The rest of November . . . .

The week after my trip to San Francisco, I had the luxury of a day at home with no kids. I know Veteran's Day is about honoring our service members, but for me the day is a much needed time to get things done all by myself! I spent the day painting a wall in the kitchen, relaxing, and even doing some work for CREEC. Matt rewarded himself for holding down the fort without me with a concert and a night out with his friends on Wednesday. Luckily, I was super relaxed after my day off and had plenty of patience and fun to give the girls. We played peekaboo, made a huge mess in the playroom, and rocked to sleep

The dogs are so happy when I am home all day and the kids aren't

Painting time

Peek-a-boo!

I love lazy Saturdays with Matt and the girls. We drink coffee in the living room while the girls watch the neighbors out the front window and then do an activity or two, followed by a car nap. This Saturday we took the girls to play at Kensington Park. Ella is starting to really enjoy exploring the slides and activities at the park.

Madeline has had a list of activities she wants to do since September. She regularly dictates the list to me: Sea World, Beach, the Zoo, Train to the Carousel with Brennan or Joss or both (whoever is available and I need to call their moms right now), and a trip to the new park by our old house. Since Madi was able to cross off her zoo trip with Grandma T and Daddy, she requested a trip to Sea World after her swimming lesson the following week. It happened to be the first weekend of Sea World's holiday celebrations. We were able to see some San Diego snow, reindeer, and enjoy a quiet Sea World visit since most of the people were hanging out in Santa's Village.

Flip flops and snow? That's how we do it.

Ella had to see how the snow tasted

Turtle and fish viewing

Trees and Christmas music. I wasn't quite ready for this mid-November.

We have settled into a comfortable morning routine. The girls roll out of bed around 6:30 and must immediately eat since they seem to wake up starving. They like to watch some Mickey Mouse Clubhouse while waiting for Matt and I to finish getting ready if they have time. It is so nice to be able to get ready without hauling Eleanor around now.

Madeline's new favorite place to eat is Sonic. We have gone a few football Sundays in a row while Matt is at the Chargers game. Basically, this is an awesome way for me to get Eleanor a long nap in the car and feed Madi at the same time. Madeline loves sitting in the front seat like a big girl wile she devours her corn dog and apple juice.

Yummy corndog

Ella has no fear. She likes to try to stand on the chairs now

Lani makes an awesome pillow

Thanksgiving week was so amazing. It was hot and gorgeous. Matt took the day before Thanksgiving off and we went to Mission Beach with the girls. This is why I live in San Diego!

Digging in the sand

Ella testing the water bucket

Post beach neighborhood watch

We spent a lovely Thanksgiving with Grandma Sue and Gramps at the club. None of us had to cook or clean . . . it was perfect! I stuffed myself with mashed potatoes and stuffing, Matt had multiple servings, and Madi got to eat french fries and nuggets. It was such a relaxing holiday! We met up with Auntie Nee in Carlsbad on the Saturday of the break. Madeline requested Ruby's so she could watch the trains and eat eggs. We followed up breakfast with some shoe shopping (Mama's favorite).

The girls had a great time helping Matt get our new patio furniture out of the boxes they were delivered in. After the chairs were outside, they played in the box for a while. Madi said it was her house and they should sleep in it.

Post-thanksgiving we started getting ready for Christmas! It was so much fun to decorate our house even though the decorations we have don't stretch nearly as far with a whole house as they did in a condo. Madeline and I took a quick trip to Target (her favorite store) to pick up some decorations for the outside. Our house looks so festive, I am unbelievably happy to be celebrating the holidays in a real size home!

Mom's weekend away

The weekend after Matt's trip to Vegas, I had a conference in San Francisco for my Noyce Fellowship. I was so excited to sleep in a bed by myself and eat all of my meals with two hands for a couple days. I completely overdid the fun one of the nights, but remembered how to deal with a hangover from my college days and managed to power through the conference. It was nice to have a chance to miss the girls and I actually came back with a few more hours of patience than I might have otherwise had.

View from the top floor of my conference hotel!

While I was gone, my mom took Madeline for the weekend and Matt had Eleanor. Madi had a ton of fun with Grandma T, shopping, playing with Bella, and eating at The Brick. Eleanor went with daddy for breakfast out at Kensington Cafe, visited Grandma Sue, and relaxed at home (by which I mean she screamed in her crib while Daddy tried to help Ella learn to go to sleep without Mom rocking her). On Sunday, Grandma T took Madeline to swim lessons and then met up with Matt and Eleanor at the zoo. Happily everyone survived me being away and now I can leave whenever I want, hahaha.

Visiting Grandma Sue and Yoda

Grandma T took Madi for a haircut!

