13 months and 15 days

Got a pretty good smudge on my camera lens today. There's no staying mad at this adorable brown eyed boy. I'll just have to keep a mental note that his arms have gotten a tad longer.


Reidy boy went in for his 13th month check-up this week. Oh, your kid's not cool enough to have a 13th month check-up? He just gets a 1 year and 15th month. Well, I really wasn't a fan of driving 12 hours to take Reid to his 15th month appt., so the doctor kindly let me bring in Reid a few months early. Reid is now 30" tall and a whole 16 lbs 14 ounces. I guess Reid decided to start following in his sister's footsteps and drop down to the 0% for weight. I thought somehow Reid could conquer the lean gene. If you all saw how much this kid eats a day, you would be confused too at the meager weight gain. But this kid is always on the go. So even though he eats more than his 3 year old sister, he just burns everything off.

On another front, seems like Reid is not a fan of 2 naps anymore. Whenever I put him down for his afternoon nap he just screams until I come and rescue him. When did everyone else's kids go down to one nap?

Oakland Zoo. Check.

I think you'll all get a good laugh out of this unfortunate event. Especially since I am physically unable to post less than 10 pictures for each and every outing. Pulled my camera out at the zoo to discover it completely useless. The battery was dead. No picture of Ava watching the monkeys swing from tree to tree. No picture of the humongous tortiose chomping on some grass. No pictures of the alligators or sea otters. No giraffees or elephants. I must admit, it was very freeing not having to worry about taking pictures and just enjoying the kids. It was nice that trip, but don't worry my lovely blog readers, the camera battery is charged and ready for anything that comes our way. And plus, we'll be fitting in a few more zoo trips before our departure from CA. Especially since I bought a zoo membership just prior to us deciding we were going to move. Thank goodness I got a dang good deal on it. I only have to go a few times for it to pay for the membership. Luckily I was able to put one of my friends on one of the two cards, so she can get good use out of it this year.

Ocean Beach. Check.

After visiting the science museum I thought it would be nice to stop by the beach. It was only about 10 blocks west of us and the weather was pretty warm...for SF. Upon walking up to the beach we were met with this sign. Nice.

It was just gorgeous weather outside. The beach was packed. Gorgeous weather at the coast doesn't happen too often.

Here's the fam trying to decide if they are brave enough to touch the freezing water.

It wasn't too bad. There were actually people running into the water in their swimsuits. I would say that they were a little too optimistic. But the kids sure loved getting to splash in the water.

Here is the last picture we will ever have of Reid's adorable hat. A few minutes later a crazy wave came up and overshot the previous waves by at least 20 feet. It even hit people sitting on the dry sand. We were barely touching the previous waves with our feet, so I had to quickly pull Reid out of the water because the water level was now at my knees. In the shuffle Reid's hat fell off and is now one with the sea. Sadness. I liked that hat.

Thankfully Josh was right near Ava when the whole wave fiasco happened and was able to make sure she was safe. I still have thoughts of what could of happened. If we weren't right next to her. If she had ran further out to touch the waves like she had done previously. I'm just so glad she was okay.

So if you happen to find yourself at a beach near SF, pay attention to the warning signs. The waves and rip currents have been known to be pretty harsh. I think we'll stick to the calmer beaches next time!

CA Academy of Sciences. Check.

Since our Saturdays in CA have become very few, we went on a little trip into the city (SF for those non-locals). We decided to spend our afternoon at the CA Academy of Sciences. One of the main reasons we added the museum to our "Must do before we move" list was because it houses a 3 story indoor rainforest. As pictured below (image taken from here).

Waiting in line to go into the dome. Each level was filled with insects and creatures from a different rainforest. But I must admit, it was getting steamy in there by the end and I was pretty glad to leave.

Ava peeking at the birds and butterflies. There was no screen between you and the trees so they could fly anywhere they wanted. Mostly the birds stayed in the trees but the butterflies were everywhere. They even have a mirror by the elevator to make sure you don't take any butterflies with you when you leave.

At first Reid didn't know what to think about the museum.

But that didn't last for long! For the rest of our visit, anything that caught his eye he would take his finger and point at it. It's so much fun watching his start to discover the things around him.

After leaving the rainforest we went down to the aquarium. This walkway was awesome.

The fish in this part were HUGE. Reid could of spent all day pointing away at the sea creatures.

Of course we had to make sure to find Nemo and Dory. Thankfully the fish tank did not disappoint.

One of the exhibits at the museum right now is called Extreme Animals. Below is the largest land mammal to ever be discovered. It's an Indricotherium, or Indy for short :)

I took the above image off of the museum's website because my shot just didn't show how massive the animals truly was. Doesn't Ava look so darling standing on her tippy toes.

Of course, we could not leave before seeing the penguins. Why does everyone love penguins so much? Seems like any museum with animals always has them.

Ava loved watching them whiz by her in the water.

By the end of the trip Reid was getting pretty restless. If you can believe it, Josh offered to miss seeing the penguins and instead walk around with Reid. Now that Reid is walking running, it's hard to keep that little boy still for too long.

On our drive home I asked Ava what her favorite part of the whole museum was. Randomly it was the T Rex at the entrance of the museum. Having no idea that was going to be her favorite part, I didn't take a picture. But this guy did :) Looks like we might just have to invest in getting a membership at Thanksgiving point when we get out to Utah.

Crawling is for babies

This little guy has been cruising on two feet for a few weeks now. I guess he's now technically a toddler, but he's still my baby boy.


