Chasing Bluebirds

mish mash

i am still struggling to get decent interesting posts up regularly here... i find i take the coolest photos on my phone and then i post the most god awful crappy ones here on the blog. here goes with a few favorites from a recent phone download...

lots of cloud photos to inspire me to get back to painting


new car love
kitty love
milestones
embracing tweendom
miss maggie
getting the backyard in shape for some major plant redo and finding a way to paint again in my own personal outside studio
black bamboo... best choice ever
fathers and daughters... love! gotta get to school, working on our garden club...it's coming along s l o w l y... cheers!

xmas 2012

we had a little family dinner for lizzie a couple nights ago and found the "elf yourself" app fun as well as the guitar hero game

Looking forward to a movie and maybe a nap before dinner... back to work tomorrow but will FINALLY have a weekend completely off so we can head up to the cabin for New Years. This has been such an awesome year, so many good things to be thankful for, really the best ever. Hoping to keep this going for 2013! Planning a Florida/Disneyworld trip and maybe take another mom and me adventure (Scotland!!) I was surprised by many Padre Pio gifts from chris, having been introduced while driving through Italy. I do wish I hadn't done any research on him though, as the mystery was better than the reality but that's what I get for being curious all the time. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!!

happy birthday lizzie!!

someone turned 9 today!! 

December happenings

I started out the month way ahead of schedule and it FEELS GREAT!! I have done most of my shopping and even wrapped most of my gifts, a definite first for me. Having two kids who are at such different maturity levels has proven hard for me this year. Lizzie is just 8 (soon to be 9) but Emily is closer to 13 than 12. This means that toys are pretty much off both their lists, even Lizzie! Last year eveyone wanted dolls (boy barbies too ???) and I obliged because I could feel the end of the doll era approaching. I guess it makes me a little sad to be moving out of the toy section and into the "curling irons, nail polish, make up, clothes" tween/teen world. Oh well! At least SANTA can still bring toys, right??

Karate and New Trucks, yay!! (food is not allowed in the new truck, yet)
Talent show and awards ceremony, we have almost gone a full year of karate, can't recommend it highly enough (especially for those kids who really really really need it)
On the Camp Fire front: we have done progressive xmas dinner parties, potluck parties and many parties at a very special grandma's house... but we have never just gone out to dinner for the heck of it! This year I decided to set our Xmas party at our local mexican food restaurant. It turned out great and I enjoyed letting the girls just "hang out" We left a nice big tip, hugs all around (hugging is BIG right now with the middle schoolers, so cute!!) and full bellies after a quick handmade gift exchange.
Some things i am enjoying right now: 1. Rachel Khoo especially her new cooking show on the cooking channel, so fun! 2. this cookbook 3. and this one too 4. this blog (I stumbled onto this blog about the time she delivered her twins and thought it was a really refreshing blog about parenting. since then i have been just smitten with it, i love her mom as well. when my kids were babies i didn't have a girlfriend to hang with or talk to and i remember feeling really lonely sometimes. i was lucky to find a really homey nurturing day care for my daughters and i met some other working moms i could talk with. it still wasn't that "dream girlfriend to hang at the park with" situation, but it did help me feel less neurotic! anyways, this blog is what i was looking for then and i don't mind taking a little trip back to the baby days sometimes, it's that good) 5. this blog totally inspiring, she has a video i watched and wow, what a lovely lady!! 6. and this one, are you KIDDING ME?? can these people be any cooler? sheeesh!! ok, off to my date with the laundry and super quick house pick up... we have had some algebra issues so today we meet the new tutor... yippee!!

brodsky contest

so before we left, our orthodontist told us about a photo contest to win an ipad: the girls have to wear their "brodsky" shirt in 2 out of 3 photos of 1: vacation 2: beach and 3: disneyland (luckily they include downtown disney which is a shopping area next to disneyland that is free, disneyland is beyond crowded in the summer so we avoid it like the plague) going through all the photos i found it neat to see all the places we thought would be good for the contest

gelato in rome (the best!)
coliseum
pompeii
top of mount vesuvius

looking into the crater at mount vesuvius

st angelo (castel) in rome
mini coliseum in pompeii As you can probably tell from all the sweat in these photos, it was HOT !!! time to send them off and see who wins. :)

rome due (that's "2" in italian)

