'twas a gooood weekend

It was a busy weekend, but a good one for sure!

We started off the weekend with a bit of bouncing in the bouncy house.  Ray was getting it ready for our niece's birthday party so he decided to set it up and Emma could invite her friends that live on our street over to bounce for awhile.  And bounce they did!

Then we got ready and headed out to our fellow Daisy Scout's house for hot cocoa and cookies before we went downtown to take part in the Holiday Tree Lighting Parade.

When it was time we made our way downtown and got lined up to join in the parade.  It was going to go down the main drag in Morgan Hill and end with the tree lighting.  We marched along with other Girl Scout troops and the girls were so excited to see all the floats the other groups put so much work into!

We didn't see them but Ray was able to take a picture of the Marines who lead the parade.  They were so impressive!

There was this old firetruck and an old police car.

Lana's Dance Group

And here's our girls!  Their first time in the Holiday parade and in their Daisy uniforms!  They looked so cute!  It was so cool to see how many people came out to watch the parade.  They lined up along the street and cheered everyone on.  My parents, Auntie Marilyn, mother-in-law Frances & sister-in-law Theresa came all the way out just to watch the girls.  My mom had to leave right afterwards to go to work too!  It really solidified my belief that Morgan Hill is the best town EVER.  There's just such a feeling of community and pride.  And it was so much fun getting to spend more time with our Girl Scout parents.  We really lucked out in that department.  Each and every one of them is awesome and so gung-ho about giving our girls the best Girl Scout experience they can have.

After the parade we introduced the Kaisers and my in-laws to the Crying Tiger at Siam Thai Restaurant.  It's only the best steak EVER!

We had a great day and the weekend was only halfway over!

On Sunday we had the Minnie Mouse Chloe Day of Festivities!

 

My mom made Minnie cupcakes

Another picture of my sister not smiling - on purpose.

My friend Kim made the delicious cake pops!

I swear she's having a good time!

Chloe liked her dress up gloves.

Ray's downfall.  He spent time in the bouncy house.

breaking out for some vamps

So yesterday was the day we were waiting for.

Kim and I were to meet JeNae & Jennifer at the theater to see Breaking Dawn, Part 1 at 11:59.  Kim and I spent the evening text messaging about how cool we are while our husbands made fun of us.

By the time it was time to head out everyone was asleep and Kim texted to say she was outside my house waiting for me.  I get in the car and she says 'I feel like we're sneaking out!'  The greatest thing about Morgan Hill is that at 11:20 pm there is NO ONE driving around so you feel like you're the only people in the world.  Dead town.

Of course, last night, everyone in Morgan Hill was at the movie theater standing in line.  And because Kim and I are so cool we walk up just as they start letting people into the theater and they just wave us in.  Whopee!  No line waiting!

The movie was exactly what I expected.  I laughed & got teary & rolled my eyes, but dang I had fun.  JeNae and I ganged up on Kim and her Team Jacob-ness (bleck) and then Kim almost cut off the circulation in my arm as the birth scene got a little too graphic for her.

Slight spoiler alert for one paragraph!!  I wondered how they were going to do Jacob's part of the book.  For about 90% of it he's in wolf form and all the communication is done in their heads.  They did well in that most of the time Jacob, Leah and Seth were in human form so they could just speak, but there was one point where all the wolves are communicating with weird voice overs and I must say it was lame.

The best part of the night?  Seeing a 80 something year old man coming out with two slightly younger gentlemen.  See!?!  Everyone loves Twilight!

Now get yourselves to the theater!

only a few hours to go!!!

Tonight's the night - finally!!!  If you'll notice on my sidebar there are only 12 hours left until Breaking Dawn!!  Woo hoo!  I'll be there at 11:59 with my fellow Twinerds.  So excited!!

I'm bummed that it's going to be just Part 1, but I guess it just prolongs the fun for one more year, right?  And sometime between this one and the next we'll have the first of The Hunger Games.  Which I just recently saw the newest preview for.  Did anyone else watch it?  What did you think?  Even though I've read the books when I started watching the preview I thought 'Too much, too much!'  It felt like there was too much given away in the preview.  Stuff that, visually I kind of wanted to be surprised, but oh well.

