California, Part 3: Weddinging

On Saturday, we stopped by my grandparents' house to visit for a bit.

In the evening, we had a wedding reception to go to-- for Josh and Elisa Peck (Congratulations to the happy couple!)

It was really nice, of course, but the best part was being able to catch up with friends we hadn't seen in a while.

Freddy and I (matching it up, saweeeet!)

Tina Shirley, my childhood best friend, and I got to finally see each other and catch up! I've missed her so much!!

Now, I know this next picture is super blurry, but I just had to share something about it. Nathan was loving all the music. He was dancing his little heart out and all the little kids were standing around to watch him jam out. SO funny! I had to hold him back while they threw the garter, because he really wanted to get out on the floor and dance-- they were playing "Macho, Macho Man!" He was causing quite a crowd to form watching him dance. :)

That's my baby boy! (Love the little tongue..)
Happy little family.. :)
And one final picture with Tina and Nathan..
It was so nice to see old friends and enjoy a night with them. Congratulations again to Josh and Elisa!

California, Part 2: Gettying

On Friday we went to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles with Freddy's mom and grandma. It is AMAZING! And get this: it's free! You just pay for parking and that's it! I'm so embarrassed that we both grew up in the LA area and this was our very first time going! Well, it was great, if you didn't catch how I felt about it.

First you take a tram from the parking lot up to the museum. It's operated by magnets and what not-- and the funniest part was when Freddy's grandma heard that-- that it doesn't have a driver. "SOLO?!?!" (Meaning, like, by itself? Anyway, super hilarious..)

All throughout there are breathtaking views-- so I've kinda posted a ton of pictures.. By the time we're done here you might be able to say that you've been to the Getty, too!Nathan's not really the quiet, museum type. He was pretty frustrated that none of the guards would let him throw his baseball around on the floor. This kept him occupied for a little while though.This was outside, I think, the East building-- and funny story. We're walking through and looking at all these 15-16th century French artifacts and artwork. Another group is walking the opposite direction and out of the corner of my eye, I see the older gentleman get tired and sit down for a minute... ON ONE OF THE ARTIFACTS! He saw this side table thing and thought it was like a bench to rest on. You can imagine how quickly the guard ran over to make him get off the 500 year old table! Hilarious!Freddy took one look at this one and said, "Hey look-- it's the inspiration for the Snuggie." Made me laugh so hard I just had to take a picture. After I snapped it I said, "I'm blogging that."Fun in the fountains outside the buildings... Oh how Nathan wanted him to let go and let him jump in the water!

I don't know why no one else had a hard time looking directly into the sun at the camera. This was like, our third shot or something-- the only one that I wasn't squinting so badly that we had to take another one. Huh.
One of my favorites. :) Loved the view from the top!

Another one outside by the fountains...

Cool, right?! "Irises" by Van Gogh-- who knew I'd be standing right next to it-- like the real thing! Pretty neat, I thought!
And last thing before we left (because we were starrrrving, or at least I was), was out to the gardens. SO BEAUTIFUL! Oh. I guess this is the only picture I've uploaded. Ah bummer. Check out FB to see more, or just go to the Getty yourself!
I just love Nathan's laugh... :)
Very cool day at the Getty Museum. But very tiring. I was so glad that I wasn't the one driving in the rush hour traffic on the way back, because I was pooped! (Sorry Freddy!) But yeah, we loved coming here and we would definitely come again. (I'm sure we'll go back the next time relatives from Ecuador come to visit-- they're always looking for good sites to see and this, for sure, is one of them!)

California, Part 1

We went to California for Freddy's spring break and also to celebrate his mom's birthday.

It was nice to be back in So Cal-- and Nathan enjoyed all the balls that Abuelito and Abuelita had sitting around in their backyard.
So many balls to play with! His very favorite toy!
But of course the one that he really, really wanted was the only one that he couldn't quite have... The bowling ball. Silly kid. He tried and tried to pick that thing up...Finally with a little help from Daddy he was able to get a grip on it-- but was pretty disappointed that Freddy wouldn't let him do it by himself!And since we're in LA, might as well jump on the band wagon and be a Dodgers fan! Cute one at that!

And that was Thursday-- a whole lot of playing around outside. What fun!

