So Excited!

Olivia and I crafted today when Bianca was sleeping.  We made some rings and picked out a picture of Auntie Helen to print off the computer.  I explained to Olivia how each of the rings represents one sleep until Auntie Helen comes and that everyday we are going to take a ring off.  As soon as all the rings are gone then it will be the day to get Auntie Helen from the Airport.

We put it up on the wall of our living room and Olivia is so excited.  I am so excited too and it is quite possible that I am more excited than Olivia.  Which, that is saying something, because Olivia just wanted to rip all the rings off as soon as we put them up so we can get Auntie Helen from the airport tomorrow.  I am so excited to have a guest from back home and Marcus will have 4 days off when she is here.  It is going to be MAGICAL!

Auntie Helen, we can't wait until you come to see us!!

New Do!

 I got my hair cut and colored by another military wife here at Ord.  She has part of her garage transformed into a little hair salon area.  It had been a long while since I got it trimmed and my hair was needing some love real bad.  Rebecca, the hairstylist, charged really cheap prices so for a partial highlight and cut it cost me just a little bit more than just a haircut from back home.  I haven't had my hair colored in  over 5 years so I was really pumped for a little change and to get some highlights back in.

Since Jayme posted a hair straight picture I figured I would too!  She blew it out and straightened it for me and I made sure to take a picture because it will probably not be straightened by me any time soon.  I don't have the patience for it and I prefer my hair curly because when it is straight it makes my long shaped face look REALLY LONG.  Having the curl evens it out and gives more roundness to my face.

So pretty much I feel like a million bucks and have been walking around today with a little extra swing in my hips because I feel so sassy with a little color in my hair.  Marcus is loving the new sassier me as well ;)

Lucky Girls.

 My girls are so lucky.  They have so much family and friends that love them!  On top of their Grandma's and Mema's they also have a Nana, Kaitlyn's Mom.  She bought my girls this Rapunzel fatheads vinyl for the walls.

Olivia was in heaven when we got home and were able to put it up!  The best thing about it is that it is reusable so when we move next we just peel it off, put it back on the roll and then it is ready for Olivia's next room.

That Rapunzel is almost as tall as me.  I often catch Olivia standing on her bed and singing songs to Rapunzel and Pascal.  Thank you Nana!

Making my house a HOME.

 Since being married, I have always had a hard time with decorating my own house.  It's not that I don't care about it.  I really do.  I love walking into other people's houses and see what they choose to display, how they display it.  It is magical to me.  How people can take the things that they love and it can turn an empty space into something that evokes such feeling.  Such warmth.

 I always feel inspired when I go Sister in Laws house, she has such a talent for creativity.  I also love how Courtney decorates her house.  Aunt Helen's house is like visual candy, every where I look there is something inspiring, uplifting and that has some sort of story behind it.  Looking around her house is like looking into Marcus family history, something that I am now a part of too.

 Whenever I am in places like these, I drink it all up.  I so appreciate their ability to "Do" when I feel like it comes as such a challenge to me.  To do my all house in one go would be costly, for sure, but it also feels like such an overwhelming task to accomplish.  I really feel like I have mastered the art of house cleaning and in thinking about that I realized something.  I didn't figure out all my systems in a day.  I also don't do all my house cleaning in a day.  I do a little here, or a little there spread throughout the whole week.  I also do some bigger projects a couple of times a week, it is a system and it works for me.

I need to apply that same principle with how I decorate my home.  I need to think about it, what things I like, what things I love.  Don't just buy something to fill a space.  I kinda of have to keep it in my mind a lot.  Then when I come across something that I love, that speaks to me or makes me happy then I need to get it.  My house needs to be full of things that will uplift me.  I have a silk screen thing in my room that I adore.  I got it for free from a friend of a friend who is an artist, every time I look at it it makes me happy.

A LONG while ago I discovered that a good family friend of ours had been married recently to this lovely, wonderful girl.  I kept up on her blog, she just graduated as an Art Major from BYU and saw that she has an etsy shop.  I checked it out HERE and fell in love with how amazingly she captured a person into charcoal.  I loved it.  I thought instantly that this is something I want in my home.  Some charcoal portraits of my girls.  When I was checking it out, while we still lived in WA, she was having a sale at her etsy shop and I jumped on it and commissioned her to make some charcoals of my girls.

I placed the order but had her hold off on making them until we were in CA so I wouldn't have to worry about losing them in the move before I could have them framed.  I was so excited when they came.  So excited to see how she chose to capture my girls.  I was blown away by the results.  My girls' little spirits and personalities are represented in these.  I have them in my living room and every time I look at them I smile, I just LOVE them.

