Skunk Train


This was such a great experience! This was about a 15 min. drive from where we were staying in Mendocino, in Fort Bragg. We've been to Fort Bragg many times before we had kids, but never ventured out furthur enough in town to know that this was there. Anyways, we packed a lunch and we were gone for a roundtrip ride for 4 hours. They sold food in the train and at the rest stop, but we didn't want to spend money on food that was going to be overly pricey.

They had a little pumpkin patch there, a perfect photo op. 

 This is part of the train. They had 5 cars total. One was an open deck, where you could hang out there and check out the scenery as you pass by it.

 The seats in this car was worned out. I mean like old school bus style. But we enjoyed ourselves anyways.

 One of the many creeks running through the trail that we were on. It was beautiful.

 Aren't they gorgeous!!!

 This was on the entire ride, redwoods everywhere. Some of the tree trunks were huge. Some have been around for hundreds of years.

 The train blowing off some of it's diesel. This is us on the open deck. We had a lot of fun there.

 This is what Soph did the whole time we were outside, picking up fallen leaves and debris. So dirty, but whatever. It kept her entertained and we didn't have to hold her.

Good ol Magnus, having lots of fun!

A Day of Fun Without School

Since the kids didn't have school on this particular day, we decided that they could still learn a few things and have some fun. We bought diet soda, alka seltzer, mint mentos and fruit flavored mentos. We tried the alka seltzer into the soda first and that didn't do anything impressive. It dropped to the bottom and fizzed until the tablet had dissolved. We then dropped one mint mentos into the soda. Eh, a little action. Then we got impatient...We brought out the whole stick of mint mentos and dropped it into the soda. That's what you're seeing here! 

                                         I love the glee on their face!

Enjoying the afterworks of minty soda. I think it's disgusting, but they seem to be enjoying it! Fun was had by all!

Fun for Magnus

Who knew that raking leaves would be so much fun??? We have to do this every year and every year it never ceases to be fun for Magnus. He has a blast doing this and I as an adult don't get it at all. But at least I do have a helper and one that has a happy attitide! 

 Doesn't it look like he is coming up from underground? Boys, gotta love them!

Magnus' Halloween Costume

I know it's a little late for this, but I haven't had a chance to write about it since we have all been sick since then and I have been busy taking care of that instead of blogging. We made this out of cardboard that was hot glued together to hold it's shape and then spray painted silver. There are some bottle caps, cds, old wires, and lights. We got so many compliments on it as we were treat or treating. It was a little heavy after a while for Magnus, it didn't help since this was his first day of being sick and he was already exhausted. Poor thing, but the thought of missing out on candy was enough for him to tough it out. He ended up getting a lot of candy that night. I think the costume helped!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

It has been a long time since I had last posted something. We have had to deal with cold, coughs, 2 ear infections and finally a nice getaway once that all ended. Now John is at work and all is normal. Normal is good. Normal I like. Normal is great!!!!!!!!!

Happy Birthday John!

Can you believe it??? This guy is 30 years old now. Many moons ago when we started dating he was only 16. We've been together for almost half of our lives. I have to say that is pretty exciting!!!



John is a great father and a husband to me and the children. I am so thankful to be his mate. I can't imagine living life without him. He has changed so much from the 16 year old punk that I dated and for that I am so thankful to God for changing his heart and maturing him.



I love you!

Decorating for Fall

Since I have had my own place, I have NEVER decorated my home for the seasons or holiday. If I did anything, it would have a been for Christmas. But this year, I wanted to change things up.

Look at our mantel adorned with all the goodies of Fall! I have to say I really like it. I made the candle jar holder thingy (can't think of the name right now) from vases and candle stick holders, purchased from Dollar Tree. A lot of this is actually stuff from the Dollar Tree. It's cheap so if I goofed up the project, I won't feel so guilty that I had spent a caboodle of $$$$.

Our front porch is so massive in depth that it is hard to fill it for the season without blowing the budget. But here it is for now and perhaps throughout the years I'll be able to purchase more things after the season sale.

Here's a close up of the front door wreath. This was made out of stuff from the Dollar Tree. I think the total for this was $10.00. I've checked out wreaths at a lot of stores and for the price of this, you get crap. I have to say this is far from CRAP!

My own book wreath

I thought that we could use a little changing things up around here, without spending too much money. So I followed the instructions from this blog to do this and it was quite easy. It costs me only $2.00!!!! I had to buy a book and a foam/plastic wreath and that was it! I got those from the Dollar Tree. The rest I had on hand, such as a glue gun and a little bit of paint.



