just one picture

I have a bunch of unpublished posts because I will start one and then have to go take care of the kids. As an example, as I started to type this Tidus started crying in his crib. So I found this post that had nothing written but a cute picture of Ted so here you go. 

He is watching Wild Kratts while sitting on a blanket he received for his birthday from Uncle James. 

Catching up with pics :)

We finally made our way out to the Newport Beach Temple. It is only 20 minutes from our home and we headed over right after church.  

 Ted was not very happy that the doors were all locked since it was Sunday.

 Tidus totally photobombed us. psh!

 As I look through these photos I now realize that I did not get a single shot of the entire temple. It is a gorgeous temple. It is one of the smaller temples that was built while President Hickley was president of the church. It is just a pretty temple up on a hill surrounded by homes in gated communities. ;) There was an apartment complex across the street and I looked up rent. For a one bedroom, one bathroom is was over $2100 per month... yikes... But that is Newport Beach for you. There was a mountain off in the distance and the entire time we were touring the temple grounds Ted insisted on climbing it. Even as we packed up the car to leave he pointed to the mountain and suggested that be our next stop.

 Aunt Kristy gave Ted this cute set of capes and masks for his birthday. In true toddler fashion, Ted was randomly terrified of the capes. He had no desire to even let me try them on around his neck. He was fine with putting the masks on (go figure). So I put all the capes and masks in a tub in the closet until one evening Ted requested I bring the tub out. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles Ted actually wanted to put on both the mask and the cape. I had to document this moment. And send the pic to Kristy for proof.

 We are still doing our preschool homeschool. We don't sit down at the table everyday but we do make an effort to include educational activities in whatever we choose to do. It gets hard to do preschool while Tidus tears apart the house so I let him sit at the table and color with a marker. It worked for quite a while. Until he became bored with coloring and dumped the bucket of crayons all over the floor. Then I banished him to the bouncer.

I have also been checking out new parks in our area. This requires me to drive Tyler to work because the parks are in neighboring cities. He does not mind because this means he gets to use the carpool lane. 

 The primary had a pool party at one of the member's homes. She lets anyone swim in her pool and she keeps it heated at 85 degrees so it was really nice. Afterwards the kids all ate popsicles.

 Tidus eating his very first popsicle.

 We got swimming almost EVERY DAY!! I only say almost because we do not swim on Sundays. Other than the sabbath we are in the pool constantly! It makes me excited because Ted and Tidus are turning into little water babies. I love it.

 To end bird week for preschool we went to the Bolsa Chica Wetlands. It is right across the street from the beach and is the perfect place to go bird watching. In fact, there were lots of people there with binoculars in hand. Other bird watchers were impressed that Ted brought his own.

 We also go to quite a few pug meet ups. I mentioned in a past post how there are so many pug groups in southern California. Tyler even said it feels like he is constantly going to put parties... This group is the OC Pug Saturday Group. This has been my favorite dog park in SoCal by far. It was nice green grass with a paved path all the way around. There was chairs, picnic tables, trees for shade, and water stations.

 Ruby getting jealous that Tyler is petting another pug.

 True to her sheepish pug personality Ruby spent the entire time either right by our side or hiding in the back. Plus, she kept trying to climb into the storage compartment of the stroller.

 More pics of us at the pool.

 Tidus is crying because he wants to be in the pool and not sit on the side but I really wanted to get a picture of him.

First days of summer

Summer is officially upon us. Last week I started getting brave and took the boys to the pool during the day while Tyler was at work. It is finally hot here so the pool feels wonderful. Ted has a floaty that he wears and he is brave enough with it on to swim over to the deep end of the pool. I discourage this since I have Tidus in my arms, but I do love his enthusiasm. Tidus has his floating island but I suspect he is reaching the age where he does not want to sit in his personal floaty anymore but he is too small to wear a life jacket. This means I get the pleasure of holding him the entire time. He does enjoy standing on the steps and splashing in the water. I enjoy giving my arms a break. And it is fun to see Ted coming out of his shell and playing with the other kids at the pool.

Yesterday we walked to Home Depot and bought supplies to make a water table. This idea came from the What's Up Moms YouTube channel. I can be counted on to try out most of their craft ideas. I already had quite a bit of pvc piping from previous projects. Ted chose the color orange to paint it and of course when daddy arrived home all calm and polite water table play went out the window. I was soaked by the end... I'm not a fan of spontaneous water fights so you can imagine how thrilled I was with this.

This post is being typed from my cell phone while baby sleeps on me. He is sleeping through the night which is absolute heaven! Unfortunately naps continue to be a battle. Today I surrendered and am just letting him nap in my arms. The alternative is to put him in his crib and have him scream at me for an hour. Ted has been left to his own devises. Thank goodness for living in an apartment. It is so much easier to handle two kids when they can't get very far from me at any given moment.

Pugs at the Beach

 In Southern California when summertime hits all the pug meet ups head to the beach!

Also can we take a second to truly appreciate just how many pug groups there are in California... the ones that I know of are the Central Coast Pug Group, LA Pug Meetup, Long Beach Pug Meetup, Newport Beach Pug Meetup, and OC Pug Saturday. Only one of those is not within reasonable driving distance for us. We could be doing a pug thing almost every Saturday! Plus the last Sunday of every month!

Okay back to today. The Long Beach Pug Meetup and the LA Pug Meetup both planned activities at the same dog beach at the same time and day. I don't think they did this intentionally but obviously everyone just ended up joining together. There were over 100 pugs playing at the beach and it was a blast! Ruby LOVES the ocean. She loves to dig in the sand, she doesn't mind the waves, and she is obsessed with playing fetch with shells.

