This is what it looks like

Doesn't this picture say it all? Sometimes when we go out with the fam it's like we're part of the traveling circus. But it's so fun we keep doing it. Today's destination was Scandia for a little miniture golf. The kids totally didn't get it, but Justin and I got to play.

Kennedy can definitely swing her hair and sometimes she hits the ball too.

And MacKenzie was workin' those sunglasses the whole time. It was darn cute.

I think it's scan all your pictures week

However these are less embarrassing. This is my sister Khristie (you can see her blog right HERE) and myself. She's Wonder Woman and I'm Diaper girl.

So I watch "Bones" and the other Halloween, can't remember which one, Bones dresses up like Wonder Woman in the VERY realistic costume and I thought of my sister's old bathing suit. Don't you love it?

And this craft table. I remember doing all kinds of things here; puzzels, water color things, eating cream of mushroom soup, painting piggy banks.
I think I ended up breaking this piggy bank.

Embarrassing pictures hiding in that box of photos in the garage.

In my search through some old photos I found some that are DEFINITELY worth throwing away. And then I thought, why throw them away... post them on the blog instead! So here is one of the most embarrassing pictures I found of myself while in the garage today. What do you think? I'll tell ya what I think, "Really?! Did I look in the mirror... ever?" It's a wonder I ever got married.

Kennedy & Austin

These two started their friendship 2 1/2 years ago! They would play every week without fail. Kennedy would've moved in with Austin if we let her. Here they are playing the piano when we lived in Visalia, aren't they so cute!




Look at them now. (With MacKenzie as the 3rd wheel). He came to Disneyland for a few days and we HAD to go visit!



And thanks to Tricia we met Wall-e and went on Monster's Inc. I didn't know that was there.



This is Grayson. I put him down for a few minutes and he lays on the ground and starts sucking up water from a puddle under the water fountain! Gross!! So I had to get a few pics before I picked him up. He does the same thing in the gutter in our front yard. I'm surprised he doesn't have some weird worm-bacteria-disease.



Thanks Tricia inviting us to come meet you at Disneyland! We had so much fun AND we beat all the 5:00 traffic home.

Curl up and dye!

Kennedy got her first hair cut at the salon this morning. She was SO excited as was I! Our conversation about what she would have done to her hair went a little something like this:

K: Can I get it painted like yours?
M: What would you like to paint it?
K: Ummm... purple! And green and red. All different colors.

She must be a Phillips girl! Justin's response to "wild" hair colors was "over my dead body will our children dye their hair purple". So what do we do... get some colored hair clippies from Sally's. What do you think? (Can you see the dark purple strip to the right?)




And you can't get just one! MacKenzie likes pink so we got her a little surprise too. They both love their colors.

No more weeds... for now

Now that we've been here about 6 months we decided it was time to stop embarassing the neighbors. If we were in the middle of nowhere... probably wouldn't do this at all, but when you're the ONLY house on the street with a pathetic looking yard it starts to wear on you. Then I talked to my friend Kiley and realized it wasn't going to be that much to throw some sod down. So here's a somewhat weed pulled front yard before the grass.



And after! It's so green and golf course-y, I love it!



Now I'm ready to put some concrete on the other side... and then a new fence (just the gates you can see) and a garden in a box I found in "High Country Gardens". It's movin along.

Primer Gray Pride

This is by far the best car we've ever purchased! We paid cash for this little eye catcher one year ago and it has been Justin's sweet ride since. During the summer someone (idiot) backed into Justin right in front of a CHP. The Chippy gave Justin his number and said if anything went wrong in the insurance part of things call him and he'd set the record straight. A few weeks later we got a check for $400 MORE than we paid for the car! (The check was to get the bumper and hood fixed) Now let's be honest, primer gray doors and you think we're worried about a little hole and scratches... no, but thanks for the check anyway. Basically we were given $400 to own this car free and clear. Love it... gotta drive it with pride!

