kfp and baby boo-boo

we had a full 3 days of going from birthday parties to a fun bbq get-together with good friends this memorial day weekend, all the while grateful for the freedom to do so because of the men and women who serve(d) our country. a big THANK YOU.

allan took lucas and emma to see kung fu panda 2 this afternoon, so i headed out with elise to do some galavanting around town. our last stop was to craft warehouse where i happened on a great sale on beads (thinking about getting into jewelry-making). just as i was finishing up on my selection and heading to the counter to pay, elise turned her head and bumped into the corner of a table causing a nasty little gash on her forehead. it took her a second, but she started wailing and didn't stop until we got out of the store and into the car. after that, she was fine and asked about getting an ice pack when she got home. poor thing.

surprise!

back in march we took a road trip with my sister and her boyfriend to visit my parents because my mom was having some health issues. (she's fine now, praise God!) it was a complete surprise to my mom and, boy, did we surprise her. my dad was really cute, too. he's usually terrible at keeping secrets. he just can't stand the excitement and blurts things out or likes to tell others that he knows something they don't. stinker. well, this time, he did a fabulous job of not saying a thing to my mom. every time he called during our drive he would talk to me in a whisper, which, if you know my dad, is almost impossible. anyway, we left really early in the morning and arrived late at night because we didn't want to spend the night anywhere. when we got to my parents' street, i called my mom and asked how she was doing. (she had friends over and was playing mah-jong with them.) i pretended like i was at home and even had lucas say hi to her. while this was going on, everyone filed out of the car and my dad let us in. emma was the first to see my mom and she didn't recognize her because my mom had zero expectation of seeing us. it was so fun! needless to say, she was ecstatic about us visiting and we had a great time seeing her, my dad, and my grandma. here are just a few pictures of our trip. the rest are on my parents' and allan's cameras.

we were spoiled and ate a ton of awesome food that we can't find here in the tri-cities. we had a delicious chinese dinner to celebrate my mom and dad's 35th wedding anniversary, we had dim sum a couple of times, we had authentic shanghai cuisine (yum!), and we also had awesome japanese food. here we are at the japanese restaurant where emma tried sushi for the first time. she loved it!

here's my mom with a fish eyeball that she's about to devour!

we went into oakland's chinatown and i got to see my preschool! yes, i remember it. :)

this is a sad, sad picture. it's a picture of the family room of my childhood home. our old neighbors (who my parents are still friends with) told us that our old house (the house next to theirs) was raided by the police because they were growing marijuana in it. we couldn't believe it. my jaw dropped when we saw this, literally. so SAD. ugh.

water fun!

a cool new water park (think sprinklers, not slides) recently opened up close to our house. they had a grand opening on thursday that we weren't planning on participating in, but in the end we were so glad we did! they had invited a bunch of important people to take part in the grand opening - the mayor, some city of richland peeps, donators, and even big top the clown! the most well-received of these was, of course, big top! he had a loooong line of kids waiting for him to create a balloon animal for them. elise got a butterfly and lucas and emma got swords. he is one talented guy. my cousin had her concession trailer there and gave away free popcorn to everyone, which was also a huge hit! the park is amazing...something like 5,000 square feet of play. wow! and, the best part...it's only minutes away from my house! the kids had a lot of fun even though they weren't dressed for the occasion, and a snapshot of us ended up in our local paper. (check out pages 2 and 6. if you're wondering, the thing on my neck is probably a bug or a piece of food. i checked and there is nothing on my neck anymore. and, elise looks grumpy because she was scared of the guy-in-a-bunny costume that came to visit.) can't wait to go again!

a day in the life of "daddy"

lucas has been dying to visit allan's office for a couple of years now. he is still too young to participate in "bring your child to work day," but allan was able to get us all visitors badges so that the kids could see where he spends a majority of his day. they LOVED roaming through the halls of their daddy's "work," seeing the big conference rooms with the fun drop-down screens and lights, seeing where aunty vicky's office is, where my old office was, and the biggest kick they got out of their visit was the ice machine in the lunchroom. check them out!

deal of the week

once we moved elise into a regular bed, i realized i had to get her a new comforter. i had already picked out a duvet for her (same one as emma, just to make things easier all around), so i just needed a plain-jane comforter. i really didn't care what it looked like since i was going to cover it with a duvet anyway. i had checked several stores (tj maxx, bb&b, target), but for some reason i couldn't find anything under $25 (at the least). so, i went back to target last weekend determined to find a deal. i was in luck because some employees were working on re-shelving one of the aisles of the bedding department. they were getting rid of the old stuff and getting ready to stock the shelves with new inventory. i walked past one of their carts and saw an extra-long twin size comforter for $9. yeah! i picked it up and figured that i could just cut and sew it to fit a normal twin-sized bed. so that is just what i did last night. it didn't take me long. needless to say, i was excited that it worked out in the end and i didn't botch up a brand new, perfectly good comforter. i love it when blogs have tutorials. even though this project doesn't require a tutorial, i thought it would be cool to include some pictures. i am just thankful the idea came to mind.

all pinned and ready to sew........done!

lately happenings

just a quick post to share what we've been up to lately. i'm going to make this quick so that i can go and catch some zzzs before the kids storm our room! (the changing up of sleeping arrangements has caused me and allan some rough nights these last few weeks. and, i know i still haven't posted a pic of the girls' room, but i will soon! it's nothing big, so be warned.) hope you enjoy these pics!

lucas and emma had "crazy hair" day at awana a couple of weeks ago. i have been wanting to shave lucas' head just to see how it would look. i was getting tired of taking him to get his hair cut (which didn't happen very often anyway). so for his crazy hair do, we decided to give him a mohawk. we all thought it looked pretty cool!

last weekend, allan took lucas and emma on a fishing outing. so, elise and i hung out together for the first half of the day. we went shopping, ran a few errands, and then went to home depot to return something. as we were walking out, we saw that they were having a kids workshop weekend! look what our little elise made...so proud of her!

here's what our typical morning of homeschooling looks like. (i took these last wednesday.) see the smile on his face? love this kid!

here is emma doing "school" while i was working with lucas. such a cutie pie!

and last but not least, here is elise doing storytime with all of her little friends. she's pretending to be miss kelly, our local librarian. i thought this was the cutest thing!

moving on to today's happenings...

our friend, aliyah, came over to play today. after storytime at the library and lunch at the park, we came home and this is what the girls wanted to do towards the end of their time together. i thought they would have wanted to play dress up or something! i kept having to tell emma to keep her eyes on the road. several times she almost drove herself and her passenger off of the curb!