.

Anyone Up For "The Talk?"

Happy Tuesday! Today sucked. Sorry, but it did. I am so very tired of being a police officer. My job is to teach, and I can do that, if the kids would cooperate. This sweet little class of mine is really, really talkative this week. It's driving me nuts. I blame the rain. We are sick to death of the rain. They didn't get their last recess. They were thrilled. I was not. I don't mind rainy day recess when I have yard duty. Anyway, after school, I had a looooooong meeting. I went to read the final books for our district's Young Author contest. I'm pretty excited because I think a book from our school won. It was such a cute, cute book, written by a kindergartner. It was kinda fun to read the winning books, and they fed us!! Quiche and salad and fruit and a roll and a brownie! I wonder where they got the money for that, now that I am thinking about it. Hmmm.

Anyway, as you can see, I am well prepared to have "the talk" with Riley, unless of course one of you would like to do it...crickets...just let me know. Anyway, I ordered three books from Amazon-that should cover it, but really, all I needed was the National Geographic!! This one has topless women! Perhaps spring is a good time to have "the talk." Maybe I can get Kevin to do it.

Camouflage

And another Monday bites the dust (and another one's gone and another one's gone...). I love to get Mondays over with. It's the busiest day of my school week. I only have 14 Mondays left to teach!

We are just finishing our Unit 3 in Reading. It was all about animals and how/why they camouflage. Today I had the kids make their own chameleons. My para and I constructed the branches to place the chameleons on. Some kids are still working on their chameleons, but look at how cute some are so far.

28 days until spring break, and 76 left in the school year. Yes, I am counting.

Stuff on Sunday

Other than puppy school, we had no particular plans today. I really do love a day without plans. I was able to tidy up around here, something that is quite difficult during the week. I even sewed! It's just too bad that the weekend is ending.

On our way to dinner tonight, we stopped by Macy's. I got some new dishes! Well, service enough for four right now. I am going to buy another service for four the next time the dishes are on sale. We got two sets of red (scarlet) and two sets of yellow (sunflower). I am going to get orange (tangerine) and lime green (lemongrass) the next time, and somewhere along the way, bigger salad plates. The ones that come with the dishes are more like dessert plates. I really like the colors, and I really like those bowls.

I worked on my elephant. It's a Heather Bailey pattern. He's coming together rather easily.

One whole side and his middle is sewn together. I have to add the other side and stuff him, and then he's ready to go!

Maya got a new toy...and destroyed it within an hour. I should have bought the biggest size. The plastic on that one was way thicker. I feel bad that the poor dog doesn't have anymore good toys to play with, but I am pretty tired of buying her toys and having her eat them. Is this something she'll outgrow? It's really, really annoying.

Have a great week everyone! Mine is another busy week: baseball, school meetings, more baseball stuff, and scout stuff. Looking forward to Friday already.

Just Monkeying Around

Just a nice Saturday around here. I went to the Sewing, Quilting and Craft show this morning. The boys and Kevin cleaned the garage. Nice day.

We went to Panera for dinner, but the boys had Rubios-it's practically next door. Here's Quinn, hamming it up with his taquito.

Riley, at dinner. He's really not this pale. I swear.

My treasures from the craft show. Material, material, material, three patterns, and a fat chicken pincushion. And now, take a look at my greatest purchase of the day...

I also made a trip to Target, although lately I am in a hurry to get in and out of my Target. It's under major construction. They are adding groceries to the Target, and every time I go in, stuff is in a different place. It's really annoying. I get turned around. Plus all of the hygiene aisles are super skinny-only wide enough to fit one cart, and if a person goes down the aisle with a cart, they have to back out of the aisle when someone wants to get past. I will be so happy when they are finished. They are wrecking my Target mojo. Anyway, when I was at Target, I found the monkey. I could not leave him there. I love him.

I am currently overdosing on Olympics, as I have done every night. They are on until really late. I love them though.

