Too Much Silence...

Since my parents left on Sunday this was suppose to be a week of cleaning, catching up on long overdue laundry, and getting back into our typical schedule; however, that did not sound appealing at all! Instead I've found myself being completely lazy and enjoying every quite moment I have. (which honestly is not many.)
My kids are not really what would call easy going. OK let me rephrase that, BRYLIE is not easy going and wants constant attention, that is unless.....she is getting into trouble, in which case she says "mommy go take care of Lauryn" hint: leave her alone because she doesn't want me seeing what she is up to.
Lately however I really have not even cared what she was into as long as I could have 5 minutes peace. After about 15 minutes though I began to worry, and sure enough this is what I found...

Two little girls with no pants on and a whole bag of potato chips on the floor.

Lauryn apparently thought it would be easier to dump them out instead of having to reach into the bag every time!

Brylie was happy to help clean up after the mess she had made

but insisted on having Lauryn help too, because well, she was the one who dumped them on the floor.

As for the no pants, well I must admit that was probably just laziness on my part. :) And I still believe my 15 minutes of quiet was worth the mess.

Pics from our week with Grandma

Brylie loved Waterworld and has wanted to go back ever since the first time. Grandma of course can never say no and promised to take her before she left. However she did this before knowing that the tempertature the next day was going to be 68 degrees, but Grandma is always a good sport, and the cold, cold weather did not slow Brylie down.

She dove right in and loved dragging Grandma around with her.
(Which is huge for my mom, because she does not like it cold!)


This is where Lauryn & I hung out most of the time, and actually outside of the water the tempurature felt quite nice, that is if I kept my jacket on. :)

Bry tried to be tough, but even she got a little cold.

Everyone loves to snuggle with Grandma!





This is where she ended up...





Apparently she couldn't get warm enough & had to hide.



Chuck E. Cheese






Once again we had a great time and it really doesn't need much explaining.

Lost Camera Cord!

I know I have gotten behind on my blogging, which we all knew was coming, but I was hoping to at least stay on top of it during the summer when I have a little extra time on my hands, this time though it is genuinely not my fault. I have actually attempted to blog about our many adventures and cannot seem to find my camera cord ANYWHERE!!!! ( And it's just not the same if you can't have the pictures to go along. :) I'm totally upset about it...and am hoping it is just temporarily misplaced. Until then though I wanted to write a few things down before I forget them all and hopefully the pictures will come later.
My parents were able to come out this week because my dad was taking a group around the San Francisco area. We were only able to see him a few days because he was busy tourin around, but my mom stayed here with me and the girls which worked out perfectly because Shawn ended up leaving us to go sell a few hours away. Thank goodness she was here to entertain and keep us company! It was great week and we were able to lay by the pool, watch a few chick flics, visit Waterworld, Alcatraz, and spend quality time with Grandma. My dad was even nice enough to take me on the greatest date to see Harry Potter! I cannot believe there are not more Harry Potter fans out here, I thought for sure since they love their Twilight and vampires so much wizards would not be a stretch, but still I could not convince anyone to go see it with me so luckily my dad has great taste and came out just in time to join me.
I do love visitors but sadly they have to leave today to go meet my sister Jessica and her family in Hawaii for a week. (I know, I know retired life is rough. :) Brylie is terribly upset to see them go and continues to tell me she wants to go to Grandma's House. I tried explaining it is really, really far away, but she simply replies "well maybe we can drive faster!"
Anyhow, sorry no pics we will work on that later, and thanks mom and dad for a wonderful visit and constantly spoiling us!

Wormie

This is the "Rock Park" so named by Bridger and widely know by all of the Apx kids.
It is on the first floor of our apartment complex and is the only spot of grass we have so this is the place we go when we can't handle the apartment any longer. (quite often :)

Our last visit to the rock park the kids found a friend ...

Wormie! He was quite the excitement and everybody wanted a turn to hold him, wormie was passed around, put in the dump truck to have a ride, and oohed and aaed at by all!


Poor Wormie, thanks for the entertainment, hope you survived....until next time!

Waterworld

I bought a season pass for Waterworld before we came out to California, but just now realized that it is already July and we hadn't made it once. Between two girls different nap schedules it just seemed hard to find a time, but this last week Jen invited us to join her and her two boys there just for a few hours, and I am so glad we did! It is only 2 minutes away and Brylie LOVED it, because she could touch everywhere! Normally she is terrified of the water because she does not want it in her eyes, and even though we are always at the pool she usually just wanders around with her friends and will put her feet in the hot one. I can never actually get her to swim in the pool, but here she was thrilled to be able to walk around the entire kiddie area without the water even getting close to her eyes.


Brylie being the extremely cautious girl she is climed up and down the stairs of the slide, examining it each time, before she finally decided it was ok to go down. After which she seriously stated "I Love it!" and continued to go again, and again.

