Passing the time in San Diego

First off, here's a picture of Ty at 10 months. (ok, this was taken well into his 10th month but hey, at least I got the picture) Doesn't he look like he's too cool for school?! My little baby is becoming a boy with an attitude! He loves to explore, climb, and crawl as fast as possible. It's funny how boyish he is. Knocking down blocks with a force, pulling hair, "petting" the cat with his fist. All so boyish and so different from our little princess. :) He also has absolutely no patience. As we stroll through a store, if he sees something he wants, he points, babbles and you better be getting it or else he turns red, balls up his fists and growls. Wow, quite a display. But he's a real lover and enjoys cuddling, laughing and climbing up on my lap to give kisses.

As I wrote in a previous post, we're having our kitchen remodeled and we've been creatively dealing with the lack of a kitchen and sometimes the lack of a house to be in during the day. So here we are, after having a wonderful meal off the BBQ by Daddy, enjoying some smores. Yum! These are my absolute favorite summer dessert! My family use to go camping a lot at the beach and this was one of the best parts. Every time I small campfire, I can almost taste the smores.

And Tatum agreed with me completely. We named our special smore (which is putting a little chocolate bar inside the marshmallow, then toasting it and squishing it between the gram cracker) The Little Black Rain Cloud (after a winnie the pooh story of course).

Oh and does the sugar make you silly! :)

Shauna took the week off work to "explore" her new town of San Diego. First stop was the Balboa Park. After scoring the best parking spot on the busiest day (apparently it was SD residents get in free to the museum day) we took a picnic over to Peppertree Park. Lots of things to climb on and all sorts of animals.

Then we headed over to the Botanical Gardens. Such a beautiful building!

And the photography lessons continued. Tatum took this one, pretty darn good!

I love this cheeky smile!

This is Tatum's photo of her favorite flower in the building. Blue of course.

So much beauty...

and interesting architecture...

And beautiful flowers throughout the park.

Then we rode the train...

and Tatum got two rides on the butterfly swing since a little girl gave her a ticket that she didn't want to use. So fun!

Then yesterday we hit a Hullabaloo concert at the 4S Library. We absolutely LOVE Hullabaloo, great songs and lots of dancing, hopping and bunny ears. :)

Tatum helped Ty with his ears. :)

4th of July

We headed over to Shauna's complex pool to kick off the festivities. Lots of delicious appetizers, warming sangria, and numerous dips in the pool.

Ty had fun in the water and out. Here he is chillin' in the shade but otherwise, he was spider crawling all over the pavement, and trying to jump in the pool. :) He definitely feels differently about the water than his sister.

But look, Tatum even got her hair wet!!

After drying off, we headed up to Shauna's place for a delicious dinner. Here's Tatum hanging with Jack.

And here's Jack enjoying his first beer. Nothing like the holidays to do a little experimenting. :)

After a fun game of duck, duck, goose with Jacquie (or duck, duck grey duck according to Sean) we had a little dress up time. I love that the lamp behind her is shining just in the right spot to light up her halo, so fitting.

Boys can sport head bands too. :)

And then we headed down to watch the RB fireworks. This was new to all of us so we had no idea what to expect. We had planned on going all the way into the RB middle school stadium but as we walked down the large hill leading to the school, everyone was camped out along the sidewalk. So we grabbed a spot and waited for the show to begin.

Tatum brushed up on her photography skills, taking pictures of all of us. Here's Shauna with us...

Nick and Shawna...

and Dana and Sean. I think she's really getting the hang of the camera!

We all enjoyed watching the fireworks; RB put on a great show.

Ty was pretty impressed. :) Happy 4th!

Ty's Baptism

Ty is almost 11 months old and we finally got around to baptising him. Hey, as I said to Garrett when he mentioned how much younger all the other babies that were there, better late than never! Anyway, the ceremony was after the 12:30 Mass and there were quite a few babies being baptised. We felt a little odd with only one camera person (Grandma) and with such a small, point and shoot camera. Some families had the paparazzi there!

