A little catch up...

Just a little of this and a little of that.

February is one of my favorite months of the year. We start off by celebrating our anniversary, then Valentine's day which is always fun at our house and then a long holiday weekend. We usually leave the country each year in celebration of all of these things but this year for several reasons we stayed home. Either way, February is always a month full of lots of love in our house.

Rick and his best friends from growing up headed down to San Diego for four days to do some surfing which is something they do every year. He came back into town the day before Valentine's Day. All week while he was gone he reminded me how much he loves me by doing little romantic things. It started off with a love letter in the mail which I love getting. I have a whole treasure chest of love letters from him all tied up in a big bow like they did in the olden days. I was telling him just last night while we were curled up in bed how much I love his love letters and how I was excited for our great grandchildren to find them one day when we are gone, read them and know how much we loved each other.

A day or so later a private shared board showed up on my pinterest page. He had created a private shared board for just the two of us with some romantic and sassy pins on it. He still continues to send me little romantic messages every now and then on our board, which I love. I then got an email invitation for our Friday night (Valentine's night) activity which gave me some homework and a little prep work. On Friday night after the kids went to bed he pulled out our RC Cola wooden crate and had it filled with some deliciousness. He had my favorite cheese (Camembert) with a french baguette, a homemade passion fruit orange sparkling drink, chocolate biscuit cookies, fresh strawberries, asian pears, passion fruit and some fruit candies. He also made me a sassy blues cd mix. I won't tell you exactly what our activity was but it was romantic, thoughtful, and well planned. I love this guys. He is always doing thoughtful romantic things for me. What more could a girl want.

We decided to buy the kids a play structure one weekend. It was totally spontaneous and not thought out. We knew we wanted one and we were looking on Craigslist for them but we didn't think much beyond that. Over the holiday weekend we found a good deal on one in Livermore so we decided right then and there to take it. We thought we could have my dad and two brothers who live in Livermore help us disassemble it and help us loaded it up. However, none of them were home so it ended up being just Rick and I in our new Honda pilot with all 3 kids and a trailer behind us. It took us 5 hours (with the kids in the car) to take it apart in a few big chunks and get it loaded into our trailer and a truck we borrowed. It took us a long time to drive home since it was so huge and top heavy. We had the slide slicking straight up in the air. Once we got it home (at 9:00pm) we couldn't unload it by ourselves so we had to leave it on the street as is. The next day our neighbors help us unload the two towers and roofs into the backyard. We then realized that we didn't have a place to put this huge thing. The spot where we were planning on putting it was not ready for it yet. That side of our yard needs some re-leveling and some stone pathways and bushes taken out. We didn't want to put it on the other side with the grass because we had other plans for that area. We realized that our spontaneity was not a good idea. We ended up only putting one tower up temporarily until we get the yard ready for it. It has two towers, a rock wall, sandbox, picnic table, slide, and 3 swings. The kids call it their tree house and are loving it. Just wait until they get the whole thing.

A few more happenings this month...

Crew, a lover of all things sweet, a lover of all things messy and know a lover of flour mixes. I have found Crew in the pancake mix a few times now but this time he decided that a handful from the bag was not good enough. He had to dump the whole bag onto the floor and dig in head first. Once he saw me coming he put his head down again and tried to lick up as much as he could. 

We have been doing a little work on the inside as well. I have been working on my craft closet and Rick built a work bench for the garage. I have been into recycling things lately and making them into useable things. It gives me a project to work on and I don't have to spend my house money on it.

Our new neighborhood has donation days almost monthly, where you can leave stuff out in front of your house and the donation truck comes and picks it up on certain days. I am always amazed at what people are throwing away. I want to take half of it. However, I don't want to be the new neighbor who scrounges through peoples trash and takes things. I did see some old beige metal file cabinets that the donation truck did not pick up (must not have fit within their requirements). They sat in front of the house down the street for two weeks, so one night I sent Rick down in the car (in the dark) to get them. I painted them bright yellow and used them in my craft closet as legs to my desk. We found a brand new door in our shed when we moved is so we cut it down to fit in the closet and painted it white. I then used lots of stuff that I gathered from my grandma's house when cleaning out her house. She had several old vintage jars with the cutest cowboy lids. I used those to hold different things. We bought some peg board and used it for the work bench and the wall of my closet. I painted it teal. Here are a few pictures of my craft closet. It isn't done yet but here are some middle of the project pictures.