Aren't little ones so cute when they're learning to walk? Love how they raise their hands for balance.


Not to be left out, here's my other cutie pie. After seeing the reaction Reid got for walking, Ava made us watch how well she could walk too. I'm a pretty proud Mama to have two super walkers in the family :)

3 more weeks in sunny California

3 weeks from today we will be no longer residents of CA. Hold on a second, I just got a mini panic attack. I just have a lot to do before then! The sad news is we will have to leave all of our friends that we've gotten to know here these past 5 years. You guys are awesome! I have been worrying for weeks about how Ava is going to cope with the move. She's at that age now that she is actually developing friendships and I know she's going to miss her cute buddies. We sure are going to miss them. But the good news is that we are moving closer to family. So I know that will make the transition go much smoother.

Any guesses which parent or sibling are the lucky ones? For some weird reason no one in our family live in the same town, or within 6-8 hours of each other. So you've got 6 options. We could be moving to southern CA, WA, ID, UT, SC or Germany. We've finally decided it was time to try and see how Josh's company does out in (make your guess before you look) this super awesome place! Josh has already got a studio space up there and we're really excited for this new chapter for our family. So here's my question for you all. If you had 3 weeks left in sunny California, what would you make sure to do?

Straight from the mouth of Ava and Reid

Here are a few things that have come out of Ava's mouth this past week.

Ava and I were talking about what a big girl she is now. I mentioned that I was a big girl too; Ava beg to differ. This is Ava's response.
Ava: Mommy, you're not a big girl.
Me: Then what am I?
Ava: You're a bad boy.

I think this conversation is pretty self-explanatory.
Me: Ava, did you just toot?
Ava: Yeah. I toot all the time.

You might all be questioning why I put Reid's name in the title of this post. You might not believe me, but here's what went down.

To give you a little background, Josh and I have been trying to teach Reid a few signs (American Sign Language). Reid is one of the loudest babies I know, especially when he sees something he wants. We just needed to lower the decibels in our home...for our sanity! Now he doesn't get so frustrated when we can't figure out what he wants. Totally worth it.

Back to the story. After eating lunch I was asking him if he was "all done" or if he wanted "more". He quickly did the "more" sign. Then I asked him if he wanted "more food" or "more drink". After I asked the question he did the sign for "more" and then said "Mama". He got so many hugs and kisses after that that he probably regretted giving that response! I love these kids!

We celebrated under the sea

Ava couldn't wait for her first friend party. The night before the big day we were getting her ready for bed and she looks at me and says, "I need a lot of rest for my party." And then promptly gets in bed and falls asleep. Wow. Is that what it takes to get kids to fall asleep at their bedtime?! By the way, doesn't she look darling in her party dress?

Here are the invites that we sent out for the party. Boy, I am so glad that I married a graphic designer. Don't these invites look awesome! My hubby sure knows his stuff :)

After we had already sent out the invites I happened upon this tablecloth in the clearance section at Target. Two promptly made it into my cart. This tablecloth had to been made just for Ava's party.

Especially since I was already planning on making this for the cupcakes. I think the cupcakes turned out pretty sweet. It is kinda weird to put a goldfish cracker on a cupcake, but none of the kids were complaining.

Josh estimated that we blew up around 300 balloons. I don't have the heart to tell him it was probably closer to 450. Thankfully we had two balloon air pumps. And thankfully we blew up the bulk of them on comedy night Thursday!

I couldn't resist hanging sea creatures all over the apartment. Especially since they all cost a total of $4.99. I don't know how many times I heard "It's Nemo! Dory!" This generation of kids are going to grow up not knowing the real names of the fish!

To help set the mood, we set up a bubble machine near the front door. Word of advice, bubbles will make tiled floor slippery. Josh quickly moved some of our floor mats from the kitchen into the entrance. Problem solved.

When the kids arrived we had them color different sea creatures. I found the cutest coloring book, scanned the pages, and enlarged the animals. I had made a pretty pathetic ocean out of streamers on our kitchen wall. Once the kids were done they got to tape their sea creatures on the wall in the "ocean". It was so cute seeing how excited they were to get to tape their pictures up.

After all the kids arrived it was time for the fun to begin. We played pin the crown on Ariel. Yep, that's Ariel in case you couldn't tell. One creative thing we did was instead of tying a blindfold on the kids, we taped paper onto the outside of one of Ava's sunglasses. It was a lot easier to put on each kid and they weren't afraid to put them on.

After playing Fish Fish Shark (the under the sea version of Duck Duck Goose) we headed over to our next game. Which just so happens to be where the bulk of our balloon blowing effort was (we were too cheap to buy the actual plastic balls!) Each kid got a turn to search for a treasure bag. The kids were so well behaved. They all waited their turns and didn't push anyone. Ava's got a good bunch of good little friends.

After blowing bubbles outside we came inside for cake! Which I made the same chocolate cake that I made for Reid's birthday. And it still was just as awesome as before. But seriously, I could of just saved some time and gave Ava a plate of blue frosting!

Here's all her little friends eating their cupcakes.

The final activity was of course opening presents. You're all probably wondering how a bunch of 3 year olds reacted to Ava getting to open all of the presents. Well, there were no tantrums, if you can believe it. Each kid went and got their present and then they patiently waited their turn to give it to Ava. It was pretty cute seeing how excited they were to have Ava see what they picked out.

Thanks everyone who took time out of their day to make our little girl feel so special. She's so lucky to have such a great group of kids to play with. I know she had a blast getting to have everyone over.