Banana Ladies

This was just too funny/strange not to write about. This morning, just as Isaac woke up and we were laying in bed snuggling he started talking nonsense. I realized he was telling me about his dream. He kept going on and on and I could tell it was very real to him. Here's what he told me:
There were banana ladies and they were wearing boots, pants and pewfect hats (perfect). They were trying to eat his candy and get him. He wanted to get an alligator so it could bite the banana ladies' legs off. They were wewy scawy (really scary). I told him it was just a dream and not real, but he didn't buy it. "There is banana ladies momma, and they try and eat kids!!!"
I looked down at my little guy with his crazy morning afro, backwards undies, banana fear in his eyes and thought, thank you Lord for sending me such a wacky, complicated child. My life would be far less colorful. Amen.

Tomatoes For Sale!

Aubrey and Sydney love trying to sell things. They pretty much jump at any chance to set up shop.
On this day it was garden-fresh tomatoes. They made signage and had Uncle John staple it up for them. They also decided to add glasses of water to their merchandise.

Here they are eagerly awaiting the first customer.

As good of saleswomen as they are though.........

they may need to work on the overall cleanliness and presentation of the stand.

Fairy Fest

Back in June my mom took my sister and I with our girls out for a very female outing. We went to a town called Alpine that's just outside of San Diego to a really beautiful nursery. It's called Summers Past Farms I believe. Each spring they hold a fairy festival where the whole place is filled with little girls (and a few poor daughterless moms that dressed up their sons) dressed like fairies. There was a fairy parade where we all lined up and fluttered through the gardens and checked out the other costumes. There were some very elaborate ones and a few scaryish gothic style outfits. It was a great place to people watch, for sure!  We packed a picnic, sat in the shade and enjoyed all the flowers growing everywhere. It was a great spot for some photo shoots. There was also a contest that we didn't participate in to build a "fairy garden" and bring to display. They were really cute. We had such a nice girly day.

Our girls were probably the brightest fairies there

This was a cute Japanese fairy garden :) It's hard to see all the tiny details.

Where's Daddy?

Not to sound weak, needy, mushy or pathetic, but I miss this guy. Not the one with fluffy white hair.....he's in my face all day. My husband. I've barely seen him in the past 2 weeks.
Summer's over. Party's over. He's back to work and the beginning of the school year is wild busy for teachers. Especially really anal ones that have to have every little detail planned and organized before the kids come to class. I'm married to one of those so he's been "preparing"  like crazy and the kids started this monday. He's been consumed, but we'll all survive. Things will calm down soon.

I'm not the only one that misses him though. Every morning Isaac asks "hey, where's Daddy?"
He doesn't quite understand yet.  Poor guy :)

Fresh as a Daisy, Tight as a Knot

I decided to revamp my blog. I was bored with my old look and name and needed a fresh start. I've been wanting to post more often so I started messing around for awhile and this is what I came up with for now.

We've had a lot of new things start up around here. We started a new school year, Jeff goes back to work tomorrow, Aubrey's playing soccer, Clayton is back in guitar lessons etc. The craziness begins! It feels good to be getting back into our routines though. This summer really made us realize that our family functions much better with a schedule in place. Boy do I have a tight schedule too. I have most of our day planned out in half hour increments & make time for much to be done by everyone. Oh man, it's a beautiful thing. It's all written and color coded and posted on the wall for all to see. You should stop by sometime and see it- it'll freak you out. I think my mom gets dizzy and nauseous when she sees it.

To each his own........

Big Bear, Little Boy

Last weekend we all packed up our van and took off for a weekend in Big Bear. My sis and John invited us to stay with them in his sister's cabin. Jeff, Aubrey, Isaac and I were feeling a cold coming on, but we ignored it and went any way. On our way up the mountain our ears started plugging. Isaac said " Momma, my eaws not wowking. I can't heaw!" So I passed him, and the others a piece of gum and told him it would help unplug his ears. "ok" he says. I waited to hear him tell me that he could hear again, or that his ears popped.