I'm still not a fan of that Josh kid as Peeta.  He looks awful with blonde hair.  Ugh.  But I am excited to see the movie.  It looks fantastic!

But let's focus here.  Back to Edward & Bella and that other kid I don't care for.  I'm so interested to see how they do the whole entire part of his 'book'.  Since most of it was in his head (and in the heads of the other wolves) and Edward can't translate everything I'm wondering how much Jacob will be a wolf?  I'm also wondering when they'll cut it off to go on to the next.  I'm thinking it'll be at the end of Jacob's book.  But we'll see.  I can't wait!!

thought summer was supposed to be about relaxing??

Have I already told you how crazy this past week was for us?  My friend’s daughter was over Monday and Tuesday, I went to Los Banos on Wednesday, Prunedale & Salinas on Thursday and then we had a big playdate with some of Emma’s preschool friends on Friday.  Then we had my nephew’s 4th birthday party in San Jose (or as we like to say ‘up north’).

It was fun, especially for Emma (she loved having so many playdates), but so exhausting.  Plus, I was having an awful time trying to sleep so that didn’t add to my cheery disposition.  Oh wait, I don’t have a cheery disposition to begin with.

I didn’t bring the camera out very much this week and when I did I generally forgot to take pictures, but here’s a few I did take to sum up our week!

Emma & Autumn showing off their crowns they made.

 

Flower’s at my friend’s in-law’s house.

Time for a playdate fashion show!

Birthday Boy!!

Enjoying her brother’s birthday.

Emma made me a special meal.  There was noodles, bread, cake, orange juice & a lemon cookie.

Ready for bed after a loooooong day.

And that was our week.  How was yours?

farmer girls

Instead of cleaning the house yesterday Emma and I decided to join Autumn & JeNae for some adventures in farmland.

First we headed over to Swank Farms, but unfortunately there’s not much to check out over there unless it’s Halloween.  During Halloween they have these insane corn mazes and all kinds of other activities for kids, but right now there were just a bajillion goats and chickens hanging out.

So we headed over to Casa de Fruta to get some goodies and play around.

After we ate some lunch Emma and Autumn had to do some time in the stockades.  Thanks to Scooby-Doo, Emma knew exactly what these were.

Then we hopped on the train and took a tour of the area.  JeNae & I found the ride to be relaxing and pleasant.  Emma and Autumn thought it was thrilling.

After the train we headed to the second deck of the carousel.

Then it was off to the water wheel and sluice where Emma and Autumn searched for treasure.  In the gift shop you can buy bags of sand that contain crystals & other fun stuff.  The girls found lots of amethyst, quartz, arrowheads and shark teeth.  It was definitely the highlight of the trip.

There’s really only so much sluicing I can watch so I wandered around taking pictures of some interesting stuff.

The place is full of old farming machines that they used back in the day as well as other machines that other farms have donated for display.  This was part of an old fire hose contraption.  I could’ve wandered around and taken pictures of tons of old rusted out machines, but maybe next time!

mushrooms, they grow a lot here

Memorial Day weekend found us at the Morgan Hill Mushroom Mardi Gras.  For some reason this festival is a big draw here.  Morgan Hill grows a lot of mushrooms and it’s cool.  I love mushrooms, but you’d be hard pressed to find many mushrooms at this Mardi Gras.  Mostly you find drunk dummies dancing badly to local bands.

But whatev.

We went anyway because I wanted to do something.  We met up with our friends who have a daughter that goes to school with Emma. They’re pretty much best buds and it’s very convenient that they live so close and are so awesome to hang out with. 

Seriously people.  It doesn’t get any cuter than this.

They went down this giant sinking blowup Titanic ship slide.  It was huge.  I was having a heart attack.  The girls loved it.

Don’t they look so tiny?  It’s because THEY’RE SO FAR AWAY!!!

Just watching them spin around made me ill.

Our little daredevils just won’t quit.

RT Booklover’s Convention

What do you think?  Is it worth it to drive 6 hours down to LA to spend 3 hours wandering around checking out 400 authors and their books?

I kind of think it is.

Saturday, April 9th the RT Booklovers’ Convention meets up at the Westin Bonaventure.  There’s workshops and panels, like Comic-Con, but for book enthusiasts only.  Really though, I just want to go to the book fair part that goes on from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m.  But Ray definitely doesn’t want to go with me.