One Potato, Two Potato

The other day I was on the phone with my sister, Jessica, while I was making dinner. All the sudden, mid-conversation, I stopped and said, "Oh my gosh, you've got to be kidding me!? This thing is HUGE!" In the middle of my ordinary bag of potatoes I found Goliath. I had to take a picture and send it to Jessica.I still don't know if anyone truly grasps how large this potato was. It was bigger than my size 8 foot-- and on the other side, a couple potatoes from the same bag-- average potato sized.Perhaps if you see it in comparison to Nathan-- it's huge!

Or, to help you understand how big this potato was, I made a whole casserole dish full of scalloped potatoes (a recipe that calls for 8 large potatoes) with this ONE potato. Yeah. It was a real monster. Amazing.

Parking

We like the park.

Every week we have a play date with some of the other kids in the ward at a local park. Most weeks I think I should just skip it, stay home, and work on homework or something more productive. But then I think about how much Nathan likes going and I get up and get ready to go.

He likes climbing on the big kid playground. The little kid stuff is boring and there's no fun places to fall off from.
He also likes to climb up slides. Now Nathan, everyone knows that you go down slides, not up.

And of course, he likes to play in the sand, especially if someone else brought toys.

These kids were playing with their "construction vehicles." They showed me how to use their "excavators" to excavate for the mall that they were building. I asked how long it was going to take to build such a big project? "Ohhhh... (He shrugged) 20 seconds."
And every week, he always wants to swing in the swings.
Oh the fun that we have at the park!

Maria Comes to Visit!

One of my very best friends, Maria, came to visit us in Arizona! Fun!

We got to have tons of fun catching up and spending time together. Here we are looking at the view of the city below-- it's a pretty cool place!
The family!
All Nathan wanted to do was climb down the rocks-- (except in this next picture-- I'm pretty sure he was looking at a couple dogs nearby...).

Okay, so the post was supposed to be about Maria visiting, but the problem is that all the pictures were on her camera, so yeah, it's more like family picture day. :/ But! We all had a great time together. We made delicious cookies-- both snickerdoodles and chocolate chip and we played a few rounds of Scattergories. We got to have a dinner at Olive Garden to celebrate Maria's birthday that was a few days ago-- and we also got to check out the Dodgers spring training facility at Camelback Ranch! So amazing! It was a ton of fun to have a guest here at the Sarmiento Resort and we'd like to announce that we do still have some availability for the upcoming months, but now's your chance to book your dream getaway! Call today to schedule your presidential suite in Glendale, Arizona! ;-)

Weekend Project

We decided to do a project that Freddy's been dreaming of since we moved in to our house. Put grass in our backyard!

There's a section of river rock in our backyard, that I thought was just fine, but in Freddy's mind he saw the potential it really had*.

So we moved all the rocks over to the side (and we still need to figure out what to do with them).Then we added some soil into the dirt that we already had... and mixed it all up.And Nathan was such a good little helper...

Then we started rolling out the grass!And then we realized that the girl at the hardware store was wrong. The sod rolls were only 2x5, not 2x10, which meant that we had to go back to get more. But we got there and they had sold all but four rolls**, and we still needed six! We called and called other stores nearby to see if we could grab some from another location and sure enough, everyone was out. So, to make up for their mistake, they just gave us the four they had for free! Great!But then that meant that we had to get the two last rolls from a different hardware store. So now, we not only have grass, but we also have a science experiment going on in the backyard to see who sells the best sod. We shall see! :) I feel like this last picture belongs in a kid's activity book. (Hi friend! Two rolls of grass are different than the others? Can you tell which two don't belong?)

The project took a little longer than anticipated, since we had to do a little running around so that we weren't left with half a yard of grass, but all in all we're quite pleased. We just hope that the sod takes to the soil and grows as expected! And also, that the upcoming summer doesn't kill it all off***! So now it's just a matter of time before soccer practice starts!

*And every time we mention the project it's followed up with a sidebar. "We did this project! Which Tracy didn't want to do." But what can I say, I didn't want to do it.

**And one of the rolls was like, falling apart already... Hm.

***Which was my original concern, I wanted to wait and see how summer would be-- before we plant a sacrifice to the sun gods to kill on the first day of summer.