I turned around to check on him and saw that he had put the gum IN his ears! We all started laughing at our funny guy. He was really mad. He hates his ears being plugged, but hates being laughed at even more.

Easter Pictures

For the Love of Shoes

This boy of mine has a major thing about shoes. Even on his first birthday, before he could talk, he opened all his gifts and it was clear that the 2 pairs of shoes won the "favorite gift" contest. He loves them all. He wears Aubrey's high heeled dress up shoes with ease, he wears my flip-flops, the boys cleats, pretty much anything he can get is feet into. However, lately boots have been his thing. There have been many tears shed over Aubrey wanting to wear her own boots. I've been keeping my eyes peeled for some boy boots that aren't too ugly or expensive. My parents couldn't take it any longer and headed to the Boot Barn yesterday and picked up these puppies. Maybe it was seeing him at church with Aubrey's cowgirl boots that have flowers and sequins stitched in them, or maybe it was him wearing her polka-dot rain boots all day Easter. Whatever it was that drove them to the Barn......Isaac thanks them from the bottom of his heart.

He doesn't want to wear them with pants on either. It covers up too much awesomeness.

They slept with us in bed last night too. He even woke up around 3 am to ask if they were his boots and where they were. I reassured him that they were indeed his, and they were right next to us.
Easter Sunday.

On our way to visit Uncle Ron and Aunt Cindy! He's worn these all over the place......when daddy's at work. Jeff says he just can't do it. He cannot go into public with his little boy wearing pink heels.

Trev's Big Night

If you know Trevor, you know he is obsessed with the Lakers. So for Christmas this year we bought tickets to take him to a game. We also let him pick a friend to bring along, he had no problem choosing. Uncle Nathan, of course. On our way there we also let him pick where we ate dinner. He chose Jack in the Box. We gave him many more options and I really wanted him to chose somewhere better, but oh well. Not about me. He wanted a double bacon cheeseburger.....yuck. Not about me. He felt sick afterwards and said he thought it was a little too much meat and it tasted kinda gross, like pork. Ha Ha. Told ya so Trev!So we picked up Uncle Nate at his friends crazy downtown L.A. apt. and off we went.
Trevor was so excited he hardly spoke....which is highly unusual.
Here he is in front of Staples center, where he would like to someday have his ashes scattered. (No joke. This came about one day while in a very deep conversation with Auntie DD)
Getting Uncle Nathan's help in the Pro Shop with his hard earned cash. He did a lot of dishes, trash emptying, vacuuming, dog poop scooping to buy his Ron Artest shirt.

We were there to see Kobe be awarded for breaking a record for most points scored.....very cool.
There's the man in the flesh. Warming up.
JOY

He crashed big time. He just couldn't take anymore. We had such a good time. Even me the anti-sport.

Would you like a warm towel?

When it's a chilly day and I'm bringing in a load of hot laundry-especially towels, I tell all the kids to lie on the floor. They don't even ask why. They line up.....

and wait patiently...
for a nice warm pile of laundry to be dumped on them. Then there are a few minutes of quiet while they just lie there and enjoy.

Sugar and Spice

I love having a girl. I love my boys too, of course, I'm just thankful that God gave me at least one of these to raise. She has become my little nature lover. She is the usually the first one buggin to get outside to play survivor girl, or pick me a bouquet of flowers. She's the one that brings in the bugs and begs me to find the magnifying glass so she can really check it out. She's also the first to fall out of the big walnut tree in the back yard. Freaked us both out pretty good.( Turns out that little pink flip-flops make it harder to climb in. Bare feet work much better.) The boys love all this stuff too, it's just that stereotypically they should be more adventurous than their little sis, right?

Last week we drove by this field of flowers and she was excited about it. So I asked if she wanted me to take some pictures of her in the field. She claimed that she was thinking the same thing and did not let me forget about my promise until I followed through. So here are a few of my favorites.