Speedin' Thru

Justin calls me the other day to inform me a famous someone has been pulled over a few times by his buddies in the office... Adam Levine lead from Maroon 5! Come on, I need some free concert tickets or something! How fun would that be to pull someone famous over?



As I searched for this pic in google images, I noticed he looks like a mix of Justin's brothers. Jacob with Jordan's hair? What do you think?

Happy Birthday Justin!

I love Justin so much... that I went through some boxes in the garage frantically searching for pictures that might be entertaining on a birthday slideshow. I found a few and I think my most fav is the one of him and Auntie Laura at the prom (or formal?). Laura ended up marrying his brother Jacob, but when the picture came out of the box Kennedy commented, "hey that's not Jacob that's Daddy! Oh I think that's when Daddy and Laura got married." Ha! It was fun looking. Enjoy, and don't forget to wish him a Happy Birthday!

The MRI Results!

I had my doctor check up today and we went over my MRI results. Any guesses as to the outcome? Well I'll just tell you now... I have NO ACL! What?! So my examination from him (where I literally feel as though I'll be sent home on crutches) shows all my ligaments firm and solid, but the MRI shows nothing... Absolutely nothing when it should show my ACL nice and strong. I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to be able to walk without that and here I am trotting around (ok let's be honest, I gimp around favoring the right knee a lot). I'm a walking miracle with "something still going on under that knee cap". I know he was being funny and nice when the doc replied, "you know different people just react differently to injuries." I think the translation is "what's with your psycho knee 'long toes'?"

Therapy (physical therapy people, come on) 3x a week for a month and he'll decide what to do then. What a weird case I am. You know I would like my knee fixed, but every time I go I'm on the verge of having a panic attack. I'd rather give birth than let him "examine" my knee and the thought of surgery... I almost fainted twice! Am I just the biggest wimp?

Great Buys @ Costco

Tax season has forced me finally purchase some new ink for my printer. This year federal e-filling was free, but state was $20... I'd rather mail that return since California's too bankrupt to send any money. And yes I heard you can file CA online for free through the state's tax page, but when I tried doing that (not only did I throw things at the computer because it's WAY more complicated than Turbotax) but when I got to the part where we received early retirement money from Justin's past job the screen says, "if you've received a 1099 you can not file your state taxes for free through this site." Thanks a lot. 30 minutes of my life I will never get back! Thus I was back to Turbotax and mailing it out in the first place. Which took me to Costco where instead of just 2 ink cartridges... for the same price I got a new machine than prints/scans/copies/faxes AND 2 new ink cartridges for basically the same price. Awesome! Looky at my very first scanned pic! I've been wanting to scan this one for-ev-er. Doesn't Michael look like Daryl, Benjamin looks like Dad and Heather... you look like your mom/Grandma to me. What do you think?

To: Sierra (my niece)

We saw something and thought of you. Happy late birthday!

Par-ty!

The birthday party. It began the night before when the Garcia girls agreed to bake the cup cakes. You see, when asked what kind of birthday cake she wanted Kennedy replied, "I want Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, Frosty the snowman, Bambi, Dumbo and Mickey cake." Ummm, okay. So I asked my sister Rebecca (click here) what she would do and she told me to print out all the characters, put them on toothpicks and stick them in cup cakes... genius! Except, I didn't realize you could control the size so I've got some 8" Cinderella's and 6" Dumbo's. The kids loved them! (If you click on the picture below it blows up so you can see our plate of goodies better.)



MacKenzie helped be the taste tester.



We had a bunch of little kids, mostly boys, running around. They had a blast. The festivities began inside with the doll house. I couldn't believe how much fun all the little boys had playing with dolls:)



And then we moved outside to the playhouse and dirt. There was absolutely nothing more entertaining at the party than the dirt aside from...



... that big pile of dirt!




