Daily Life

Today our good friends Felix and Amanda invited us with them to play at the zoo! The girls had a fun time! Jillian and Olivia fed the giraffes. It was cute watching them have so much fun. I forgot that a giraffe’s tongue was so long.  Jillian’s two main things that she wanted to see were the panda bears and a pink snake. The panda bear because of that viral video with the baby panda sneezing and the pink snake because Uncle Jason brought over a king snake the other day and she hasn’t stopped talking about how she wants a pink snake.  The panda bears were fun because they were both eating. We saw the pink snake at the end of our trip. I got to see my favorite animals, the elephants! The Elephant Odyssey was interesting because it also showed models of animals from California’s past. It was a long day for us, even though we were only there for four hours. The girls and I fell asleep on the drive home. When Jillian woke up she told my parents all about the animals.

Feeding the Giraffes:

Saturday night Adrian and I celebrated a good friend’s birthday. We stayed the night in LA to avoid the long drive home. We had a fantastic time! It was also a great Mother’s Day gift being able to sleep through the night without babies waking me or Adrian up. It was also great being able to sleep in without the little ones running in and out of the room. Adrian and I stopped for a quiet breakfast before heading home. It’s amazing how a little bit of quit time away from the girls can be so rejuvenating. Haha two children under the age of three can be a bit exhausting at times. We arrived home to everyone out back gardening. My brother Jason’s gift to our mom was working on her garden. I think this was a great gift idea since he is so good with the garden! After lunch Jillian and I made red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. Red Velvet has never been a favorite of mine but I knew Jillian would get a kick out of the batter/cupcakes being red. Once those were cooked, cooled and frosted we went to visit Adrian’s mom. We then headed over to the mall to get my mother’s day gift!! I’m getting a Mac Book Air, I know crossing over to the other side, haha. I plan on being a firm PC believer with knowledge of how to operate a Mac haha. I don’t think I’ll be a true convert because I’ve been a PC user for so long, and I’ve had some horrible school Mac experiences! Anyways, haha, we came to found that the Mac Book Air that we wanted to buy is not carried in the store. So my excitement balloon was deflated, but we did order it as soon as we got home from dinner, which was at our favorite sushi restaurant.  OH! My other mother’s day gift was a handpicked by Jillian, bouquet of flowers! It was very sweet. Adrian said that she was the cutest thing to watch while she was picking out the flowers. (Yes, most of them were pink. haha she’s such a girl).

My Beautiful Handpicked Flowers:

Making Cupcakes (eating the batter)

Washing the Dishes

Decorated Cupcakes

In full spirit of spring, my mom took the girls out in the back for a bit of gardening. They both loved digging in the dirt. Olivia loves picking flowers, we may not have many flowers left if she keeps at it.

Here are some pictures of the girls gardening.

Happy Easter to all of our friends and family! We hope you all had a wonderful day!

The girls woke up nice and early and found that the Easter Bunny had left them some baskets! They were very excited about the stickers and bubbles.  During breakfast a bunny made it’s way into our backyards and Jillian was super excited. For breakfast this year I made buttermilk pancakes from scratch. They were surprisingly easy to make and super delicious! I’ve been thinking that I need to create a recipe book that includes all of my favorites, that way I only have to look in one place. haha but that is way down on the To Do List.

Anyways, after breakfast I got the girls dressed in their pretty Easter dresses. After some mandatory photos the girls were set free in the backyard to hunt for eggs.  Olivia enjoyed her first egg hunt. I was worried that their would be some fighting over eggs but Jillian had on her good sister hat.

After the egg hunt we packed up the girls for a day at the park with Adrian’s extended family. When we arrived at the park it was pouring rain! It was a good thing I packed extra clothes because the girls were still in their dresses. Unfortunately I forgot extra shoes, nothing was too ruined thankfully. After about 30 minutes or so of not stop rain the sun decided to come out. The ground was wet but it wasn’t raining anymore!! The girls had so much fun running around in the grass.

Once the girls started to get antsy we left the park for Easter Dinner at my Aunt Angie’s house. The girls both fell asleep on the drive home, so Adrian and I got to eat dinner in peace. Overall it was a very fun yet exhausting holiday. Next year will be more fun when Olivia is old enough to be excited about the Easter Bunny too!

 

Decorating Eggs:

Easter Morning:

Mandatory Photo Shoot:

Easter Egg Hunt:

Easter at the Park:

After uploading all of these pictures I have realized that Adrian and I forgot to take a family photo again.

Jillian had the honor of being one of five flower girls in my friend Natalie’s wedding this past Saturday. She was so cute in her little dress! She had a difficult time following directions however. I kept telling her that the princess wants her to do her best. It kept her going until Natalie came out in all of her glory. haha Jillian became instantly shy and refused to line up with the girls. It wasn’t until we got outside that she cooperated. Then she had a grand old time running down the path.  I packed a backpack full of goodies for each of my girls since I knew it would be a long night for them. Jillian was an angel during the ceremony! (I can’t say the same for the other flower girls next to us).  Jillian sat so nicely playing with her magnetic doll set and her coloring book.

It was great to spend the night with good friends celebrating Natalie’s wedding!

 

 

 

After the heavy rains Adrian and I noticed that there was water in the playhouse. This is currently our storage unit. Since this week was my spring break from my master’s program I decided to move our possessions from cardboard boxes into plastic tubs. Once my mom and I started removing  boxes we noticed that the floor was not right. At one point we stepped down only to create a large hole in the floor. This is when we realized that something was really wrong. After all of the boxes were out of the playhouse we realized that there was a lot of mold around the baseboards. My dad and Adrian had to gut the floor to clean and fix it.

The one nice thing about this is I went through all of our boxes and purged quite a bit. I managed to get all of our storage possessions down to about 12 bins.

Once the floor is repaired my mom and I plan to organize the bins so that the girls can actually play in the house. They’ve been in heaven playing in there this week.

Here are some pictures of our progress 🙂

Rainy days are the best to work on crafty projects. Today I decided Jillian was ready to play with some play dough.  A friend of mine gave me this recipe and it works fantastic! Most play dough recipes are really grainy and do not feel like real play dough. This one however comes out almost like the real thing!

Homemade Play Dough

2 cup flour
1 cup salt
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
mix dry ingredients together

2 cups water
2 tablespoons oil
food coloring (typically whole bottle full if it’s the small ones from the store)
mix wet ingredients together in separate bowl

Mix all ingredients into one bowl.

Cook over medium heat until dough looks like mashed potatoes.

Knead until cool. Play and enjoy!

Store in airtight container