LA Trip

How can you not love LA? Especially in the morning, when the fog is lingering, and it is slightly chilly, but you are standing on the roof of a parking garage about to enter the bowels of the fabric district!!!!! Heaven!

 Of course this wouldn't have been a proper adventure at all without my bestie Megsie!!! I am sure people thought we were freaks standing of the top of the parking garage taking pictures of almost the same thing and switching back and forth between our "big guns" and our iPhones taking pictures. We are definitely nerds.

 The sheer amount of fabric is totally overwhelming. I felt like I could drown in it and nobody would ever find me.

 Oh Michael Levine's!! What a nice break. Everything is organized properly and I could actually find stuff! There was still a TON of stuff there too! I found fabric for quilts for my boys! So happy! Sadly no curtain fabric. Boo.

We planned to eat at this charming French Garden restaurant, but they didn't open until 2 pm!! After diving in and out of fabric stores for hours we were starving!!

So we opted for one of my favorite touristy stops: Olvera Street!

 I love everything about Olvera Street: the buildings, the dancers, the people, the food, the vendors. It is like a mini trip to Mexico!

 Yeah, we got in trouble for this picture. Apparently, you can't take pictures in it unless you buy it. Oops! Oh well we got a picture of my sister in the Nacho Libre mask anyway.

 Aren't we so cute?

 My mom and sister came and met us for our fabric district / Olvera Street adventure.  They just laughed at how nerdy we were.

 Just across the street from Olvera Street is one of my very favorite places in the whole wide world!

Union Station!! It feels like you step back in time when you go here. Back to a time when travel was luxurious and you didn't feel like cattle. Traveling was an experience. Some day I want to go there and just photograph for a whole day.

Kiersten and my mom were wiped out. They haven't been on a Megan and Britta adventure before. After this we stopped by Beard Papa's in Little Tokyo for creme puffs. Yum - o!

 The main event of this adventure to LA was the Rose Bowl Flea Market!

 We were so not prepared for the amount of stuff that was there. I think we walked around in a daze for the first two hours. Then we got our feet under us and started making a game plan for working our way through the maze of tents.

 I really really wanted to take home all the succulents and orchids, but decided against it because traveling wouldn't be so nice to them.

The highlight of the day was that we got to meet Emily Henderson in person!! Her awesome assistant Orlando took the picture for us! She is a designer on HGTV and the main reason we made this trip is because she always talks about how awesome it is! She was right! Megan and I were totally starstruck! But she was so nice and talkative. I loved chatting with her!

Other trip adventures:

My poor little lips have been struggling this winter so I have become a chap stick addict. The sad part is that they were not getting any better, in fact they felt almost worse. I wake up the morning I am leaving for LA and my lips are killing me! I look in the mirror and almost pass out! I look like a botox job gone incredibly wrong. I mean my lips look like Hitch and they HURT. So against Scott's counsel (He thought that,"It didn't look that bad and it would get better on its own"), I dropped my boys off at my neighbors house and rushed to instacare. Sure enough I was having a MAJOR allergic reaction to something most likely in my chap stick. They put me on steroids and two types of anti-histamines. Fortunately they worked quickly so I didn't look so scary when I boarded the plane. I flew into Vegas and Megan picked me up and we headed to LA! We ate at the most delicious Vietnamese restaurant ever that night. It was called 9021-Pho. So so so good. I am still dreaming about it. The next day we hit the fabric district, Olvera Street, Union Station, and Little Tokyo. That night we had tamales with Megan's parents and the missionaries. It was entertaining. One of the elders was convinced he was "fat" while his companion was skinny as a rail and claimed to have already gained 40 pounds in the few months he had been out. Claudia, Megan's mom, did a quilting show for me after dinner and gave me lots and lots of awesome tips and tricks. The next day was the Rose Bowl!! It was so awesome. We were definitely newbies and had NO idea what we were doing but now we know what to do for next year! After the Rose Bowl we drove to Loma Linda to have dinner with my mom and sister. Then we drove back to Vegas! The whole way back to Vegas Megan and I kept talking about how much fun we had and how much stuff we did. We loved every second of it, but we both admitted that we definitely could not get up and do another adventure like that the next day. The next day we went to an awesome quilt store, and shopped a bit before I needed to get to the airport. I love being a mom, but I love getting a weekend to myself to feel like I am a person too. This needs to be a yearly tradition!

Road Trip Quotes:

"I love boobs!!" - Britta

"Well not really naked. As naked as a Mormon gets." - Megan

"He looks like a toad with hair." - Megan

"You are not Lehi. We don't all follow your dreams." - Megan

"We're like BAM! Britta and Megan!" - Megan

"Just saying . . ." it was a great trip!

