these are the good old days

Vacationing with this many little peanuts is about the funnest, craziest thing. We've got a 0, two 2s, a 4, and a 5 on our hands. All of them are lunatics. So loud and bossy and they have no idea what's going on but they want what they want and will holler about it! And it's awesome. But thank goodness for kid naps and beer.

This has been just the best. Why do vacation days fly by so quickly? Why don't I tan, ever? Why do we have to live so far from these people?

cousins

Hey guys. I hope your holidays have been just the best! We are back from our trip to Arizona and kinda sorta getting ourselves back into schedule. It's difficult because Rob's on winter break and Otto's school chooses to do a piecemeal schedule this time of year, only offering daycare on days when enough parents have signed up. We're feeling a little all over the place with life, but also full of pre-New Year energy and anticipation for what 2014 will bring. I have a lot of ideas brewing for this year, things I'm so excited about that I don't even want to put them into words just yet. My heart is full to bursting and I'm thinking, thinking, thinking about all the possibilities this life has to offer. It's a great, though a bit scary, place to have my head. Ha.

Our Christmas vacation was head-to-toes wonderful. It was busy but also just relaxing enough. I came down with a little throat condition (it was real bad) that kept any date nights from happening, but on the plus side... ok no plus side it was lame and I sounded like a creep and no one wanted to stand by me or be my friend. Boo. But other than a not-sexy-raspy-voice and too much coughing, the trip was just amazing.

We had an extended family photo shoot, hopefully the first of an annual tradition. I wanted to share this pic of Otto and Loretta and their three cousins. Seeing these cousins united, bonding, playing, just running shoulder to shoulder, arguing, and generally being friends and loving each other... it was one of the top highlights of the holidays for me. I'm a good deal older than my next closest cousin and just never got to be close to my cousins, at least not as a kid. I adore my cousins and am so glad to have relationships with them now, but as a kid I don't have memories of playing with my cousins, more babysitting them or being a mopey teenager reading in the corner while they played. Anyways, that's fine, but I just wanted to share that I love what I see when these kiddos, five of them under five this year (!), got together and buddied up. It was magic. And what a cute crew, eh?

a family visit

Rob's spring break started on Saturday and we kicked off the week with a visit from his sister, mom, dad, and our two nephews this past weekend. Four little cousins aged four and down is the makings of a cuteness party -- also a party that is hard to photograph all at once and usually has at least one little crier and/or one little napper in the bunch.

I sure miss living near to our family and having everyone in town was just a couple of days of magic.

The next few days will speed by as days do and I am looking forward to maybe taking a little time off of work Friday to spring break it UP with my husband, toddler, and baby. We are thinking of dying eggs Friday afternoon and then I need to throw together some Easter fun for the kids. Otto is at an age where he remembers every sweet detail of the holidays so I need to get on it and pull together a special basket for Easter. He was bonkers for his giant chocolate bunny last year so that's an easy one and then some other special little craft items and non-candy snacks is what I'm thinking.

And then deviled eggs need to happen, because priorities.

currently {link up} zoo lights magic

 one super cool monkey

 two sweet monkeys

 ergo-cam!

best buds = cousins with great sparkly rings

Coming at you live from sun shiny Mesa, Arizona, my home town. We are so happy to be enjoying the holidays this year with our very much missed families. Goodbye snowy Oregon in December, we choose to Festivus in Phoenix where the tamales flow like wine and our poor papery skin is catching a little vitamin D the old fashioned way. Both my and Rob's families are from the valley of the sun, so we have so many loved ones here and we are totally happy to let them spoil our kids this holiday. Nanas! Papas! Aunts! Uncles! (and super hurray!) Cousins!

Currently is a weekly link-up hosted by the lovely Randalin of Harvesting Kale and I am super excited to be co-hosting the series with her. I hope that you can participate by writing your own Currently post (using the provided themes or your own) and please join us by linking up. This week, around these parts, we have been...

Wearing my baby and some ill-fitting mom jeans. Hello ladies (or gents if there are any who read this and who knows) let me tell you I have known that I need to get this body of mine in gear for a while now but here I am at 9+ months postpartum and I think I'm ready to commit to this thing. That is all I have to say about that.