I guess now you can say that I am no longer afraid of my glue gun!

What do you get

when you combine this beautiful girl
and this Desitin cream

A facial!

This is what happens when you let your little ones alone for too long. She "slept" in her room until noon. I thought I was such a lucky mom to have some free time, guess not!

Tasting Exotic Fruits

We did this for school and I LOVED IT!! I think I liked it more than Magnus did.
Isn't he so ADORABLE!!

We had young fresh coconut that we purchased from the Cambodian store on Pet. Hill Rd. It was difficult to break a small opening at the top for the straw, but once we did it was yummy-ness. I had kept this in the fridge so it was a nice cold refreshing drink on a particularly hot day last week.

I don't know what the name of this fruit is, but I know it was something I have never eaten. It reminds me a lot of a prickly pear, although I have never tasted that either. The color is beautiful though.

Young coconut is different than regular coconut because the flesh is a lot softer. It's more of a melt in your mouth texture than a crunchy constant chew bite of the regular stuff. I liked it a lot. What a treat!

This was like a kiwi without any of it's great flavor. The texture was there with the seeds, but it had NO flavor. It was quite bizarre for me because I was expecting something great. All exotic things are suppose to be awesome, right??? It was also quite expensive. I guess it's a good thing that we didn't like it!

At the beach

We went to the beach the other day and it was gorgeous. It was a little chilly, but not the typical sand in your face windy-ness.

Oodles of fun!!

Magnus doing what he likes to do at the beach,"building a sand castle". Which consist of taking a bucket and filling it with water and dumping it into some sand.

Here's Soph playing with the sand. This is the first time we have brought her to the beach and let her play in it.

And of course my girl has to chase the birds!

Oh Crap..I just got rear-ended

That's right! I was on my way to Target after I had dropped off John and the kids at his mom's house to hook up her new tv. I was stopped at a red light by the most hated gas station on that side of town (most hated because it creates a traffic nightmare), and what do you know someone hits me from behind. It took me a second to realized what happened, but when I did, I was peeved. I called John who was only down the street, gave him the plate number, just in case they decided to run (more typical on that side of town). Thankfully they didn't. We pulled into the gas station across the street from the other ghetto one. I am trying to be as calm as I can. We start to exchange info and she tells me that she doesn't have a drivers license, only a permit. I was unsure of how to handle the situation. So I asked her how old she was, thankfully she wasn't a minor. Anyways they start taking pictures of my damaged bumper and I think, oh crap, I don't know how to use the camera option on my phone. Just then my knight in shining armor drives up in his mom's car. I know that he has a phone and and I know that he knows how to use the camera option!







Anyways, I am fine, the girl and her friend are fine, and both the cars are fine. Now I am just irritated that I have to deal with the insurance crap.







I am very thankful that the children were not with me as I probably would have lost it and beat the crap out of her. Then cry and cry and cry uncontrollably.

Soph took 3 steps

yesterday while she was hanging out with her grandparent's house. I am so impressed because for the longest time she showed no interest in walking what-so-ever. But for today she hasn't done anymore unassisted walking so we might have to wait a lot longer to actually see anymore of her moves. For now she loves loves loves bling and waking up in the night for no reason.

Magnus's First Academy Day

This is his "first" day of school. He was so excited the night before. His prayer before bedtime was that he would be able to sleep well so he can be ready to get up for school in the morning. He is so cute. Anyways, he had to wake up at 7:30 and that means that I had to be up at 7am. That is early for me!!

He said his favorite thing about school was playing freeze tag!

My little Kindergartener

Hooray! We've completed 2 weeks of school and we still love each other. Sometimes it's crazy to think that he is this age and we have successfully raised him to be such an amazing boy. Yes we will take all the credit for it!!! Our Monkey can read quite well. He reads just about anything and everything. Including emails that were not meant for him. We've already had that talk.

He's quite a goof-ball. We love him so much!

(If you notice in the top photo, his one eye is smaller than the other. Just like me. It's must be a hereditary thing).

Their true nature

I think this photo captures the essence of the kids well. Magnus usually content and Soph usually in a state of discontent. They sure are beautiful though!