 Here is my door desk on top of the painted file cabinets. I put a wooden rod up to put all of my ribbon on. Down below you can see my vintage cowboy jars filled with craft supplies. On the right side wall is my old cabinet that my great uncle made. He was a really well know wood worker in San Fransisco for many years. I had this cabinet up in my loft as my jewelry box. I painted it red and now keep my paints and stuff in it.

 Here is the inside of the Bingham and Co. box with my paints.

 This is all in the right hand closet. I still have to do some work in the closet on the left. There are two big closets right next to each other that make one big one. This closet is in our library which has a couch bed in it for guests, along with a guest bathroom attached. Basiclly, this room is a craft room, library and guest room, but on an ordinary day it is all mine. We are going to put sliding barn doors on the two closets so they can easily be opened and used.

We went to Disney on ice a few weekends ago with the kids. Athen liked it but Crew was entertained for about 2 minutes straight and that was about it. While we were in Oakland we headed over to Berkeley bowl, the kids favorite store. We bought so many different kinds of fruits and vegetables including a buko (coconut). Every time we travel to the West Indies or anywhere tropical of course we have to drink buko and eat the fresh young coconut so now the kids love to get coconuts. Here we are drinking our coconut after a nice family bike ride/walk.

We have been working outside the last few weekends in the yard as well as making our lemonade stand with the kids. Athen has been so excited for our family lemonade stand, which we will use in our backyard for parties not as a real stand in a public place. He loved nailing the wood together and dragging the wood pieces all around the yard. He loves helping his papa work and is pretty much stuck to his hip at all times. It is so precious.

This one is for my twin sister...

Alright Mariah, here are a few pictures of your cute niece. She is 7 months tomorrow. She is getting to be quite the little chunky monkey. She finally just started eating baby food. She rolls, swivels and moves all around the room. She gets up on all fours and rocks back and forth so I expect she will be crawling any time now. She has been sitting up for about a month now and she loves playing and watching the boys. She has this special little bond with Crew and gets a big smile on her face every time he comes around. He can really make this little girl laugh. She loves it. She doesn't have any teeth yet which surprises me. I feel like she has been teething for months now but still nothing. She is always happy. I have to take her out of RS at church sometimes because she is too loud, not because she is crying but because she is laughing or jabbering. Of course all the ladies think it is cute which makes it really disruptive. She loves her toys and goes after them on the floor. She is just cute as can be.

Here are some pictures I just took for you. They aren't the best but you get the idea.

Sutton and her big smile with Athen in the background with a bug net over his head.

 Look at that little round chunky face.

Look at those big bright blue eyes.

 Here she is going after her big brother. Athen is laughing and loving it. He fell on the patio the other day and scrapped up his head and got a bloody nose, poor guy. Can you see his huge scrape?

 Here is my little lady ready to crawl.

Loving this little girl.

Valentine's Day Party

My kids love Valentine's Day. After Christmas is over they start asking for all the Valentine's decorations. They want their mailboxes out, the love tree up and all the banners up. The kids really wanted to have a Valentine's Day party this year so that is what we did.

We invited Crew's park group friends to attend. However, all the kids had school off so it was all kids rather then just the younger ones. We had 32 kids RSVP (along with their parents) however, we ended up with 25 kids (some were sick at the last minute).

The kids prepared all week for our party. Athen was making Valentine's every day and putting them in the family mailboxes. He really wanted to have confetti at the party so he helped me make confetti all week long. We have been collecting sticks for a month or so every time we walk home from school, so we used those to make stick arrows with hearts for Athen's valentines. For Crew we printed off some jar pictures and glued bugs on them. The kids loved both.

Our party was a pot luck brunch. We ate lots of food, decorated sugar cookies, played in the backyard, passed out valentine's to all the kids and threw our confetti. It was a fun and crazy morning.

Here are some of our decorations. The kids helped me decorate for the party.

 Our Valentine's garland.

 Our love tree and banners.

Here are our confetti bags that we made for each of the kids. Athen also wanted noisemakers for when we threw the confetti so I made some noisemakers as well.

I made some sour cream cups with candy hearts as thank you for coming treats.

Here are the boys holding up their valentine's that they made.

Athen's is the stick arrow and Crew's is the jar with the bugs. It says "Happy Valentine's Day Love Bug. They loved them both.

Crew ate two plates full of powdered donuts. He was in heaven with all the donuts, cinnamon rolls and cookies around. It was his lucky day. There was so many people and so much going on I wasn't able to control his eating and his sticky fingers.

Some of the kids eating.

Decorating the sugar cookies.

Passing out valentine's cards to everyone.

Throwing the confetti. This is one of our family traditions which our kids LOVE. Everyone else seemed to like it as well. Yes it was a pretty big mess - 25 bags of confetti all over the place, but it was worth the memory for the kids.

