June 2010 D.N. (During Newmans)

Okay, at long last…a little round-up from the last few weeks around here while the Newman clan visited.

And as I’m sorting through nearly 800 photos, (and those are just of when the cousins were here!) I’ve decided that there will not be any photo editing or nice bordering going on here. There are just TOO many photos. So, what you see is what you get. And I’ll try to edit myself so that this doesn’t go on for days. Already, it might, ok, MOST definitely will need to be a two-part mini-series.

But, to all the naysayers and people who called us crazy – we did six kids for the week, and we did just fine! Everyone was bathed (for the most part), well-fed, and no ER visits. I can’t recall for sure, but I believe we didn’t even have a band-aid incident, which all adds up to a successful week in my book. Of course, I had Lexer, who is quite the mother’s helper, J. made sure to come home early-ish almost every night, and I conned our sweet 14-year old friend to come help me when we went to the pool so I had an extra set of hands.

We managed a zoo trip…
(See the cute monkeys?)

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Although, the “best baby in the world” probably doesn’t remember much of it…
(See the little joey in his kangaroo pouch?)

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We had a lot of popsicles…

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Tried out the Easy Bake Oven…

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And swam…

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A lot…

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Just a little more…

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We hula-hooped…
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We were sassy…
(Ha! Actually she was great all week, but this photo! But that is my SasserElla!)

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Some were just stinkin’ cute…

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And before we knew it, Meesh and DJ were back from Hawaii. Feeling the love…
(DJ hates cats, but Tiger LOVES him!)

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So we did the requisite tour of Hollywood…
(Squint through the haze you can see the Hollywood sign up there!)

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Visited with some friends…

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And some stars…

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Showed Lexer where she will sing when she makes the next American Idol…

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And made sure she got to go have the Miley Cyrus milkshake…
(Although she was led to believe that all the pop stars hang out here, and we didn’t see one!)

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Mmmm…milkshakes…

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Then we took a trip to the beach…
(In the middle of the chilly June gloom that has extended into July. It IS JULY now, gloom go away.)

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After being buried in the sand, took a dip to wash off…
(Freezing, I tell you. I won’t get in the Pacific until at least mid-August, but it didn’t stop the crazy girls.)

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Although some of us chose to play in the sand where it was warmer…
(Was she eating the sand?)

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And since we needed some more enough excitement, we took the kids to Disney for Madey’s birthday.

The inseparable Cheshire cats…
(Can we all say “joined at the hip” for the entire trip?)

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Took a spin on the teacups…

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Or got spun on the teacups?
(I was in this cup, blech. Spinning is not my forte.)

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Even Mav took his first Disney rides…
(I think he liked it!)

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All the kids were champs. ALL day. You see quite a lot of “melting down” going on at Disney – tired, over-excited and stimulated kids, but our crew was great and we got to do quite a bit of the park. And then it was time to go home – literally. DJ and the girls pulled out of our driveway to start the trek home maybe 45 minutes after we pulled in from Disney. Some of the girls were a little pouty on the way to our house, and I think Meesh might have been pinching Ella in this last shot to get her to smile…

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All in all, it was a lot of chaos, but OH so much fun. We should do it again…oh, wait we are! Next week!

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To be continued…

Yep. The aquarium…again.

If you haven’t figured it out – the LB aquarium is at the top of our list of favorite places in the LA area to visit. We take everyone who comes to visit us there, and we usually make at least one trip by ourselves every month or so. I love the ocean, I love ocean life and I LOVE that the girls are just as fascinated as I am with all things “ocean.”

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So naturally, when the girls came to visit last week, the first place we took them? The aquarium. To see the
“fiss-hhhies!” as Ella would say.

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I think she liked the fishies. Addie certainly liked being older than someone and being able to show off the stuff she knows.

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The sting-ray touch pool was a definite favorite…

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And I think everyone (except maybe Madey, she wanted to touch them until they came within 3 inches of her fingers) got to touch one of these…

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And look! I relinquished the camera yet again. When J. is with us I end up in a photo…

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…sometimes even two!

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We can’t get enough of the aquarium. So come visit us – we’ll take you, too!

We are on a 2 day break from vacationing

We got back from our mini-vacation on Sunday, and we are leaving again for a trip to Michigan on Wednesday. The girls are starting to think their entire lives are just one big vacation!

Our San Diego trip was a little spontaneous but we managed to snag a good “last minute” deal at a pretty nice resort on Coronado, which is also called Coronado Island, but I think is technically an isthmus…it is connected to San Diego by a little bit of land. At any rate, very cool little downtown. Pretty nice resort. This was the view from our window…

…of course just to the left was the parking lot, so it is all about selective viewing, here.

We found a bagel shop and had our Saturday morning bagel ritual and headed out to the San Diego Zoo. Which, if the animals have to be caged up and on display, the SD Zoo does a pretty good job of it.

The zoo had just started a program on Friday where you can pay to feed the giraffes, which happens to be my favorite animal at the zoo. Nice timing on our part, totally not planned, but we did get to feed them, which was really cool. Let me tell you, they are very, very TALL.

J. makes fun of me when I said that, “Um, what a profound statement: giraffes are tall!” But although they are very gentle, it is slightly intimidating to have this animal literally towering over the top of you and reach down to take a “biscuit” out of your hand.

Em did great and really loved it, Ad acted all tough until she looked up and the giraffe started down towards her, then she quickly handed her biscuit to me and said, “Dohwanna, Mama!”

These little guys gave the giraffes a run for their money in my book, though. I could watch the meerkats all day (and yes, I’ve been known to watch Meerkat Manor mesmerized for hours as well).

Addie’s favorite was the flamingos, or “mingos”…

Em’s favorite was the Reptile House. Yes, you read that correctly. She drove us crazy with her “are we going to see the reptiles, yet?” We stupidly made it the last stop. Will not make that mistake again. She kept asking Daddy to take her picture with the snakes. Addie thought we were talking about “snacks” and got antsy, so she and I only made it halfway through before we went out for some snacks.

I think Daddy’s favorite was probably the monkeys. Here are my two monkeys watching the monkeys in the cages…

After the zoo we tried the pool (too cold!), Em got her hair braided (took forever and ‘Nise does a much better job) and tried to rest in the room (most unsuccessfully), but the light through our balcony was very pretty so I got to practice taking photos of the girls.

Then we had ice cream for dinner!

Granted we had a very late lunch, so it wasn’t like we only had ice cream in our bellies when we went to bed. But the ice cream and a romp on the beach, plus all of the ocean-fresh air helped everyone sleep very soundly that night.

Tomorrow, I’ll fill you in on our experience at Legoland…and the second day of our San Diego excursion. In the meantime I have a few more hundred photos to go through…