She also had to approach this turtle very slowly and carefully before it was ok to touch it. Then she patted his head and decided they we're friends.

Jen's little boy Bridger thought the water was much too cold to play in (which I agree), but because he just wanted to relax and eat snacks brylie had to keep recruiting Jen and I to come play with her. I kept trying to get out of it by saying I needed to see Lauryn but then she would just go over and drag Jen in the pool instead, she could not experience all this fun by herself! (Thanks for being such a good sport Jen:)


I love these babies!! Lauryn loves to play with Jen's little boy Roper who is only a month older. They get along so well, and are just the happiest, most easy going babies around. They do tend to get left behind quite often while we take the other kids to play, so thank goodness they have each other.

Waterworld turned out to be quite a success, we had to drag Bry out as the workers were cleaning up, and she continues to ask when we get to go again.

Sunday in the Park

At the end of the week, I am usually going crazy from being stuck in the apartment with two kids and sooo anxious to get out and play. Shawn on the other hand is completely warn out from working all week and I'm sure would love to just relax and do nothing. He pretty much always gives me my way though and happily goes along with whatever activity I have planned for us. So this Sunday I tried to be a nice wife and not give in but compromise. :) After church and nap time we headed over to the cute town of Pleasant Hill where we stopped by Cold Stone for some delicious ice cream, then found a great little park to play & RELAX in.

Sunshine and ice cream-Life's little pleasures! :)
Lauryn could not get enough!

Shawn even bought Brylie her own little treat from the ice cream cart that was driving around the park. It was WAY to big for her and she made an absolute mess but was thrilled she had a Dora popcicle.

As much as Brylie wanted to take Dora on the swing with her, it wasn't quite working out...

after finally convincing her to hand Dora over to daddy, (just for a minute) we had a great time on the tire swing.

Lauryn got so excited on the slides but Bry pretty much just thought she was in the way of her going fast.

Luckily we found this slide where they were able to go side by side without getting each others way.

It was an awesome park, that Brylie DID NOT want to leave, but after promising to come back another day she grudingly walked back to the car asking constantly what happened to her dora. (Shawn had to be sneaky and throw it away while she was playing because it was dripping everywhere! We were hoping she wouldn't notice but no such luck, she is still bringing it up 3 days later.)


I think we all enjoyed ourselves and hopefully Shawn got rested up for another long week of knocking the doors.

This year for the fourth we didn't have to make it to the parade till 11:30, which I loved and even nicer it happened to be right across the street! So the girls and I were able to ease into our morning, get ready, then catch up with the other kids and wives to watch the parade together.It was the perfect day for a parade not to hot or cold & I must admit Concord put on a pretty good show, although it did last a REALLY long time so we had to head over to the park a little early where we walked around the booths then enjoyed a nice little lunch while listening to some live jazz.

Davie & Brylie , so cute in their patriotic attire.

Stole this picture from liz because she actually had one of Bry holding still, and plus Liz's pictures are just always better than mine. :)


So it wasn't quite the dutch oven dinner and fireworks in the red hills that I would get in Kanab but instead here in Cali we have rainbow flags and equility for all, marching in the parade. Oh and also these cool dragon head things!



All of the Apx kids lined up patiently waiting for the parade to begin, (of course Brylie is not one to wait patiently and I could not get her to hold still for a picture either.)

After the parade had gone on for quite some time Bry decided to begin her own parade, marching with Bridger's light-saver.

Later that night after the guys got off work they headed to a park to have a little BBQ, play some football, and watch the fireworks. Unfortunatly I had to stay home with a tired little girl but could not let Bry miss out on the fun, so here she is so excited because she had her own snap pops.



Brylie was to interested in her light stick necklace to look up for a picture, she was thrilled that there happened to be fireworks that matched her necklace! "Look dad, they match! " (she's very into matchy matchy lately. My little fashion consious girl.)

Happy 4th of July to all!!!!!

A princess & her prince

Brylie asked Bridger if he would be her prince and he makes such good one. You should see those dance moves. Aren't they cute!!!

Chocolate: The Best Medicine

You would think I should know by now that Lauryn is too old, and wild to leave sitting on the couch. But I never learn and I was only two feet away picking up toys, so today she took quite a head dive, and let me tell you she was UPSET!!! I mean I could not find anything to calm this girl down. I knew she couldn't be seriously hurt because...well it's not that big of couch and all of her limbs moved fine. Any how I tried giving her carrots....no luck, rocking, singing, bouncing....still totally inconsolable. Desperate to quite her before she woke up her sleeping sister in the next room, I grabbed one of my favorite things. Chocolate! Oreo to be exact, but its all wonderful :) Sure enough within a matter of seconds, happiest girl in the world! The pain is forgotten and a complete mess from head to toe.

Just goes to show you, like mother like daughter... Carrots never seem to soothe me either, chocolate on the other hand always makes life a little better. :)