Mishap with the glue gun

There's going to be a pretty gross photo coming up, just warning you. I was trying to beautify my house with fall decors because I LOVE fall. Everything about it, the wind, the chill in the air, warm soups, leaves falling, and so on and so on. So I saw some tutes in the blog world about making your own decor balls and thought I could whip those up. I guess the answer to that is WRONG. I am inept with a hot glue gun. Hence the injury.

This was immediately afterwards. Hurts like a b*&%$! Can I tell you I cried, a pathetic frustrated cry of why, why did I do this to myself?

Soon after, this is what the results are. Those are some mighty hurtful blisters. The one on my middlefinger is the worst. I am still wearing a band-aid on that one.

So I never did finish my project and now I am a little sqeemish about using the hot glue gun ever again. So sad...

Cribalism and ghetto-ness

So this is what Soph eats as a snack while she is in her room supposedly napping. It was originally just the wood that she would eat, but then it got so bad. We would find little pieces of wood in her crib and in her shirts and wonder what the heck it was. Until one day we were hanging out in her room and the sun alluminated the crib just right and we saw the gouge marks she had made on the underside of the crib bars (where the tape wraps under). There was a good 1/4 inch of wood missing on each post. So something had to be done. Not buying a new crib because we're cheap that way. So we thought we could fix it with duct tape. I know duct tape fixes everything right??? WRONG! This girl ate the duct tape too! Soon we started finding little pieces of tape stuck to her hair and in her crib. Aiyiyi!

Our grapes

This is the second year that these have been planted and they are already yielding such amazing tasting grapes. I am so proud of these babies. Having an edible garden has been great. Since these are in the front yard, anytime we leave the house, you can see us in front of our vine sampling them. Even Soph gets in on the action!

Our Bounty

Isn't that amazing??? All we had to do was purchase the plant, dig a hole in the ground and remember to water daily. Or in our case whenever we remembered, which could go as long as 4 days! We try our hands at gardening every year and so far we have not been disappointed. Magnus loves to help out too. Pretty soon our darling girl will be able to join in on the fun. We used the zucchini for a stir fry, the cucumbers, green beans and tomatoes in different salads. They were all delicious.

What Magnus says

The other day after church we came home to see a huge poop on our lawn. Hopefully of the dog variety. Unfortunately we couldn't clean it up because it was still fresh(aka wet). So later John had to go to the bathroom so Magnus asked his dad why he didn't just go on the front lawn, there was already poop there. All he had to do was squat on top. So funny so inappropriate! We had to tell him that people don't go pooping on people's lawns. They need privacy. If only we could return the favor to whomever left us that wonderful gift!

We completed our first 5K

I am so excited!!! We completed the race in under 45mins! Our original goal was to complete the race under an hour (along with not falling on our faces, pooping on the trail, or throwing up). I am so proud of John and Windy. They are great co-runners. I had a blast running the race with them and also training for this with them. Thank you both for making this such an enjoyable experience. Up next...there is a 5k/10k benefit run for FISH and Redwood Empire Food Bank in November. I want to do the 10k, but John thinks we should stick to the 5 and improve our time. I don't know if I agree with him, we'll see. Unfortunately our friend Windy will be going off to college on Thursday so she will no longer be a part of my shenanigans. Sorry there is no pics of us. We didn't want to bring anything heavy that would hinder our times!!!

Disgusting...

I think you can now say that with Magnus , he was a perfect child. Soph on the other hand, not so much. Especially when you give her a bath and she leaves a huge nugget in the tub when you lift her out of there. Like I said disgusting!

Magnus passed his swim class

Yeah for Magnus! He has worked so hard for this. We started with swim lessons for him last year. He was a little timid in the water so the instructor didn't pass him. So this year we spoke to him about the areas that he can improve on. Well he did a great job! Or so we thought until the last day of class and the instructor handed me his "report card". Not passed. I was so fumed at the instructor I could've punched her lights out. I thought about confronting her about why she didn't pass him and so on, but then I realized that I would just come across as a crazy mom to others and emotionally scar my child forever. So this mom didn't make a scene and went with it. Enrolled him in the same level class, Tadpoles, a few weeks later...well what do you know???? In the second day of class, his new instructor took him over to the Waterfrogs class because his skill levels were beyond that of a Tadpoles class! So in your face to the old instructor that didn't pass him!(not that she would ever read this).

(kinda look like he's giving someone the stink eye) He is so proud of himself and his swimming skills are improving everyday. I don't know if they will pass him or not, but he looks good out there!