Pictures of Pictures

Happy Friday everyone, and welcome to your weekend! I am so happy to have another weekend. I had a very frustrating day today, so I am very happy to be at home, Olympics on TV, kids in bed, and dog asleep-on Kevin (apparently I'm moving around too much for her tonight). So Riley is going to be 12 next month, in 24 days in fact. He's going to Junior High in the fall. I've made my peace with it. He'll be fine. I just can't figure out where the 12 years has gone, since we JUST brought him home from the hospital, and Kevin and I didn't know where to put him-if we should hold him, put him down. It was very confusing, those first few days, figuring things out. Now he'll be 12. He'll be able to sit in the front seat of the car. It's his last official year of being a kid, as the next one is a teen year. Anyway, for the yearbook at his school, they are collecting baby pictures. I picked one out, with his help-wouldn't want to embarrass the guy. It was so fun to look at the old pictures. I decided to take a picture of the pictures, and here are some of my favorites.

Quinn: Top left, he was about a year. Top right, was at Disneyland, in the "cookie room" at the Disneyland hotel. Bottom left, was his first bath-he didn't much care for it. Bottom right, playing with toys in our new (current) house.

Riley: Top left, a mohawk in the tub. Top right. at a 4th of July parade. Bottom left, fun at home with his beloved piano, and bottom right, trying out the new floor, in our old house.

Kevin and I: Top left, I was very pregnant with Quinn. Top right, Kevin and I at our wedding reception. Bottom left, me leading the conga line at our reception (1995). Bottom right, a pregnant (with Riley) me and skeletal Kevin-our first Christmas in our first home.

Me: Top left and bottom right, me as a baby. Note that I have a phone in the picture on the top. Figures that love would evolve into my iPhone love. Top right, me-looking like a boy, which I did a LOT. It's a soccer picture. Bottom left, a seriously cute me. I need to organize the boxes and boxes of loose pictures that I have.

A single picture of Maya tonight, being a spaz on the bed.

Happy weekend! I am off to the Quilt, Sewing and Craft Fair tomorrow!

THE FOG

Do you think my subject sounds creepy? I meant it to sound creepy. There was a movie called, "The Fog." I don't remember what it was about, except that it involved fog. Hmmm. Perhaps I should Netflix it. Or maybe not.

The last few days have been really foggy in the morning. This is what I saw when I was up this morning, at 6:30. Creeeeeeeeepy. This is the view from my front porch, looking left.

To the right, over the hedge (hey, that's a movie too! I am on a roll!)

To the right, the outlet of our court. I love the feel of the fog in the morning. It's so quiet this early in the morning, and so still. It wasn't really cold, although it was pretty cold later in the day for some reason.

Tomorrow is Friday! Yay! Any plans? I am going to the Quilt, Sewing and Craft show in San Mateo!

Oh, and I wore my new shoes today, and they are so very comfy. Everyone should own some Keens. I may invest in another color!

Shoes and Some Cool Shots

I got to see an allergist this morning. My appointment was bright and early, at 7:40 am. I was out of the house at 7:25 am! It was super foggy this morning. It was a good appointment. I need to have a skin test. The doctor is going to have me tested for seasonal things: trees, pollens, and also cats and dogs. He doesn't think my swollen face and lip last Thursday was from nuts. Most likely just a reaction to all of the salt on the nuts. Salt can be an irritant-you are telling ME! Anyway, the skin test isn't for a month. I can't have any of my meds for 7 days prior! Oh how miserable I am going to be. For now, he gave me a prescription for eye drops, and a topical eye cream so that I don't rip my eyeballs out of my head. I am happy to have things move forward now, although my eyes really bugged me today. On the news tonight, they were talking about pollens in the air-ummm, yep. Not too excited about all of the pokes for the skin test, but I need some relief.

Anyway, it's been a super busy day. Allergist, work, math council meeting, and team parent meeting. I am so tired, but there's Olympics to watch!! The most exciting part of my day, was my Zappos order! I got new shoes. I am keeping them away from the dog, who has already eaten one of my shoes, and also Riley's Webkin, and a plastic jack, and most of her toys.

Isn't this cute? Maya in a fancy photo frame.

I LOVE this picture. It's Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse, and aerial view of the Hub at Disneyland. Cool huh? Oh how I wish I was at Disneyland. Sometime in the spring. We are trying to wait to go, because the new World of Color water fountain show will be starting some time in the spring.