It will probably be very slow and steady, it will probably take me a lifetime to figure out how to master, but I will learn this skill.  I will make my house into a home.  Not that our lives should be about possessions, that they are the only things that matter, but I want my house to be a reflection of me and my family.  I want it to feel inspiring like how I feel inspired when I go into those houses of those I admire.  One silkscreen and one charcoal portrait at a time I will do it.

If getting  portrait is something you have ever thought about, please go see Brittany's shop and check it out.  I promise you won't be disappointed.  I hope she doesn't mind my flagrant bragging for her, I guess I better send her an email about this, huh?

Scrutiny

These eyes were staring me down yesterday.  All day long.  Every time I had a conversation with her I was met with this intense stare.  She wasn't looking in my eyes, her focus was always in the same place... right in the middle of my forehead.  Right at my bullseye zit.

She would look really hard and then would just contemplate it or think to herself.  Finally she just asked me what it was.

"Mom?  What is that?"
"What is what Olivia."
"That big thing.  Right there.  On your head.  That big red thing.  What is it?"
"It's a zit Olivia."
{Olivia pauses}
"But why?  Why is it a zit?  Is it an owie?"
"Well, yeah it kinda hurts, but it isn't just a regular owie... it's a zit."
"A ZIT?!?"
"Yes, Olivia.  A. Zit."
"Oh....Can I get zits?"
"You don't get zits until you are big to the wall, Olivia" (big to the wall in Olivia dialect is when you are all grown up, for whatever reason that is what she terms a grown up as).
"So you can get zits Mom?"
"Yes."
"So Daddy can get zits too?"
"Yes."
"So, what IS it.  A zit, what is it?"
"Olivia....I don't know, it just IS.  It's a zit.  That's it."
"Can you put a bandaid on it?"
"I could, I guess, but you don't really put bandaids on zits."
"Oh.  But, why?"


All day long she stared me and that zit down.  All freakin' day long.  She would surprise ask me to see if I changed my tune and would just call it an owie.  She would look at me for a long time and then just blurt out.
"But MOM!  What IS it?  A zit?  But WHY??"

I wasn't about to try to explain to her the inner workings of a pimple or how you can get them.  I wash my face, I take care of my skin but sometimes those suckers just come.  And as the day progressed I felt like that zit was turning neon.  A giant pulsating bullseye that commanded my daughters full attention.

At the park she was staring at it, on the walk home she was asking about it.  At dinner she would just look  at me, no at it.  It was like it was this fantastical thing that she couldn't put her brain around.  I have had pimples before, it's not like she hasn't seen them, but for whatever reason she couldn't take her mind off of it.

Of course it didn't help that I had a function to go to that night and was super self conscious of my face at this point.  I am hoping that her fascination with pimples goes away by the next time one happens to grace my face or I might just have to put us all in quarantine for the day.

Sleepy Time

There are a lot of things that are comforting to me during the day.  The routines we have set for the girls are as much for them as they are for me.  There is security and calmness that comes from knowing what is expected of you and what to expect during a part of the day.  Have our schedules and routines work well for us, but it also doesn't mean that everything is perfectly uniformed all day either.  There are the chaos times and the times when nothing seems to go right or all heck breaks loose.  But having our schedules in place helps to keep things on even keel as much as possible.

We always have the same night routine.  Baths, cuddles in our jammies,  little movie time and/or stories.  We always end with family prayer and it's sleepy time after that.  Sometimes if Olivia wants a little more unwind time she will read stories to herself with a flashlight in her room.  She reads the stories that she has memorized (seriously she has the entire books memorized), The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Are You My Mother, Ten Apples up on Top.  Then when she is ready for bed she always shuts off her flashlights, puts her books beside her and goes to sleep.  

 So, after checking on the girls before we went to bed, we found Olivia sleeping like this.  She went to sleep tucked in to the side closest to the wall and somehow she untucked herself, rolled over to the other side with no blankets AND on top of all the books she had been reading to herself before bed time.  She was sleeping right on top of 5 books and a flash light!

 We always have two blankets in a basket in our living room in case we want to cuddle up in them.  Olivia has dubbed them Mommy blanket and Daddy blanket.  The Mommy blanket is this red one that is fuzzy, my Mom made it for me when I was still in high school.  It is so perfect for bundling up and reading a book or watching a movie.

 The green blanket is a wedding present from my Aunt and even though it doesn't have a fleecy side to the back, it is still so perfect for cuddling up into.  I prefer to use the red one and Marcus, by default because the red one is occupied, always uses the green one.