Booooooo.

Check out the lineup for the YA authors!  Richelle Mead, Cassandra Clare, Kelley Armstrong, Melissa Marr…nuts and crazy man, nuts and crazy.

You can get scheduling info here.  Let me know if you’re interesting in taking a road trip with me!

I Really Do Have Friends ... I Swear

I think I mentioned before that I do not make friends easily.  I'm standoffish and constantly afraid of whatever vitriol will spew forth from my mouth at any given time.  Somehow I have accrued friends who are sweet and nice.  I have no idea why they are friends with me.  A few of them are religious.  I wonder if maybe they think they can covert me.  Maybe I'm a project?

Well, better if I don't question it, right?

Anyhoo ... since Emma started preschool I have actually made friends.  They are these hilarious women whose kids play with my kid and now we all go play together.  Over the winter break we thought we'd take the kids to Pump-It-Up, but having no foresight whatsoever we didn't think about it being the last day of vacation and rainy and completely full.  The best thing about Morgan Hill is the Centennial Recreation Center or the CRC.  It has everything, including an indoor pool with a shallow play area.  The kids love it.  So we took them all there since we're members and JeNae decided (as the last holdout) to give in and get a membership.  (The best perk is the discount we get at the preschool for being CRC members)

Of course, I thought, this is awesome!  Work out buddies!  But really, I just figured it would be great to sit and gab with some friends while the kids swim.

JeNae has had other ideas.  We took a step class on Tuesday.  It was not fun.  Apparently, they don't need to advertise in the class schedule that something is an intermediate/advance class.  So there we were.  And at first I thought, well really, how difficult can stepping be?  Oh, I found out it can be extremely difficult.  Extremely.  This wasn't stepping!  This was dancing around and on a platform that constantly wanted to move out of my way.  Like I am so scary it did not want me to step on it.  I swear I almost fell 176 times.  And once, my shoe scraped so loudly off the side that everyone in the class turned around thinking someone had died.  And I pretty much was.  Dead, I mean.

Today we decided to workout on the machines since there weren't any 'fun' classes.  JeNae seems to have much more coordination than I do.  She thinks Zumba might be fun.  Julie & Kim say it is and it kicks your butt, which I'm okay with.  But fun?  If my coordination efforts in step class are any indication I don't think Zumba is going to be fun for me.  But I'll try it out.  Give everyone a good laugh. 

So anyway, my legs are like rubber from jogging for a half hour on the treadmill wondering how in the hell the couple next to me are sprinting whilst discussing how so-and-sos from their wedding are going through financial difficulties.  Sprinting.  And discussing.  Freaks.

But really, it's nice to get out of the house in the evening and do something.  Emma and Autumn get to go do fun crafts and play around at the Kid's Zone and I get to sweat and maybe lose some of this baby fat I've been carrying around for 5 years.  I'm sure Ray appreciates having the house to himself for an hour or so too.  So I guess I'll keep going.  If anything it's fun to watch the elderly run laps around me.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention.  The woman who was the star of the step class and was much easier to watch and follow than the instructor?  She was about eleventy-hundred years old.  Pretty much everyone in the class had about 30 years on JeNae and I.  I want to be them when I grow up.  Which means I'm going to have to do more step.  Ugh.

Dinner with Friends

If you are ever in Morgan Hill and feel like having some awesome food you need to check out Big Grill BBQ & Teriyaki on Monterey.  It is the best!  It’s a teeny Korean BBQ place that seats 24 people, barely and it’s run by pretty much one woman who cooks all the food and another who serves.  They have my favorite ramen dish, lemon ramen.  IT’S SOOOO GOOD!

Today we took some friends with us.  Emma loves them.

This is Bookworm.

And Bugsy.

Shy Guy.  He’s saying hi.

This is Diny (like Tiny).  Emma named her.  She’s very creative.

Ray ordered the pork belly.  He cooked it for us.  It was a lot, but once we told Emma it was bacon it was all over.

Diny liked the sides.  Can you see her, she’s kind of camouflaged.

Afterwards we stopped to get some gas.  Everyone waited patiently.

A good night was had by all.