The kids are collecting all the confetti to throw it up again and again.

We had a fun Valentine's I hope you did too!

R+C

Rick and I celebrated our 6th year anniversary this last weekend. It's crazy how fast time goes by. I still feel like we are newlyweds. We started our celebration on Friday night with some family fun. I had been pretty excited about the anniversary gift that I got for him and was excited for Friday night to give it to him (our anniversary was actually on Sunday the 2nd).

Rick and I give the traditional anniversary gifts to each other every year (like wood, paper, leather etc.). This year the traditional gift was iron. My gift from Rick was delivered to the house a few days before with a picture of what it was on the box. I was very excited to see that it was an iron fire pit for our backyard. I have been talking about having a fire pit in my backyard for a few years now. The other reason it was so exciting to me was, it went perfectly with what I gave him, a branding iron. Yes, you might think it is odd that we gave each other a fire pit and a branding iron for our anniversary but we loved it. We may very well be the only two who would give such gifts and love them and that is what makes us us.

I ordered the branding iron on Etsy. It's a heart shape with a R+C in the middle. You can brand wood, leather, steaks or what ever you want. My thought was to brand one of the big Sycamore trees in our yard with a heart shaped R+C. 

The kids LOVE having bonfires and making smores. One of our favorite family memories from Costa Rica was building a bonfire on the beach and roasting marshmallows. Every time we go to the beach or camping we have to have a bonfire. Friday night I called Rick at work and told him to come home early. The kids and I made some pilipino food (pancit) for dinner in the wok and we ate our dinner around the campfire in our backyard. We then roasted some heart shaped marshmallows and made smores. We told spooky campfire stories and sang some songs. I then gave Rick his branding iron and we put it in the fire to heat it up. We then branded the big tree in the backyard of our first house. I love this memory that we created together. 

We are more about giving gifts that have meaning and create memories rather then something flashy that cost a lot of money. My thought with the branding iron is to take it with us everywhere we go. I want it to become a new family tradition just like our yellow rubber raft is. When we travel we bring our iron and make our mark where ever we go in this world. We can then keep track of all the places we have stamped with our love and put them into a book one day. In years to come, when our grandchildren or great  grandchildren travel to those places we can give them the coordinates of where our initial heart is and they will know how much we love each other. That is perfectly romantic!

 Eating our pancit around the fire and Rick getting his new branding iron.

 Roasting our heart shaped marshmallows.

I love these pictures of the branding iron in the fire.

Rick branding the tree in the backyard of our first house - perfectly romantic memory.

Here we are ready to go out on our date.

On Saturday night my dad came up from San Jose and watched all three kids for us while we had a date night. We went to a local restaurant in Lafayette called Metro. It was a nice restaurant and fun to get out but the food wasn't great. We were hoping for the food to be a little better then it was. We had a mushroom bruschetta which was the best part of the meal. Rick wanted the duck but they were out so he got the mahi mahi with some potatoes. I had some pork with some pasta. They were both good but nothing special. We decided to go to Walnut Creek for dessert. We headed over to Lotties Creamery which was delicious (better then the meal). I had a vanilla with salted toffee almond ice cream in a waffle cone and Rick had a vanilla ice cream with chocolate covered peanuts and marshmallows. They were both delcicious. We then ended the night with a shopping trip to Target all by ourselves. It was nice to have a night away.

I can't believe it has already been six years. Ricky is the love of my life and it just gets better and better. I always told myself that good things come to those that wait and he was definately worth the long wait. I feel lucky he is all mine. Love you to pieces RickyB!

Pinterest Party

I decided to host a Pinterest/House Warming/Girls Night Out party at my new house. I invited all my friends from Oakland so they could see the new house and we could enjoy a night away from the kids. Each person had to pick a Valentine craft from Pinterest. The party had a Valentine theme. They had to bring the materials to make 6 of the same crafts. Everyone sat around the table and made their craft and then we exchanged crafts.

Everyone also brought their favorite treat and we sat around eating lots of delicious treats and some homemade hot chocolate. It was fun and good to see my friends.

Here are my arrows straws that I made for the sodas. We had cream soda and black cherry.

Here is my vintage Valentine banner that my sister and I made last year.

I made everyone cd's with all the pictures from the dinner parties that they have attended. I also made some valentine's confetti bags along with a brown paper bag for all the crafts they collected through out the night.

I had a craft that everyone could make if they wanted. The kids have been collecting sticks on the way home from school so we used them for allow valentines.

Here we are crafting, eating, listening to girly music and chatting. There were 10 of us.