one of the highlights of our trip was going to this museum. i found it on trip advisor, just a few weeks before our trip i decided to actually look up attractions, it was number one! check out the website, it is a ruin that was found underneath a federal building that was excavated out. they built glass floors over the top of the house, some places you walk over the inside and also the roof in some places. then they put together a slide show, movie type thing that walks you through the place highlighting certain areas. there are all kinds of special effects and neat modern technology along with the archeological information. near the end they show a movie about trajans column which explains the entire story written around from bottom to top. it feels like the best pbs show you've ever seen and at the conclusion you are sent down a long hall that opens up on to the REAL trajan's column! it is so unexpected too. the premise is that the unearthed house is at the level of the column and was most likely built during that time (other columns have been found during the excavation too). it leaves you with the excitement the archeologist are feeling with this remarkable discovery.

another place we stumbled on (after passing it several times on the hop on and off bus) was the castel sant angelo


(the girls had their orthodontist's t shirts on for a photo contest they participated in)

this is the view from our rome hotel, i loved listening to the swallows as they swooshed in circles around this open area. ciao!

science time

emily had to do a 6th grade science project and luckily she had just planned a camp fire lesson on scientific experiments so we used one of them for school. because it was a "science fair" format, there were endless amounts of hoops to jump through (abstract, hypothesis, research, raw data...results, conclusion... bibliography...) so from a 3 minute experiment, we had to fluff it up a whole lot.

supplies...
place coin on the plate, pour water... (this is called "coin rescue" by the way)
light paper on fire and put in glass jar...
put glass jar onto plate near coin (we had to move inside, wind malfunction)
listen to the squealing sound, watch the bubbles as a vacuum forms because of the combustion reaction (oxygen burned up and carbon dioxide produced) soooo fun!
we tried food coloring too


coin rescued!

april 2012

its like i need to just put the date up there because time is flying by and my blogging is lagging, geez! right now i am: swimming twice a week, riding my bike almost every day down the river to the beach (in crazy wind with these recent storms) and feeling so much better! when i was younger i could do three or four hard workouts in a week and be down a size no problem. well at 44, i guess it takes more than a few workouts to see a real change but at least i have swung that weight gain pendulum swinging in the other direction a bit. so on my bike ride today (the river runs right through the wetlands) i was surprised to see this at the end of the trail

the most beautiful, lovely sign dedicated to the wetlands we have been desperately trying to save!!! on the other side is a sign about the san gabriel river channel describing it's route and characteristics, also very well done. in other news, lizzie has been taking tae kwon do (sometimes 5 days a week she loves it so much) and she just had her first belt testing yesterday. it was really cool and i enjoyed watching the other kids too, especially the tiny kids getting really high level belts. this was exactly what this kid needed!!

(poor olive wants in) unfortunately we had a loss of a family member this week but the flip side was lots of visiting with extended family bringing us all closer and reminding us how important family is, how fast time flies. jump stated me planning an east coast visit to finally see all those cousins on the east coast and scout out my favorite state: north carolina. happy spring everyone!!
hanging out with aunt heather

12 years... time sure flies!

my first born is 12! wow!

we spent the day at knott's berry farm

still trying to figure out my new camera, feels really awkward, hoping it gets easier. lizzie struggled a bit, being too little for most big rides and too big for the little rides...
with my squeamish stomach, i took advantage of our time together waiting for the big kids. we shopped and had our own adventures, i treasure these fleeting moments shared with her alone. happy birthday emily!!

christmas 2011

whoa, i am really absent here lately! i had a run of extra work so i have been super busy and tired. finally have a few days off to catch up on everything...

this year i had portraits of both girls made by alice du bois (three different ones so i could keep one and give the other two to the grandparents) we also had my parents dog painted (*unfortunately he became ill over thanksgiving and had to be put to sleep, so sad!*) and our dog maggie as well. it was such a fun process to find photos of the girls to have painted and then interacting with alice as she worked on and completed each painting. it was always a thrill to open up the package with the painting all finished. i highly recommend getting portraits done of your pets and kids and whomever because it is such a unique way to capture a moment in time. i never tire of looking at the first portrait i had done of the girls. you can see the three portraits here and archie as well.
maggie got her annual bone and the girls got dolls, dolls and more dolls (including a justin bieber doll!!)