My little Aubrey Claire Flower :)

Moving right along

Gosh, I may need to change the title of my blog. We are no longer desert rats. We moved back to Yucaipa two weeks ago, and we couldn't be happier about it. We are renting a house that we love. It is so private and quiet, something that I didn't want to give up after when we left Joshua Tree. We have a beautiful yard. There are plum trees, an apple tree, a walnut tree, roses, grass (something I missed) and a really cool view. The kids are loving it. They've spent most of our days here outside. We still have a lot to unpack, but I feel so relaxed and lighthearted out here!

There are some things we're going to miss. We made some really great friends that we won't be seeing as much, the JT National Park hiking being down the street, the desert night sky.....hmm. That's pretty much it! The list of what I won't be missing is a lot longer, so I guess we made the right decision.

I want to keep up on my blog again, so if anyone out there still reads this, the video of Isaac dancing won't be the only thing up for six months anymore :)

Peace.

Loose Hips

My baby sure can shake what his mama gave him. He loves listening to tunes on the ipod. This video is funny until his big brother tries to help him put the bud back in his ear. Just stop watching as soon as it falls out!!

Wild, Sassy, Funny Five Year Old

These are back from Aubrey's birthday (June 13th). We took her by herself for an afternoon. She chose to have lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. She loves the thai lettuce wraps-me too. She was so excited for this day and was in her spazzy mode. She was bouncing around, trying to be funny and kept asking when they were going to sing to her with the ice cream in a wine glass. It was fun for us too. Just having one child is so crazy different. We actually have time to let them finish telling a story.

Is this the freakiest long little girl tongue that you've ever seen? She's very proud of it. Next time you see her, ask if she can touch her nose with it!
\

Next we headed to Build-a-Bear Workshop. If you've ever been there, they do this whole "cutesy" thing with the kids when they stuff the bear. They have the kid hold a heart and tell them to kiss it, rub it on their nose, do a little dance, spin around etc. Kinda cute for a little one that isn't way too self conscious for her years. Everything the girl told her to do Aubrey would look all embarrassed and say "um, no. I don't want to". The chick was confused, most little girls must eat this up.
..

Then you get to give your bear a bath. It's actually an air bath. Being the little OCD germophobe that she is, this may have been Aubrey's favorite part. She really got into it and could have gone on for another 20 minutes if we let her.

The finished product. She dressed her in a very fancy pink ballet outfit. Sparkles Rose Mitchell, welcome to our family.

Poor little spazz. She burned out. All that bouncing and talking and bear-cleaning and sugar eating and lotion sniffing (bath and body works stop). We all three had so much fun. Until next year, my wild little girl. :)

Summerness

A few pictures from our super busy, super fun summer. So far.... We stayed a few days out near The Marsh family + Nathan and Steph. Nathan got us a room through his work so it really felt vacationish. It was very nice.

We spent a day at the beach.

You can't visit the beach without turning someone into a sand mermaid. Seaweed nipples are mandatory.

Trev was in the water most of the day. He loves it. He'd probably be a surfer if we lived close enough.

They are all so quiet and busy at the beach. I love it. I just wish there was grass to sit on instead of sand. The stuff drives me crazy.

In our room.

Aubrey and Isaac's favorite thing to do together....dress up in princess costumes and watch Barbie movies. FANTASTIC

We went camping at Lake Piru at the end of June with John and Emily. John rented a pontoon boat. It was really fun. The kids fished and took turns driving, then we all jumped off and went swimming. It was definitely a highlight of the trip.

Captain Aubrey. She was a nervous driver.

All packed in. We have almost too much stuff to fit in our van when we camp. It was a long drive and the boys had sleeping bags and pillows all over them. Toward the end of the drive Clayton started freaking out and trying to get everything away from him and wanted us to pull over. It was really funny....I know how he feels. I get claustrophobic sometimes too. We were just down the street from the campground though, so he didn't suffer too long! Ha Ha

Isaac and Bella relaxing in the jacuzzi. She likes it and starts falling asleep!
So this is some of what we've been up to lately. So much more to come!