Outside of my kids there were about 15 little boys and 4 little girls. Good thing we're not at the slumber party age:) Anyway it was fun! And for next time I think we've learned that presents... didn't even care about the presents until everyone left. Maybe we'll just have a present-less party in the dirt next time:)

Disney Birthday

And how sweet are these princess dresses!! They were SO CUTE! MacKenzie was dancing around talking about how she was a princess and Kennedy was just happy to be at Disneyland. We stayed 3 days and 2 nights and she was still bummed to leave.



Snow White was amazing! Sleeping Beauty was great too, but something about Snow White made the "meet the princess" TOTALLY worth it. She took 5 minutes talking to our girls and listening to MacKenzie ask for lipstick and, "where's your dad?" Which translated is, "where's the prince?"



And we saw tons of characters. On her birthday Kennedy started the day at the park @ 9:30am and ended at 9pm.





Mickey! We just love Mickey. Finally saw Fantasmic too and it was worth seeing! Loved every minute.


For the year of 2009 if you have a season pass AND you go on your birthday they give you a gift card to use that day only. So she got $60 to buy whatever she wanted... which honestly gets you a small handful of things, but that small handful was A LOT more than anything I'd buy. Next trip will be on Justin's birthday. He's takin me to the Blue Bayou (the Pirates of the Caribbean restaurant). That food always smells so good, but we're too cheap to pay for it, but on his birthday... free!

Slave Driver

If you don't crack the whip young, you'll have a hard time crakin it later. The girls actually enjoyed this kind of manual labor... in the back of the truck and throwin things, what's not to love there? And they had help from their cousin Madelyn.



However we don't want to mess up our du in the process.



My in-laws picked up a load of wood while visiting a few weeks ago. For $20 a truck load Bruce thought it was definitely worth checking into. He came back a few hours later with the wood and of course the girls wanted to "help". Up in the truck they went which got them out of the way and useful at the same time.

Get Your Fingers Out

I pulled out the camera to get a shot of Grayson digging through the trash. He loves to open the lid and find a few hidden treasures, but not so much today.



Poor little smashed fingers in there. Doesn't he have the cutest little sad face you ever saw?!

Welcomed Visitor

Auntie Heidi came to visit! Holy cow she brought her 2 dogs and between her and the "puppies" the kids were in heaven! She needs to move next door. While here for the weekend she made monster cookies and amazing fudge. We also went to Tai Pan (every girls needs to go there), Ontario Mills Outlets, Olive Garden and to the park here in town. Good times!



Here's MacKenzie cleaning the fudge bowl. Each time I have "a piece" 12 make it into my mouth. Let me tell you it's GOOD! Thanks Heidi for the 25 extra pounds... I really needed that. To see more of Heidi and Jordan click here.

3 am

This morning we had a visitor from the Sheriff's dept... @ 3 AM!!! The deputy was knocking and ringing the doorbell trying to wake us up. Before I understood what was going on Justin was at the door talking to the deputy saying, "no our house is not on fire."



What?! Let me set it up first. I put the bird outside a few weeks ago, but because it gets cold at night we turn a heat lamp on for him. The bulb is red so when it's on obviously there's a red glow. Secondly we have a wood burning stove and we use that as our heat source. Naturally when you have a fire in the stove the smoke comes out of the chimney, that's kind of the point.

Early this morning a concerned citizen drove down the street and could see a red glow in our back yard accompanied by smoke. They called 911 and thus the Sheriff's dept at our door. What a morning. Thanks to whoever called because you never know, we could've had a fire in the house and not known... although I've done my fair share of smokin out the house trying to build a fire and it is pretty hard to breath. I think we might know if there actually was a fire in here.

Would You Be Quiet?!

I'm trying to read. Poor kids. I'm waiting for them to go to sleep tonight so I can read my old-new book uninterrupted. I originally listened to it on tape 5 years ago and loved it then... love it even more reading it myself.

The Kitchen

Well it's done! I finally finished painting the cabinets... how many months later, but I'm pretty darn proud of myself for completing project number 2. Now it's on to the kids bath. Let me know what you think and tell me what I should put on top of the cabinets.