 I follow a lot of pugs on her Instagram account and I was trying to recognize other pugs but it is kind of hard. Mean Mug Pug Ozzy was there and her brother Kubrick. Gidget the surf pug was there. Afterwards I went on Instagram to see who else came and posted pictures.

 Tyler is pretty much amazing. He has about a million things he needs to do at work and he knew how important this was to me so he went. When the meet up was over he went home and showered and then headed back in to work.

Here he is with a bunch of pugs on him.

 In the background of this picture you can see Gidget surfing. Apparently there is a breaker out in the water at this beach so there really were very few waves but she was still able to catch a couple. It was cool to watch up close because you can really tell that she is moving on the board to keep it balanced.

All three of my children were thrown into the tub and hosed down. 

The end of a fun and tiring event for Rubert. 

Homeschooling has begun!

For a few years I have been considering doing homeschool with Ted. I have read several books, tons of blogs, and even gone to a homeschool convention. Of course I have also said many prayers on the subject and had talks with Tyler too. For our family this feels like the path we want to take, at least for now. I am all about taking it one grade at a time. Before now I have been doing small toddler focused activities with Ted.

Ted just turned three and we felt it was time to put a bit more focus and structure toward Ted's education. Thank goodness for people who blog and create printables!! They are the most amazing people ever! I use several different blogs including 1+1+1=1 and Simply Learning  and Pinterest ;)

For now each unit will last 2 weeks. What I like about homeschool is that this can change. If Ted is miserable with a specific topic then we don't have to keep going with it. Adversely, if he is loving a topic then we certainly can keep it going. Each day we spend about 30-60 min on "preschool" time where we sit down at his table to do activities and worksheets. We take this time to learn letters, numbers, etc. Then throughout the rest of the day I try to find activities that can also be educational like story time at the library, walks through the park, trips to the beach and this past week we went to the aquarium.

As you can tell from the picture, our first unit was ocean themed. I also checked out a few books from the library on the ocean.

So far Ted is loving it. He even requests to do activities and preschool time. It is so much fun to spend time with him and see him figure things out and then later in the day apply what he has learned to real life. He is just amazing :)

Meeting Gidget the Surf Pug

A while ago I created an Instagram account for Ruby. She follows lots of cute little pugs :) One such pug is Gidget the Surf Pug. Gidget and her family live in Southern California and just so happened to be coming to Huntington Beach this past weekend for a surf dog competition. Actually it was the Purina Incredible Dog Challenge. I have watched these competitions on ESPN in the past so it is cool that it is being hosted so close to where we live. 

I told Gidget on Instagram that we are coming to cheer her on :) 

It was quite the challenge getting us to this competition on a Friday morning. We had to drive Tyler to work so we could have the car for the day (sorry we made you late Tyler :( ) Then when we got home I drove around a ton to try and find where the surfing event was being held. It was 2 miles down the beach from where the rest of the events were taking place. 

By the time we arrived Gidget had already done her first round. I was so bummed but I still worked put the courage to go introduce myself. Luckily she had made the finals and would be surfing another round. Her two owners were so nice to let us come see Gidget and talk to them. Of course we did not talk long at first because we did not want to distract the surfing pug :) 

So we hung out on the beach watching other surf dogs until the final round. 

 Tidus still loves the beach :) He is getting some crazy sun bleached hair down here.

 Here is my funny story for the beach. You will notice from the pictures that this was a very overcast day. Apparently Huntington Beach is known for May Grey and June Gloom. Almost every day starts out completely overcast. But by about 3PM it has all burned off and it is then a hot sunny day.

Before we left in the morning I made sure to put sunscreen on the kids. While they were playing in the sand a lady (one of the surf dog owners) came up to me and asked if I lived around there. I told her yes and she inquired if I knew that this kind of weather is the most dangerous as far as sun damage. Probably because it is deceptively cold and cloudy but you can still get burned. She then asked if the kids had sunscreen on. I told her yes they did, they are my pail babies and she was like oh ok good job, you are a great mom.

It was not offensive at all I didn't mind her asking.

We were sitting about 10 feet from another family that had little white hair babies the same ages as Ted and Tidus and I thought to myself, I wonder why she singled me out and not them. Then I noticed that their entire family was very tan. No tan lines. They just looked like a family that grew up in a sunny climate. We have lived here since last fall and we still look like we are just vacationing from Washington :) it made me laugh.

Finally it was Gidget's turn to surf in the finals. For each round a person would blast an airhorn and two dogs and their handlers ran out into the wave. A group of guys in yellow went out as well. They are the safety helpers. Each dog had at least 3 people guiding them through the water. 

In this pic you can see Gidget on the right and another little white dog on the right. That dog took first and Gidget took second. 

 I took a pic of the cameraman on the stand filming the competition.

 After the surfing was over the winning dogs were interviewed. This was the winner for the large dog competition. The large dogs are fun to watch because they don't really stand on the boards as much. They lie down. There was even a great dane that was really good.

 When all was done we got pictures with Gidget. She is a purebred all white pug. She is so stinking cute I can't handle it! And I love that my kids like dogs. They both loved seeing all the dogs run around on the beach.

 I don't know if you can tell but at this point Tidus was so dead tired. He was falling asleep in my arms and then I just plopped him on the ground for a photo hahaha. Oh the things my boys put up with...