 After baths the girls have really been into using little towels to dry off.  Like hand towels or the smaller towels that they sell at the PX (Marcus normally uses those PX towels to keep in his locker at the gym to use after workouts when he is getting ready for school).  Olivia calls those towels the Army towels and she LOVES to use them.  They are the same proportion on the kids as regular towels are on us.  But if all the Army towels are dirty then they use the hand towel sized ones.

The other night I had a lot of things going on one evening and had to take off shortly after dinner.  Marcus was really exhausted from a particularly hellish weekend of studying and training.  I suggested he just go to bed when Olivia goes to bed because then he would be able to catch up on some sleep as well as getting as much one on one time with Olivia before they fell asleep.  She didn't see him much over the weekend and was super excited about her cuddle time with Daddy.

The plan was to wake up Marcus after I got home so he could finish his night sleeping in our bed and so that his alarm wouldn't wake up Olivia when it was time to go to school.  When I went to wake him up I found them like this.  All cuddled up and they had fallen asleep holding hands.  It was such a sweet moment that I risked the flash of the camera to capture it.

Konka's Birthday Party

 We had a pretty low key party to celebrate Bianca turning 2.  We had our good friend the Enky's over (they just moved away a few weeks ago... sad face) and Murphy and Jacobson.  I only have the Enky's  on video, not pictures and the video with them on it was like 3 minutes long... so you will just have to take my word for it that they were there.
Bianca was so shy about opening her present.

 One of her presents was play dough, with both the girls are in heaven over.  This is the first time play dough has made an appearance at the Radder house.

 But the big deal present was a box of assorted princess shoes/slippers.  All different heights.  Some are totally flat, some are huge platforms, some are kitten heels.  We only had one pair of dress up shoes prior to this and these girls are loving the dress up so we really needed to add to the shoe arsenal.  These shoes have not disappointed.  The girls LOVE THEM.  Although they are technically Bianca's present for her birthday, all the toys are communal and they both know that so they have to share everything.

 Sadly there is no DQ within a reasonable distance of our house with the nearest location being Salinas.  Which is a little of half an hour away, in the heat with no AC an ice cream cake would be toast.  And boy does little sister love her ice cream, so we just went for ice cream cones instead of a cake.

 Daddy getting all the shoes out of the box.  OH!  Look!! Tammi is sitting in the chair, I did get a picture of her!  I also made sure to get pictures of the ever famous Jacobson and Murphy.  Jacobson being to the right of Marcus (your right... not Marcus' right... got it right?).   Olivia gets slightly confused with Jacobson's name because at first we called him Jacobson because that is what Marcus calls him (dang Army with their last name shenanigans).  But then one day I asked him what he would prefer we call him, and he said he likes to feel more like home at our house and to call him by his first name, which is Josh.  So when Olivia prays at dinner, she will say
"... and thank you that Jacobso....I mean Joshobson... I mean Josh and Muwphy could come to our house today..."
Murphy says he is fine with just calling him Murphy, so that is what we do!

 Josh and Olivia enjoying their ice cream.

 Murphy and yours truly enjoying our ice cream.

 Bianca was loving every minute of her mint chocolate chip cone.

We feasted like kings and had so much fun with our friends that night.
I really love it when we have people over, I love all the hustle and bustle.  Different conversations, laughter and fun of it all.  We feel so blessed to have made such good friends here!

To Swaddle, or Not to Swaddle...

 We like our babies swaddled at our house.   Bianca was a swaddled baby...

 ...and Olivia was a  swaddled baby...

 I'm thinking we abandoned the whole swaddling thing a little early.  I mean, look at them!

All bundled like burrito's, snug and tight.  There aren't a lot of shenanigans they could get into all wrapped up like this.
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There are a lot of pregnant ladies, or ladies who have just had babies here.  Therefore babies, whether in the Mommy's tummy or not, are a big topic of discussion.  Marcus told Olivia she used to be in my tummy and that she was a baby once too.  She about died from laughter.  Then she kept telling me all the things that she used to do when she was a baby.  Like cry and poop and sleep a lot.
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Then Marcus showed her how she used to sleep when she was a baby... all bundled up like this.  Then he wrapped Bianca up too.  Olivia was laughing so hard about the whole thing she could hardly breath.
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I love these two sweet girls.  They are such good sisters to each other and help each other so much!

Weekend Study Sesh.