Oh Benjamin . . .

Grandpa Wayne refers to Ben as a budding little attorney. I am pretty sure he is onto something. Ben has an argument for everything and they usually go something like this:

Me: "Ben it is time for bed."
Ben: "I know. I know. I know Mom, but I am just a little and I am curious about lots of things, like shows."
Me: "Ben it is dark and late. Time for bed. No more shows."
Ben: "Here's the deal Mom. One more show and then I go to bed."
Me: "No Ben. Time for bed."
Ben: "Mom! I have a great idea!!! How about I sleep for couple minutes and then I wake up and watch a show?"
Me: "Ben, time for bed. You can watch a show in the morning when the sun comes up, but right now it is time for bed."
Ben: "I know. I know. I know Mom, but I am not tired. See? I have lots of NG (energy)!"

Oh boy. What a kid.

Happy New Year . . . sort of . . .

I wanted to do something fun for New Year's Eve. I thought it would be fun to start a tradition with our little family that we could do together before the boys went to sleep. (There is no way they are staying up until midnight. Everyone will be miserable.) I decided that it would be so fun to do a breakfast dinner! I was so excited to find a package of bacon in the freezer because Scott LOVES bacon so it would make the meal perfect!! I made homemade waffles, yummy cheesy eggs and . . . bacon. Everything was going perfectly. Scott even got home a little early. I checked the timer on the bacon and turned around to pull a waffle out of the waffle iron. When I turned back around to the bacon in microwave, the paper towel covering was on FIRE!!!! So I did what every level headed mother does. PANIC!!!! I started screaming, "FIRE, FIRE, FIRE!!" Then in my head I thought, "Water. Water puts out fires." I yanked the burning pan out of the microwave, threw it in the sink and turned on the water. A teeny tine thought crossed my mind, "Never put hot glass in water . . ." KA-BOOM!! The glass dish exploded into a million ity bitty tiny pieces all over the kitchen! Awesome. So after I aired out the house and doused the rest of the flames. We sat down and ate our waffles and eggs. No bacon. After we ate and I had recovered a bit I cleaned up all the glass and dishes. I just finished wiping everything down and then ran the disposal to clear everything out and the most horrifying sound came out!! I shut if off and realized, "There is glass in there. Awesome." I fished around in the sludge trying to find the stray pieces of glass. I tried the disposal again. Again, horrible sound. So I dug around some more. Scott came up to my rescue. He kept digging while I put Cole to bed. Right as I came back down the stairs he flipped the switch to try it again and . . . nothing. Great. I killed the disposal and the bacon and a baking dish. But the night didn't end there!! So I then put Ben to bed and miracle of miracles he was asleep by 9:15 pm. I came down ready to party with the hubby to find him fast asleep on the love sac. Sweet.  I tried to watch some the Times Square broadcast to cheer me up, but it only frustrated me. Thirty seconds of Ryan Seacrest telling me what was coming up and then 5 minutes of commercials, and then thirty more seconds of babble, then more commercials. All the while Scott is snoring gangbusters in my ear. I shut off the TV and we were in bed by 10:30 pm. Wahoo!! Aren't we party animals? Don't worry. There is more. Of course the fireworks going off at midnight woke up Ben. He came in our bed for a bit, but I grew tired of his feet in my back so I took him back to his bed. Not an hour later he had weaseled his way back into our bed. I realized I had two choices. 1: carry Ben back to his room a million times or 2: sleep in his bed. I slept in his bed. Happy New Year from us!!

buzz lightyear and his faithful sidekick

Even though being Ben's brother threatens his life daily (Ben gave Cole his first bloody nose yesterday. Awesome). I am pretty sure Cole would still follow him to the ends of the earth. And Ben would most likely let him because he needs someone to boss around. But they do love each other. Because as Ben says, "Dats what fam-a-wees do."

my little bookworm

 Cole LOVES books. Even when he was itty bitty he preferred books to toys. While Ben runs around racing cars like a hooligan, Cole sits in his rocking chair and reads books. He is getting pretty good at animal sounds. He knows: dog, tiger, bear, lion, chicken, cat, donkey, and cow. My favorite are his cat and donkey sounds. His meow is really slow and soft and sounds like, "Mrrrraaoow." He gets so excited to do the donkey sound. I don't know what is so funny about "hee-haw" but he laughs every time. He loves to read his "Jus-Jus" (Jesus) books at night before bedtime.

Cole is super into blocks. He dumps out the blocks in his room at least ten times a day and then knocks them over and then he laughs and laughs and laughs. Balls and trains are other big favorites right now.