Playing and laughing and reading and puzzling and giggling and snuggling and all kinds of living it up with my kids. The first best thing about being on vacation is getting to spend real leisure time with my kids for days and days in a row from morning to night. The second best thing is sleep.

Baking NOPE haha. I AM on the hunt for some legit tamales for Christmas Eve though. Important.

Making really great Christmas memories. Is that too corny to say out loud? I'm just really happy to be spending this time in Arizona.

Singing "All I Want for Christmas is You" and that Ne-Yo song that's all, "and I will love you... until you learn... to love yourself... let me love you." I don't know. I just listen to whatever's on. Those two have been stuck at the top of my head all week. Good stuff.

That was this week. Here are next week's themes:

obsessing, looking, improving, learning, remembering  

oceans and plastic pools

last week when our family was visiting we had some really perfect days. smiling kids running in sunshine from morning to night. one was a daytrip to the coast. the following day we just made homemade ice cream sandwiches (//robot voice// "cannot stop making the good sandwiches") and played in the kiddie pool. god bless summertime and cousins! and now,  i will dump-a the good times summer love photos:

it is windy and cold as f&ck on the oregon coast but also --> magic. in other magic news, see 'pool day' -->

on a little sidenote i just want to point out my super cutoffs. you are witnessing my only shorts i own and they are fugly and i LOVE them! i only wear them on the summery-est of days and when i do i just feel like a big, relaxed summery summertimer. like i just wanna put them on and curl up in a hammock with a tuna salad sandwich and fifteen Star magazines and a beer-hat loaded with mimosas.

Loretta in a swim suit also wins some kind of prize for The Greatest Thing That Ever Happened Ever. Ever.

Ever!

her little swimsuit with the rosettes is Circo from Target. i think it cost $12 or something ridiculously affordable like that. TGTTEHE.E.E!

ok, well i'm off to watch Louie and  Newsroom with Rob. Breaking Bad started up again Sunday! it's like a tv party at my house. i'm five minutes away from drinking night coffee and basking in the warm glow of the boob tube. yay for that and oceans and plastic pools. summa summa summatime :)

ps. yesterday i was guest posting at Musings of a Manic Mama since Rebecca's on double vacation. a little easy craft/learning project for the kiddos that we've been doing around my house lately. so you should check it out and Rebecca's blog. she's a rad chick!

Cousin Madness!

what a great past few days it has been. rob's parents, sister, and her two boys have been staying with us and it has been Cousin Madness! our sweet nephew Kace is only a couple months older than Loretta and they. are. in. love.

Otto and his cousin Kingston are 18 months apart which seems less and less as time goes by. these two are squabbling buds: fighting over tow maters, holding hands, and promising to be a lot of trouble for their poor old parents someday. a couple of loose cannons! and the good looks on these two! i tell you, we are doomed.

soooooo... with this many munchkins in the house we haven't been too ambitious in our outings. instead, it's been lots of going to the park, picnicking, annie's mac & cheese dinners (with secret peas), and everyone smelling like spit up. hurray for Cousin Madness!

i'm just going to once again announce my all-for-little-boys-in-tank-tops opinion. all for! if you disagree then your eyes are broken. get them fixed.

i only wish we lived closer to these guys. my dream is for Otto and Etta to grow up super close to their cousins and hopefully in a few years that will be a fact, jack (as Ot would say) and in the mean time, i'm just so happy to see them getting to know each other and becoming buddies. we'll be visiting AZ at christmastime and having four kiddos under four on christmas morning might just explode my brain from super sentimental amazingness. mmmmmyup. that's pretty much guaranteed.


tomorrow we head to the coast. so pretty! so cold! i can't wait. there is this little ice cream shop on the way to the beach we usually go to and it's real, homemade ice cream with like fifty flavors. so there will be that. and in the evenings i can always count on my sister-in-law to have a pyramid apricot ale with me. so there will be that. and Otto basking in the love of his nana, papa, aunt, and cousins is like the best thing on the planet. so there will be that. all great stuff!

one thing though, i am pooped. tired! and smelly. haha. so off to bed i go. goodnight :) hope your summer vacations are treating you just as nicely as ours is. xo

A Stip, A Stop, A Stip Stop Steppy to the Steppedy Stepped Out!