Hi Mom!

Justin was recuperating the other day (sleeping) while I was running my errands. Upon my arrival I was graciously ushered in by Kennedy with a welcoming smile, "Come in mom!"




"We're making you lunch", she said. " It's so yummy!" If you can't tell that's apples, bananas, carrots, sour cream, ketcup, mustard, milk, applesauce... it had a balloon at one point also.



Then "we" suddenly turned into "MacKenzie did it all" when I asked about the mess. Very clever, but... gross! I don't understand how they can scale the fridge for a piece of candy, but have to use a laundry basket for the lunch bowl.

Wow...

"Those are the longest toes I have ever seen!" I usually hear this from others who notice my bare feet. However when I was getting checked by my new knee doctor he added, "I have seen LOTS of feet in my life... you have the longest toes by a mile". Thanks doc.



The secret's out now. In the same note this was a BEA-U-TI-FUL trip to the doctor. Besides getting made fun of, my knee yanked on and about 25 more x-rays, I received the most thorough treatment of my life! The end conclusion was that I need an MRI and possibly a CT scan for further understanding. I might have patella subluxation AKA: dislocated knee cap. I also have symptoms of a torn meniscus. The doc's comment was, "well I can't fit you into a box of 'torn ACL'. I can see there's an injury here, but it is definitely not your normal injury". So if I understand that correctly I'm out of the box with long toes... maybe I could use my toes to climb back in and get something fixed, ha!

The Birthday

Last year my birthday STUNK!!! January 4th is preceeded by:
1. Halloween
2. Thanksgiving
3. Christmas
4. New Year's
Who wants to have ANOTHER party after taking down Christmas decorations and sleeping in from New Year's Eve? I simply decided to change the date of my birthday to July 4th. I mean what's not to be happy about with swimming, BBQ's and fireworks? Then when it was about to be July 4th I didn't factor in MacKenzie, MIL and G-MIL all have b-days the week before. Bad planning again. So what do you do... threaten your sweet husband to make your birthday absolutely amazing or else! Ok maybe there really wasn't so many threats as there were LARGE announcements that my birthday was "going" to be the most fantastic birthday ever!

It totally worked! I had an AMAZING birthday even on fast Sunday? How much was optimism bunched up for the whole year and how much was it just being a great day? I don't know but it was awesome. (Here's my plug of thank you's to Liz, Mariann, Ellen and Milette who all gave me things I loved!) Justin then carried it on through the next few days by taking me to Red Robin's for dinner and getting me a season pass for Disneyland!

So we went to get our passes yesterday (we get the So-Cal-cheap-skate, comes-with-no-parking-pass ones) only to find out you can add parking for a small fee. And, "bring your parking voucher back and we'll refund it for you" along with that! The lady in the ticket booth was fantastic. She even gave me a birthday button when she realized I was celebrating my birthday. This alone got me a bag of fresh tortillas in California Adventures.




We didn't tell the kids where we were going besides that we were going to "look for Tinker Bell" the entire way there. So there's Kennedy looking out the car window up at the sky saying, "but I don't see the second star to the right". The girls were so excited when we pulled up to Disneyland.




MacKenzie made sure to show everyone she met her special Tinker Bell panties, ha! Within minutes everyone knew her name and what her underwear looked like:)

Katelyn and Scott (ask me about how I'm already planning their wedding even though they're "just dating") went with us and Kami & Jared met us at the park. The 11 of us stayed until 7pm and had such fun. I'm ready to ditch the kids at home and go on a date with my husband, if only I could convince some worthy babysitters to skip out on high school for a day...hmmm.

Anyway Happy Birthday to me! What a great day and now I'll have to come up with something even greater for my husband. His celebration is in 4 weeks and I need some fun ideas. He has to work on his birthday so should I take a "gun" birthday cake to the office? What cha think?