Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Pampered Chef Party!

I sent email invites to those in my hotmail contacts, but I know I don't have everyone's email. So here's your invitation!! Bring friends, come for a little while or a long while!

Thursday, April 2nd
7pm
13402 Cedar Rd.
Cleveland Heights

For those of you who know Sarah, you KNOW her food is awesome, and who doesn't love the Pampered Chef products? :)

If you can't come but need to order something, let me know and we'll get it added to the order!

If you're going to come, post a comment so Sarah and I can figure out how much food to make.

Parking: in my driveway, on Cedar in front of the nursery next door, or across the street on Rossmoor

Hope to see you there!!!

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Cali

Since everyone is asking...drum roll please...

These awesome pictures were taken near San Luis Obispo, on the central coast. It's a little piece of heaven tucked away where other people can't find it-hee! We drove around the county, from the 101 south of San Luis Obispo to north, in Paso Robles, then west on the 46 to Cambria and the 1, then south on the 1 back to the 101. We went all over!

In our search to find a place to live that was near water (for me), had a milder climate (for me), had somewhat affordable land (for Dave) and outdoorsy type stuff (for Dave), and where we could enjoy beauty all around us (for both of us), I came across Paso Robles. And from there, everything fell into place! It hasn't been easy finding a place that suits both of us, but we found it! And everyone is welcome to visit us anytime!!!

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Unfulfilled Foot Fantasies, But Still a Pretty Place

So we think we finally found where we want to live (This is the San Luis Obispo area in central CA). The only way I can really describe this place is that it's what I think the Shire would look like. I kept expecting little hobbits to pop out of the hills and ask us what we were doing there. I was excited about this possibility because as long time readers of our blog know, I myself have hobbit feet. I've been looking for an opportunity to join in the time honored tradition of having a foot-off. This is similar to having a competition of strength but it mostly involves looking at your opponent's feet and making comments like, "Your toes are especially square", or "I like how those bows accent the color of your foot hair" until one person's feet are decided to be superior. But my square toes and foot hair accessories went unchallenged and therefore unappreciated. But it was still a very pretty place and somewhere we think we want to settle down.

Now the challenge is to find a job. I'm pretty sure there aren't many people, much less dentists, who could win a foot-off, so if I could find the local hobbit hole full of hobbits with cavities I'd be set; but in the mean time I need to find some people to work on instead. But I'll still probably bust out my hobbit feet from time to time, because I think everyone can appreciate a well groomed bunch of toe hair.

Here are some images of the areas we found for your enjoyment (groomed foot hair not included).
For some reason our pictures didn't quite capture how green these hills are. They are much more vibrant in real life, as are my feet.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Happy cows live in california!!!


NOT KIDDING!! You KNOW those commercials. And we spent a good chunk of our day seeing all sorts of happy cows. It's no wonder they're so happy. They're living in the prettiest place on the planet. We found it. But we still need to find a job. Pictures of the prettiest place on the planet soon to come...if we can remember to take the camera out amidst our jaw dropping shock of the beauty of this place. :)

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Time flies!

I had really good intentions at the beginning of the year to do this "Photo a Day" challenge, where you (duh) take one photo a day. Doesn't have to be the kids-it can be anything to document what you're daily life is like. Needless to say, that hasn't happened. If anything, the camera has rarely been out of the bag in the last few months. But we've been busy!

First off, the house has SOLD. We are so so happy. We haven't put anything on the blog b/c we were worried about "jinxing" ourselves (I know, what a stupid concept "jinxing" is, but yet we all fall for it). But now the major hurdles have passed and we close on Tuesday. It all happened really fast. The house was put on the market on Feb. 9th, they saw it on the 14th, then made an offer the following week. At first we were going to have to be out of the house by today (since we go out of town Monday), but when they found out we weren't ready to move yet they offered to let us rent back from them. Thank goodness-I was NOT looking forward to moving twice within a few months. But we would have done it if it meant the house sold. We were ready to take anything! We feel really lucky and are excited to know that at least this part of our life is taken care of. Now we need to work on actually finding a job!

I wrote in a post in January that we were interviewing in Kansas. Well, we went. And felt like we should NOT take the position. It was offered and they wanted Dave (who wouldn't??!!), but we just felt like it wasn't the right road for us. Funny b/c we went into it with the intention of taking the job. We thought it was what we wanted to do. But I'm glad we went there to get the full picture and meet everyone so that we don't have any regrets. But that leaves us jobless. So off to California we go to find a job! We're looking at some specific areas that have just kind of peaked our interest. Neither of us knew anyone in those areas. I was just trying to research into areas that had all the "ideal" things we wanted out of a home and came across a few things that mentioned these parts of California. So I researched some more, mentioned it to a few people, and now we have some connections! Things really have fallen into place and we've got some good leads, so hopefully this will pan out for us. We're going in with a lot of faith!

And now, for your viewing pleasure, here are some pictures we took when the camera finally came out of its resting place.

We went to an awesome park today-it was 60 degrees...of course we were going outside!

Emma's hair is getting pretty long. She keeps telling me that she wants it long so she can have braids. Today she said she needs it "longer and longer and longer and longer and longer like Elizabeth's" It's still not quite long enough for braids. But I have a feeling that the braids she's thinking of are more like the ones her friends at school have. Most of the girls in her class are black. And they have the cool braids all over with the fun little "ball" rubberbands. I just don't think she'll ever get her dream fulfilled.
Of all the pictures Dave took of the 3 of us, this one was the best-yep, a finger in Bree's nose and Emma making a weird face.

Look at those adorable faces!



Emma dancing like a princess in front of the castle!

Our fearless daughter.

A view of her SUPER CUTE HAIRCUT! I chopped off her mullet, and got this adorable curly bob!

A typical Bree "look"



One of Bree's favorite pastimes (much to my dismay and sanity) is getting into the sinks and the toilets. The girl loves water. I should just stick her in the tub all day.
We made a fort and stuck the girls inside with the DVD player. Stroke of genius. We just kept throwing cookies and ice cream in there and got a few hours of uninterrupted adult talk time (and maybe Mariokart time).

This is the remains of Emma's little accident. You can't see the color very well in this picture. She was running in our room and came around the end of the bed, tripped over the pillows on the floor and went head first into my nightstand. Her face broke her fall. And somehow she ended up hitting it on the side (what you see) AND on her forehead. Instantly there were 2 big goose eggs and bruising. And the one on her forehead was also a big scratch. The coloring got better and better each day! I love the process of a bruise! It even gave her a black eye. We're just glad nobody called social services on us! That one was a doozy.

And this is Bree, pretending to be me. She LOVES to flip through and "read" my magazines like she's a big girl. When she's not flooding the bathroom with the sink faucet or playing in the toilets or throwing all her crackers on the recently vacuumed floor or pulling ALL the baby wipes out of the package or opening the bag of bread and taking a bite out of each piece or rubbing her yogurt in her hair or pulling all the toilet paper off the roll or throwing all the rock salt meant for the front porch onto the carpet or pounding on the keyboard and freezing my computer or putting videos into the VCR the wrong way she really is AWESOME! Haha. She's my little spazzy girl and even though I get exasperated (quite frequently), I really just want to squeeze her and kiss her all over and tickle her. She can make me laugh at the drop of a hat.

Wish us luck in California!! SUNSHINE, HERE WE COME!!!