Ty and his Godmother Shauna, or GM! :)

Ty loved the candle but when we wouldn't let him touch it, he made a bit of a fuss. :)

Here's Grandma and her two little grandchildren.

Ty and GM

Our little baptised man. Great Aunt Diane gave him this outfit that was made by a nun. It came with a hat that he refused to wear...

but we were able to get it on him at home. Oh goodness. :)

And then it was present opening time, with the help of sister Tatum of course. He got a prayer lamb, and a few prayer books, and a real bible from Shauna! Shauna invited us over for a delicious meal that ended the day perfectly. Thanks GM!

Passing the time in Irivne while my kitchen is in ruins

We're currently having our kitchen remodeled (hopefully we're almost done but we all know how that goes in the remodeling world). They started the process while I was still up in Napa. I think I should have stayed up there because when I got home, the house was a complete disaster! Unfortunately, the demo company forgot to tape off the kitchen before gutting the kitchen and dust went everywhere. I even found it way down the hall in Ty's room! Anyway, we quickly realized that it was no environment for children so we packed up and headed to Grandma's! And one of the first things we did was invest in a kiddie pool. The kids love it. Doesn't Ty look like a little man here?!

While up in Irvine, we enjoyed many things and saw lots of friends. Here's Ty's first ride on the merry go round. As you can see, he's obviously not a fan. Since this was his first time, I didn't think he'd even know what to expect, yet as I walked onto the ride, before we even got to the horse, he locked a death grip onto my shirt. When I put him up on the horse, it just got worse (as you can see from the photo). Poor little man, it was a long 45 seconds.

But here he is after it stopped. I think he knew he was getting off. Since this experience, I have put him on a little toy rocking horse at a friend's house, and a zebra at a park and both times he's dug in with the grip and hates it. I don't know, maybe he has a past history with horses that I'm not aware of. Too bad I was just thinking about getting Tatum's old rocking horse out for him.

Here's someone that still loves the merry go round, and loves to strike a pose, as you can see. :)

Some other fun things we did to pass the days were kite flying (absolutely love this. Who doesn't smile when running with a kite?)...

tire swinging (Tatum's new love)...

picking flowers out of Grandma's garden...

(another one of those poses)...

and hanging with Grandma. Always love doing that.

We finally got over to Nadine's new house to enjoy some kiddie pool swimming...

sand box digging (which made me realize how much we need a sandbox since Ty loved it)...

and yogurt Popsicles! Tatum loves hanging with her girlfriend's Mattie and Sylvie!

And Ty enjoyed his first Popsicle. Yum!

We hung out with Isaac, Leanne, James and Shannon at a park for dinner one night. So much fun and such wonderful weather.

The day before Father's Day, we had lunch at Silverado, the senior living center where Uncle Tom lives. It was a rodeo theme as you can see and Uncle Tom was the sheriff! :)

Then on Father's Day we surprised Daddy with delicious blueberry pancakes and banana chocolate chip pancakes, yummy! He got some fancy presents too.

So we got creative this year and decided to try to be crafty. So even though we didn't stitch our items, we put a lot of work into them. First off, we tie died three golf club covers and ironed on the appropriate club numbers. Then we made Daddy a tie die Tshirt that has each kids initials on the sleeves...

and #1 Daddy on the back. He wore it all day, even to the Spectrum for shopping! I wanted to put their hand prints on the shirt but we put them on his home made Father's Day card instead. Regarding the tie die, we had so much fun with it, that we tie died a onesie for Ty and a shirt for Tatum. So easy and fun!

Before heading back to San Diego, we got to visit with my childhood friend Colleen and her two sons at her mom's house in Seal Beach. Here is Cameron, Tatum and Ty enjoying some reading.

And here we all are, including Bryce, enjoying some make believe baking. :)

We were able to catch the first Tustin concert in the park on Wednesday. A great Irish band called the Fenians played and Tatum took most of the pictures. :)

Here's my mom and good friends Jane and Barbara as we drink up some wine with our picnic dinner. :) We are now home after three weeks and the kitchen is coming along. Hopefully in a few weeks I can post some pics oc the completed project and the chaos will have ended. :)