New boots

Stealing all of grandma T's bed

Ella and Jameson <3

Daddy's weekend away

Matt started November spending a weekend away from the kids. The day after Halloween, Matt headed out to Vegas with Dru and Eric. The guys stayed at the Venetian, ate some good meals, and gambled their money away (I am sure they did more, but this is the only story I got from Matt).

15 years and six kids between them makes a difference

 I kept the girls and scheduled their weekend to the maximum in order to keep myself from going insane. Amelia and Joss came over for dinner Saturday night (bringing a yummy bottle of wine - again for mom's sanity). I love how easy the girls are together even with their age difference. I managed to get both girls to sleep by myself (Madi watched TV in the playroom while I rocked Ella down then she went to bed with me at 8:30). We were up making pancakes by 5:30 in the morning thanks to the time change. This left us lots of time to play in the morning, go to church and head to the YMCA for Madi's swim lesson. She is back in swim this month to help her keep her skills for next summer. We picked up lunch from Madi's current favorite restaurant (the corner bakery) and had a car picnic while Ella slept in the backseat. Riva and Marissa came over in the afternoon for a playdate. This got us over the hump to dinnertime, a walk and then bedtime. A miracle occurred and both girls fell asleep in my lap in the rocking chair after less than ten minutes of rocking!!! I was able to put them into their own beds by 7:30 which gave me plenty of time to clean up, make lunches and do my own work. yay!!! All in all, a successful weekend without Daddy (though of course, he was missed).

The girls love to "help" with the laundry. Madeline is actually getting pretty good at folding

Morning pancakes

Madi helping Ella drink her bottle

Sisters!

Not sure how she feels about Spaghettios

Before bed walk with Mom. Madeline needed a light up necklace since it was dark already

Yep two kids on my lap. This is about 1 minute before Madeline fell asleep too.

In other news, the girls are becoming more their own people every minute. Eleanor is completely weaned (yay!) but making up for it with multiple bottles of formula at night. She loves to eat and is in that awesome period of time where she is entertained by foods for hours if we go out. Ella is so close to walking, but isn't quite confident enough yet to take steps without holding onto somebody's hand. Since she is giant, I am hoping Eleanor will start walking on her own soon!
Madeline is singing songs she makes up about everything: the car, school, her plans for the afternoon. She is obsessed with putting band-aids on her "ouchies" and then as soon as a band-aid is on, she can't use her arm or leg or whatever. It's like she goes from fine to coming home with a limb blown off in war within one minute. "I can't walk because I have a band-aid" is a sentence she uses often in our house. This also means we have to rip band-aids off after a couple days and hear the screams of death that mean she isn't ready to give it up (even though the band-aid is beginning to burn her skin). Madi is also so helpful and loves to fold laundry with me, make lunches and watch the neighborhood out the front window. My favorite thing is listening to Madeline go through the cookbooks with Eleanor and discuss what they should make before running off to her playroom kitchen to bake us some gingerbread men or cakes or pies!

Playing with lids mom

fries for dinner

neighborhood watch

laundry help

Halloween 2014

Every Halloween gets better with kids. I love that we get to decorate the house, dress up, and spend the night having fun! There was a time (pre-kids) where it began to feel like we were supposed to be wearing super cool or sexy costumes and finding  a raging party to go to every Halloween, it is so nice to have that feeling be gone. Instead we drank a ton of wine and cocktails with our friends while corralling a group of excited toddlers and elementary schoolers around the neighborhood. The girls also had a parade at school with their annual trick or treating at Siesels and the Coffee Shop.

How many Elsa's are on parade?

Little witch

Ella got much too heavy and had to ride in the stroller with her friends for the second half of the parade

Of course we started off the holiday with the annual Bulldog Halloween picnic. The dogs bobbed for hot dogs (Jameson miraculously didn't eat his though he managed to get one out), they had a costume parade and then we ate cake. Madi was so excited about the cake! We dressed the crew in their costumes (a witch and her flying monkeys). I think I need to work a little bit harder next year on our group theme, but they were all so cute anyways.

Costume group winners!

:)

Madi practicing her princess walk

We had a few friends and their kiddos over for Halloween. We participated in maybe half of the neighborhood parade (but didn't want the kids to wear their legs out too early), headed home for dinner and then let the wild things loose on the streets. The kids were so enthusiastic about every piece of candy and about every house that had a pumpkin or a decoration. It was so awesomely cute! We chaperoned with our to-go cups and even Ella seemed to enjoy the night out (I ended up taking her out in the stroller because she was so cranky I couldn't deal with keeping her in the house). Thankfully, post-parade, Alyson and Greg elected to hang out and pass out candy. After Brennan got tired of trick or treating, he took over candy passing out and he was so good at it!

Trick or treat!

Brennan as a ninja turtle

Madi witch

Jocelyn as a rainbow spider (go amelia on the costume making!)

Trying to get a pic of the rainbow spider doing a handstand

Baby Julia in outfit number 3!

Monkey crawling away