It's true, dawgz. I totally showered and got dressed yesterday. And contrary to the pics, I totally brushed my hair too. A family friend is getting married and we were invited to binge on toasted coconut 'n lime cupcakes at her sweet little bridal shower. Here's what we wore...

I'm wearing... cardigan (thrifted), tank (Old Navy), skirt (thrifted from Buffalo Exchange*), shoes (DSW)

*Does Buffalo Exchange count as thrifting? This skirt (which I DIE FOR) still had a $380 price tag on it (it's from Italy and it's hard to see but it's hand embroidered top-to-bottom with hand-sewn rock beading along the high waistline). But I bought it "used" for $40. Is that thrifting? Whatever, who cares. Anyways...

Here's Ottobot with his Nana (Rob's mom) testing the heat of the jacuzzi. Gah! Cuteness!

Ot's wearing... tshirt (Polarn O. Pyret), cords (Janie & Jack), mandles (Dexter, thrifted), and John Deere socks cuz you know by now that Ot rocks his mandles sock style! Every. Day.

More fun -->

World's cutest cuzballs! My little nephew is going on 10 months and totally creeping the furniture and walking with just a lil assistance. He'll be vertical all on his own any minute.

Time, seriously dude. You fly too fast.

Also, legs, seriously dudes. You are too white.

If Ot looks a little wild eyed it's because he was mainlining sugar the whole time, running on not enough sleep the night before, skipping his nap, and running his poor Nana ragged the whole 3 hours of the shower.

So that glazed look in his eyes is actually Toddler Icing which is made from chubby little sugar-crusted fingers being rubbed into watery, tired toddler eyes.

Awwww, yeah, boyee! (see I'm continuing the hip-hop theme for no reason again). And that, my friends, is how we stip, a stop, a stip stop steppy to the steppedy stepped out yesterday!

What's everyone else up to this weekend? We seem to be spending every weekend in April up here in Phoenix so I'm off now to go pack our duffel while Ot & his gparents are at church. We head home again this afternoon after a breakfast brunch for Ot's great-grandpa. Hopefully will be returning home to Rob having done our taxes (the excitement never ends around here). Hope you all had funky-ass hip-hop weekends too, with exciting things like cupcakes and taxes!

xo,
Lindsey

Mama Say Wha?!

I'm thinking of adding a page to this site for "modern mommyisms" what do you think? And I'm not talking about "You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar."

I feel like we blog-reading, twittering mamas say the funkiest, funniest things sometimes! I know you guys have me rolling on the floor pretty much daily. I came up with two yesterday (based on my life yesterday)...

Butter Blemish (noun) : a glob of sun- soy- almond- or peanutbutter in the middle of one's forehead, directly above the area where the unplucked eyebrows kind of meet in the middle. Resembles a blemish one has smothered in concealer. The butter blemish should be worn for countless hours, unknown to the wearer, and definitely should be worn to preschool dropoff.

Poptart Pedicure (noun) : a mode of distraction employed to guarantee 45 uninterrupted seconds of toddler toe care. Sit toddler in highchair, provide toddler with a Nature's Path Organic Toaster Pastry, clip the crap out of toddler's toenails as fast as you can!

ps. Here is my favorite picture from last weekend. Otto and his little cousin AJ having a roaring game of ping-pong. AJ was so patient to play with Otto all weekend (legos, slapjack, hide-and-seek, school) even though Otto cheats at everything (not on purpose, it's just that he's 2 years old).

So what do you think about a "Mama Say What?!" page? Do you guys have any you'd want to add to the page? I'll put it up tonight & take submissions and would link your submission back to your blog/twitter page! Just email me (see sidebar for contact link) or comment it and I'll add.

ps. This is my evil ploy to have jokes emailed right to my inbox, haha!

xo,
Lindsey