While Bianca was napping, Marcus did some studying. Olivia observed the studying and documented it. She was also eye ballin' Marcus Mexican Coke.
He writes out lots and lots of vocab flash cards.
Olivia was thinking if she acted real cute, Daddy would share his pop.
Daddy is a sucker for little girls named Olivia.
Anatomy of a swig of Cola... the anticipation...
...slowly and ever so slightly tipping of the bottle to ensure not a drop gets lost...
... and contact! the caramel substance has successfully made it!
And then the caffeine starts to kick in... sugar rush! We like to start 'em young at our house.

Monterey Bay Aquarium

We have been figuring out how to see everything we want to see here, as cheaply as possible. For the Aquarium we have some friends that have a seasons pass and we borrow their guest passes. I had been once with the girls before with other Mom's but this day we went just our family.
It is a really fun aquarium and it isn't as stressful without paying the entry fee. If the kids act out of start acting too tired we can pack up and not try to push through just to get our money's worth.
The Sea Horse exhibit is a favorite of my girls.
There was also a bright tank and we took turns finding Nemo in it!
Of course we had to take breaks now and then.
There is a lot to walk around and see. It was pretty busy the day we went and I am excited to try again once school has started and not have as many crowds. All the cool exhibits were packed.
This is one of our other favorites. It is a wave tunnel and the "wave" crashed over you when you are inside. It is a cool perspective to see and is very mesmerizing. Kinda like how staring into a bon fire is mesmerizing, capiche?
This is Bianca's favorite, the Sun Fish. It is in the new HUGE tank call The Open Sea. It just opened a few months ago. This Sun Fish is as tall as I am and loves to swim right past all the people standing along the tank. Bianca squeals and hits the tank and laughs at him. She thinks he/it is the coolest ever. It cracks me up every time.

There is one part of the aquarium that is a little much. It is like the "Save the Planet" area. I am all for doing my part, but this section was just out of control with it's propaganda. Global warming this, cow farts ruining our atmosphere that, get made and write to your Senator here, never eat red meat again there... they lure you in with all the cute flamingos and then BAM, read all our junk about how you are the worst person ever for eating hamburgers for dinner. For some reason it just makes me crave a hamburger more and I get the insane desire to BBQ for dinner. Doing my part to save the environment, one farty cow at a time.

Happenings.

Pretty much over the long weekend, we hung out with Murphy and Jacobson a ton. We love them. They are in Marcus company and Murphy is learning Korean with Marcus, while Jacobson is learning Chinese. Marcus made friends with them before we moved down and we have them over for dinner at least once a week. If Marcus is going to go and do manly-man things, then he does it with them (guy movies, workouts etc.... plus he would probably totally cringe that I used the words manly-man things and him in the same sentence.)

To say that my girls love them is a gross understatement. They ADORE them. It is the highlight of their week when they come over. They are such sweethearts, so kind and attentive to the girls.

I am kicking myself that I haven't taken more pictures of them. Marcus snapped this from his iPod while Murphy was helping Bianca brush their teeth. That will be my mission when they come over next, to take their picture!

We had a blast with them over the weekend and after dinner one night we got a game of two-on-two going. We went to the basketball courts at Super Park and the girls ran around while we played. I was sore for days after, I guess I am not as in shape as I normally am right now! The second night we played Catan!

Also, a while back, Olivia gave the opening prayer in Primary. Marcus snapped a picture with his iPod. She did so great! I thought for sure she would need help, but when it came time she walked right up to the podium and said "Mommy, I got this." and said her own prayer, unflustered, from start to finish! This was huge for my shy girl. Before she said the prayer she got to sit up in one of the front seats until it was her turn.

Study Time.

For some reason when Marcus study's at home he doesn't get as much done as he does at school. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why.

Better just stick to studying in the library instead.

Point Lobos

One of the State Parks close by is Point Lobos. We headed out one weekend in the beginning of August.

There are lots of trails, beautiful ocean views, harbor seals and tidal pools. We left the stroller at the car and Bianca hiked almost the whole way. She was loving all the freedom.
She did so good, we were so proud of her!
Olivia insisted on wearing her trusty Army shirt on an exploring day. And boy oh boy did she explore!
The girls were a little hesitant with the tide pools with the occasional wave that would gently crash in. I think it would have been better had we gone at total low tide.
The girls were entranced with this squirrel. It came right up to us and the girls at him/she had a stare off for a few minutes.
Taking in the views.
There were some seals down below and they were rowdy! You could hear them way before you saw them.
This is what it is like, taking these two girls out. Olivia clinging to me, ever cautious, while simultaneously trying to hold back Bianca from diving in head first!