Happy Wednesday everyone!

A Book, Some Cupcakes, and a Sign of Spring

Back to the reality of work. It's amazing how quickly you forget a long weekend, and fall back into normal routines. This is a busy week. Baseball stuff, school meeting, math meeting, union meeting, and an appointment with the allergist. Friday is looking great!

I ordered this book for Riley, to get him ready for Jr. High. I thought it was funny, and some of the advice is really useful. One of the topics was perfect: How to survive being the shortest guy in school. Oh, and another was: What to do if you are not athletic. It also offers advice on how to deal with bullies, how to change clothes in the locker room, etc. I tell you, these are important things to know. If it helps as well, then great!

I got these cupcakes over the weekend. They are fake. I got them at Pier 1. Aren't they adorable though? I love the one with the yellow flower. Looks so yummy.

Look at this! I spy signs of spring! I even wore my flip flops and capri pants this weekend! I have a pedi, so now I can wear the flip flops, and not feel self-conscious about my toes.

Heading to the allergist in the morning. I am hoping he can give me some relief.

Rosicrucian Museum

We took the boys to the Rosicrucian Museum today, in San Jose. We used it as a dry run to see if Quinn would be able (and willing) to go to the King Tut exhibit at the deYoung Museum. He told us that he's "really into Egypt stuff." He liked the museum, and we are now proud owners of King Tut tickets.

Quinn trying to read the Rosetta Stone.

Riley trying to decipher the Rosetta Stone. Both boys...unsuccessful.

Obelisk outside of the museum.

A pretty fountain and building on the grounds of the museum.

Ahhhh! These are some scary ancient Egyptians!

Back to work tomorrow, and a really busy week ahead. It's been a great four day weekend! Looking forward to Spring Break, and then SUMMER! We are working out our vacation plans. Anyone else have vacation plans?

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! For us, it was business as usual. We picked the boys up from my parents' house. Kevin took Riley home to work on his class project, and clean his room. I took Quinn to baseball practice, where he spent three hours today. We all went to Fry's (big yawn, disgusting bathrooms), and then to dinner, with some other stuff in between.

Kevin gave me these Mickey and Minnie Mouse plushies. When Minnie kisses Mickey, it makes a smooching sound-so cute. He also got me a new Paul Frank iPhone cover. I love Julius the monkey, and now you can really tell. I got Kevin an iTunes gift card, and the movie Zombieland-I know, you just can't believe how romantic I am. That's how I roll.

Here's Quinn in the batting cage. He can hit the ball from the pitching machine. He has good form too. We need to get him a face mask for his helmet.

While Quinn was at practice, I went to get my toes done. My normal place was closed, so I went to a place at our horrible mall. I had been there before, and it was ok, and cheap. The spa chair was really annoying-I thought it was going to squish me inside it, and the back part was trying to push me into the water bowl. I finally turned it off. The lady used sea salt on my feet and legs, and it HURT. She was rather rough filing, cutting and using that damn salt. Anyway, I appreciate the finished product, and it was cheap.

Today is also Chinese New Year, so Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Bicycle Rodeo

Both boys had scouting events today. Riley's was first. He spent three hours working on badges for Boy Scouts. Quinn had his bicycle rodeo. It was held at my school, which was nice for me, because I got to spend a little time working in my classroom.

Off to rodeo!

There was a little town set up with buildings, cars, street signs, etc. The guys running the rodeo walked the kids through the course, showing them that they had to obey the laws of the road. Helmets, stopping at stop signs, looking both ways, etc. They also did a little presentation on bicycle safety. These were the same guys that did our school assembly on Thursday.

Quinn taking a rest, listening to how to be safe on his bike.

On the track!

Finishing off the day with some monkey bar fun.

The boys spent the night at my parents' tonight. Kevin and I had a date. We went to dinner, at Chef Chu's in Los Altos, and then we had frozen yogurt in downtown Palo Alto. We were going to see a movie, but decided just to go home and watch the Olympics. We are like Dorothy I guess...there's no place like home.